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-   -   THE NEW ZELARON PORTAL! (No, it's not launched yet, but we need YOUR ideas! Now!) (http://zelaron.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43213)

Chruser 2007-08-23 12:06 AM

THE NEW ZELARON PORTAL! (No, it's not launched yet, but we need YOUR ideas! Now!)
 
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 2007-08-23 12:07 AM

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 2007-08-23 06:48 AM

I want more smilies.

!King_Amazon! 2007-08-23 06:51 AM

We definately need more smilies.

D3V 2007-08-23 07:31 AM

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

Lenny 2007-08-23 07:44 AM

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 2007-08-23 07:50 AM

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 2007-08-23 08:14 AM

Local news/weather would be cool.

Maybe links to funny videos and such...

!King_Amazon! 2007-08-23 08:30 AM

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 2007-08-23 08:45 AM

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

Titusfied 2007-08-23 09:23 AM

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 2007-08-23 09:38 AM

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! 2007-08-23 09:48 AM

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 2007-08-23 10:05 AM

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

Willkillforfood 2007-08-23 01:43 PM

Chruser's book of the month club =P.

Chruser 2007-08-23 02:13 PM

Since when do I read books?

WetWired 2007-08-23 05:06 PM

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 2007-08-23 05:31 PM

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

!King_Amazon! 2007-08-23 10:43 PM

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

Mantralord 2007-08-23 11:21 PM

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

Chruser 2007-08-23 11:56 PM

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.


Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

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 2007-08-24 10:33 AM

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

Lenny 2007-08-24 02:45 PM

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 2007-08-24 02:46 PM

It'd be like homework!

Lenny 2007-08-24 02:57 PM

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 2007-08-25 01:18 PM

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 2007-08-25 01:24 PM

This needs to be the main page:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...rfood/9afa.jpg

D3V 2007-08-25 01:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

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 2007-08-26 04:43 AM

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 2007-08-26 08:11 AM

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 2007-08-28 08:09 PM

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

Vault Dweller 2007-08-29 01:20 AM

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 2007-08-31 11:25 AM

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

Asamin 2008-03-11 09:02 PM

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 2008-03-12 07:49 PM

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

Chruser 2008-03-16 08:31 AM

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 2008-03-16 10:34 AM

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 2008-03-16 06:49 PM

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 2008-03-19 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

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.


Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

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 2008-03-19 01:23 PM

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.


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