Website Ideas and Suggestions

seanality · Post by **seanality** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 7:05 am

1. There needs to be an easier way to get from the forums back to the front page.
2. It would be cool to have a gallery with an album system so pictures from all the old lans can be uploaded. (who knows when gotfrag will be going down)
3. There should be a page with all the previous league champs just like sp3c.org has.
4. Like #3 there should be something with some crosshair packs and some commands so people don't keep asking the same damn questions.

that's my list for now.

cassinoroyale · Post by **cassinoroyale** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 7:53 am

I 2nd this

And I would a #5 to get people writing more articles (old lan histories, remarkable sandbagging, memorable matches, etc).

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 8:32 am

seanality wrote:1. There needs to be an easier way to get from the forums back to the front page.
2. It would be cool to have a gallery with an album system so pictures from all the old lans can be uploaded. (who knows when gotfrag will be going down)
3. There should be a page with all the previous league champs just like sp3c.org has.
4. Like #3 there should be something with some crosshair packs and some commands so people don't keep asking the same damn questions.

1. Yeah I agree. The way the forums connect with the front-page in general is really wacky and I'm not happy with it, working on it.
2. Gotfrag isn't going anywhere, MLG is bringing it back. But yeah, it would be cool to have a gallery system.
3. Yeah, I agree, working on a whole DoD history/past champs page.
4. It's on the list, just not as high a priority as finding the best way for the community to communicate and consolidate our "news".

Thanks for starting this conversation, I've been wondering what direction to take this thing.

I'm working on a new revamp of the site, but I'm not sure what direction we will go from here. To be honest, I've been disappointed in a lot of ways with the current version and how it has played out. I went into it thinking that we would have a lot more front-page content going on, and that hasn't turned out to be the case. We simply just don't have anyone posting anything on a regular basis (news updates, predictions, movies, articles).

In the good ole days, pretty much everything made it to the front-page, whether it was simple match predictions or weekly results, a quick update about players moving from team to team, a chronicle of an epic e-fight, or Image getting all meta and writing articles about the existential body of work the community was producing as a whole.

In retrospect, I think that's what made 1911, 1911. It was a simple yet intimate connection to the core of the community, and that died when 1911 went to gotfrag. That connection to the inner-working monster of our small community was shut off.

The one thing that has been successful has been these "behind the gamer" articles. People really stepped up and flooded me with those, and they've been a huge hit. The community unfortunately just has not produced a lot of other content since we launched the new version, which leaves us with this big gotfrag-like site with all this stuff on the front page that isn't getting updated.

It's also worth noting that our page views are as high as they have ever been. We are getting about 200 unique visitors to the site per day, and over 300 unique visitors checking out the site every week. This means that there are about 300 people in the world that still care enough about dod to check out 1911. Most days we are getting about 500-700 total page-views.

These are by no means HUGE numbers, but my point is, there are far more people coming to the site and viewing the site than there are people actually posting and contributing content and commenting on things. I'd like to fix that.

As with any community driven site, it is always a work in progress and you are constantly learning about your audience. With this current version, my idea was to attempt to bring the best of both worlds together as best we could (old 1911 and gotfrag). In the end, I don't know how much I like it, and I miss the nostalgia of the old site.

What do you think the best way to go about this is?

Should we scale things back and go back to a more simpler front page ala 1911 #1, or 1911 #2, or do we keep heading in the same direction and try and fix the bugs as we go? (weird navigation between forums, fucked up avatars, difficult to find content, general awkwardness)

Thanks for your thoughts.

Post by **ceebz** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 8:35 am

i honestly liked the version before this one.

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 9:10 am

ceebz wrote:i honestly liked the version before this one.

you mean when it looked like this?

Post by **ceebz** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 9:14 am

Sears wrote:
ceebz wrote:i honestly liked the version before this one.
you mean when it looked like this?

yeah

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 9:18 am

k, fa sho

seanality · Post by **seanality** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 10:26 am

I think this one is more appealing to the new visitor. It is attractive, inviting, new age, and gives the feel that there is a lot going on in this community.

The downside is that you actually have to update this sort of front page to keep people coming back. Another problem is the fact that most of what is going on with this website is actually taking place on the forums, there isn't much of a connection between the two and that is a problem. GotFrag seemed to be able to bridge the two ideas very well; the front page concept with articles and comments as well as the forums.

seanality · Post by **seanality** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 10:57 am

If you want to keep the registered users returning I would give an email out every time something hits the front page or every time a movie is released.

stevehisey_ · Post by **stevehisey_** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 11:08 am

1. don't listen to ceebz. keep the site how it is now.

2. I think the way to create more forum activity has a lot to do with what sean and cass are mentioning. There has to be a better way to tie these forums in with the front page. Also, it would be pretty cool to have a past lans tab with photos, results, etc., or just a story every once in a while with interviews with some of the people who attended with their unique stories and thoughts. That's where the lack of writers come in. I'll be glad to help out with creating stories about the 4 previous east coast lans which I attended (w2z, x3o, x3o, w2z). I also have some pictures, screen shots, hltv demos, and 1st person demos. This brings me to my other suggestion in making a demos page OR a demos/downloads page that has demos, crosshairs, detailed texture packs for movies, movie configs, etc.

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 11:34 am

seanality wrote:I think this one is more appealing to the new visitor. It is attractive, inviting, new age, and gives the feel that there is a lot going on in this community.

I agree with you, but this is 2011 (almost 2012), and it's DoD. We aren't going to see a whole lot of growth out of the community, especially from this website, and it should be used primarily to best serve the current community, not attempt to attract new players.

seanality wrote:The downside is that you actually have to update this sort of front page to keep people coming back. Another problem is the fact that most of what is going on with this website is actually taking place on the forums, there isn't much of a connection between the two and that is a problem. GotFrag seemed to be able to bridge the two ideas very well; the front page concept with articles and comments as well as the forums.

95% of all traffic to the site comes from the front-page. 300 people a day are going to the front-page. The problem is that they don't have anything new to interact with.

I agree with you that connection between the front-page and the forums needs to be improved, but once again, that isn't the source of the problems we are having. Our current predicament is that we have a front-page geared for a lot of diverse content that isn't being created.

Comparing gotfrag to both the old and new 1911 is kind of apples to oranges. They really are different monsters as the technology behind them as well as the size and activity level of the community that uses them are totally different.

seanality wrote:If you want to keep the registered users returning I would give an email out every time something hits the front page or every time a movie is released.

This actually isn't true. The same number of people are coming back to the site week after week. The problem is lack of content, not lack of notification of said content.

stevehisey_ wrote:1. don't listen to ceebz. keep the site how it is now.

2. I think the way to create more forum activity has a lot to do with what sean and cass are mentioning. There has to be a better way to tie these forums in with the front page. Also, it would be pretty cool to have a past lans tab with photos, results, etc., or just a story every once in a while with interviews with some of the people who attended with their unique stories and thoughts. That's where the lack of writers come in. I'll be glad to help out with creating stories about the 4 previous east coast lans which I attended (w2z, x3o, x3o, w2z). I also have some pictures, screen shots, hltv demos, and 1st person demos. This brings me to my other suggestion in making a demos page OR a demos/downloads page that has demos, crosshairs, detailed texture packs for movies, movie configs, etc.

Just to be clear, we are not going back to the old site (we can't, it's broken forever). But, I am interested in redesigning the site in a way that best suits the community as it is now, at that might mean downsizing things a little bit.

The demo uploading/downloading page is a common request. However, people underestimate the technology needed to implement such a feature. It is being worked on, it's just going to take a great deal of time to get it working properly.

Gotfrag had the advantage of all it's features being built on the same massive backed. Unfortunately, we don't have that luxury, so implementing features that are "gotfrag-like" are much more difficult than they seem. I do hear you though, and I am working on it.

defiance · Post by **defiance** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 11:36 am

IDEA: What about reaching out to the Euros who still play on DoD and let them know about the site. Hell, we let SA's play in the league, why not whole Euro teams?

ao_ · Post by **ao_** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 11:38 am

Sears wrote: The one thing that has been successful has been these "behind the gamer" articles. People really stepped up and flooded me with those, and they've been a huge hit.

Eric you give anybody a chance to talk about themselves and they will jump all over it.

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 11:40 am

defiance wrote:IDEA: What about reaching out to the Euros who still play on DoD and let them know about the site. Hell, we let SA's play in the league, why not whole Euro teams?

I'm all for the euros hanging out here, but that's up to them.

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 11:40 am

ao_ wrote:Eric you give anybody a chance to talk about themselves and they will jump all over it.

Truth.

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 11:42 am

Just a note about content creation. Literally every registered user has access to create content for the front-page.

Simply head to the dashboard and type away.

seanality · Post by **seanality** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 11:42 am

defiance wrote:IDEA: What about reaching out to the Euros who still play on DoD and let them know about the site. Hell, we let SA's play in the league, why not whole Euro teams?

I tried to put something together like this before with 4nkoR and Bewton, we made something called the IDC or IDODC whatever it was called, the International DoD Commity or something. The idea was to band together all of the DoD communities in the world and have them all join together for a common purpose. We wanted to make instructions on how to use IRC, GotFrag, CAL, and any other league or website so that it would be easier for people to get involved in the competitive scene of DoD. This unfortunately didn't last very long or go anywhere but seeing as how we only have so many teams in the community now it seems more necessary than ever.

nunz · Post by **nunz** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 12:22 pm

I like the way the front page is now. With that said, simply showing results from TPG every week with possible score screeners as a means to check out weekly might give you an easy way to have new content on a week to week basis?

seanality · Post by **seanality** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 1:37 pm

If you remake the front I page I think you should use some of the same ideas you have now as well as some of the ideas from gotfrag.

News/Articles-
Predictions-
Results-
Recently Updated Threads-
New Movies-

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 3:11 pm

seanality wrote:If you remake the front I page I think you should use some of the same ideas you have now as well as some of the ideas from gotfrag.

News/Articles-
Predictions-
Results-
Recently Updated Threads-
New Movies-

All of that is supposed to be a part of the site as it is. If you guys want this kind of content on the site, someone needs to create it.

toxinatoR · Post by **toxinatoR** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 3:33 pm

1. Demos section
2. Files download section
3. Movies section? Or connect something with dodmovies I think there may already be not sure tho.
4. Bring back the old dod movie uploads you use to do. (Once a week or so?)
5. Preds/results
6. I like the setup I think the recent threads should be on the top right.. And should come up as the most recent threads posted in rather than most recent made.
7. Past champs is a good idea
8. Top 10 teams? Kinda lame with the state of dod but wouldn't hurt to have.
9. What's the deal with the justintv/stream? For matches? Or w.e

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 4:06 pm

toxinatoR wrote:1. Demos section
2. Files download section
3. Movies section? Or connect something with dodmovies I think there may already be not sure tho.
4. Bring back the old dod movie uploads you use to do. (Once a week or so?)
5. Preds/results
6. I like the setup I think the recent threads should be on the top right.. And should come up as the most recent threads posted in rather than most recent made.
7. Past champs is a good idea
8. Top 10 teams? Kinda lame with the state of dod but wouldn't hurt to have.
9. What's the deal with the justintv/stream? For matches? Or w.e

1 and 2. See previous posts, it's in the works, just takes a ton of time to do from scratch.

3. http://nineteeneleven.org/category/media/, http://www.youtube.com/1911dod (This has always been there, there is even a clearly labeled form for you to fill out if you want to submit your movie to the site. In addition to this, all of the movies on dodmovies will eventually be available on 1911 as part of the upload/download package.

4. Kind of ran out of good older movies...but ok I'll get back to that.

5. If anyone is willing to put in the time to do weekly preds/results posts, have at it.

6. The recent threads is getting a remodel, but like I said before, it's a process of getting two massive programs (wordpress and phpbb) to play nice with eachother. It will happen it just takes time.

7. Full DoD history/past champs page is being written.

8. Don't think a top ten team list is worth it, but if anyone is up for collecting match stats we could do top ten players week by week.

9. Anyone is welcome to use the stream whenever, pm me for more info.

toxinatoR · Post by **toxinatoR** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 4:26 pm

Maybe find some older fotw's to upload that were good... I know dodmovies has a ton of movies on there. I think maybe a top 8-10 teams wouldn't be such a bad idea considering there will be sa teams involved in the list and we just lost. Makes things interesting..

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 5:39 pm

Don't get me wrong, if you want to have people vote and come up with a top ten teams, have at it and submit an article.

nomis · Post by **nomis** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 5:58 pm

I don't think there's any way euro's could play in our league, they have to play at like 1 or 2 am their time, unless you mean a league of their own, which never works out

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 11:12 pm

Recent threads should now list them by whichever has the latest post.

FINALLY.

Sigh, onto the next thing...

acetamino · Post by **acetamino** » Fri Sep 16, 2011 10:17 am

I have visited the homepage 3 or 4 times, (always used the direct link to the forums) but I just surfed through it today, and loved what I saw. Thanks for doing all this work Sears.

edit - suggestions: is there a way for the website to auto resize avatars? Also, from the frontpage I clicked on "sumbit" tab then behind the gamer and I keep getting a blank screen where I believe a form should be to fill out a "behind the gamer" interview. anyone else having this problem?

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Fri Sep 16, 2011 10:47 am

acetamino wrote:is there a way for the website to auto resize avatars?

The avatar thing is a HUGE mess that has a lot to do with how phpbb (the forums) and wordpress (the front-page) talk to each other.

Basically, it's set up so that Wordpress looks to phpbb to handle all the user info (logins, passwords, avatars, etc). This way you have one single login (the one you used for the forums), to use throughout the site. It's pretty slick but there are some bugs, especially when it comes to avatars.

Your phpbb avatar is supposed to override any wordpress avatar you might have, and that works pretty well. I can't modify the size of any avatar you upload to the forums, but I can control what dimensions it's displayed at on the front page (thru wordpress). However, if you don't have an avatar uploaded via the forums, it just returns a dead image link, and as of yet I've been able to figure out an override fix for that. This is why some people who have posted on the front page who do not have an avatar uploaded have automatically been given this default avatar.

I'm working on a solution, but right now the only alternative is to overwrite everyone avatar to the default, and have it automatically give new users the default avatar, but then everyone who already has one will have to re-upload.

It's another complicated problem, but like the others, I'm working on it.

acetamino wrote:Also, from the frontpage I clicked on "sumbit" tab then behind the gamer and I keep getting a blank screen where I believe a form should be to fill out a "behind the gamer" interview. anyone else having this problem?

Yes, there should be a form under the Behind The Gamer tab on the submit page. I just tested it on every browser I have and it seems to be working fine. If it's still not working for you, you can fill out the form via this direct link:

http://1911.wufoo.com/forms/behind-the-gamer/

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 9:09 pm

Site might be down for a day of so in the next week or so. Got a big update coming.

Rambizzle · Post by **Rambizzle** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 9:33 pm

Sears wrote:Recent threads should now list them by whichever has the latest post.

FINALLY.

Sigh, onto the next thing...

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 11:31 am

For people wondering why I've been shuffling forums around and screwing with the categories:

Edit: Having a hard time figuring out an icon for the Random section, anyone got any ideas?

cassinoroyale · Post by **cassinoroyale** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 12:01 pm

Sears wrote:For people wondering why I've been shuffling forums around and screwing with the categories:

Edit: Having a hard time figuring out an icon for the Random section, anyone got any ideas?

LogicLand! tiny logo

british · Post by **british** » Mon Nov 07, 2011 11:51 am

For some reason i cant even get to the front page right now. It just redirects to the forums everytime

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Mon Nov 07, 2011 11:55 am

british wrote:For some reason i cant even get to the front page right now. It just redirects to the forums everytime

Yeah duh bro. It's being remodeled. Shooting to have it back up by the start of next season.

british · Post by **british** » Mon Nov 07, 2011 11:59 am

Sears wrote:
british wrote:For some reason i cant even get to the front page right now. It just redirects to the forums everytime
Yeah duh bro. It's being remodeled. Shooting to have it back up by the start of next season.

Been away for the last 6 days, must of missed that memo

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Mon Nov 07, 2011 12:06 pm

british wrote:
Sears wrote:
british wrote:For some reason i cant even get to the front page right now. It just redirects to the forums everytime
Yeah duh bro. It's being remodeled. Shooting to have it back up by the start of next season.
Been away for the last 6 days, must of missed that memo

No memo, just took it down when I broke it a few weeks ago.

rymoz · Post by **rymoz** » Mon Nov 07, 2011 1:22 pm

Dear Sears,

I have had 0 reputation power for about a week now, meaning I cannot rep or neg people. Yaso also has the same problem. If you could fix this, it would be great. Thanks!

Sears · Post by **Sears** » Mon Nov 07, 2011 1:46 pm

It was set so that you had to have 100 posts before you had reputation power. Lowered it to 50.

Rambizzle · Post by **Rambizzle** » Mon Nov 07, 2011 2:01 pm

BITCH GIMME A CHICKEN SANDWICH AND SOME WAFFLE FRIES.... FOR FREE.

Cory Cory! Price · Post by **Cory Cory! Price** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 1:02 am

sears, I notice this website isn't paying me anything. if you could fix that - I would appreciate it.

kirk · Post by **kirk** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 6:55 am

Cory Cory! Price wrote:sears, I notice this website isn't paying me anything. if you could fix that - I would appreciate it.

I have the same problem. I talked to PayPal and they assured me the problem must be that you are not sending me money. Now I'm not accusing you of anything, because for all I know you lost my PayPal account number, but let's get this taken care of asap.

stealthlol · Post by **stealthlol** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 7:04 am

alex kirk wrote:I have the same problem. I talked to PayPal and they assured me the problem must be that you are not sending me money. Now I'm not accusing you of anything, because for all I know you lost my PayPal account number, but let's get this taken care of asap.

Don't fall for Alex's trickery. Once you give him money, he'll take it and run and never appreciate it!

kirk · Post by **kirk** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 7:07 am

stealthlol wrote:Don't fall for Alex's trickery. Once you give him money, he'll take it and run and never appreciate it!

Moneyb called me Mr. Responsible since I handled the finances for w2z. My references are solid.