THE NEW ZELARON PORTAL! (No, it's not launched yet, but we need YOUR ideas! Now!)

[Chruser]

The planned, new Zelaron portal is 100% vBulletin compatible. This means that you will be able to search the forums, browse the latest threads, see which users are online, switch between synthesis/ocean theme colors and so on directly on the portal itself. But, having a portal for these purposes alone would be stupid as all of these things can be accomplished on the forum anyway. This is the reason why our old portal failed. It didn't offer any new features aside from pointless eye candy.

So, what kind of features do you want to see on the new Zelaron portal? What would make YOU want to use it as your start page? A pre-selected Google search field? Your own customizable calendar which lets you add personal notes? Local weather and news reports? Post your ideas, anything goes! Even if they're completely insane!

Note that Zelaron members will be able to vote on portal pages ("modules") to determine their usefulness. Considering that portal pages can just as easily be removed as new ones can be added, a trial and error approach to finding the perfect modules and content is definitely a possibility.

[kaos]

Able to choose games on the arcade and play them in the same window through flash.

A small little bar that shows if you've done your 5 daily posts of the day.

A shoutbox.

A part of the window should show the new posts page and refresh itself every 1 minutes.

[D3V]

I want more smilies.

[!King_Amazon!]

We definately need more smilies.

[D3V]

I'm talking a DB of like 2-300 more.

[Lenny]

All of the same style? Or a mish-mash of different styles?

Animated? Static?

There's something - we could get members to design some.

[D3V]

Animated of course, ones that hold signs up etc, There's alot of pre-made ones out there on other forums, and we're stuck with the same 20-30..

[Thanatos]

Local news/weather would be cool.

Maybe links to funny videos and such...

[!King_Amazon!]

I think putting something as simple as like a google search would give it some use. Instead of putting google as my homepage I could put the Zelaron portal, and get a google search along with other things.

[D3V]

Yep, like vista has it built in on the bottom bar.

[Titusfied]

Customizable stock ticker that enables you to pick which ones you want to monitor on top of the market as a whole.

Sports ticker with updated scores on all or any games you choose.

[Chruser]

A shoutbox sounds good. I'm not sure about an arcade game selector, governing how easy it would be to visit the arcade anyway. Maybe a pull-down menu with all available games would be useful.

Funny videos? I guess some kind of YouTube integration could work. E.g., we could have the pre-selected Google search field come with three radio buttons, "Google Search" being the default one. The other two would be options to search YouTube, and of course, Zelaron threads.

Maybe a "featured videos selected by Zelaron members" page of some sort could work.

More ideas:


Customizable member profile pages (e.g. username.zelaron.com)
User-definable RSS feeds
Software downloads
Torrents
Gmail login, or gmail-powered @zelaron.com e-mail (Google has already approved my request for the latter; I just didn't add the feature as it felt out of place on the forum itself)
Wallpapers
Shipment tracking
Birthday tracking (Yes, part of the personal calendar feature, but having a separate page for adding new birthdays would likely make me use this feature more often)
Share lists and graphs (Not sure if anyone here is into this)



List more!

[!King_Amazon!]

That all sounds good to me. A new calendar wouldn't hurt anything, since our calendar has been broken since like december. It doesn't go past march of 2007 and even then you've gotta mess around with it to get to that.

[Thanatos]

Member profiles sound badass. That would def. spruce this place up.

[Willkillforfood]

Chruser's book of the month club =P.

[Chruser]

Since when do I read books?

[WetWired]

Shoutbox would take activity away from the forums instead of adding it.

As for smilies, we have 65, not 20. If you need some obscure smilie, you can post it as a picture. I see no reason to add 200 smilies.

[Willkillforfood]

Well, you're into art at least. Try and get some people here from deviant?

[!King_Amazon!]

WW, you see no reason to do anything as long as the forums are functional.

[Mantralord]

We need front page articles. And we need me and grav to write them.

[Chruser]

Why hasn't anyone mentioned reviews yet? (Aside from my hypothetical book club.) Game reviews, movie reviews, book reviews. Definitely with unique elements that separate us from other, more established review sites. 20-word reviews? Image-only reviews?

If this works out, we could attract a lot of attention. If it goes exceptionally well, publishers may in turn contact us and give us pre-release games, possibly invite Zelaron reviewers to screenings and such. Either way, we don't have anything to lose. The forum will still be around.

As for front page articles and news; they will definitely be there.


Customizable stock ticker that enables you to pick which ones you want to monitor on top of the market as a whole.

Sports ticker with updated scores on all or any games you choose.

Weird, you posted that while I wrote my list of ideas with the stock monitoring element. Stock and sport tickers/marquees do sound better than separate pages. The fewer clicks required, the better.

Anyway, I know you have more ideas! What are they?

[D3V]

For the reviews, we have them already, and there's only like two members that can actually sit down and write good material..

[Lenny]

Well, no. I think the case is that there's only two members who will take the time to sit down and write good material.

If all of us put aside time to do it, then we'd have 30 or so members sitting down and writing good material.

[Thanatos]

It'd be like homework!

[Lenny]

Oooh! We could do that! :D

Have a rating system put in place, with a grade for the number of good ratings you get! Say 80% of your ratings are positive, then you're on track for an A, but if only 60% are positive, then you're on a C.

[Titusfied]

We would need Raziel back to write most of the reviews, or to at least grade and redline all the ones that get submitted.

[Willkillforfood]

This needs to be the main page:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v724/Willkillforfood/9afa.jpg

[D3V]

Well, no. I think the case is that there's only two members who will take the time to sit down and write good material.

If all of us put aside time to do it, then we'd have 30 or so members sitting down and writing good material.

I know personally I could write decent reviews for material I know relatively well. I guess you're right, most of us just don't want to take the time to sit down and actually write stuff up.

[Sovereign]

If there were a manga / anime section on the portal I'd be more then willing to update it with new fansubs and scanlation lists. Nothing would be hosted on the zelaron servers, only links to sites.

I'll draw some idea up later today when I'm bored.

[WetWired]

Well, I already have a script to leach Animesuki's data and make it many times more usable. The only work that would need to be done is anime that they don't cover, which will mostly be licenced.

[WetWired]

ORLY?
http://wwuzone.com/bitbin/kalies.gif
Come on guys, we need more good ideas.

[Vault Dweller]

I'll write reviews. I can't promise the topics will be current or consistent, but I watch enough movies and read books often enough to provide something at least. Not sure how this would help a revamped portal, but I'll see if I can get to work on something soon. (Halfway through Ender's Shadow right now).

[KagomJack]

I remember when we had a Review forum. I contributed a bit to that.

[Asamin]

I like the game reveiws idea! The ability to look at what people think of games without bothering to search for it would be nice. Maybe also some by zelaron members. That could be the reward for 3 rep bars!

[Atnas]

Having Zelaron members do the reviews is the idea...

[Chruser]

Bump! WetWired has worked quite a bit on the portal project, which I haven't had time to be involved in for a long while now.

Anyway, here is a list of the suggested features, arranged by myself based on how important I regard them as:


Very important:
Pre-selected Google search field (Replaces the need for using Google as your start page)
Reviews by members (Games, movies, books)

Useful:
Customizable module layout of portal index
Customizable calendar with personal notes
Easily reachable arcade games
Software downloads
Shipment tracking
Gmail login
User-definable RSS feeds
Torrents
Local weather and news reports

Unnecessary but possibly interesting:
Customizable member profile pages (e.g. username.zelaron.com)
Wallpapers
Customizable stock ticker
Sports ticker
Dictionary
Babelfish translation
Links to funny videos (Or videos in general? Some kind of YouTube integration?)
Links (To general, useful sites)

Available:
Perfect integration with forum database
Portal styles match forum styles
Recent threads
Weekly poll
Wikipedia search
Private messages
Birthdays
Buddy list
Activity bars
Shoutbox
Users online
Community statistics (Member, thread and post amount; newest member)



Post more ideas!

[Lenny]

How are reviews going to be done? Within the portal itself?

I said a couple of days ago, in the Chatbox, that we ought to resurrect the Reviews forum, seeing as it generated quite a bit of activity in its time. If it is resurrected, then it could be linked with the Portal - the newest/highest rated/most viewed/most replies Reviews on the front page, maybe a specific Reviews page with the latest reviews/see above, and then a link to the actual forum.

[Vault Dweller]

I had been posting some game reviews/impressions on 1up, but their site's gone all batshit, so I wouldn't mind posting here. Just need to finish some more games. And write stuff.

And I'm all about the customizable RSS.

[Chruser]

How are reviews going to be done? Within the portal itself?

I said a couple of days ago, in the Chatbox, that we ought to resurrect the Reviews forum, seeing as it generated quite a bit of activity in its time. If it is resurrected, then it could be linked with the Portal - the newest/highest rated/most viewed/most replies Reviews on the front page, maybe a specific Reviews page with the latest reviews/see above, and then a link to the actual forum.

Sounds excellent! Currently, moderators and administrators are able to choose specific threads to add to the news feeds on the portal, thanks to WetWired's customization. That is, a brief (currently (up to) 800 characters) version of the first post of a thread will show up on the portal as a news entry. Something similar could be done for reviews.


I had been posting some game reviews/impressions on 1up, but their site's gone all batshit, so I wouldn't mind posting here. Just need to finish some more games. And write stuff.

And I'm all about the customizable RSS.

Great, that's promising. I'll likely be able to do some album (mostly electronica/ambient) reviews, and post about interesting art events and/or links.

[Asamin]

Keep working hard! This will improve my connection to what is happening in the outside world. I didn't even know Brawl was going to exist until a month before the release.

[Wed-G]

We need front page articles. And we need me and grav to write them.
I really agree with this one. Except we need to ALL be able to write articles. (Not really like a post. Find some way to distinguish it) but, we should be able to review books, movies, games, events and such.

EDIT: LOL, didn't read all the way through before posting my thoughts. Still a GREAT idea though.

[Chruser]

Okay, the portal is almost done. All we need to do now is to decide on what content should be put on it. So far, the main ideas are:


Reviews (games, books, movies) written by Zelaron members.
Interesting news (mostly pertaining to gaming and technology).
RPGMaker resources.
Game hacking resources.


We could, of course, turn Zelaron into a RPGMaker or game development community, largely because it is better to break into markets with low supply and high demand, but it depends on what we're capable of, and interested in providing.

So, three questions for those of you who read this.


1: Why do you come to Zelaron?
2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?)
3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?

[!King_Amazon!]

So, four questions for those of you who read this.


1: Why do you come to Zelaron?
2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?)
3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?


1. I come to Zelaron for the community, and occasionally to talk about Gaming.

2. I percieve Zelaron as a place to hang out with a touch of Gaming discussion.

3. We should focus on RPGMaker, Gaming, Art (literature, modeling, what have you,) and current events (such as science, debate, and all that jazz,) in my opinion. Whatever it is we do, I think we need to focus more on these things rather than the "community" aspect.

4. Where's the fourth question?

[Vollstrecker]

1.) I come for the community, to discuss current events (science mostly), and to share my knowledge on what games I play.

2.) Mostly, I perceive Zelaron as an online chatboard. There really isn't a whole lot of gaming discussion these days.

3.) I mainly think that more discussion on the gaming aspects would draw more members in, as the aspect of "community" doesn't do much to draw in new people. Whatever we discuss should be something that a lot of our people are interested in, and hopefully a popular subject (I doubt we're going to find something bigger than D2 was in its heyday unless Diablo 3 is announced).

[Willkillforfood]

1: Why do you come to Zelaron?
2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?)
3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?


1. It's addictive, and I find some of the vindictive assholes on here similar to myself.
2. A hang out for people. Most of my conversation does not have to do with games, but there's a lot of it that goes on.
3. Pull a slashdot and relay the news that nerds like.

[Chruser]

3. We should focus on RPGMaker, Gaming, Art (literature, modeling, what have you,) and current events (such as science, debate, and all that jazz,) in my opinion. Whatever it is we do, I think we need to focus more on these things rather than the "community" aspect.

I disagree about the extra emphasis on art unless there's an interesting twist to it. I definitely agree with your idea about focusing on RPGMaker and other areas of gaming. Of course, "gaming" is too vast per se, so narrowing down our share of the gaming market to something which is in great demand without a great supply of need-covering websites is a good way to go.

What about cheating and game hacking? Not many web sites cover that, but everyone wants to cheat. We even used to be a fairly famous Diablo 2 hacking community. A few more up-to-date map hacks posted as attachments so visitors have to sign up to download them, some guides on memory editing... Of course, illegal things such as cracking copyrighted games or selling CD keys would be disallowed, but a little ToS bending has never hurt anyone, has it?

Focusing on things other than the abstract "community" aspect of Zelaron is definitely a must in our pursuits for expansion.


3.) I mainly think that more discussion on the gaming aspects would draw more members in, as the aspect of "community" doesn't do much to draw in new people. Whatever we discuss should be something that a lot of our people are interested in, and hopefully a popular subject (I doubt we're going to find something bigger than D2 was in its heyday unless Diablo 3 is announced).

RPGMaker and Diablo 2... Hmm. Game development and hacking? Throw in some Slashdot-esque technology, gaming and world news as Willkillforfood mentioned, and I think we're good to go.

As for my earlier skepticism about linking Zelaron with art, what about writing game, movie and book reviews which follow a particular theme or school of thought, e.g. Cranky Steve-esque cynicism and negativity? Raziel (whom I have a 50% chance of resurrecting) would definitely pull that off extraordinarily well. Or, what about limiting the reviews to cyberpunk, steampunk and/or generic sci-fi?

[Wed-G]

1: Why do you come to Zelaron?
2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?)
3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?



1. I come to Zelaron because it feeds my gaming news and tech addiction better that most other sources.

2. Zelaron is most definitely a gaming forum. I found it years ago when looking for RPGMaker tutorials. It was mainly because of this site that I got as good as I did.

3. I really think we need to host resources and review RPGMaker games.

While others may favor the community more, I've always seen this as a game making site.

[Draco2003]

I know this idea is kinda late in to submit, but what about floating modules? There would be a bar that can be moved to either side of the screen, such as the 'Start' bar, that would allow you to add or remove modules, depending on how the user sees fit. But the modules can be moved where ever and when ever the user wants.

As Wed-G pointed out, this is probably viewed as a game making site by most people who weren't around for or cared about Diablo. So why not point out indie games? I am sure there are some great games out there that not many people have heard of.

And before I forget:

1.) I come here... I don't know really. Used to be RPGMaker, but now it is a bit of everything that goes on in the world, all in one place. I can learn about games, news, movies, and get psycological help when needed.

2.) As I said earlier, I percieve zelaron a gathering of people that are, in one way or another, interested in the makings of games. The other stuff we share just happens to be a bonus.

3.) We can have flavored urinal cakes. The ones at the theatre are rather bland.


Another feature came to mind. How about every week, there can be a featured member? At the top of the forum or on the portal, a small module would show the avatar of the individual and a short 4-5 sentence summary of thier contributions since the last time they were on, or in the last month or so. Under that would be a section saying something like, "You can find "MEMBER X" most frequently sharing wisdom in these forums/threads" or something like that. This, at least I think, would show potential members that they can expect whatever issue to recieve attention, and might in turn cause them to stay.

[Wed-G]

I like the idea of a featured member. That's not bad.

[Vollstrecker]

RPGMaker and Diablo 2... Hmm. Game development and hacking? Throw in some Slashdot-esque technology, gaming and world news as Willkillforfood mentioned, and I think we're good to go.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say with the bolded part besides coming off as condescending, but okay.

I haven't noticed any real discussion on game hacking/exploits practically since I was Diablo 2 Mod, and that discussion/help section was one of the biggest reasons people came to Zelaron. The retention rate on those people wasn't high, but I know they referred other people here for similar help. /shrug

[quote=Chruser]As for my earlier skepticism about linking Zelaron with art, what about writing game, movie and book reviews which follow a particular theme or school of thought, e.g. Cranky Steve-esque cynicism and negativity? Raziel (whom I have a 50% chance of resurrecting) would definitely pull that off extraordinarily well. Or, what about limiting the reviews to cyberpunk, steampunk and/or generic sci-fi?

Didn't we have an informal kind of thing going on with this? I'm assuming with the Portal that things like this would get more obvious exposure? We could link Zelaron with almost anything, we just need our memberbase to jumpstart it and have active Moderators who care about the subject.

[Kazilla]

1: Why do you come to Zelaron?
2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?)
3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?


1. I come to zelaron because its a forum that i have actually managed to become a part of - not saying you all know me or like me but, it has a wide variety of people with more then just general knowledge. alot of you have many answers to questions, and can give descriptive answers as well.

2. I always saw this as a gaming forum, solely because those tend to be the threads i troll. i tend to not venture much out of my comfort zone, however lately ive been posting in just about every thread.

3. i think you should dedicate yourself to 1 idea, be it gaming, friends, welcome parties. However if you do choose to do it all, you cant ever lax in 1 area, then it slowly turns into nothingness - cough diablo 2 hacking. There are some great programmers on here, but - why hasnt anyone programed a dupe for me on d2 yet?! ;)

Recommendations : I think there should be some exclusive content to veteran zelaron members. Titles for reaching x amount of posts. Perhaps blogging? Keep up to date with the games comming out, information about news, gaming, and the science half of life.

Most of the last part of that description is already here, i think it just needs more posters, and a bigger community.

i bumped a 2 month old sticky!

[jamer123]

1 i come to zel because my life is boring

2 i think zel is a place were you can talk about anything

3 i think you should advertise on other sites for more people
get more games
more ranks like kazilla said
and last but not least have more themes for zel

[Kazilla]

the one ranking system by forum posts i found was on www.crossingtyria.com when you reach 1000 posts you get the Discple of Dwayna (its a guild wars website) title, if you contributed to something on the site you get the contributor tag. i had mine before i got banned for bored and useless posts ;)

[jamer123]

how about an area were if your this or above you can see and post in it

[Kazilla]

I thought of something that i havent noticed about zelaron. when you type www.zelaron.com it brings you straight to the forums, which leaves a ton of space to play with. Most every single other webpage brings to a home page where you must navigate your way to the forums.

My idea is this, if we made a home page we could ideally become 'fan sites' or have a complete library of information at our members disposal - for instance.

Warhammer Online is due out september 18th (without official forums). There are requirements to become a fansite - you need so much of x with a mixture of y. So say you built a homepage that had a WarhammerOnline Link, which brought you to the warhammer fansite - tons of information there, everything anyone could think of. If something wasnt posted they could look it up and edit it, almost like a wiki with restrictions of course (or not). Warhammer fans will be looking for that site that is easy to navigate has a great community and tons of information. I think this is prime meat for zelaron. All the forum links could come back here, introducing the Warhammer community to everything else zelaron has to offer.

Guildwars as well doesnt have any offical forums, althought currently the GuildWars community on zelaron is dead, if we were to create something that felt significant to them. I think it might change.

WoW forums are full of asshat trolls, and the elitestjerkoffs that spawn from top raiding guilds and arena teams. World of Warcraft forums is a popularity contest, if you are a nobody dont post. This could be a nice alternative to that.

Big console games are comming out in the very near future. We have the respective forums for those, but maybe tweak it a bit to appeal to more people.

Allowing zelaron members to contribute to the cause is imo the ideal way of brining more to this community, writing guides, strategies, builds, and walkthroughs. It is all very excillerating to some poeople.

[WetWired]

Congradulations for not knowing what the thread you're posting in is about.

[Asamin]

1: Why do you come to Zelaron?
2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?)
3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?


1: I am actually accepted here and the people are not boring
2: I see it as a place to discuss games that I play (D2 LOD and WoW)
3: I don't know what else it could need besides game reveiws, I would like to be able to score games I play and we could have our own "top 10 games"

[Kazilla]

THE NEW ZELARON PORTAL! (No, it's not launched yet, but we need YOUR ideas! Now!) em... ok? i suppose they arent idea's

So, what kind of features do you want to see on the new Zelaron portal? (from the very 1st post)

[jamer123]

i think its up now

[Lenny]

Unless WW has been on an obscure domain name shopping spree for the portal, one would imagine it would be found at www.zelaron.com (http://www.zelaron.com). Seeing as that still redirects to the main forum page, I'll have to reply in the negative to your thoughts.

[!King_Amazon!]

congradulations

error.