New RPC Website is Here!

[Kylin]

It's finally here~

 

You may have to reload your browser (or even delete your cookies via "tools" >> "options") if the old site shows up. Comments are of course welcome. I'm in the process of adding a main site button up in the forum navigation bar at this very moment.

 

I also intend to add more to the main site with time obviously. New etiquette will be added. The newspaper and podcast will likely be added under a new Media tab or something. Other projects that others want put up can get posted as well.

 

http://www.ffxiv-roleplayers.com

 

Original design created by Keir.

 

Edit: Main Site button added! The little icon next to it is a placeholder until I find a better image.

[Renaise]

EDIT: Nice, much better than mine.

[Eltharian]

Looks good, I like the book theme. ^^

 

I was wondering how the lore section will be done, will it be based of of the library?

[Kylin]

The lore section will mostly be a link to a wiki (which will be based on the Library). I've already started working on the wiki and had to stop to do the main site. So that's one of my next priorities now. Other things could always go in the lore section too. If Mythis wants, for instance, we could add the name generator there. Other projects related to lore can also be included.

[Eltharian]

Oh, okay. Glad to hear we'll be getting a wiki for all the mass of information there will be to go through.

[Pointy-Eared Molly]

Awesome job! I really dig the book layout as well. Very cool. :cheer:

[Seraphine Felstar]

Very nice job, Kier! It looks amazing. Thanks to you both for such an awesome job

[Faust]

Looks great, but I have a few suggestions:

1. Change the font to something a bit more appropriate. Preferably not something so frilly that it's hard to read, but something with more appropriate character. The Times New Romanesque font isn't much to look at.

 

2. Can you tone down the colors on the tabs? The bold colors don't really mesh well with the antiquated leather-bound book look.

 

3. Get rid of the scroll bars where they're not needed.

 

4. Not going to make too many comments about the content at this point, but good general advice is to keep it brief. For example, opening up the charter gets an automatic tl;dr from me. I don't think most people will be interested enough in the charter to bother reading it, but a summary of the main points that are going to be relevant to the average reader would be good. A link to the charter for those who would like more detail would probably suffice. Make the page for the average person who is looking to join a guild, but also keep the information for those who'd like to start their own guild easy to find.

 

Overall a job very well done, but I think these few polishing touches will go a long way.

[DAISHI]

I think the site looks really good!

[Kylin]

1. Change the font to something a bit more appropriate. Preferably not something so frilly that it's hard to read, but something with more appropriate character. The Times New Romanesque font isn't much to look at.

 

Do you mean the main text? Or the titles? Or both? If you mean the main text, I completely agree. I actually spent a bit of time playing with fonts before getting frustrated and just sticking with the one you see now. I wanted to make it look appropriate while keeping it easy to read. I'm not sure if anyone has any particular fonts they'd like to suggest that we can try out.

 

2. Can you tone down the colors on the tabs? The bold colors don't really mesh well with the antiquated leather-bound book look.

 

Being worked on now. Not sure when it'll be done though.

 

3. Get rid of the scroll bars where they're not needed.

 

This would be a bit harder to accomplish. Due to the graphic complexity, the page can't extend downward for bigger patches of text without looking hideous with mismatched borders. Thus, there are only two options. Use the scroll bar or separate the content onto different pages with navigation arrows. Splitting up content onto different pages not only eats up more web resources (though that's probably not a huge issue with the amount we technically have) but it can also be annoying to people if they have to keep clicking "next" and "back" buttons to read the entirety of a topic.

 

4. Not going to make too many comments about the content at this point, but good general advice is to keep it brief. For example, opening up the charter gets an automatic tl;dr from me. I don't think most people will be interested enough in the charter to bother reading it, but a summary of the main points that are going to be relevant to the average reader would be good. A link to the charter for those who would like more detail would probably suffice. Make the page for the average person who is looking to join a guild, but also keep the information for those who'd like to start their own guild easy to find.

 

The charter is intended to be as is. I realize most newbies will skip over it but it's there for those who need it. We will be going over it one more time again before the game launches and voting on revisions though.

[Aveline]

I honestly don't know about changing the text font... you would either have to embed the font within the site, which can slow down loading, or you would have to rely on everyone having that font installed. Which in most cases people would not bother and would just see the Times font anyway.

[Faust]

I don't know html so I'm not sure what's involved with changing the font, but I'm sure there are plenty of decent fonts in Wordpad/Office if that's workable. The "Visit our forums" banner on the Welcome page has a decent enough font, but I'm guessing that's an image. I would feel free to go with something even more pensman like with the titles.

 

As for the scroll bars, I'm not sure if we're understanding eachother; they're fine where there's enough text that you actually need to scroll down, but there are little bars just sitting there where there isn't even any text to scroll down to. If those are easy enough to remove, it would clean up the look.

[DAISHI]

I have a request.

 

Can my title be AbsurdlyPowerfulGuy ?

[Kylin]

What browser are you using? I don't see any extra scroll bars >.>. So it may be a browser related issue that I'll have to look into.

 

Daishi, you can control your own title in your profile

[Faust]

I'm using Firefox. For example, when I go to the main page, it shows the Welcome! and right next to the Welcome there's a little scroll bar which lets me scroll up and down on only the Welcome. I don't actually need to be able to scroll to see it all, but the scroll bar is still there.

[Aveline]

Here's a good list of the common fonts included for Windows and Macs. http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html

 

Anything other than those fonts listed, you will have to code the font to be embedded directly into the website itself, or use image files (not good for large bunches of text). To be honest... I would go crazy if all the text in the books was in the font used for the RPC's header. Small text like that should be clear and easy to read (and accessible to all browsers and machines) first, pretty second.

[Kylin]

Ohh. I see what you mean. Yeah, that shouldn't be happening. I'm also using Firefox and I'm not seeing that. Maybe it's due to different versions or something. Does anyone else see these scroll bars?

 

When I was first building the site, those scroll bars were there. But I quickly adjusted the height of that line and they went away. So I don't know why you still see them. I'll see if the height can be adjusted any more.

 

Edit: Adjusted height. Do you still see it?

 

This is what the site -should- look like. If anything is off, please report it along with what Internet browser you use:

 

 

 

[Smiling River]

Yeah the one on the front page is gone now. However there are still scroll bars next to titles in each other section. For example there is one near "Charter" and it barely moves the title up and down... I don't think that's meant to be there.

[Kylin]

Try it now. You should only see scroll bars in the following locations:

 

Charter--Right side of the page.

Etiquette--All 3 subtopics on the right side of the pages only.

 

Anywhere else should not have any scroll bars.

 

I didn't take into account older versions of web browsers. Curse you people and your outdated technology! :ugeek:

[Faust]

Some are fixed; I still see it in Etiquette and Links (title captions only). Could be a screen resolution thing?

[DAISHI]

As an aside, what song is playing in the guild teasers page?

[Kylin]

Adjusted height on the etiquette and links pages. Hopefully that does the trick >.>

 

As an aside' date=' what song is playing in the guild teasers page?[/quote']

 

It's a track from the game

 

Edit: Eva has prepared some new potential bookmark tabs for the site. I uploaded them to the test site so you can see them. Better/worse? www.ffxiv-roleplayers.com/test

 

Did not change links or lore tab yet. Don't click on any or you'll get navigated away from the test site to the actual main site.

[Eva]

Those can be fixed a little further. I'm not 100% happy with them. The 'fabricky' texture seems a bit off, and I think they'd look better if the colors were a bit more drab, but maybe it's just me. They would be relatively easy to fix up.

[Faust]

Scroll bar issue is resolved. I do like the new tabs better, though I agree that darker/more drab would be even better still. As for the font, in lieu of something flowery, maybe a good ghetto fix would be to use something with serifs and italicize it. Particularly something where the lower case "f" dips below the letter line. Could also just screencap it as an image for shorter text blocks?