Postby Shane » Mon Aug 06, 2012 2:42 pm
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.
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