Substance over style - forum update

Fengol

Hi Everyone,

The forums are falling behind on keeping up-to-date with the latest software versions and we're becoming vulnerable to security hacks, etc. I have successfully migrated our data to the latest version in a DEV environment but the latest version is lacking our forum's unique look-and-feel.

Unfortunately, in my ignorance, I made chances to the core libraries and files of the software instead of putting them in a theme or plugin.

So we have a choice: upgrade the PROD forums with the latest software, returning to the default theme until a new theme and plugins are created in DEV and released OR keep the current PROD forums until the new themes and plugins are ready and release everything at once.

I would appreciate your input.

Tuism

In the long term security issues are much more important than prettiness... So I vote upgrade and keep up instead of looking pretty and being vulnerable to spambots.

wogan

What does the default theme look like? (Just so we know what we're choosing between)

Fengol

wogan

That doesn't look too bad - I'm with @Tuism on this one, security over all :)

pieter

I'm also for security over prettiness.

garethf

Security.

Fengol

BTW, I'm implementing the Bootstrap theme to make future adjustments easier. You can checkout the colour schemes and let me know which ones you liked: Lumen, SpaceLab & Paper

wogan

The gradient shades on Spacelab are a bit 2010, so it's between Lumen and Paper, for me. I like Lumen's buttons more - the animation's a bit more skeuomorphic than Paper's.

electrov

Lumen gets my vote

Tuism

Lumen for me.

farsicon

<3 superhero

dislekcia

Readable seems the most... readable. For the text that we're all going to be interacting with the most.<br><br>The main body text on the others is really, really tiny/oddly kerned.<br><br>(Also, why do we have 1 hour to edit stuff now? - surely that will cause issues in game threads where the whole point is to update the OP with links, etc?)<br>

mattbenic

I'm really late to the party here, but am I right in assuming the current dark theme is temporary until Lumen comes in? I don't know about anyone else but I find some of the colour combos on the current theme really hard to read.

Fengol

@dislekcia, it's a new default setting, I will reset it.<div style="font-weight: normal;"><br></div><div><b style="font-weight: normal;">[Edit]</b> done</div>

AngryMoose

@mattbenic doesn't get a vote: He doesn't even like the Pro skin of Unity :P

mattbenic

<blockquote class="UserQuote"><div class="QuoteAuthor"><a href="/profile/AngryMoose" rel="nofollow">AngryMoose</a> said:</div><div class="QuoteText"><p>@mattbenic doesn't get a vote: He doesn't even like the Pro skin of Unity :P</p></div></blockquote>

No, I don't, because prefab links are less obvious :)

AngryMoose

Pfffffft! Who needs prefabs?

pieter

Lumen for me as well. Love the new dark theme, easy on the eyes.<br>

Nitrogen

Can we switch the site back to the bootstrap theme until we get something more permanent going?

Elyaradine

Have you been working on this, @Nitrogen? I was under the impression that you and @Fengol were communicating about fixing things up.

Nitrogen

@elyaradine We're just starting to collab now after the holidays, but it's going to take some time to get a new theme up and running, might as well put the bootstrap theme back for now, it seemed to work okay?

dislekcia

I prefer this theme, TBH.

The thing that I'm missing most is the front page with the explanation, etc. I keep telling new people to go to makegamesSA.com and they're not getting the best introduction...

Zaphire

I really enjoyed discovering the sagamedev website back in the day because of how it advertised local talent. I got onto the website and it first showed a reel of all the SA games like rooks keep, desktop dungeons, toxic bunny hd etc.

What I feel the website needs is the following.

• List of games made by SA game devs (Successful ones)
  
• Forum like this one
  
• FAQ
  
• Maybe a tutorial list page
  

Boysano

A change is as good as a holiday, I enjoy this darker theme...reminds me of early internet days when I dreamed of programming and hacking away...haha.

I prefer this, and really like that the wisiwyg editor works now, easier to do links, etc.

But I agree, that we can structure local dev resources and community branding better on a structured home post or page. I don't mind it just being a forum.

Thanks for the constant improvements!

dislekcia

So MGSA has a logo and an identity already, I feel like that's what should totally drive what the forum theme looks like.

mattbenic

I agree with @dislekcia.

Also, IMO a far higher priority than getting the forums themed is for the non-forum front page with basic information about the association to be restored.

EvanGreenwood

I'm not fond of the darker theme. Feels less welcoming. I like the MGSA identity with the white and the rose red.

Though a lot of the updates to the forum recently have been badass. I like the new editing window a lot.

Squidcor

I much prefer the white theme. I find this one uglier and less professional.

Zaphire

This one's readability is worse than the white theme imo

Karuji

I don't mind the dark theme, but the white and red is what I feel is the best representation of MGSA. Though for the mean time I offer 'win' to our Dynamic Duo for the temp theme since it aligns and presents the text in a manner that is much easier to read than the last temp.

And with Wordpress I'm quite confident we'll have a rather wonderful front page and other features. :3

Nitrogen

Yeah the front-page stuff looks to be well in order, as for the theme, I dont think we'll ever get one theme that will satisfy everyone. I'm probably going to use this current theme as a base and amalgamate it with the old (community approved) white and red theme. If there's time at the end, I'd love to get a dark theme switch that could be activated per-user.

Elyaradine

Cool. :) The only things I don't like about this theme (aside from colours) are the gradients on various headings, and what the quote button looks like/where it is. I dunno, I just think that those kinds of gradients are from some 5-10 years ago and haven't been "in" in modern UI development for quite a while.

Good luck, and thanks for doing this.

PowerCat

I must say I really like this theme!

Though I can see what other users are saying about branding - MGSA has been branded as White and Red. The Logo being a red heart. Keep things consistent!

But it is a New Year - maybe it is time for a new Logo and stuff?

dammit

Can we get the search function back?

Tuism

Sorry, no we shouldn't change the logo "just because" :) We're trying to build a brand, and logo change is not how you build a brand.

The theme should indeed reflect the red and white, so I look forward to what @nitrogen and @fengol does with it.

The current theme was fine as an interim thing. I agree with @Elyaradine that the quote button is the only really big stand-out "huh?" things. Stuff besides that that bugs me have mostly been mentioned already:
1. Lack of logo on top
2. Lack of front page
3. Perhaps a barrage of "banner spaces" that's discreetly under the categories to the right, stuff we can use to highlight this and that with.
4. I don't mind the gradients, that's an overall design choice. Though I know that "modern" sensibilities have moved away from gradients in the footsteps of Google's branding. But I don't really mind them.
5. It still says "Thanked by", would be nice if it was consistent with <3

damousey

6. Quotations are strangely large without feeling like quotations atm

dammit

Tuism said:

Sorry, no we shouldn't change the logo "just because" :) We're trying to build a brand, and logo change is not how you build a brand.

Well....a lot of the time a new logo and look are an opportunity to actually become a more recognisable/memorable brand. I'm not sure how ingrained the image of the pixel heart is in the minds of people who think of MGSA... This would probably be the last opportunity to change the logo to something that maybe helps to build the brand.

I'm not attacking the logo - which I know you did a lot of work on - but I have had feedback from a good number of people that it reminds them of the healthy heart logo and doesn't exactly scream game development. It's possible that this is something we need to look into...

And if we decide as a community that a change is needed, then we make it, we make it boldly, and - like I said - we use it as a marketing opportunity.

Karuji

@dammit at rAge we had some people trying to find the MGSA booth and found us because we had people wearing MGSA t-shirts (with the logo).

Also original logo thread, logos are hard, and I love our current one and feel like it have a stroke of genius in it's design. Just conceptually and everything that goes with it. It really just say says MGSA, or as much as something can say something as abstract as making games in SA.

dammit

Karuji said:

@dammit at rAge we had some people trying to find the MGSA booth and found us because we had people wearing MGSA t-shirts (with the logo).

Also original logo thread, logos are hard, and I love our current one and feel like it have a stroke of genius in it's design. Just conceptually and everything that goes with it. It really just say says MGSA, or as much as something can say something as abstract as making games in SA.

Wearing T-Shirts certainly helps bring people to booths...but I wonder if we missed opportunities to bring more people to the booth because a quick look at the T-shirt didn't tell them what the organisation was about. To me, it says nothing about games, or game development (even having "makegamessa.com" doesn't tell you much). The old Game.Dev tees were more descriptive in this way, if you ask me.

We probably also need a tag line. I believe Game. Dev was "You wish you were making games" or something like that. (I wore that T-shirt out, so I don't have it any more to reference :( )

Fengol

I'd like to steal that tag line @dislekcia?

FanieG

Where is our search function now?

Karuji

The tagline was "It's what you wish you were doing."

I should probably make an archive of Game.Dev and MGSA T-shirts or something.

@dammit I think we're getting rather off topic in a thread about forum software updates ;)

dislekcia

Karuji said:

"It's what you wish you were doing."

I made that up on the spot when we needed a slogan thing because the shirts had open space. It wasn't considered or aware of marketing at all, if it worked out, that was luck ;)

TheFuntastic

I'd like to say changing the logo now is something I'd only consider harmful.

Fengol

It's not perfect but the logo is back (although mis-aligned) as well as the Google search

Tuism

Came here to say that the logo is misaligned and the Google bar needs formatting love (and probably better placed to the top right just above the "New Discussion" button :)

And good job :)

As for changing the logo, I won't dispute that the logo itself without context doesn't scream "game dev". That's why the url is descriptive - "makegamesSA" tells the story well enough... So if we're gonna tagline, it's gotta ADD to makegamesSA.com, as in add something that the url doesn't already say, and I don't really see what.

For example:

MakegamesSA.com - we make games
MakegamesSA.com - you wish you were making games
MakegamesSA.com - association of game makers

Just all sound so redundant to me. What does everyone else think? And no offence to anyone, I also want to design by committee syndrome.

alternatively, upweight the text of makegamesSA, downweight the graphic logo.

If anyone has better ideas for the logo now is the time, then. I don't really.

Tuism

Karuji said:

@dammit at rAge we had some people trying to find the MGSA booth and found us because we had people wearing MGSA t-shirts (with the logo).

Also original logo thread, logos are hard, and I love our current one and feel like it have a stroke of genius in it's design. Just conceptually and everything that goes with it. It really just say says MGSA, or as much as something can say something as abstract as making games in SA.

That was definitely more an issue with the stand branding than the t-shirt branding.

And thanks @karuji :)

Tuism

Whoa, just noticed the categories page, I hope we're not gonna keep that page looking like that, with the coloured highlights with each of the category labels looking like that. It looks broken. But I know it's not :)

Nitrogen

I'm in the process of making the new forum style based on this theme (heavily modified though), but I'm doing it on a local copy of the site so it doesnt disrupt daily activity. I'll post a preview of it when it's ready for public criticism :P

Looks like @fengol is doing patch jobs in the mean time, so please just bear with us for a while until I can get the proper theme up :)

Fengol

Sorry, I wanted to find some info for the DBN guys and I found the Google search code with @Nitrogen on the weekend; so I quickly slapped it in.