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[Selroth]

Hello everyone!  Hopefully you've all been able to login just the same and browse intuitively without any problems!  I just got this forum online and most of the content (forum posts, PMs, users, etc) transferred yesterday, and there's still quite a bit of work to be done.  

The story is, when I came home from vacation, I found the site was not working.  I attempted some quick-fixes, but none of them worked.  I got side-tracked with work and such, and somewhat lost interest for a while.  Heh, I guess I started missing the place, and continued working on it but this time just figured "what the heck" and took the extensive downtime as an opportunity to upgrade the site.  After a bunch of trouble with that, here it is.  Post freely once again!!

Expect to see some new rules and a new style of administration around.  Nothing bad (I hope), but certainly different.  A different Draconity.org is better than no Draconity.org (which is almost what it came to be).  Also, the site will physically change around a bit as I add/remove features and themes.  Unfortunately, I think the old library theme is completely incompatible.

If you or anyone you know is fluent in designing website themes, then I have a paying opportunity for them.  Unless I find someone earlier, then after a while I'll be publicly offering a sum of cash for anyone who can complete a satisfactory website design.  

I'm looking for volunteers to help categorize the old topics into the new forum layout (which I'll be building later today).  It'll be easy, just take the most recent threads from the old forums and move them into the appropriate place in the new ones.  We don't need to do all of them, just however many we can of the most recent/interesting.

So, if you have any opinions, problems, or would like to help out, let me know here!  

[Ethelshai]

Glad to see it's up and running again :) Well done, Selroth, and Thanks :)

[Knight]

I'm pretty sure that if you need a new theme, you could just go to either the simple machines website or just Google it.  I'm almost certain that there is some site or another that is devoted to making and sharing themes for free.  (I know cuz I looked myself for DracGames)

[Selroth]

I'm aware of many themes for SMF, and have a few lined up to install.  However, I meant an original and authentic theme just for this website.  A professional one with some hand-drawn artwork, and not some cheesy theme intended for a gaming or role-playing site full of lame clip-art dragons.

[Fury]

Congrats on your site running again!

Best of luck Selroth.

:)

[Airy]

Glad to see the site's back.  A couple of weeks of checking on the site each day and seeing it not there just shows how sadly obsessed I am. ;D

I like how on the top of the page it shows my avatar picture along with the message "Hello Airy".  It kind of make me feel important or something.  :D

A thought on the discussion/debate forums.

It might be good to have an explanation about what a debate is and some rules/guidelines to follow in a debate or heated discussion.  I think a debate should have some structure to it, and be distinct from a discussion.

Is this a project that you've mainly had to take care of yourself Selroth?  Thanks for the time and effort you've spent to get the site back up and running. *many claps*

[Aurelia]

I like how on the top of the page it shows my avatar picture along with the message "Hello Airy".  It kind of make me feel important or something.  :D

Yeah I like that bit too hehe.

A thought on the discussion/debate forums.

It might be good to have an explanation about what a debate is and some rules/guidelines to follow in a debate or heated discussion.  I think a debate should have some structure to it, and be distinct from a discussion.

Just a quick reply to this (Sel can respond to the other bits).  Having an information/rules/guidelines post in Cooled and Heated has been thought about and will be done shortly but the priority was for us to first move the old posts over to the new forums, which is very time consuming believe me!  Do feel free to use both of the debate forums in the mean time though - if anything in Cooled starts to become a heated debate/discussion then it can be easily moved.

I wanted to also say welcome back to our old and new members! :)

[Aurelia]

Selroth has put a redirection at http://www.draconomicon.com/ it's strange it didn't show up for you :-\  What was the exact link you were using or had bookmarked?

[Dafydd_Edward_Dragon]

.. I mean no offence at all to your efforts Sel', in fact I'm very glad you worked to getting the site back up. But I liked the old style of the home page. The layout was easy to see what topics are active (and you don't get repeated results of the same topic), you could see the active journal entries, it was easy to navigate, the side bars were clear and easy to use, and the news articles were right there in the lower pane of the page.

I dislike PHPBB because even with themes, every single forum is the same generic design which I find annoyingly hard to navigate around. I liked PostNuke for that reason. I also liked the easy controls on threads with the nice quick-reply box at the bottom with the 'post reply' button right near it if you needed to post something more advanced, the layout was clean, you can easily submit to watching threads with one button at the bottom of the page rather than having to go through those cascading menus, and it was even 'light brower' friendly. Though not easy, I was still able to navigate the site on my cell phone, or though a basic SSH/Telnet based browser if I had to very easily. PHPBB uses too much unwanted eye-candy, frames, cells, images, and so forth that makes it so clunky and bloated. I'd give up a month of access to get the old version back.

Draconomicon/Draconity is still the only forum I ever to go these days, I've grown too far attached to the nice old version.

EDIT: On top of that, another 'feature' I dislike is this thing doesn't have the decency to send me back to the page I was reading when I make a post, this one shunts me back to the general forum page so I have to navigate back again -.-

EDIT2: Apparently it also smashed off my avatar, thinks I'm a 'newbie' again, and corrupted my signature.

[Drakenigma]

EDIT2: Apparently it also smashed off my avatar, thinks I'm a 'newbie' again, and corrupted my signature.

You can fix your sig by tacking on the leading '[' ... it seems any sig with a [ as a first character didn't make the transition to this site with its bracket intact.  Simple fix, that. ;)

Thanks for all the effort Selroth and staff.  It's nice to see the site back up!

[PhantomDragon]

It's good to see that everything is back up now. So it's good to see everyone here again.  I was worried at first when I tried to come here a  couple of weeks ago. Now when I found out everything was going to be alright, I was looking forward to the newer version of this site.
^.=.^

Also, I've noticed my post count went back down to zero but everyone else's is where it was before all this happened. How come?

[Aurelia]

You can fix your sig by tacking on the leading '[' ... it seems any sig with a [ as a first character didn't make the transition to this site with its bracket intact.  Simple fix, that. ;)

Thanks for all the effort Selroth and staff.  It's nice to see the site back up!

The move apparently ate the first character (no matter what it was) from everyone's signature.  Why?  No idea!  As already said, it is a simple fix, along with the avatar vanishing, and is something we've all had to do.

EDIT: On top of that, another 'feature' I dislike is this thing doesn't have the decency to send me back to the page I was reading when I make a post, this one shunts me back to the general forum page so I have to navigate back again -.-

As Ria has said, I agree this can be annoying and we can look into sorting that out, along with the "newbie" subtitle that everyone now has.  Although (going back to the redirection after posting), if you've already posted something in the thread then when you're sent back to the general forum page it is right in front of you at the top of the list, so it isn't hard to find it again.  We will look into it though.

Technical things (as the rest of your post was) aren't something I'm completely familiar with so I'll let Selroth respond to that part.

PhantomDragon: That's very strange it reset your post count.  We'll look into that too.

[Ravtrag]

Some threads/sections have a wider "thread started by" then "topic name" Which just causes me to click on the username then the topic.
http://www.draconity.org/index.php/board,34.0.html
is the best example
http://www.draconity.org/index.php/board,18.0.html
is a 50/50 example.
Its more of a comfort thing in the form.
Or is it just how my browser shows it? (Opera)

[Karnanyd]

My user name didn't transfer over and I had to reapply!  What's up with that?  :(

Glad to see the site is back though.  :D

[PhantomDragon]

I just noticed something about my post count. I actually see the old posts that I have made here apparently, but the thing is it also has my old post count, it seems that I somehow have a duplicate account from the transfer.