SDCFans - The Unofficial Fan Site For Silver Dollar City
Site Stuff => Announcements => Topic started by: shavethewhales on March 18, 2008, 10:29:30 PM
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...Or at least what it will look like - sort of.
This is subject to a whole lot of change, but here's the general template for the new site - http://www.sdcfans.com/test_index.html
The empty top area will be partially filled with some sort of GIF image of either a coaster track piece or SDC's sign. The top nav will hold a drop down containing everything currently situated in the right-hand nav on the current site. Also, I'm not sure about the 'Latest Posts' box, I may switch it to 'Latest Articles' for one of the features I mentioned in another thread.
It may take a few days to get this on the CMS that I built though, I thought I would have it up faster, but I had to go back and re-build a bunch of sloppy CSS. I knew I should have just built it myself...
Anyhow, if anyone has any complaints/suggestions, they had better hedge them now 'cause once I get it hooked up, it'll be hard convincing me to change it.
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It looks all right but I think it also looks a lot more confusing than the site that is currently up. And I think your idea of changing "Latest Forum Posts" to "Latest Articles" is a very good one.
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I tend to agree with Coaster about the confusion, but when you get all the content in that may not be the case.
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^By the time it's done it'll be a lot cleaner, I have a lot of stuff I need to move around.
By the way, if anyone has any photoshop skills, I could use a mono-colored transparent gif to go up in that big empty header area. I'll try to bust something out with the GIMP, but getting anything to properly cut out of the GIMP can be a pain. If you don't understand what I'm asking for, just look at the logo area of the current site - I'm looking for a transparent image of track piece or something SDC to fill that space.
Also, I've only checked out the site in IE7 and Firefox, and I already know there's a bug in IE7, so I'm sure IE6 will have at least a few problems. Let me know about any browser bugs, and what browser you use the most.
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I'll see if I can whip something up for the header. Any ideas as to a color scheme? Maybe the colors I used in that logo I made (brown & green)? And would you like an SDC-themed image for the Current Events area of the header?
I LOVE the new layout. Once it's all updated with content, it won't be confusing at all. It'll basically look the same as it does now (with the news/updates on the right and the User updates on the left), just with the navigation on the top.
~ "Becky" Joy ~
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Will you be fixing the clock as a part of the revision. I think it should be set on SDC time.
Also, if you're looking to tweak, you might want to put the missing in in AnnouNcements on the forum index.
I have faith in your vision, Steve. You're working on a labor of love and it should be something you can be proud of. It's foreign to me, but you're doing a fine job. Keep up the good work!
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You can see the designs I just whipped up. Mainly just modifications of what I'd already made for the logo... Let me know what you think; it won't take much to change things around (colors, etc.)...
I included a screenshot of the test page overlayed with the designs I made, just to give an idea of how they'd look on the site.
http://s223.photobucket.com/albums/dd129/sdc_joy/SDCFansLayout/
~ "Becky" Joy ~
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It looks pretty good Joy!! I'm just not too big on the cowboy. Maybe a picture of the park or something would look better.
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^^Hmmm, well it's nice, but it kinda throws off the flow, and I want to keep the blue colour/texture. Look at the mock up again - http://www.sdcfans.com/test_index.html I was thinking of smaller images sort of like that, maybe in some sort of switcher that changes when you refresh the page.
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I like the SDC logo picture. How about using the advertising on the sacks you get when you buy something. I don't know if it would work for a header, but it might be interesting somewhere.
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I like the SDC bag idea. I have always enjoyed reading and looking at all the ads on the bag. General Store, Ice Cream Parlor, Glass Factory, Candles, Corsets...
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Sorry about it taking so long to get the site upgraded - I need to make a couple of small changes to my CMS, then I have to upload and configure quite a bit of stuff before everything can go live. Hopefully though, I'll have it done by Sunday night - I've just been spending a lot of time with my family lately, so I haven't had much time.
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Ugh, so today I was about to release the site, but I ran into another big error that I need to fix, and with it being Easter Sunday tomorrow, it'll be tough to get it fixed and the site up anytime soon. Besides, after I get it fixed, I have to go back and upload all the news stories in order, and fix some other styling bugs, and fix some browser bugs...
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March 23: record users on site! It's just going to keep growing, Steve!
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Yeah, I just wish I could keep up with it... ::)
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There are lots of things we could tell you at this point:
It's alive!!!
If you build it, they will come.
Anyway, don't get in any rush. We're a patient crew. Remember, we all enjoy the slow life and the charm of an 1880s town in the Ozarks called Silver Dollar City.
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I like the SDC bag idea. I have always enjoyed reading and looking at all the ads on the bag. General Store, Ice Cream Parlor, Glass Factory, Candles, Corsets...
I noticed that, at least in the Hospitality House, alongside the classic paper sacks, they have a supply of plastic bags - like they use at Celebration City. I hope this doesn't mean they're getting rid of the classics.
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Alright, the site is ready for a weak soft-launch as soon as I get the content put in, which shouldn't take too long. There'll be a lot of problems with it, but it'll be good enough to work with for a while. At least updates will be a hell of a lot easier, so I'll be able to actually post news updates more frequently.
You'll notice a lot of empty spaces or areas with 'coming soon' written on them though, but bear with me for a while until I get them up.
Also, I've only checked the site in FireFox and IE7, so if you use a different browser, speak up now. (though there's probably not a whole lot I can do if you're still using IE6)
Edit: Never mind, I've decided to wait once again and launch the site when it's more complete. As it is, it would be usable, but there's so much stuff to fix... I'd rather wait till it was more complete.
What I will do is hook up the current home page to my news module so that I can keep more frequent updates up until the time that I can launch the full site. Don't worry, if I have any time at all, the new site should be done soon, maybe by next week if I can work on it every night. There's just a lot of new features with this upgrade that I haven't ever built before like this.
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Update: I've worked some more on it, but there's still a ways to go before it can be called anything close to done. I'm getting close to where I could launch it, but I still want to wait a while longer till I have more features done. After all, if I went ahead and launched it now, the only new thing would be the layout, and it isn't all that hot. Once I get all the backend stuff and user-features done, I'll probably design a new skin for it.
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I don't know if you've already said you were going to do this or not but I had an idea for the new site. And this should probably go in the Suggestions category but I thought it worked better here because this is the thread for the new site upgrade.
For the new site have you thought of Silver Dollar City having it's own news page and Celebration City having its own news page? I think it would work better this way because right now on the SDCFans home page it all looks kind of cluttered. On the Silver Dollar City page you could put all of Silver Dollar City's news and then you could have a User Submitted area for just SDC. And then Celebration City would have it's own page and White Water also. I just think it would make the site easier to navigate and understand.
It's just an idea.
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^Meh, it's a thought, but the thing is that CC and WWB don't usually have enough noteworthy news to warrant a separate page altogether. Besides, it would be harder to find stories and would increase the time needed to get info from the site.
I may eventually have it set up to where news from CC and news from SDC can be sorted, but I've got other things to work out right now.
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Well maybe instead of having two different pages maybe you could just split the home page in half. You could have SDC on one side and CC on the other. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. But this is SDCFans.com and not SDCCCFans.com
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Eh, there's not much room as it is, but I'll think about it when I do my revision of the template for the new site system. I really just need to get that new system up and running right now though, it's just been a wild ride with one bug after another popping up and throwing me off track.
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Okay, now it's truly almost done. I just need to fix a couple of bugs, finish the user panel, and put all of the content on the site into a database. It'll take a while longer, but if I get a few productive hours in during the next few days, I can get it done. We'll just see what happens though, I've got a few other projects to do as well, including painting my house.
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Just a head's up - I'm going to try to pump out the rest of the site tonight and tomorrow, but when it goes live there will still be a number of issues to fix up. It should be up by tomorrow night unless - as always - I run into some sort of huge problem, or something else comes up and I don't have enough time.
Heh, I still can't believe how long it took me to do this, but now that it's done running and re-theming the site will be so, so much easier. In fact, I'm already working on a new template that will look so much better than this new one.
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Ok, it's actually up and running now - for the most part. I still need to do a lot of tweaking, and a bunch of pages need to be set-up on the new system, but at least the system itself is up and working.
Tell me if you guys experience any bugs, specifically browser bugs. I've tested the site out in IE7 and Firefox, but I haven't even glanced at it yet in IE6, so I'm sure there are some problems there. I haven't actually worked with the registration page too much yet, so it may not even work right now, but I'll fix it later.
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It won't allow me to log in but maybe that is because you might now have it set up yet. I don't know.
I can't wait until you get all the features on there and you get it all hooked up and working properly. I think it'll look a lot better once it is all up and running.
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You'll have to set up a new account on the main site. Hopefully I can eventually tie both the site and the forums together, but they're both set up on different databases, so I'm not sure how it all would work out.
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That is weird. I'll register up though.
EDIT: I clicked on Not a Member at the bottom of the page and it didn't work. I'll be patient for the new site to get up and running though. This is exciting!
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^I sorta fixed that. You can now sign up, but you'll get a minor error when you do. No worries though, it's not a big deal.
Anyway, after I get all the old content switched over, I'll be building a feature allowing select members to post editorials on the main site. I'll pretty much allow anyone to write editorials, but I'm going to ask everyone to ask me for permission first, for spam reasons and such. Next, I'll start the lengthy process of figuring out a system to allow members to write reviews/guides/whatever's of rides, attractions, and eateries. Eventually I'll get around to setting up member photo galleries, but that will take some doing due to the heavy scripting it will take to block large images and handle the hundreds of folders and galleries it will create.
And this is still just scratching the surface of what I've been planning, I've got a long way to go.
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Woohoo! This is going to bring this site to a whole new level. How exciting!
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The front page is messed up in IE. I haven't had time to check Firefox.
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^IE6 you mean? Yeah, I'll wait for awhile to get to IE6 bugs. People really should just upgrade, I'm tired of dealing with that crap.
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The site looks great! It'll be exciting when all the upgrades are complete! I registered as a new member for the site, but couldn't find a logout feature on the homepage once I was logged in. No biggie, just not sure if I'm not seeing it or if that feature hasn't been added yet.
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^I had actually forgotten to add one.
By the way, there will be loads of random style changes going on for a while. You'll notice I chose to use a free template to save time, which turned out to be a big mistake. I've pretty much had to go back in and change all the styles myself.
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Yeah I think it will look a ton better once you get everything upgraded and set. Because right now, that stupid test thing and then that jibberish underneath it on the home page is really annoying me! But I'll be patient....
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It looks a-okay on my Firefox 3 Beta 5.
~ "Becky" Joy ~
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So right now there's more stuff messed up than ever before, but I just don't have time to sort it out right now. I just need a couple of productive hours and I'll be able to fix pretty much all of it, but I doubt I'll get any free time at all between now and this weekend. I've got a big project, plus random other oddities filling my time. I just spent the better part of tonight chasing down a huge brush fire near my family farm, only to find that it was out before I got there. ::)
Anyway, at least the site is still navigable. :-X
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Has anyone had any trouble leaving comments on news stories? In fact, how does the whole logging in deal sit with everyone? It seems pretty pointless now, but it does cut down on all that spam, and eventually you'll be able to do a lot more when logged in.
Btw, I'll probably get the rest of the upgrade knocked out tonight, depending on whether I go somewhere or not. If I don't, I'll get it done tomorrow.
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Yeah the logging in thing will be pretty cool once it all gets worked out but right now it is kind of pointless, besides just commenting on news articles.
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I got the rest of the content up, though there's still work to be done with the old galleries.
I've still got a bunch of random little things I'm going to add, but I think the site feels pretty solid right now. I'll get that user articles feature up this week hopefully; I just need to get a good text-editor hooked up to it, as I'm sure most of you don't want to fool around with having to use HTML tags with your writings.
I'm going to put a hold on the whole ride/shop/eatery rating and review system for now though, as it will take a lot of work and re-doing of the CMS structure. It will be a big part of the next big upgrade though, which will come out this summer. I will be getting the user photo galleries feature up in the next few weeks though.
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I realize there are a few things around the site that need to be fixed, such as IE bugs, but I just don't have time to work on it right now, and probably won't for a good while. Eventually I'll get some time to really knock out a bunch of stuff, but I'm really buried in work right now.
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^That's okay, Steve. The site looks really good. I'm sure I can speak for most when I say that I'm pretty patient. I know the updates and upgrades will be worth the wait.
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So I took care of a couple minor IE7 bugs that were annoying me, but I haven't had time to do anything else yet - and it looks like it will still be awhile before I can get back on it. I'm going to be hardcore busy for the next couple of weeks, so I may not be on here that much and there probably won't be any news stories for awhile unless there's something major that happens. Still though, there's always light at the end of the tunnel: by June I should have a lot more time to finish this site version - and more importantly, get started on the next. Yeah, I have some big plans for the next version, as always, but this time I want to go one step farther and actually bring some of Branson to the site. I'll be throwing some pretty crazy ideas at you guys later when I get more time to research their actual feasibility.
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I just upgraded to IE7. It makes the site look A LOT better (I haven't looked at the whole site but the homepage looks awesome.) I don't know what old IE version I had but it looks a lot better and is a much cleaner web experience now.
Upgrade if you don't have IE7 eveyone. It is the way to go. ;D
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^Indeed, I still haven't worked out the many IE6 bugs, so anyone using IE6 or below will hardly be able to even use the site. I plan to eventually work those bugs out, but it's not really worth the time right now.
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When will all the user features be available? I'm not trying to rush you or anything just wondering.
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I really don't know. I've been hoping to at least get the user editorials feature going, since it's the most simple, but I haven't had time to figure out how to implement an interface on it so that an average user could use it easily enough. Maybe I'll get it done next week, but I've got some other personal projects to do first.
As for the other stuff I mentioned a long time ago, some of it will come out in a test version in a few weeks, and will be improved upon when I re-do the site one more time over the summer. I won't even be able to start on most of that until the start of June though, as I've got my next two weeks filled with work, and then a Cedar Point trip after that.
Tch, this is why I want to get this site to the point that it pretty much runs itself - I just can't be around to work on it all the time, and there are times when I can't work on it for long stretches at a time.
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If you need any help on the site be sure to ask. I don't know much about HTML or whatever you run the site on but I can pretty much help with anything else like writing stories or whatever you need.
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Have they taken care of the bugs in IE7 (the software not this website)? That's why I use Firefox at home instead of IE, when we downloaded the beta version it screwed everything up.
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^Well... they've fixed it as much as they will fix it. There's still numerous problems with IE7's CSS implementation and support, but it's light years better than dealing with IE6. The world will breath a sigh of relief when IE8 rolls out, though that will mark the end of a lot of my business... :-\
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Hey - here's some good news: I figured out what was keeping me from implementing the user articles feature. Unless something comes up, I'll probably be able to get that feature up and running this week, and the old articles from the last site version will be back up as well.
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I finally got the user articles feature back up - so if you feel like writing something for some reason, check it out. Look in your profiles for a link that says "write an article". If no such link exists and you want to write something, contact me.
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It looks very good Steve. ;D
What does the Active button do?
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The active setting determines whether it actually shows up on the site or not. So don't set it to be active unless you are done with it.
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Ahh, I see. I bet there will be a lot more articles now that that is put up.