That's really low priority right now, but definitely doable in the future.

Well the main focus was the toolbar thingy since Cent said that it should do wit hthe facebook notification ajax thing. The rest was done in a really lazy manner.

You know what would make this a lot easier? If you guys would post links to other sites so things could be "stolen". Like how i did with the toolbar from facebook. I'm no good at imagination.

Looks good. I'd stick with having a full-width banner on top and somehow try and integrate it with the toolbar, however; that battlecruiser looks awkward and unnecessary, but nothing at all would look dull.

Do you guys actually think you can rewrite all of SEN? Better than IP designed SEN in the first place? v5 had some nice speed improvements over Invision (likely due to lack of useless features, but still). Unless we have professionals, I think trying to rewrite everything will be inefficient. Dirty code, all that, even if it works.

Also, does "about to get a major overhaul" mean "we'll start and try but it'll take years", "we've got most of the backend done", or something else?

I think something like this would look a little better.

Also,
"Unfortunately, the requested page does not exist."

By notifications, I was hoping for something that would make it sensical to subscribe to topics by just clicking a button somewhere in them and have it basically catalog progress, report new posts (with the same number system shown above), etc. Something separate for private messaging, most likely; again, maybe AJAX-powered?

You can really get a lot of good ideas from how Facebook is built.

I left out a real banner picture because I've kinda sort of always wanted a skin that didn't have a banner to improve speed. I know it doesn't matter to you all but it matters on dial up. Just trying to take advantage of the moment but I knew you guys would rage if it had no images and it was all plain and black and white.

Like i said. Only the top toolbar looks nice because I had an idea of what needed to be done. Everything else looks like shit and is simple shapes. I think the way i had "newest files" box thing should really be considered. I've always had a thing for those boxes that would scroll with 5 different images or something showing the top 5 latest news or files or whatever you'd think is important to have up there.

I don't really think newest files should be that important on the main page. Call me not a true starcraft fan, but I hardly ever look at the new maps that are uploaded. :3 I think forum updates that show the most recent posts would be better to have there (like what we have now).

I'll just point out that the battlecruiser image is actually the full width of the screen and is taller than, for example, the Maplantis banner picture. The only difference is that you have content over it. Still, it looks nice and simple; I'd add some contrast, make colored versions of the same skin (green and blue, ofc), and make it actually exist, and I'd stay there.

Would the skin be low priority in the first place? You need a backend before you can make a frontend.

We are really tired of using SEN's existing code. Even though it is a vast improvement over IPB, IP's code is really disorganized and apparently really inefficient. For a little while now, we've been discussing the idea of moving to vBulletin or some other forum system and not worry about having to fix code anymore. Cecil became really interested in the idea of redoing the entire site using Django, and I gave him the go-ahead. Everything is being redone from scratch (everything), so it will take some time.

Well, I'm not doing it from scratch. I'm using a pre-existing framework. This in and of itself means that the site will be more professional by leagues compared to what it is now. And yeah, I definitely can. I'm sure you could as well if you had the interest in doing such, and put the time needed into it.

No, the code won't at all be dirty. The major aspects of a website: the backend logic, data, and frontend will all be loosely coupled in a fashion that makes modifying the site extremely easy; you can mess with say a webpage template without knowing anything about Python or Django all without fear of interfering with anything except the template you are messing with.

Don't you mean would -> wouldn't? I'm not sure what you mean, but I'm not even thinking about skins right now as I'm currently getting together a basic forum with user login/authentication. Once that is done I'll work on adding additional features.

Everything is being redone but you can't call it from scratch since I'm using a pre-existing framework. It will take some time, but I don't think it will take too much time to get things up and running. Also, the new site should be much more resource efficient, much easier to add onto, much easier to modify, and much cleaner.

The simplest way I can describe it is like this: IP's code and his site was all created as a single functioning system. Django allows you to create a very professional system very quickly with each separate system of the website all nearly independent of one another, allowing for easy additions and modifications to the overall site. IP's site is all tangled, and a well coded Django site is professional, streamlined, and organised.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 10 2011, 5:37 am by CecilSunkure.

wut. I thought you told me you were doing it from scratch. My mistake.

Well think of Django as a library of functions, and I'm using the library to construct a website thus saving me a lot of time writing my own functions, and giving me the ability to immediately access a plethora of professional-grade functions.

Like for example instead of coding a game in scratch, you could compare django to the pygame engine.

Then why is this topic asking for it? D:

We were asking for design layouts, not skins. I've said like three to use photoshop to portray design ideas and layouts for the site, not to create skins for current SEN.

Yes, I understand that and understood that even from the OP. I just requested maybe a layout for mobile devices and you were all LOLNO. >.>

EDIT: Actually, reading what I actually said, I just asked if it was possible at all. I never even requested anything.

Oh sorry. Yeah it's possible, and probably pretty easy.

I can haz feature requests?
-It'd be great if there was an updates box like in MZ's example skin that one could choose what's displayed in it, eg new wiki pages, latest wiki updates, PMs, new files and maps, subscribed topic posts etc.
-topic subscription

Anyone else got any feature requests or suggestions for cecil? I expect he'd welcome them.

Screw in-forum topic subscriptions. Just generate feeds for topics. Let the clients handle that shit from there.

If anyone wants to make a StarCrafty skin using in-game assets, I recently figured out how to rip most of the graphics (notably the main menu images) from the SC1 MPQs. Not sure if that'd be legal in terms of copyright for us to use as a skin, but I can tell you how to rip the pics from your own SC1 installation.