I wuz thinking we should have a picture competition area, like the one they have at SC4d.

We could post our images and let people vote which one is the best, and the winner goes into the next round, and someone else challenges that person and so on so forth....

I like it I'll add it

It appears some of the ads are in video format again.

I've gotten angry at Forumotion for this, there is no reason to LIE on their own support forum saying that the video ads have been removed. And I don't see anything on their site! So, yeah...

Have you changed the settings for them? I'm sure you can change them to text-only. On the AIN we have the text only setting, although I can't see personally as I have Chrome Ad-Blocker installed.

thomas wrote:Have you changed the settings for them? I'm sure you can change them to text-only. On the AIN we have the text only setting, although I can't see personally as I have Chrome Ad-Blocker installed.

Well, no you can't. You have to pay to remove the ads. If the AIN admins or whoever didn't pay to remove it then, well, that makes me all the more mad at Forumotion.

Thomas: There has already been plenty of discussion on ads. We apologize for the ads. We wish there was a way to change them to text-only ads.

I would recommend using Firefox with Adblock installed. When I come here, I don't see any ads because Adblock blocks them all.

I wuz thinking now that Christmas is around the corner maybe setting up a Christmas/winter type skin?

I recommend googling Hitskin.com, and browsing for one to avoid having to make it yourself.

I was actually thinking about talking with Mayorm about changing the skin for the site altogether. This skin has simply been an excellent skin for the past fifteen months or so (especially in comparison to the original one), but personally, I think that the site is ready for a change to kick things up.

Quite obviously, I would need to talk with Mayorm about something like this. I have to ask for permission before changing the design of the site.

Yeah, i would recommend changing the version to Phpbb3, and this is 2, the outdated version. CSGforums uses PHPBB3.

PHPBB3 looks too cluttered to me. I like PHPBB2 much better, personally. I don't know what Mayorm will think, but if it were me, I think that the forum software is better being at PHPBB2.

Maybe, but plz, change the colors.

I was thinking blue and white?

I'll have to talk with Mayorm about this. I think he should definitely be involved in a color scheme change like that.

don't worry guys I have some plans for the design of the site, that I will throw your way soon, I just have to find another design I like

I just added ranks. If the ranks you see don't look good, please give me some suggestions.

NOTE: There are a couple of Easter eggs at 1,000 and 4,000 posts. Post again, and they are replaced. Look carefully at your rank after reaching these postcounts. (Just a reminder, don't spam to get these postcounts. )

Mayorm: You said a while back that you would find time to add the ranks. I took the liberties and went ahead and did them. If you don't like them, I can remove them.

thanks blakesterville, I was gonna get to it over my break coming up. I'll bemaking some site changes during my break too, I hope you don't mind that I'm keeping them secret (I want it to bea surprise for everyone)

Changes? I can't wait!

I'm already on my Christmas break, a little later than I normally would have been. At the same time, I've actually been much busier than usual, so I'll probably be spending less time here during the holidays.

no problem blakesterville you have actually been puting in a lot of time here, and doing a lot of administration thingsd that I've been meaning to gt around to.

More or less a cosmetic thing but the Community activities thing still says unions in it and we have a unions section for that now...

That's been fixed.

I was thinking instead of our current poopty-doo chatbox (which is just merely a javascript widget), we should have an IRC channel instead (I posted a new topic so we don't have discussions for chat, rank pills, file exchanges, and new boards all in the same thread, which is confusing at times).

Currently the best and only free host is Mibbit, which is the same one used by my site and CSGforums. It wouldn't take much work to set up and to operate, however getting admin or chat mod status is kinda tough, I'll tell staff how if this goes through.

Mibbit is free, but is advert-sponsored, so an IRC client is recommended by people using mibbit. You don't HAVE to use one, but it opens in their bloody Ajax IRC client (technically it isn't really an Ajax client). If on firefox, you can use ChatZilla, if on Opera, use the built in IRC client, or if you don't have these, you can download and use clients such as X-Chat, mIRC, or Irssi (I don't recommend Irssi though, and mIRC is payware)

Another option is to use an Ajax client. However, the disadvantage to that is you download the entire client to your computer, and then you have to upload it to an FTP server. Forumotion sites don't have FTP access, and the only free host that has FTP access doesn't allow chat scripts, so this generally might not be a good idea, unless administration is willing to pay for a dedicated host. There is also the possibility of hosting it on a computer, preferably a desktop, the same kind people are using to view this site, but I have tried this before, and either the software is too buggy or I can't figure out how to set it up.

Thoughts, questions, post away!

Well IDK you don't have be a member of the site to enter those chats, where as here you need to be a member.

Requiring people to have memberships to participate in that kind of a service would also probably be more secure as far as banning users should we need to. We haven't actually needed to ban anyone from anything yet, as far as I know, but allowing unregistered users into the chat is a great way to get misbehaving chatters into the room.

blakesterville wrote:Requiring people to have memberships to participate in that kind of a service would also probably be more secure as far as banning users should we need to. We haven't actually needed to ban anyone from anything yet, as far as I know, but allowing unregistered users into the chat is a great way to get misbehaving chatters into the room.

Any chatroom can be a jerk magnet, and even still, someone can register, join the chat, and misbehave. Personally I don't see a difference in the two except that one you have to register and the other you don't. Besides that, for example on CSGf, it is extremely rare a nonregstered member joins the chat anyway

Well true but I believe that since we don't really have people in the chatbox constantly we have no need to switch the site's chat. Unless blakesterville feels differently.

But if he does have another opinion its still NO! jk

Well, switching would probably bring more people in, but I honestly don't see the need for the trouble right now. Rarely are more than two people every in the chatbox (and usually there are none). Our little chatbox is more than capable of handling eight or nine in it because several months back there was actually a chat with that many participants. If the site grows to have a more active chatbox, I think that then it's wiser to explore other options but right now the only thing we would be doing is creating a bigger "jerk magnet". We don't have many people to moderate that sort of thing so it I personally don't feel that it is a good idea at this time. That's just how I feel about it.

In the time it would probably take for the site to grow enough to need that sort of thing we could probably have programmed a better chatbox for our needs. Still, there's actually no way to include a better chatbox that can use the user database, as far as I know. We don't have access to user's data except by the means that forummotion gives us. That means that we could not write a program to retrieve information unavailable from the admin panel. That makes completely integrating a better chat to be impossible, so any other option would allow guests in, to some degree.