The Lurker Lounge is coming up on its 10 year anniversary. TEN YEARS. On the Internet, 10 years is a lifetime. Count the number of private hobby-driven websites out there that you know of that have lasted for 10 years. There aren't many. What's even more amazing is that the site is so alive yet. It may not be as thriving as it was in its Diablo II days, but the user base here is very loyal. Many of you I've known since before the Lounge started, and that continues to blow me away. I don't mention it every day because I'd be a broken record, of course. But it's wild to me personally, thinking back to when I was in high school, that so many of the posters I've communicated with, argued with, and played with then are still around. Especially since I'm not the most...uh, personable guy out there.
I will take some of the credit for the Lounge's longevity - after all, I've been paying the bills all these years at the very least, keeping the site ad-free - but most of it lies with other people. I hesitate to name names because others will feel left out, but guys like Mavfin who hosted the Lounge for free during a number of years when cash wasn't exactly a thing I had a lot of deserve much thanks. I really appreciate Griselda, the amazingly patient forum admin who put up with so much crap for so many years. There are others who have supported with their dollars as well in donations, not for any other reason but to help see the site continue. Web content admins and forum admins like Lemming, Mirajj, and MongoJerry have done a bang-up job keeping the ship upright.
Ultimately, it comes down to the users though that continue the Lounge community. Even when the main site closed for a while, the forum secretly kept moving along. Seeing that really motivated me to get back into it years ago. And it's the users that I want to focus on going forward.
Lounge veterans have known for years that there's always been a disconnect between the "front page" and the forum. I've waffled at times, and considered even shutting down the front page area and just concentrating solely on making the Lounge a forum site - yet, that isn't to me what I want to see the Lounge become. We can have the best of both worlds if there were only a way to integrate the forum with the front page better; to further expand on what the original focus of the Lounge was: highlighting quality forum posts and strategies of interest to the hardcore (or casual-but-analytical) game player, and encouraging a user base of thoughtful, dedicated players.
Now, you couple this with a few other problems that have grown over the years, and I feel things are straining. First of all, we have this aging forum software here. It's just not keeping up with the times, as modern spambots find continually-evolving ever-evasive ways to disrupt things, all without solid means for us admins to shut them up (and down). We clean up posts, we ban users and IP addresses, but ultimately if you log in here and get a porn spam PM or see 20 threads filled with spam before an admin gets to it, it's going to annoy you. Upgrading the forum isn't much of an option because the license to do so with Invision Power Board costs a prohibitive amount of money. Secondly, the front page content is so utterly dependent on having one or two people with lots of time on their hands to generate content that it's been the downfall of the system for years. I don't have the time/will to do it, and let's face it, finding someone to do it for years and years isn't realistic. It doesn't remain fun for the admin and it becomes a chore, a responsibility that inevitably leads to burnout (even for me!). Last of all, the "strategy" part of the Lurker Lounge has been in decline for a long time. The regulars here still post a lot, but not so much about game mechanics and strategy but rather community-style posts. That's great, but it would nice to see the site get back to its roots a bit. It's not the fault of the users. If the main site loses a strategy focus, then so does its forum. Diablo III will certainly help revive things around here, I'm sure. But we can have the infrastructure in place beforehand.
Okay! Enough dwelling on the past and present. Let's take a look at the future.
What? ANOTHER site redesign?
Well, yes. But it's not so much because I'm tired of the current look; rather, it's for the reasons stated above. A 10-year anniversary of the Lounge gives me the impetus to make some changes around here, hopefully all for the better. The Internet is a very different place than it was back in 1999. Back then, gaming websites were kinda rare and you just didn't have commercial gaming websites on the web. At all. Gaming has changed a lot since then. And for those of you who have been here all this time, you have changed too. I know I have.
So here's my overall plan, details included. Please provide feedback about what you think, and give suggestions/ideas from everything to a technical perspective, design plan, content ideas, etc.
1) Modernize the content and forum softwares, converting over current content, posts, and users
I'm going to be updating the software used by the site for the front end and the forum, going with a more integrated solution. At the moment, I'm leaning toward Joomla! for the front-end and MyBB for the forum. Joomla! can integrate with MyBB via a Joomla! extension, allowing for a combined userbase. With both systems, the current content should be portable thanks to developed conversion scripts. I expect some bumps along the way, and there will be a "beta test" of sorts that I'll want your help with to make sure things are working nicely. But getting away from the current slopped-together codebase in place to a tighter system will make me a happy camper and help us keep the joint clean. Man, you should see the garbled php mess that is the STSI system...
But modernizing the forum software gives us access to so much more cool stuff. Imagine having a poster rating system, and being able to filter posts and threads by a certain rating level. Forums can become self-moderating and dynamically police themselves. There's so much out there that we can't do right now, and tops on the list is keeping out all the spambots. It's also safer from a security perspective, being able to update software as new holes/exploits are found instead of being bound to expensive software with no upgrade path.
2) Shift the front-page to a user-submission system
This is an absolute 100% paradigm shift in how the Lounge's front-end has operated over the last 10 years, and where the crux of the "new direction of the Lounge" lies. Simply put, I've always wanted the userbase to provide the content, but never possessed the means to do so. Early on, in the D2 days, it was "wait for someone to post something good, link to it, and ask them if I could host it more permanently." It would be much more awesome to have the users provide the content directly for the front page. "Editors" would be those who would green-light a user submission to appear on the front page. If this sounds somewhat familiar, it's similar to how sites like Slashdot do things, and it's a system that works. I figure, since they crashed the Lounge more than once by Slashdotting us, I can take the liberty of swiping their design ideas. :)
The main idea is that if YOU - yes, YOU - see something of quality and linkable on the Net about the covered games, whether it be WoW or the original Diablo, just submit it for the front page. It doesn't even need to be linking; if you create a great guide or strat for something, that could be submitted directly. Doing so would be as easy as making a forum post, and if it is green-lighted, the Editor approving it will credit you for the submission. The Editors don't have to come up with the content, which becomes quite a chore for any one or two individuals to do. I'm sure we'll have people who submit a lot of things, and others who only submit something once every two months, but either way, the system works because the content is created by lots and lots and lots of people. The Editors control the quality of the content that appears on the main page, but ideally it would be rare that they write their own. After all, to submit their own content, they'd have to beat all of you guys to the punch, right? :)
It's expected that things we had for Diablo II like a "strategy" section - hosting of permanent content - would fall by the wayside. You'll notice we don't really have one for WoW, for instance. This really makes sense anyway, since the way games evolve these days (especially in MMOs) any particular strategy becomes invalid in a short period of time. We could say "let's start a wiki then!" but I'm not yet convinced that's a great idea since competing with mega-sites like WoWWiki for continually-updated comprehensive static content is a waste of time. We'll see. There's always room for stickied posts (like FAQs) in our forums if people want to maintain things that way. Another method could be "tagging" certain user-submitted front page articles as reference content that gets housed in various sections for future easy lookup. This way, if you submitted a killer Warlock Talent Guide for WoW Patch 3.1, it could go in a "Warlock strat" area for a while until it gets outdated and removed by re-tagging it as a general posting.
If you have ever looked at the Lounge front page and thought "man, why hasn't this been updated" or "at least they could mention this or that," now you will have the power to make that happen. Everyone becomes a content creator on the Lounge, and now I can really, truly say that you all make the site. It will have as much activity and content as you are able to provide for it.
I fully expect this to evolve over time. Frankly, I have no idea exactly where it'll go because I won't be controlling it. I like that idea. :) Thoughts?
3) Designate an "editorial team" to green-light user submissions
These people would have phenomenal cosmic powers (and itty-bitty living space). Well, sorta. Every time they green-light a user submission, everyone could complain that it shouldn't have been green-lighted. The Editor's job would be solely to fix typos and such, and mostly to separate the wheat from the chaff so that we don't see articles like "OMG DKs are so OP Bliz FIX NOW!!1!!1eleven!"
Articles appearing on the front page will have integrated comments links. Either the comments will be stored on the front page or they'll get integrated into the forum. First I have to see what's technically possible, and if both are, decide which one works best.
As for who the editors will be, it'll probably start with a *very* small list of people (maybe 2-3 tops), and if things grow like I hope they will, the list will expand.
4) Integrate the forum with the front end
To me, this was absolutely critical to solve the disconnect problem between the front-end and the forum. With a common userbase between the systems, and a built-in navigation to bind the two together, it will stop feeling like two separate sites. We might even get the majority of the userbase to start with the front page instead of the forum, oh my! Dogs and cats, living together - mass hysteria!
Joomla! and MyBB can integrate together. Ideally, you log in in one place and you're logged in in both. I have to see how the cookies work and cooperate to make that happen, but at the very least the user accounts will be the same, with the same passwords.
5) Come up with a new, snazzy look!
To me, this is the hard part, actually. The tech stuff is easy. It is brutally hard and time-consuming for me to come up with a look for the site that works stylistically and technically. If you've never tried it, it probably seems easier to you than it really is - and I can point you to millions of hideously ugly and terribly-designed websites as evidence to this.
There's a reason this is listed last. It's the part I dread doing. I'd like to think I've done a good job of it in the past, considering my limited HTML and CSS knowledge, and I feel that each iteration of design has gotten better and better while I've learned new tricks. I've gotten design help from people like Angelstar who have knowledge of color schemes and artistic designs. But an expert could do so much better. I wish I had a pocket artist who enjoyed coming up with Lounge skins. Gee, that would be great. Really nice. Yep. *cough*
Again, please respond with your thoughts, recommendations, ideas, offers to help, etc. If you are familiar with the softwares I've mentioned here, please sound off on what you think of them. If you have cool ideas for web styles, discuss them! If you think this is all a terrible idea and will never work, say so. If this excites you, say so. If you don't care at all, then you haven't read this far anyway. If you're wondering where 10 years of your life went, the answer is: you wasted them playing computer games, you dolt. Glad to have you here with me.
-Bolty
I will take some of the credit for the Lounge's longevity - after all, I've been paying the bills all these years at the very least, keeping the site ad-free - but most of it lies with other people. I hesitate to name names because others will feel left out, but guys like Mavfin who hosted the Lounge for free during a number of years when cash wasn't exactly a thing I had a lot of deserve much thanks. I really appreciate Griselda, the amazingly patient forum admin who put up with so much crap for so many years. There are others who have supported with their dollars as well in donations, not for any other reason but to help see the site continue. Web content admins and forum admins like Lemming, Mirajj, and MongoJerry have done a bang-up job keeping the ship upright.
Ultimately, it comes down to the users though that continue the Lounge community. Even when the main site closed for a while, the forum secretly kept moving along. Seeing that really motivated me to get back into it years ago. And it's the users that I want to focus on going forward.
Lounge veterans have known for years that there's always been a disconnect between the "front page" and the forum. I've waffled at times, and considered even shutting down the front page area and just concentrating solely on making the Lounge a forum site - yet, that isn't to me what I want to see the Lounge become. We can have the best of both worlds if there were only a way to integrate the forum with the front page better; to further expand on what the original focus of the Lounge was: highlighting quality forum posts and strategies of interest to the hardcore (or casual-but-analytical) game player, and encouraging a user base of thoughtful, dedicated players.
Now, you couple this with a few other problems that have grown over the years, and I feel things are straining. First of all, we have this aging forum software here. It's just not keeping up with the times, as modern spambots find continually-evolving ever-evasive ways to disrupt things, all without solid means for us admins to shut them up (and down). We clean up posts, we ban users and IP addresses, but ultimately if you log in here and get a porn spam PM or see 20 threads filled with spam before an admin gets to it, it's going to annoy you. Upgrading the forum isn't much of an option because the license to do so with Invision Power Board costs a prohibitive amount of money. Secondly, the front page content is so utterly dependent on having one or two people with lots of time on their hands to generate content that it's been the downfall of the system for years. I don't have the time/will to do it, and let's face it, finding someone to do it for years and years isn't realistic. It doesn't remain fun for the admin and it becomes a chore, a responsibility that inevitably leads to burnout (even for me!). Last of all, the "strategy" part of the Lurker Lounge has been in decline for a long time. The regulars here still post a lot, but not so much about game mechanics and strategy but rather community-style posts. That's great, but it would nice to see the site get back to its roots a bit. It's not the fault of the users. If the main site loses a strategy focus, then so does its forum. Diablo III will certainly help revive things around here, I'm sure. But we can have the infrastructure in place beforehand.
Okay! Enough dwelling on the past and present. Let's take a look at the future.
What? ANOTHER site redesign?
Well, yes. But it's not so much because I'm tired of the current look; rather, it's for the reasons stated above. A 10-year anniversary of the Lounge gives me the impetus to make some changes around here, hopefully all for the better. The Internet is a very different place than it was back in 1999. Back then, gaming websites were kinda rare and you just didn't have commercial gaming websites on the web. At all. Gaming has changed a lot since then. And for those of you who have been here all this time, you have changed too. I know I have.
So here's my overall plan, details included. Please provide feedback about what you think, and give suggestions/ideas from everything to a technical perspective, design plan, content ideas, etc.
1) Modernize the content and forum softwares, converting over current content, posts, and users
I'm going to be updating the software used by the site for the front end and the forum, going with a more integrated solution. At the moment, I'm leaning toward Joomla! for the front-end and MyBB for the forum. Joomla! can integrate with MyBB via a Joomla! extension, allowing for a combined userbase. With both systems, the current content should be portable thanks to developed conversion scripts. I expect some bumps along the way, and there will be a "beta test" of sorts that I'll want your help with to make sure things are working nicely. But getting away from the current slopped-together codebase in place to a tighter system will make me a happy camper and help us keep the joint clean. Man, you should see the garbled php mess that is the STSI system...
But modernizing the forum software gives us access to so much more cool stuff. Imagine having a poster rating system, and being able to filter posts and threads by a certain rating level. Forums can become self-moderating and dynamically police themselves. There's so much out there that we can't do right now, and tops on the list is keeping out all the spambots. It's also safer from a security perspective, being able to update software as new holes/exploits are found instead of being bound to expensive software with no upgrade path.
2) Shift the front-page to a user-submission system
This is an absolute 100% paradigm shift in how the Lounge's front-end has operated over the last 10 years, and where the crux of the "new direction of the Lounge" lies. Simply put, I've always wanted the userbase to provide the content, but never possessed the means to do so. Early on, in the D2 days, it was "wait for someone to post something good, link to it, and ask them if I could host it more permanently." It would be much more awesome to have the users provide the content directly for the front page. "Editors" would be those who would green-light a user submission to appear on the front page. If this sounds somewhat familiar, it's similar to how sites like Slashdot do things, and it's a system that works. I figure, since they crashed the Lounge more than once by Slashdotting us, I can take the liberty of swiping their design ideas. :)
The main idea is that if YOU - yes, YOU - see something of quality and linkable on the Net about the covered games, whether it be WoW or the original Diablo, just submit it for the front page. It doesn't even need to be linking; if you create a great guide or strat for something, that could be submitted directly. Doing so would be as easy as making a forum post, and if it is green-lighted, the Editor approving it will credit you for the submission. The Editors don't have to come up with the content, which becomes quite a chore for any one or two individuals to do. I'm sure we'll have people who submit a lot of things, and others who only submit something once every two months, but either way, the system works because the content is created by lots and lots and lots of people. The Editors control the quality of the content that appears on the main page, but ideally it would be rare that they write their own. After all, to submit their own content, they'd have to beat all of you guys to the punch, right? :)
It's expected that things we had for Diablo II like a "strategy" section - hosting of permanent content - would fall by the wayside. You'll notice we don't really have one for WoW, for instance. This really makes sense anyway, since the way games evolve these days (especially in MMOs) any particular strategy becomes invalid in a short period of time. We could say "let's start a wiki then!" but I'm not yet convinced that's a great idea since competing with mega-sites like WoWWiki for continually-updated comprehensive static content is a waste of time. We'll see. There's always room for stickied posts (like FAQs) in our forums if people want to maintain things that way. Another method could be "tagging" certain user-submitted front page articles as reference content that gets housed in various sections for future easy lookup. This way, if you submitted a killer Warlock Talent Guide for WoW Patch 3.1, it could go in a "Warlock strat" area for a while until it gets outdated and removed by re-tagging it as a general posting.
If you have ever looked at the Lounge front page and thought "man, why hasn't this been updated" or "at least they could mention this or that," now you will have the power to make that happen. Everyone becomes a content creator on the Lounge, and now I can really, truly say that you all make the site. It will have as much activity and content as you are able to provide for it.
I fully expect this to evolve over time. Frankly, I have no idea exactly where it'll go because I won't be controlling it. I like that idea. :) Thoughts?
3) Designate an "editorial team" to green-light user submissions
These people would have phenomenal cosmic powers (and itty-bitty living space). Well, sorta. Every time they green-light a user submission, everyone could complain that it shouldn't have been green-lighted. The Editor's job would be solely to fix typos and such, and mostly to separate the wheat from the chaff so that we don't see articles like "OMG DKs are so OP Bliz FIX NOW!!1!!1eleven!"
Articles appearing on the front page will have integrated comments links. Either the comments will be stored on the front page or they'll get integrated into the forum. First I have to see what's technically possible, and if both are, decide which one works best.
As for who the editors will be, it'll probably start with a *very* small list of people (maybe 2-3 tops), and if things grow like I hope they will, the list will expand.
4) Integrate the forum with the front end
To me, this was absolutely critical to solve the disconnect problem between the front-end and the forum. With a common userbase between the systems, and a built-in navigation to bind the two together, it will stop feeling like two separate sites. We might even get the majority of the userbase to start with the front page instead of the forum, oh my! Dogs and cats, living together - mass hysteria!
Joomla! and MyBB can integrate together. Ideally, you log in in one place and you're logged in in both. I have to see how the cookies work and cooperate to make that happen, but at the very least the user accounts will be the same, with the same passwords.
5) Come up with a new, snazzy look!
To me, this is the hard part, actually. The tech stuff is easy. It is brutally hard and time-consuming for me to come up with a look for the site that works stylistically and technically. If you've never tried it, it probably seems easier to you than it really is - and I can point you to millions of hideously ugly and terribly-designed websites as evidence to this.
There's a reason this is listed last. It's the part I dread doing. I'd like to think I've done a good job of it in the past, considering my limited HTML and CSS knowledge, and I feel that each iteration of design has gotten better and better while I've learned new tricks. I've gotten design help from people like Angelstar who have knowledge of color schemes and artistic designs. But an expert could do so much better. I wish I had a pocket artist who enjoyed coming up with Lounge skins. Gee, that would be great. Really nice. Yep. *cough*
Again, please respond with your thoughts, recommendations, ideas, offers to help, etc. If you are familiar with the softwares I've mentioned here, please sound off on what you think of them. If you have cool ideas for web styles, discuss them! If you think this is all a terrible idea and will never work, say so. If this excites you, say so. If you don't care at all, then you haven't read this far anyway. If you're wondering where 10 years of your life went, the answer is: you wasted them playing computer games, you dolt. Glad to have you here with me.
-Bolty
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.