23 Aug, 2008, Zenn wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Hey! Custom-designed a new website :grinning:

http://swconquest.org/

Dunno how many I've gone through.. but this is by far the best one so far IMHO.

Basically, what I'm trying to do is figure out how to do is to -embed- the forums into the website itself, like is done here..
http://www.mudpages.com/index.php?option...

Suggestions?
23 Aug, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Ultimately the easiest way is to use a CMS with integrated forums, or a CMS that comes with a wrapper to share the same login data and CMS theme with the forums software. Other than that, it would require a fair bit of knowledge of html, css and php to do it properly. There are countless CMS's out there, i use e107 and find it to be nice and easy for the newbie like me and it does not suffer to from feature bloat but does have everything i require and an active developer community. QFS Portal, what this site uses is also i believe pretty easy to work with.
24 Aug, 2008, Pedlar wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
heh, all that second link is a IFrame with the IFrame pointing to the forums link :P very not so intergrated properly.
24 Aug, 2008, Sandi wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Zenn, I think it's too wide. Keep in mind lots of people use laptops and have smaller screens. My own site is probably too narrow, but I was trying to make it usable, if not pretty, at 640. I figure anyone with screen that small these days is used to scrolling sideways. :)

Fury (or should I call you Dojo, now?), what's a CMS?
24 Aug, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Sandi said:
Fury (or should I call you Dojo, now?), what's a CMS?
LOL, you know if i changed my name as often as my games name, i would have 100 accounts here. CMS is Content Management System, most often written in PHP and using a database for the storage of all the data. What a CMS does easily is allow for content creation by those without HTML and CCS knowledge and to display information in a consistent and cohesive manner.
24 Aug, 2008, Guest wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Which makes QSFP a pseudo-CMS since you still need to know the HTML and CSS to create stuff with the custom pages module. I have no idea how it's supposed to work with a CMS where you don't even need HTML/CSS knowledge.
24 Aug, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Samson said:
Which makes QSFP a pseudo-CMS since you still need to know the HTML and CSS to create stuff with the custom pages module. I have no idea how it's supposed to work with a CMS where you don't even need HTML/CSS knowledge.


e107 is pretty easy, from the admin panel click create new page, give it a name and use the integrated WYSIWIG editor to lay out the information. It can be a little restrictive if you would like to do something a little more than basic, but then if you have those skills you would use HTML and CSS anyway and produce exactly what you want.
24 Aug, 2008, Guest wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
I'd actually really like to have that kind of CMS power in QSFP but I've got no clue how to make that happen. And of course also have the more advanced abilities for folks who want them.
24 Aug, 2008, Zenn wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Sandi said:
Zenn, I think it's too wide. Keep in mind lots of people use laptops and have smaller screens. My own site is probably too narrow, but I was trying to make it usable, if not pretty, at 640. I figure anyone with screen that small these days is used to scrolling sideways. :)

Fury (or should I call you Dojo, now?), what's a CMS?


1) I designed it off of a laptop.

2) Content Management System
24 Aug, 2008, Kayle wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
At 1024x768 your buttons wrap around for me and distort the page. Also, the banner at the top causes me to have to scroll right to see it. The whole thing seems to be a little too wide honestly. And I have a pretty standard setup for laptops, You're not going to find a lot outside of the high powered gaming or multimedia setups that will handle much more than 1024x768.
24 Aug, 2008, Guest wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Might seem like piling on, but yes. Generally the target size for non-scrolling on the horizontal is 1024x768. Even if you're not going to use a fixed width format. Anything lower than that and you're catering to 1% of your market. But 1024x768 is still a seriously significant number of casual surfers even among gamers who would normally play their games at twice that resolution. Me, I do everything at 1440x900 because it's my native screen size on this LCD and the stuff I play most often looks like ass if I force the monitor above this setting anyway.
24 Aug, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Samson said:
I'd actually really like to have that kind of CMS power in QSFP but I've got no clue how to make that happen. And of course also have the more advanced abilities for folks who want them.


Might actually be easier than you think, take a look at the TinyMCE that's the editor a lot of the bigger CMS's use.

@Zenn, I have to agree with the others, 1024x786 is likely to be the upper end of resolution you should use. Having some blank space either side of your content can make the site much easier to read, also rather than being fluid, it can also be better to be a fixed width, this will keep your layout from changing for different screen relolutions.

Take a look at this site, It was something i was working on as a promotional tool, that never got much interest from the people i approached about it. It is fixed size and will look the same no matter what the resolution is. Also using CSS is a must, it might be more work in the beginning, but in the long run its going to save you a lot of pain.

There are thousands of website templates on the web, which can be a good place to start with and modify up from, saving a lot of work with designing CSS and colour schemes.

The nav bar uses a CSS and a graphic
24 Aug, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
I wouldn't say that the defining characteristic of a CMS is to let people without HTML/CSS skills manage content. I'd say the defining characteristic is that it lets anybody manage potentially large volumes of content in a uniform way, abstracting away from maintaining each individual page's appearance and instead focusing on content and letting the system display and format it for you.

As for resolution, I have a 1680x1050 primary monitor and then a 1280x1024 secondary monitor, so I have lots of screen space – and even so, I find it offensive/annoying when I need to devote huge swaths of my screen space just because some silly website has huge horizontal banners that force me to scroll around. I have many windows open that I want to see at the same time, and "wide" websites force me to change that. So it's not just about how big the monitor is – it's about how much space is being devoted to the website.

Samson said:
But 1024x768 is still a seriously significant number of casual surfers even among gamers who would normally play their games at twice that resolution

How many people regularly play games at 2048x1536? :stare:

Kayle said:
And I have a pretty standard setup for laptops, You're not going to find a lot outside of the high powered gaming or multimedia setups that will handle much more than 1024x768.

I think that in the last couple of years, give or take a little, pretty much every new laptop I've seen has had better than 1024x768, not just the high-end ones (which will have more like 1600x1200 or similar widescreen).
24 Aug, 2008, Zeno wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
Bridge the two together.
http://gurrenlagannepisodes.com/
See what I did with phpBB+Joomla? Real easy. Is that what you want to do?

Once you do that, a simply wrapper is used (most CMS have it built in).
25 Aug, 2008, Conner wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
*shrug* guess I don't get it. When I view that site I get no horizontal scroll bars at all, and I'm only set to 1280x720 here. Either way, I rather thought it was quite an improvement over his previous sites, so I don't see the problems y'all seem to be having with it.
25 Aug, 2008, lspiderl wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
personaly ive found freewebs and proboards were very easy to use and set up into a nice looking website that is functional ,atractive , and best of all free :)
25 Aug, 2008, Zenn wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Zeno said:
Bridge the two together.
http://gurrenlagannepisodes.com/
See what I did with phpBB+Joomla? Real easy. Is that what you want to do?

Once you do that, a simply wrapper is used (most CMS have it built in).


Basically, I guess I'll just take an iframe and put it in like it's done on Mudpages with. Then I'll change the theme of the forums completely, so that it'll integrate seamlessly with the site itself
25 Aug, 2008, Pedlar wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Iframes aret the prettiest in the world, you could always MAKE your own small forum board, thatll fit seamlessly into your webpage, as it would be built into it.
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