I firmly believe that CDO should be constantly changing and improving. To stand still is to miss out on a lot, and with the release of an armybook drawing ever closer, means we have some thinking to do.
So I thought it would be a good idea to open up discussion of this to everyone.
Aside from CDO, is there any other warhammer forums you’re on that you think has something particularly good about it? Looking here at layout/ content/ forum structure/ artwork/ background material etc etc.
If we look at these forums it might give us some good ideas for things to implement here as well. Things that will hopefully ensure CDO remains as a massive Chaos Dwarf forum for years to come.
Its the nature of forums that some grow whilst others diminish, so we wouldn’t want to get sidelined by some new flash Chaos Dwarf forum.
I’ve browsed a few forums and I’m also a member of a few other forums too.
warhammer.org is filled to the brim with painting talent from the likes of old fogey, [fiend] and mika. Some of the stuff on the site is truly inspirational but the forum itself is quite uninviting and arguments are frequent (something I’ve never seen on other forums).
Bartertown is my favourite place, although it’s not much of forum it can be your saviour when it comes to finding old models.
Then there are race-specific ones like the ogre stronghold, asrai.org, asur.org, the herdstone and places like that. They are all quite good, the ogre stronghold is particularly good for hobby inspiration as it has an extensive gallery.
The Ogre Stonghold has a pretty organized system going.
On the whole, I am trying to keep CDO fresh by updating the site and creating fresh new content to attract new Chaos Dwarf generals. But I am with you, gotta keep things constantly changing and improving.
Oh yeah, and I check out HoH occasionally too, but find it a bit redundant as the members whose opinions I value use this forum too, and the one who annoy me don’t.
Despite me not being big on Ogres as an army, I really love the Stronghold’s site. Next to CDO, it’s one of the few sites that looks flashy and is actually updated.
both realy, the dar grey in the background s raher bland, and the constant light grey is realy boring to look at, also you could replace the dots for new posts with a chaos dwaf symbol that fades when theres no new posts and is normal when there are new posts
Boring to look at? But easy to read off of, which is the usual function. I don’t really see what sort of background you’d want to replace this stuff with, I guess. Hehe, but I am open to ideas and concepts. Take some screen shots and modify them to how you might like them to look, if people like it, then I will try that out.
No, Xander’s right. Backgrounds are there so that the text is readable. We don’t want multi-colored backgrounds and writing that looks like every post is a test for color-blindness.
Is it even possible to replace the standard lightest grey (behind the text)?��If so, would it be in sections; the avatar bit on the left, and each new post?
It couldn’t be a complete pattern, or picture, as the post length varies.��Am i right in thinking a repeating texture might work?��It would have to be very light, like an off white/grey smoke texture or something?
Or have the avatar section a slightly darker grey with ‘obsidian texture’? Would need to see this first I think.
I have to say I prefer readability to cool backgrounds, esp. when you are staring at a screen for hours. CDo is by far and away my favoite forum, I’ve posted a few times on some others but this is the one I keep coming back to. Has anyone noticed how the minority armies (CDs, ogres DE and WE) have the best forums? I know wood elves aren’t minority any more but they were when asrai.org was founded) I think its because they have a core of dedicated followers who put a lot into their armies and value what resources they have, and because the sites are less clutered with annoying children who’ve just taken up WFB and have googled their latest army
Personly, my two favourite forums are here and the Herdstone. They both have backgrounds that are easy to reaad offf and gentle on the eyes if you’re on the site for a decent length of time. Sure, they’re not flashy but it works. And anyway, its better than the dreaded black background.
i think its because it has so many members that actively participate, and manage to get discussions going about even the most random things to do with warhammer. im sure we arent far off.
Personly, my two favourite forums are here and the Herdstone. They both have backgrounds that are easy to reaad offf and gentle on the eyes if you're on the site for a decent length of time. Sure, they're not flashy but it works. And anyway, its better than the dreaded black background.
Traitor King
Thats true, sites like underempire and TDL aren't good when you vision isn't 20/20... O.O >.<
What you could try doing is changing the buttons (new topic, reply etc) to suit the mood of CD more, the herdstone added some new buttons recently and they really help make the forum look snazzier ;)
As a former Council of Thirteen member from the UnderEmpire.net community, I just can’t resist to respond on the comment made by Dracomancer… I’ll admit that the black background there combined with the grey text makes it hard to read posts from time to time. One of our administrators had managed to create a pulldown menu where all the (non-coloured) text could either be gray, white or silver and those latter two made reading the text a lot easier.
Unfortunately with the Zetaboards upgrade Invisionfree did, a lot of that additional coding got lost, which included that pulldown menu… Still, the trouble reading can -in some cases- be fixed by pushing the lighting (that sun icon) of your screen to 100%. The higher that one is selected, the better the reading becomes.
You raise good points, and i’ll admit that underempire isn’t quite as bad as TDL and another forum (can’t remember which) that use luminous coloured text (red and green respectively), that was a serious “one-minute looking at the screen gives heavy migrane” thing… :sick
