New Website: In Progress

[weasel]

Build 30 is on its way, and it's big enough I wanted to have the website in fairly good condition so we can show it off to people and generate some excitement.

Greg mocked up the new website and Aubrey cut it all up and made it compliant and compatible across the browsers for us - it looks wonderful! Really makes the game pop, I think. I still have to hammer out the level browsing code, and we have to populate the white area below the game window with something like featured content, but the layout is in place.

I also spent a bunch of time today installing vBulletin. So far I think it's a million times better than PHPBB and I don't understand why I never switched sooner. I was able to import everything from the old database, so if you had an account before you should still have one now.

I have, however, turned off new user registrations for now. I'm trying to get them tied into the game registration system in an effort to cut back on spam.

Shouldn't be long now - I'm aiming to have a public launch in 30 days!

[OfficiallyHaphazard]

Really nice website you have going here! It makes the game feel much more "in place," and I look forward to seeing the rest of the changes. My only comment right now is to suggest that the links up at the top are changed in some way. They didn't particularly strike me as links when I first glanced at them, and they feel a bit strange (but maybe that is because I am not used to seeing 3D letters from the bottom.

[weasel]

The game now hooks into here and makes a forum account. I've disabled forum registrations permanently and put up instructions on how to post in the forum. Goodbye, spam!

[OfficiallyHaphazard]

The game now hooks into here and makes a forum account. I've disabled forum registrations permanently and put up instructions on how to post in the forum. Goodbye, spam!

I think registering through a flash applet is one of the most effective anti-spam features I have seen :D

[weasel]

The front page's News Feed is now up and running! Thanks to Aubrey for integrating that in there. I'm still working on getting the other half of the page going (Level showcase).

[weasel]

Made several fixes to the newsfeed throughout the day. Little code glitches here and there.

[weasel]

Greg re-did the forum styling and added us a new header image. Hooray!

To clean up the style a bit I removed the Location & Post Count from below every person's avatar. You can still see this information on their profile and the user list, but I kept the user Title (titles will change as people post more frequently) and the Reputation Gem (the little box below your name).

Those are the two most important status symbols, after all. :P

[OfficiallyHaphazard]

The new forum looks great. The one change I would like to see is a link back to protonaut.net at the top of the forums.

[tes753]

The new forum looks great. The one change I would like to see is a link back to protonaut.net at the top of the forums.
Exactly what I was going to say. :argh: Great site and game weasel!!! :woop::worship:

[OfficiallyHaphazard]

Another change I would like to see:
For new users/not logged in users, make sure they know they have to register through the flash game to get access to the forums. Perhaps there is a way to alert non-logged in users at the top of every page?

[weasel]

There's a notice at the top of the main forum screen, so users will see it when clicking the "Forum" link from the game. There is also a notice on the (disabled) forum registratrion screen so if you get to that point you'll know what's going on. I'll see if I can find a way to make it more prominent.

[OfficiallyHaphazard]

There's a notice at the top of the main forum screen, so users will see it when clicking the "Forum" link from the game. There is also a notice on the (disabled) forum registratrion screen so if you get to that point you'll know what's going on. I'll see if I can find a way to make it more prominent.

Cool, just wanted to make sure there was some notification :)

[weasel]

Favicon now setup, and the big "PROTONAUT" header on the forums takes you to the game. :)