My New Sites - What do you think?

cinematography · Jan 26, 2005

I'm not a website designer, so please forgive me.

Home Page: http://tsharpfilm.ts.funpic.org
Photography Site: http://www.musecube.com/tsharpfilm

cinematography · Jan 26, 2005

Guided by Voices said:
Looks pretty good, you can get a better free message board than that though. Check out www.phpbbforfree.com, the boards look similar to Vbulletin and has a great admin/moderator control panel.

Nice forum host!

Time to switch, methinks. Thank you very much, Guided by Voices.

cinematography · Jan 26, 2005

Dang. There is a slight problem with that host though. It's a little slow, it puts too many banners at the top, and it won't let me have more control over the colors and look. It makes me use premade templates.

It's still pretty good though.

Will Vincent · Jan 26, 2005

Why not just install some forum software on your webhost, and run it direct ... that way it doesn't have to look like it's "free"

If your host supports php (most do) there's plenty to choose from.

cinematography · Jan 26, 2005

Guided by Voices said:
Theres about 300 or so templates to choose from, theres some pretty good ones. What I do about the ads is use Adblock with Mozilla Firefox. (A plugin, just right click on the ad and select AdBlock)

I could always do that, but what about the other people who don't have adblock?

I need to find a board that is not too ad heavy.

Will Vincent said:
Why not just install some forum software on your webhost, and run it direct ... that way it doesn't have to look like it's "free"

If your host supports php (most do) there's plenty to choose from.

I didn't even know such programs existed.

Do you know of any good ones?

Will Vincent · Jan 26, 2005

well.. if your webhost supports php (and a database).. lets see...

FUDForum
Xchangeboard (The site is in german, but if you click on the little british flag it'll switch to english)
EasyForum Not pretty by any means, but should run on virtually any web host.
UseBB
uGroup
phpBB (Probably the most popular, also what most others are based on..)
PunBB

or you could go all out and just run a content management system (CMS) or "Portal" as they're also known...
PostNuke
Xoops (Based on PostNuke, but totally reworked)
e-Xoops(Based on Xoops, but rewritten from the bottom up for better speed and more features, etc)

I've always liked the CMS thing.. if it's done right. It really makes running and updating your site very easy. Hope that helps somewhat.. there are of course hundreds more free forums available.. take a gander at www.freshmeat.net or www.sourceforge.net to find virtually limitless free software.

Walter_Smidge · Jan 26, 2005

The site looks good, its simple and straight to the point.... good work

cinematography · Jan 26, 2005

Sweet. Thanks a lot guys for the help and comments. Thank you Will Vincent for the links.

NicklausLouis · Jan 26, 2005

cinematography said:
Message Board: *linked removed by mgmt.*

Sorry, link is in violation of Forum rule #3.

3) Do not use the forums as an advertising tool to promote direct competitors of indietalk.com

Poke

Will Vincent · Jan 26, 2005

cinematography.. looking at your site again I just noticed a problem. You need to change the alignment of the main content on each page..

I see you have the header, and one table, both centered. The buttons are all set to absolute positioning, which is fine.. but having the rest of the content centered, if the width of the window is narrow enough the buttons overlap. Easiest way to fix it would be to drop everything into another table that is 1 row, 2 columns.. with the left column just a bit wider than the right edge of the buttons.. put all the main content into that right cell on the new table, and set that to be centered (or even left aligned) and you're golden.

cinematography · Jan 26, 2005

Poke said:
3) Do not use the forums as an advertising tool to promote direct competitors of indietalk.com

My board isn't about just film. It's about experimenting with art. But okay, I'll play along.

Will Vincent said:
Easiest way to fix it would be to drop everything into another table that is 1 row, 2 columns.. with the left column just a bit wider than the right edge of the buttons

This is a good suggestion. I'll do some research on it and see if I can pull it off.

Thanks again folks.

cinematography · Jan 28, 2005

Oh wow. Now someone has edited the message board link from signature. :no:

And to believe I actually took the time to put the IndieTalk banner in my website's links page. I think I better remove that banner now.

Will Vincent · Jan 28, 2005

You do realize that if the link to your forum was on your website, rather than in your signature or a post it wouldn't be as big an issue, right?

The rule says "Do not use the forums as an advertising tool to promote direct competitors of indietalk.com"

The fact that your forum includes other topics besides film is not the point. The point is that by supplying a direct link to the forum it does not follow the rule. Period. Is it truely that big of a loss to follow the rules? No. This forum is available to everyone for free, indietalk pays the bills, he made the rules.. We enforce them, that's the way it is. Topic closed.