2010 new site

[Crash]

This is encouraging.I'm not fully finished with my replacement to the ImageVue Gallery.If you choose Images from xbomber.co.uk, you'll see where I'm heading, which is a single image file structure that absorbs the X-Archive, Imagevue gallery as well as any other images.

[Zordon]

(Matt Darcy @ Jul. 13 2012,15:09)QUOTEseriously, give it a rest now, look at the title, "new site 2010" - it's 2012 and you've added a front page to the site.how many "new sites" have you done, accept it, you're not cut out to run and maintain a website, do something else, anything else, but I don't think I can handle another "new site" or "more new content post"I'm sorry but who made you king of the Internet?I feel like updating pages when I have time. It's a work in progress and I've done more than I ever have for a fan site in the last 15 years. There actual content up on this site. I've written and hosted fan fictions abeit some of them aren't up in full.I have a life and other interests outside of Star Fleet which come first. I also have a 2 year old son who has cerebral palsy too who I spend a fair amount of time helping with physiotherapy.When I decide to update a page I will, I won't announce it, I even offer to those interested in helping to write a few pages on the characters they have a love for. Shane is a Captain Carter fan, Vanessa is a huge Makara fan so I leave it upto them if they have the time (and they have expressed interest) to write the Bio's.When I set out to make the 2010 site a few months later I suffered a lock out from the file hosts (I EVEN STATED THIS!!!) once I got my responce back from moonfruit and they unlocked the site I started uploading and updating pages, making fan projects (small ones) and even collabarated with Crash on the archive.So don't sit there behind your screen picking fault at me for not finishing off a website a narely have time to sort out. I'll sort it out when I'm good and ready. Shanes Big Dai-X site has a few sections that don't link to anything and he's said he'll probably not finish it anytime soon.I'm sorry to rant on but it pisses me off when some ignorant dipshit who said he'd help 2 guys out with a site some 10 years ago basically gave us the finger then continued to belittle us. I am in no way an expert on sites and how to make them i just wanted to put something out there that nobody else has.If you can do better fine i'll give you want ever you want and you do it.

[Zordon]

Not to carry on my rant even though i'm still miffed about it but I've just gave the site a once over. and every page works fine.I know the voice actors section and the character bio's are WIP but the bio's that work are linked with that little link underline thing so pretty much self explanitory.I can't see what the problem Matt states is. If a page isn't ready the text remains unlinked till it's done.I'll do a bit of work tonight if I get a chance and sort out some info.I will be meeting with Louis soon for a chat so i'll take my camera along and ask him some more stuff.

[Crash]

Coding a site with a good deal of content like this one (SFXB) is a massive undertaking.It's a full-time job. That's why SFXB is so monumental as a fan-site.I'm looking forward to this interview with Louis. I'll have to rack my brains with questions.Like I say, we all need encouragement as well as a good thrashing sometimes. Someone was very much less than complimentary about my site the other month but he was a (*^*. Nevertheless, it did make me think about it and soul search as to whether there was a better way of doing things.Off the back of that, my site no longer even bothers with thumbnails. It generates them on the server dyncamically without even storing them anywhere. For more info on the matter, look for SLIR on the internet.

[Matt Darcy]

I'm not "king of the internet" and nor did I say I was.I have no issue with sites not being updated, as you said there are many sites that are not updated on a regular basis, the difference is they have a site that's not updated, not 20+ sites that keep never really getting started and obviously never progress as site 1 gets trashed and moved and re-done to site 1+1 and repeat.They also don't keep telling everyone "new content is coming", they just site on their content and let it be available to people who want it, which is great.If you look at approx %35 of your posts it's informing people that a new site is coming, new content is coming and the site is dead, but hang on, you're starting a new one.That's no put down of your content of effort though, when I said you should stop trying to run a website, I mean that, however I'm sure someone who has more experience running a site / maintaining a site would be willing to host your content in a stable and long term project rather than a moving goal post, you can just then concentrate on the content, rather than the site which you are clearly struggling with as a technology project.I'd suggest talking to some of the guys here who have respected/long term sites and seeing if you can feed content into them.Yes, I can do better and do, do better on multiple sites, but I never mentioned that, you brought it up, however I have no interest in running a start fleet project as with sfxb and a few other sites I can't see any need for more sites or content, plus I'm a fan of star fleet and with the DVD release it's pretty much run it's course apart from individual ideas like Crash's game or the Genesis project which slowly plods/stalls/starts in the background.Me genuine advice that you can throw your toys out of the pram about and start pulling random "I have other things in my life" cards to if you want, forget the site, forget trying to run a site, concentrate on the content which will save you time and effort as you clearly have "other things in your life" as you put it, and that way you can just concentrate your limited time on content and give it to some of the people who are capable of running a long term site, yes you will no longer have a site, it will no longer be your project, however if your ego can lose the "I'm not the site owner" need, which I hope it can, you could possibly find yourself in a much more valuable position of contributing more and better content and not waste your time on other components of the running a site part.

[Crash]

This brings us back to the amalgamation that I proposed a couple of years ago. http://www.sfxb.co.uk/cgi-bin/ikonboard ... =8;t=871In fairness, the Star Fleet Project website has reinvented itself more times than Madonna but I was glad of the situation report because the forum was quiet otherwise.I can't remember how the X-Archive gallery came about but Dave had *a lot* to do with it and it was a very useful site as far as it went because it was the first time that everyone could upload files to a Star Fleet site.The only problem was that the Coppermine software (that I chose) was very terrible from a usability point of view.So, I had to freeze that part of xbomber.co.uk so that I could integrate the content into a single gallery.I'm not finished restoring everything from the X-Archive Gallery because, while I am organising the content and filtering out a lot of small or low-quality images (so as to condense the awesome things), I'm also locking horns with another large project at the moment.So, you'll have to bear with me. The ability to contribute files to xbomber.co.uk will return shortly.But the point is that, without Dave, the X-Archive would never have come about because I don't remember bouncing the ball off anyone else. It was a very even collaboration.Also, these matters of full time jobs and looking after our kids (thankfully, I'm not at that stage in life yet) are serious blocks on peoples' free-time creativity.The are also problems with multi-collaboration on sites, i.e.:- A) SFXB has been effectively 'content frozen' for a long time because Andy has other commitments.- B) F-Zero One ... vanished suddenly ... and it was a great site but it was never fully finished in the first place.- C) Big Dai-X isn't updated because I can't offer Shane an FTP login because, in turn, it's not my server and because of the server break-ins that happened in 2009, which is a huge bummer.- D) My site is the only other Star Fleet site that is still being updated in terms of both content and structure, (well, the only one that I know about, at least).The problem there is that xbomber.co.uk's main duty is to serve the game to people but, at the same time, there is a need to catalogue together the awesome things that BladeZ and Vanessa and Dave do. So, I'm moving in that direction. I've always said to people that, if they can send me things somehow, I will host them for the duration and I will do it quickly.I don't disagree with much of what either of you have said. Producing a website is dead hard work and I honestly don't believe that it gets easier from using WYSIWYG editors like Moonfruit or DreamWeaver. All they do is confuse you and slow you down in different ways. There probably is an amazing site creator - but I don't know of it.It's better to just roll up your sleeves and do it all in NotePad because the more comprehensive and complete a script/solution/package you use to build your site, the more comprehensively and completely it shafts you in the end, when, after all the effort you put into setting it up, you realise that it just doesn't do what you wanted and all the excitement turns into disappointment.That's how I eventually felt with Coppermine, which ran the X-Archive and we had the same trouble with the MediaWiki that we tried to use to build a Wikia clone. That was terrible too. Nobody could figure how it worked. It was such hard work to make it do anything and it ran so slowly. xbomber.co.uk's server is not the fastest in the world but it's not pathetic either.So, it could well be for the better, if we just expanded xbomber.co.uk with as much content as people wanted to add. I suppose, I see no profit in reinventing the character bios (like those on SFXB) on xbomber.co.uk, unless they're going to be ones that expand the character story, based on fan-fictions and that would take a colossal amount of work because:- A) You would want to have a character story that made perfect sense while incorporating all the various fan-fictions on the forum.- B) You would have to multiply that effort into every character in the show/fan-fictions.It would be a project that you would just never want to get into.Anyway, that's a very rambling interjection but I'm tired and working on a few other things at the moment.Hopefully, it will spark some constructive discussion.

[Shane]

Just to add my two cents.Only around a dozen people post on this forum regularly and most of them have an ongoing project of some kind based around Star Fleet. It has, indeed, become much more of a creative forum now, so getting a stage by stage breakdown of a specific project on here via multiple forum posts isn't out of the ordinary. For example: Bladez videos, Crash's Game, My Sketches/fan fics, Dave's various projects (including a website) and Vanessa's fan fics/translation project have all benefited from feedback over a period of time even though many of the projects are still ongoing after many years. If this was a more public forum and, dare I say, we were going to be more professional about our projects, there would be less chatter and maybe one preview post made before the final product was released. But this forum doesn't work like that and we have the luxury to let things breathe and bide our time, exchanging thoughts on each others' projects, sometimes over several years.On the subject of websites, however, and particularly as interest in Star Fleet has dropped since the release of the DVDs, I would say it's always better to have the whole thing coded first and then announce it as a completed project. If a section or two is in a state of 'coming soon' then that's cool, but the core site should be functioning. I did this with the revamp of Big Dai X. I made a forum post saying it was coming back and issued a mock-up of the homepage and then nothing more was said until it was unveiled a few weeks later.OK, fine, I've neglected to go back and fix some of the 'coming soon' sections, but as Crash has already said, FTP issues have made updates impossible even if I wanted to, and I don't, certainly not in its current archaic format.I think if you don't do the above, you'll lose the casual fan as they will just move on to the next Star Fleet site for info.I do know what its like, though, to have other commitments and can appreciate that long periods of time can pass between updates. I'm guilty of this myself, as my forum posts become fewer and far between and the ruddy Council of Evil is still only half completed! I have been thinking about Big Dai X's future as I feel it's redundant in its current form. If I revamp it, I will be getting the help and advice of a friend of mine who builds websites for a living as 'the game has changed' when it comes to compatibility with all the different internet capable devices out there. Content-wise - I would gear it more to Japanese content, and particularly behind the scenes coverage and add some of the newly found behind the scenes pics to the existing ones that can be found on Big Dai X already. It would be a smaller streamlined site, but dealing in a specific area that isn't covered as greatly within the other sites. As I'm in the process of learning Japanese (Boy, it's hard work), it might even be beneficial to my studies, so it would be win win and not just another project where only a dozen people see it.    

[Crash]

You can't do an 'Apple Inc. style' finished and polished release presentation on this forum because every project needs to be talked-through in detail with other people. And who else will you talk to about it besides the people on this forum?It's a complete catch-22.If I can help you out with the new site, Shane, let me know.I have come to the realisation that simplicity really is the key to all things.

[Shane]

(Crash Override @ Aug. 06 2012,21:42)QUOTEYou can't do an 'Apple Inc. style' finished and polished release presentation on this forum because every project needs to be talked-through in detail with other people. And who else will you talk to about it besides the people on this forum?It's a complete catch-22.Yep, that's what I was getting at in my post. Games, fan fics, videos, etc benefit greatly from the feedback on this forum.Websites should be simple and easy to use allowing the content to speak for itself. Matt made some fair points, but it is the nature of the forum to bounce ideas around, even regarding under-construction Star Fleet websites.If I embark on the revamp I won't be touching Dreamweaver (probably won't even be using it at all) until I have an overall idea of a design layout and content in the form of new articles. Pictures aren't a problem as I've got those already plus some new material thanks to Vanessa.I will certainly give you a bell, Crash if I need any help.

[Crash]

Dreamweaver is the biggest lie in the world. The idea that it makes developing a site easier is just the most complete myth.We were forced to use it for computer science at St-Andrews.A task that would take you 5mins to rattle out in notepad took about 50mins to cobble together in that contraption.The quality of the code that it generated for you was terrible as well.If it encrypted a password, a became b, b - c and c - d. If you had a table, decoding it was childs play.The other thing was that it was quite unstable back in 2007. It would just lose your work every 15mins.The rest of Adobe's stuff is great. Fireworks and Photoshop are terrific although I think even they have quietly given up on Flash after Apple savaged it over iOS.I don't think I'm giving away any trade secret when I say that the reason that Jobs didn't want it on the iPad had nothing to do with stability or power consumption or ... differences with the user interface. Those were just the excuses. The actual reason was that Jobs didn't want any way of putting interactive content on the iPad apart from via the App Store.Apple totally pulled the wool over everyone's eyes and now they have it all sewn up completely.The other thing is that Adobe seems to be losing control over their Acrobat format.We had a guy call into us at work today and Adobe's plugins had totally jammed his Safari installation and, in the end, I just had to pull everything relating to Adobe and just let Safari fall back to its own WebKit PDF engine. Then we were golden.To be fair, this was not Adobe's fault. The customer had done some incredibly stupid stuff. He'd restored from Time Machine all the apps and plugins and system config onto 10.7 Lion that he'd had on 10.5 Tiger. Of course, 10.7 has no backwards compatibility for G4/G5 apps and, because his old machine was a G5, that was what his million different Acrobat plugins were coded for.So finding and pulling all of those was quite a mystery tour.