Site Management! (Help or information?)

Alright, so this site isn't very old at all yet obviously but I'm still working and playing around with everything since I've never really hosted a web page on this site before. I've done it on other host sites but...They were more simple or had less features, I'm not sure which. Not that I can't understand it, oh no, it's fine, it's just that I can't seem to get a few things to work my way.

I already addressed and submitted my little problems so far to the actual forumotion website to see if anyone there could answer my problem. This can be seen here.

First off, before I start with the problems, I HAVE updated a few new features you guys aren't probably aware of.

IN YOUR PROFILES you're now able to tell us if you're in a relationship with any one of the other registered members, meaning BOTH of you have to be on the States list I have up here. So, you can't change this status unless you're ON that list and the person your character is with is ON that list as well. Be sure to remember that, this way, it's more 'official'. One more thing about your profiles as well. You know how there was a limit to your age? (I'm guessing most of you tried to put in your state's birthday and it's obviously older than 99? Yes I know this problem, I've had it too.) I finally came across those options and FIXED it. I pretty much set the limit to over 9000 lulz. So yes, please change your birthdays on your profile to now read as your character's ACTUAL birthday. I'll have an edit up soon for a box that'll be for how old your character looks (Like Leo looks 19 when he's actually 208). So you can do that too.



PROBLEMS I'm having right now with this site. Obviously, you can see me addressing it in the problem post to forumotion above, the first link I gave to you guys, if you'd like to see. But I'll address them here, too.

• The Gallery: Oh my god I'm having a problem with this. Apparently galleries can only be on 'portals' which is just another link to another page for this site that...Idk. It's a bit confusing and annoying to me. I just want the gallery to be on the main forum page, not a link, dammit. But I'm still trying to figure this all out so I can put one up.
  
• The Meta-Tag: Apparently I need one for a favicon, the little icon next to the address in the address bar that lets you associate a little image with your site and makes it more...'Findable' in bookmarks and shit, makes it stand out. Apparently I need one but I don't have one. However, I seem to be able to use it WITHOUT one so I guess this isn't too much of a problem...
  
• ISO File Hosting: Alright. Well, in order to HAVE a favicon you gotta save the picture in a certain format. A ISO format. This makes it to where it can be viewable in almost ALL browsers without a problem. I have it in that file format and all, that's ok. However, my problem is that I cannot find an online hosting site to view and host the actual file itself. ISO isn't a common file type, obviously, and it's very difficult to find hosting sites for it. On the 'forum help' site I found out that they like to use this site called 'FileDen', however, every time I went to it google warned me that it may harm my computer (Every single link or anything to it), when I clicked on it, it instructed me to go away...And when I ignored and tried to go anyways it tried to hack my computer. I'm fine, don't worry, I have a GREAT virus and etc software installed. However, my problem now is that I can't find a good ISO file hosting site OTHER than FileDen now.
  

And I've been on the 'Forum help forumotion' site all over searching for the answers to my problems. I obviously couldn't find them, wrote up my own report on my problems, and have been waiting since...Well, yesterday. I know I won't get an answer immediately and there's lots of problems and requests but I was still hoping I'd be able to find some help.

If you guys are experienced in any of this, would like to help, knowledgeable of something that might help, or even just wanting to provide me a little feedback on all of this that would be great. Do you guys have something you'd like to add to your profile but can't? I can make a box for it, just tell me what you think we should add. (Kinda like how I added the 'Relationship with' box and whatnot. I can do that, easily, anything you want.) Or if you have other comments for other sections of the site you'd like to see improved, revised, or anything, tell me! I'd like to see how I can make this better.

Alright! I added these features now:

• Age in appearance: Pretty much self explanatory. Your character is 208 but looks 19? Put 19 then.
  
• Ranks: I shall explain ranks below.
  

Ranks:

• Administrator - 7 Stars, Special Ranking (Must be assigned)
  
• Moderator - 6 Stars, Special Ranking (Must be assigned)
  
• Contributor - 5 Stars, Special Ranking (Must be assigned)
  
• Super Member - 4 Stars, 200+ Posts
  
• Great Member - 3 Stars, 100+ Posts
  
• Member - 2 Star, 20+ Posts
  
• Starting Out - 1 Star, 3+ Posts
  
• Nothing Yet - 0 Stars, 0+ Posts
  

Alright, and a breakdown. Admin is obviously me, no one else is going to have this position. Moderators can only be assigned by me. Contributors are those people who are generous enough to donate to us and I will give them this special ranking if they donate. The rest is self-explanatory for how many posts you must have to achieve which ranking. And I must say something else. Do NOT spam the boards and shit aiming to get more posts just to get to a higher position faster. If I catch you doing this I'll make a special rank for you and you won't like it, along with a warning. You'll get your ranking in due time, don't spam. I'm warning you now. I don't want to see any of that shit.

Also, yes, I know the ranking icons are retarded. There were a few different ranking icons I could choose from but I liked this one best. I mean, the others were Star Wars, swords, etc...I'm not really liking those all too much. So I was thinking about assigning a new challenge to the challenge section for you guys about the ranking icons. If you'd like to check out more information on that, please visit the challenge section where I will explain more.



As always, suggestions and help is appreciated! You guys got an idea you'd like to see, a new box area to fill in, what? Tell me, I'd like to see if I can improve this site more! And I'll let you guys know on the updates I make here and there that I'd like to see being taken advantage of.

Alright you guys! I added some more features.

New Features:

• Drafts - I enabled the 'draft' feature. So if you want to take a break from that long state application and save it for later in your memory, this should come in handy for you guys! I haven't used it myself yet but hopefully it works.
  
• Quick Reply - Now instead of pressing that 'reply' button every time, instead, I opened up quick reply, which shows you the box already (A bit limited in the features compared to 'reply' but it allows you to just reply there and then quickly, so, yes.) You can still do the old fashioned 'reply' if you like that better, this is just for those of you who like this approach better.
  
• WYSIWYG - Alright, I know a bunch of you aren't fluent in web page lingo and everything as I am. I've taken web design in high school so I know A LOT of codes and stuff to edit the text. However, I know that many others AREN'T. Which is why I enabled this feature to make it easier on everyone, it's basically 'What-you-see-is-what-you-get'. So instead of dealing with all of those codes like [b.][/b.] [color.=red.][/color.] AND SO ON I just cut right to the chase and made it immediately 'editor' mode so that you guys can just see how the text is going to look when you submit it rather than having to preview it, mess around with codes, and all that shit. Before, if you wanted bold text you would've needed to put [b.]texthere[/b.] and then continue on, same with underline, italic, strikeout, resize, colors, EVERYTHING. Now you simply highlight the word, click on the 'B' button for bold text, and BOOM your text is automatically bold. I hope this helps out those who aren't script and code versed like me. (Btw, those were examples of the codes earlier. I had to put in the '.'s because otherwise the script would've run like normal and not display those codes you wouldn't normally see. So if you want to go the more difficult way and enter the code, just take out the periods that I put in the code, ok? If you have no idea what I'm talking about, just ignore this part, lol)
  
• Smilies - Uh...I think I disabled them. Oh, yes, I see I did! I was questioning this because I saw the smiley button in the quick reply and thought that was a bit out of place. I didn't care for the smilies and if people want to be taken seriously or anything instead of acting like a 3 year old and using them, they'll feel this way too. Just use the old fashioned emoticons through text, I do those and they're just fine, ok? ouo
  

Problems fixed so far:

• Meta-Tag - No, I didn't find it. However, I did find the favicon slot finally. It offered different favicons and when I clicked on one, it gave me an address. I tried going to the 'base' of this address, thinking that this site might provide possible uploads for an ISO file. It didn't. But at least I found this slot, huh?
  
• ISO Hosting - I technically didn't find a solution to this either. I needed a hosting site for the file that is VIEWABLE not DOWNLOADABLE. That's a horrible misconception I seem to find while searching for these hosting sites. I don't need to download it, I need to see it online, something like tinypic, photobucket, or ANYTHING. I got frustrated and went to Google, typing up 'ISO Hosting Upload', etc. I actually found some people with the same problem asking about it and there was one whole forum page that was checked as 'solved' with this problem. Obviously, they found an answer. So I clicked on it. There was someone who offered two great sites that uploaded without having to sign up, quite fast, and without ads as well. The only problem with it was that it was a DOWNLOADING host, not a VIEWABLE host file. Ugg.
  
• Favicon - So. I gave up trying to find a hosting site to upload my favicon to. I decided to just go to tinypic, upload the fucking PNG or whatever of the little ball that I have on the main forum's page, and used THAT address in the little "not-really-meta-tag-but-works" area. To my surprise, it worked. At least, for me it did.
  

SO I NEED TO ASK YOU GUYS. ARE YOU ABLE TO VIEW THE FAVICON, THAT LITTLE ICON NEXT TO THE ADDRESS OF THE WEBSITE IN THE ADDRESS BAR NEAR THE TOP OF YOUR INTERNET BROWSER? PLEASE, I NEED TO KNOW IF IT WORKS OR NOT.

From what I understand, the reason I have tried to force it into an ISO format is because that's universally accepted by ALL BROWSERS. And thus see-able. If it isn't in ISO format, I was informed it probably wouldn't work for any other browser but mine, which happens to be Firefox. So, I'm asking you guys, does it work?

...Well, hell. I decided to check quickly for myself if it worked on another browser. Internet explorer comes with all computers so I used mine to quickly jump onto the site and found out that it just displayed the usual Internet explorer icon. Which is sorta frustrating lol ;u;. Oh well, perhaps I might figure something out in due time? It may still work for other browsers, like Safari or Google Chrome or something. So this is where I'd like input from you guys and what you know about it. That'd be helpful ;u;

Still yet to be solved:

• The Gallery - I still haven't heard back from that forumotion help site yet about this issue at all. I haven't really tried to play around with it more yet, I've been busy with other things. But this is still a problem I need to work on. I was thinking that I might have to accept it being a 'portal' and instead try to make a button to match the others at the top (You know, 'home', 'faq', etc...It'll go right in between 'home' and 'faq'.) that would say 'gallery' instead and work on the gallery from there. I have no ideas, I'm just trying to come up with solutions for the time being. I might not try and fiddle around with it until later so don't expect any work to be done on it IMMEDIATELY.
  

As always, your comments and suggestions would be very helpful eue <3

Hm...Alright. They've answered my question on the forum help board. Well, technically. They didn't really give me a great answer but the site is a bit limited in how it can display the gallery, I can understand and see that. This is what they put on http://help.forumotion.com/t86895-help-with-gallery-and-favicon#559411 ...

Quote :

Gallery its own page. You can add a widget on the forum for the gallery and select random images or you can iframe the page and put it in a section. But that would look weird.

So I'm going to have to play around a little with this and see what I can do. So I either have to deal with the gallery being on the portal, creating its own button up there in between 'home' and 'faq' or just do the other option and put a widget on the main forum page for the gallery to select random images...Or do this iframe they speak of and put it in a section, even though they think that looks weird.

Either way, I'm just going to play around with these options and see what I like best. I'd like for a way to be able to link to it, at the very least, from the main forum page but we'll see! I'll get started on it as soon as I'm done watching this movie eue Lol nvm, the movie fails on my computer and keeps glitching. Looks like I have some work to do.

Oh, and I'm giving up on the favicon issue for a bit. It works for me but not when I go to view it on internet explorer and I always seem to get online when NO ONE FREAKING ELSE is online that can quickly view my site and tell me if it works or not. So if you guys happen to run across a image host site that will host an ISO format picture, please let me know! I'm just...Tired of looking for it right now.

Alright, I set up a poll to ask what you guys think. If I get back positive responses, I'll go ahead with the DA group idea. If not, I'll fight the gallery issue on this site more and go back to the same old same old. S-sob.

HOWEVER. I did enable a new feature again too that I think you guys might like.

New Feature:

• More Poll Options - You can now have up to 50 CHOICES on the polls, that was the max I could set it to, I got tired of only having 10 when asking little questions like 'What's your favorite color' and stuff. ;u; Don't try to fill all 50 spaces though, lol, that's trollin'~
  

And, as always, if there's something you guys want to see or have, let me know and I'll see what I can do eue.

Lol, heya. Still waiting on opinions on that new DA group for our gallery and more traffic. I was wanting more opinions before I went ahead and made one. It's probably ok to wait longer on this, it's not like I'm a real hurry to get this done..After all, we're still waiting on people joining and such, I doubt anyone is in a real hurry to submit art pronto, lulz. It'll all be handled in due time, I assume.

Anyways, I got bored of not seeing anything at the top of the page if you haven't already noticed. I already issued a challenge in the site's art/gallery section but I know that obviously won't happen anytime soon and I'm with that, I still just don't like seeing nothing but that text at the top lol. So I just put that little ball icon at the top to take up space and make it look a little better until we can finally be able to do that challenge and fill it out better with our icons.

So, not much of an update, just kinda over-viewing a few things lulz. I just hate inactivity and seeming like I'm doing nothing. So yeah. I already belong to two forums and a group that don't really update all that much which is a bit frustrating that they aren't kept alive...So I wanted to make the group I made more active and alive than those other ones and intend on keeping it that way. Whether it's just small talk or polls even to keep it alive, I'll do it. Not that we're inactive or dead, heavens no, we didn't start that long ago AT ALL and we've already got this many members, I love it <3 I hope it keeps this way ;u;

New Feature/Update:

• Underline - The underline under usernames on the main page (Right above the chat box?) are now gone, making them more visible.
  
• FCFS Rps - Are now ready. I have made the rules and example Into Post ready for viewing
  
• Application - I've updated the Application. I didn't change the questions or anything, I simply offered a new WAY to take the application. I've even written up a bunch of simple code for you guys to automatically use and hopefully make it easier for everyone. I even made a tutorial as well. You can still take it the old fashioned way if you want, I simply offered this new, better way as well. (I took this design off of how Oregon fashioned their application.
  
• Galleries/Impressions/Photos - I've locked this entire section except for 'Challenges' due to wanting to make it into a DA Group soon. Until I get a mod, however, that will also moderate the DA Group with me, I will not work on this. So I need a mod first for both of these.
  

Things Still WIP:

• Gallery - I've decided that I WILL make a DA Group for the site. However, I've put that project on halt until I get at least ONE moderator for this site that will moderate this forum AS WELL AS the DA Group with me. I also need to create a DA Group logo before I start such a group too. I don't want to make the group and just have a blank one, ok? I'll probably list this as another challenge.
  
• ISO Host - Again, not in a hurry. Apparently IE Browsers cannot see the JPEG format but all others can. Eventually I'll start up the search again to see if I can find an image hosting site that will host ISO's. Until then, I'm taking a break from it.
  
• Rules - Still working on posting up stickies, rules, and examples for each of the categories and subjects. I've gotten a lot done though.
  

I really like how the site is going so far, it's an excellent start for having only started on the 3rd, after all ;u;. So I'm satisfied <3

LOL. Yeah ok I suck at making buttons. O-Otl.

;u; I really do. I tried, at least. FOR THE LIFE OF ME I COULD NOT FIGURE OUT WHAT FUCKING TYPE FONT THEY USED FOR THE BUTTONS. So I went 'fuck it all' and just created my own set. It took quite a bit and it sucks that they don't look as nice s-sob. They look all crammed together, huh? I might fix that later, and go back in and give it more space. HOWEVER. FUCK THAT FOR NOW. I'm not messing with ANY of those damn buttons for a little bit. ene;.

If one of you guys likes making buttons or something, it's quite easy if you can manage to get the hang of it ;u;. I would love it if someone could come in and make them look much nicer. For now though, I'm leaving them.

HAAAAA

I have no installed a points system. For certain areas that you post, the more points you earn. I'll go ahead and tell you the spots.

Per Profile Message: 2 points
Gain Per Friend***: 5 Points
If you post an application: 15 points!
Just talk topic: 3 points
Polls And More Topic: 2 points
Feedback topic: 5 points
Feedback reply: 5 points
FCFS Fanfiction topic: 5 Points
DR Fanfiction topic: 5 points
Rp Request topic: 5 points
FCFS Rp topic: 8 points
FCFS Rp reply: 2 points
DR Rp topic 8 points
DR Rp reply: 2 points
Art challenge topic: 5 points
Art challenge reply: 5 points

***Gain per friend: Ok. Don't go adding everyone to your friend's list now. I only want states YOUR state likes on your friend list. I don't care if you guys are BFFL!11!!ONE! in real life or not. Treat your friends list as if it was your CHARACTER'S likingness for other states. Not your personal preference or buddies. I WILL send you a message asking you to remove a person (Or people) if I or a moderator catches this. Treat the account as if it was YOUR character's actual file, not yours.

SO YEAH. If you guys want to earn a bunch of points, go on, start posting eUe

Anything that I didn't post...You basically get +3 points for every topic (At the very least, except for polls. I made poll topics only worth 2 cause they're easy.) and +1 point for every damn post you make, at least, anywhere. What I gave you above is the only exceptions and differences. So you guys could earn a lot of points and show off eUe

And I've been trying to figure out exactly what we can spend the points ON. I don't think they really offer anything and there's not really a way I can TAKE AWAY points if I were to offer something in exchange for them. I can only give points, it seems. So hmm...I guess the points could be considered reputation or activity points? It'll show you who is most active, the biggest poster, etc. So yeah, I guess it works like reputation. There was also a reputation whole thing I could mess with but I didn't like that as much because it was just users rating other users, which is a little dull. I'd rather see how /active/ people are in posting and all. So yeah, I'll just go with this instead eUe

Added a new feature!

• Human Name Field - You can now add your character's real human name to your profile. I thought this would be useful for those who don't put their state's human name and state in their username. So if we're rping or something, and you forget what their name is, a simple scroll up to their last post and looking under their profile picture will tell you all! c: