new forum is live, and upcoming news updates

[sothis]

hi guys,

ok, i think i've finally fixed the forum for good. this is the live and "complete" version. the only thing that is still a little wacky is that on most pages, there are two body tags in the html. i've tested the site in IE6/IE7/FF and having two body tags doesn't affect what the page looks like,, so i'm going to leave it at that for now.

to solve that problem, i'd have to update like 35 templates in vbulletin. as you can imagine i'm not excited about that, so for now it'll just not validate (ohhhh no! haha)

i apologize for all the weird threads you've seen in here. that was part of project #2, getting news posts to show up both on the main site, and in here at the same time. i've verified its finally working, but now need to take the time to code the news item interface so everything runs automatically. i hope to complete that tomorrow night. for the short term, i'm posting this thread instead.

what you can expect from the new news item structure:

-when a site update occurs (forum change, contest is added, update to the site's code/graphics have been made, new theme is added, etc) a news item will show up where it always has: on the main page of the site.

-at the same time, a thread will be posted here, under my name, with the exact same title and text.

-you can then post in the thread here, with your comments.

-for the future, i'll get it hooked up so if you are at the main page of the site, there will also be a link with each news item, pointing to the forum thread.

-when a new REVIEW is posted, this same concept will happen... but instead of being posted here, it'll be posted in the reviews section. i'll probaby split off an anirec section again so i can put updates to that area in there.

-youll also notice that the colors change depending on what theme you are on. awesome. this also means in the future, we can have different kinds of button sets depending on theme.

i'll be moving all news posts into a subforum in here called archive tomorrow. any new news posts from then on will be from this dynamic process.

anyways, i used up 3 days of coding/anything else in my life time to fix this forum stuff. i did it because you all hated the iframe. i would happily accept showers of praise now ^_^;;;;

more to come tomorrow.

[MechaTama31]

What is an iframe? I'm not being sarcastic or anything either, I really don't know. But it does look right pretty in here, I do know that at least... ;)

[Mikademus]

No debating it, it does look slick.

[ZErberUS]

Yeah body tags are not problematic. I'm using Firefox and there are no problems with it.
You did a damn good job on this forum and it adds up to the high quality feeling, your new site design is giving me.
I'm looking forward to seeing complete Site with all the functions working.

[runpsicat]

<3 uncramped forums <3

[sevencreature]

Hey, nice!!!

There are still some minor issues (like in advanced reply - should be centered - check the screenshot) - but I can solve them by 'Fit to window width' in Opera.


Issue with reply formatting:





MechaTama31: "IFrame (from inline frame) is an HTML element which makes it possible to embed another HTML document inside the main document." I am using it mainly for external stuff but comes handy anyway.

sothis: IMO it is better the way it is now Great job.

[Cythraul]

Ok, to start with, the forums are now better than ever. Showers of praise, etc.


That said, I did notice a few things that aren't working quite right yet. If you're not ready to read that stuff quite yet, well, ignore the rest of this post. I'll put it in spoilers...

When I first logged in, I saw this http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/9880/forumhv7.jpg and went wtf, but then I realised I needed to update my bookmark again.

So in case anyone else had bookmarked http://www.anime-planet.com/forum.php changing it to http://www.anime-planet.com/forum/ helps...

Next, when I started to write this post I noticed that the "message editing box" doesn't fit into it's place, that is, it goes into the margins. This happens when using anything except the basic editor. Ah, someone posted about it while I was editing this...

Also, when testing that, I noticed that when you click the Forums link in the top-navigation from the forum's user cp (or as I now noticed, from anywhere within the forums), the link goes to http://www.anime-planet.com/forum.php which, as I said earlier, does not work properly anymore.

Finally, is it just me or is the color of visited links a bit too close to normal text? Not a major usability problem but maybe you could look into that someday. Or maybe I'm just color blind.

[sothis]

no no, definitely tell me stuff that's broken :)

so here's why the styles (centering, colors, etc) are a little wacky:

the link colors and such matching the themes were kind of an accident, and then i had to hack job it to work well. basically i had to include a bunch of code and files in a few places -- both in external php files (vbulletin uses "plugins" for this) and also directly into their stylesheets. i had pasted the links to the theme stylesheets in, and lo and behold the styles in there overrode the vbulletin ones (thus changing the link colors etc).

a lot of the colors were messed up though, so i had to then add styles that were vbulletin specific (like .thead, things they created but i had to overwrite with my own stylesheet). but this definitely means i'd miss some stuff.

so yeah, please post ANY issues with centering, text, etc... and i can figure out styles to add/fix the problem ^_^

for the /forum.php problem ill put in a redirect on there right away in a few hours, but yeah, for the style issues, keep them coming!

and thanks, guys... this makes me feel a lot better about the time i spent!

[ScarletEmerald]

Looking good sothis. Much less cramped than before.

[Lord_Vegita]

i also like how you fixed it so that when you open a link in a new window it still displays the style sheet and the layout. before the iframe change it would be just a plain forum thread with no styles behind it ^^_. i don't know if that was intentionally done but thanks :p.

otherwise as everyone else has said, "great job and we really appreciate all the work you've put into this."