New Layout Rotation

[ZeaLitY]

While Ramsus is doing his own research, I'm going to open a venue for member discussion of this new aspect of the site. The new layout is easily modified, colors and images both. Because of this, we can sort of rotate certain layouts and color schemes according to a theme. For example, this could be the fall one, with orange and yellow colors, while a winter one would be icy blue, spring might be chronopolis tropical dead sea drab, Summer might be greenery and sky, etc. the possibilities are endless, and that's why we might need to have some discussion. Specifically,

How often should the site switch its color?
What themes should be used for the above switches?

Thanks for your comments.

[V_Translanka]

Oh, that's a neat idea. I think a monthly change might be ok...maybe bi-monthly...? I like the idea of seasonal based themes...perhaps when so many themes are made, they could be divided into seasonal colors afterwards or something?

I want a Chrono Trigger system theme still!

[DeweyisOverrated]

I like the idea of the themes switching, but I don't think you should necessarily make it a specified time thing.  You could do a holiday season one, maybe one for the spring, other times for special occassions, etc.  No need to constrict yourself to a strict time schedule.

[tanisloray]

I personally think that too many changes every month may get too much for webmasters, but perhaps a javascript that, like you suggested, changes like the icon, or imply have a bunch of the people who browse this site regularly, make their own "Chrono Compendium" icon and have them randomly selected, each time someone logs in?

I only heard of the 10th anniversary last night while browsing through a bunch of stuff.

I plan on erasing all my previous chrono trigger games, and starting completely fresh on the 22nd, for another 10 years of Chrono Trigger.  After I finish Chrono Trigger, I plan on playing Radical Dreamers again, and then Chrono Cross.

[DeweyisOverrated]

If you want a good idea that keeps the site "fresh", go to http://www.nintendorks.com.  They have a database of about, I'm gonna guess here, 100 banners or so.  They put in a simple code of line that randomly generates the banner that appears at the top every time you visit the page.  You might wanna check that out.  Of course, the problem arises in getting a ton of banners.  The good news is, I'm sure there's a ton of people on these boards willing to spend about 15 minutes making one for the site, and you can jsut start with a few, and keep adding on.

[Ramsus]

As far as difficulty goes, I could write the code in 5 minutes that would make all the layout colors and images easily switchable by Zeality or according to the date, with the upper right hand image completely random.

Here's what's customizeable via CSS:

The horizontal repeating background of the logo (the orange bar part).
The left image of the logo (the logo itself).
The background of the page (Crono and the gang).
The page's colors.

The image on the right can also be customized by adding a script that outputs a random or selected image. However, I'm shooting for quality, not quantity, so gathering lots of low quality images to randomly place there isn't our goal. Every random image should blend seamlessly with the layout it's designed for. It shouldn't draw any attention away from the content or the navigation links.

If people are interested, then I'll provide some general tips and we'll set up a thread to allow users to show off their designs, featuring the best ones on the site.

Also, for branding purposes, I'd like to keep the logo design the same, no matter what. The current logo design is lightweight and simple, though I might experiment with some other designs before finalizing it. Once final, I'll be making a variety of downloadable image files available to allow others to use it in their sigs, banners, and images.

Now then, here's what I won't do: User selectable skins. We tried this a year ago, and it required a lot of ugly code hacks to get all the different parts of the site to work together. Why the difficulty? There's three different template/skin systems used by the Forums, Encyclopedia, and News/Story scripts, and they all have different authentication and session management systems. Tying them together is at least a full day's work, and I don't have the time to waste on useless things like that.

So yeah, continue with the discussion.

[teh Schala]

I was originally thinking a monthly rotation, or maybe even a customizable one.  (I know that'd be a lot of coding work, but it sure would look nice to be able to customize the look of the site with our forum profile on here...  Of course that means new themes would have to be developed here in the forums...but to change the look of the WHOLE site, not just the forums, and have them integrated...it could be awesome.)

As for what themes...  I just want some awesome Zeal theme.  Something that looks like a paradise.  Maybe I should have CuteLucca do a big landscape thing of Zeal sometime.

[Ramsus]

Well, the real issue with user selectable skins is the Wiki. Last year we just had the forums and the site, with no Encyclopedia/Wiki, so making the existing two systems use the same skin was a lot easier. Users just selected a skin using the site's "User Control Center" and it applied it to the forum and the site whenever they were logged in. It used an ugly hack and its own cookie, but it worked.

After some thought though, I think I can make all three parts of the site use the same template system and a skin management script that uses forum sessions to determine which skin the user sees.

Hell, I might as well.

The only catch is that school is starting up, and I have other much more important and time consuming obligations, so it might be a while before I can implement it all. It'd take two or three full days to write and debug the code (a hack job would be faster, but that'd be harder to maintain), and another two or three full days to create some usable templates. With my schedule, that could easily turn into weeks or months.

The good thing is that I don't work on any content for the site, so it's not like me perfecting the layout (or layouts) and getting everything to work together seamlessly is going to affect any of the site's content.

I guess this throws the whole changing color theme idea out the window for now.

[ZeaLitY]

Edit: So user selected schemes will be possible eventually?

Original post: Well, everyone, until we decide rotation, we can throw out some rudimentary themes. Please include a list of suitable images for the right; those will be the primary tipoffs to the theme (aside from the colors).

Dead Sea

-Pictures of the Dead Sea, including Nadia's Bell. Drab, lightly dark green logo with very dark page.
-Background image is Nadia's bell.

Skies of Zeal

-Pictures of Zeal. Very rich gold logo with light cyan background.
-Background image is Zeal.

Viridian Shadows

-The forest concept art, the Entity discussion, and other greenery/tropical stuff. Rich, dark green logo and light green backround.
-Background image, no idea.

The only hitch in customizing color at the moment is that text has to appear over it regardless, so background colors will always be very light or very dark.

[Ramsus]

Zeality: Yep, in fact, I think I'll go ahead and get it over with in a flexible and clean manner, so changing the layout in the future means editing one set of templates instead of three.

It's more possible now than ever before, since MediaWiki recently switched to using PHP scripts as skins. For the Wiki stuff, I can just write a MediaWiki skin that uses another template system, checks for forum sessions, and decides which skin to use based on forum selected preferences.

[teh Schala]

And thus, a new incarnation of the Compendium is born...

[tanisloray]

Sounds good to me.

*smiles and counts down the days*

[Kazuki]

Considering how great these last two layouts have been, I can hardly wait to see the next one   .

[LionheartAce]

Yeah, that sounds excellent to me. Keeping the site the same for a while is a good thing, but it does get a LITTLE boring, even then changing it every Quarter sounds better. Four layouts a year sounds excellent.

[Oswego del Fuego]

And thus, a new incarnation of the Compendium is born...

At least we got through it without any talk of one of us impregnating the Compendium's ovum with our spermatazoa.  

Oops.

Anyway, as long as the Zurvan skin is not taken away, I'm cool with it.

OdF