The Congress of Awesome Rewritten

[Hyperguy]

The Congress of Awesome’s community has become stagnant.  This is because of inactivity by several parties.
However, I think that activity alone isn’t enough to make people start posting again.  I think at this point it’d be a good idea to revaluate the Congresses’ purpose and content.

In short, the Congress really doesn’t have a grand purpose.  It was originally created by Hyperguy out of his dissatisfaction with other forums.  “I could make a better forum than this crap,” he boldly stated as he used Fantastico’s autoinstaller(omb noob) via  CPanel (omg noobx2) to first install a copy of PHPBB onto the server for the purposes of creating the original H-Forum.

I could get into the whole history of it all, but long story short, the forum was cool and new and things progressed a little slowly at first, and some forums that were created back then are still around today(the rest either evolved or got canned).  Cool and inventive things like banners and drama sagas were created and for the most part things felt fresh and meaningful.

Fast forward to today.  Things have become stagnant, there are more forums than needed, and activity is minimal.  Things aren’t as fresh and exciting as they once were.  Worse, much of the forum’s become unkempt, with piles and piles of threads that either aren’t directly related to a particular forum or just don’t have a suitable forum to be placed into, despite the demand for these threads.  After all, people are posting threads like these because they want to and see that in some scope, they are related.  We just don’t have a good set of categories to put them into.

So anyhow, what I’d like to do is completely restructure the forums, and I need the community’s help on deciding on just what kind of content we should have on here.  I’ve already got my own ideas of things I’d like to see, and I want feedback on what other people want.  Please, don’t be shy.  I’ll be more than happy to be accommodating of any interest within reason.

I guess it’s no secret that the majority of us are a bunch of video game and anime fans.

Somethings that I’d like to see are:

A proper hentai forum:  I know that the entire site is hentai friendly but it’s really sad that we don’t have a proper hentai forum, whether it be for discussion or exchanging images and files or what have you.  People often find this site because they’re looking for hentai.  The demand for hentai threads is such that people often post about hentai in the Viper forum.  I don’t mind it, but it really needs its own forum.  I’d like it if people would post about them in Lurker’s Haven, but have realized that given the amount of threads I feel it’d be better if they had their own forum.

No Super Arts forum:  Because no one posts pictures or music in the Super Arts forum.  In truth, the Super Arts forum exists because one day Bill asked me to make a Super Arts forum and that I assign him a moderation position for it.  It’s nice that there are some picture threads there, but I feel like they’re general enough to fit into Lurker’s Haven.  Besides, any cool thing we post that contains multimedia might as well go into Lurker’s Haven anyway since it’s more than likely something general.  And for all you nutty ones who don’t like the idea of losing the Super Arts forum…

A projects forum:  For the posting of projects that you and/or yourself and others are working on that you care to share with your fellow congressmen.  I know that everyone here’s got a million projects and I’ve seen threads about them sometimes spill over into other forums.  They don’t really belong anywhere(That is, don’t have a proper home), but they keep getting posted so I think a projects forum is in order.  I know people love to talk about the things they’re working on, and it’d be a nice little way to organize the many existing project threads.

More flexibility for unrelated threads:  I know a lot of us experience other cool things that aren’t just vidja gaems and a nimes.  I want these threads to have a home too.  Now, I know that the demand for threads like these aren’t very high, but I still want a place for them too because I do see them pop up occasionally.  Like, remember when we all switched to wrestling avatars and a lot of people were scratching their heads?  Or when HMD made a thread about Pshimodo Pop?  Well, no one really said that we couldn’t talk about wrestling or Swedish Pop, and given that a lot of us here are open to cool things(this is the Congress of AWESOME after all) I think there should be a place for the occasional uncategorizable yet nonetheless awesome threads.

Gai Daigouji Board canned:  Let’s be honest here.  Creation of this board was for a cheap thrill.  “A WHOLE BOARD DEDICATED TO GAI DAIGOUJI?  AWESOME!”  And now, like the hero before it, we must kill it.  Only 67 threads, last post was made in February.  I’m sorry Miss Nanako but it looks like we won’t be able to go the beach like I promised.

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I was thinking of using this as a charter and posting it on the registration page:

The Congress of Awesome is an alternative video game and anime fan community.  Alternative to what you might ask?  Everything else.  All of those other forums you’ve been to and their maddening, nonsensical and for lack of a better word, crap.  You won’t find shrieking anime fangirls and their plethora of ascii smiles here.   You won’t find hostile, dead inside trolls either.  We’re short on militant mods also.

However, what will you find is that you can spend your time here discussing some pretty obscure things and that things are pretty lax, and maybe, just maybe you’ll laugh at some of the sillier things that are posted.*

*Or get mad and storm off!  Individual results may vary!

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Congress of Awesome - Not the crap you get from other forums.  Different crap, in a different package.

[bfg00]

Good call on this.  A reboot is most likely in order to freshen things up around here.  I concur with condensing the forums and with the mission statement.  However, I think we should keep the banners and shoutbox as the banners are classic and the shoutbox tends to actually get used quite a bit.

[黒い灯影]

I'm all for the Project forums..

[Moge]

First and foremost: a new attractive template.  The white font on black background makes this site look prehistoric.

And oh yes does this site need a complete restructuring.  Abandoning this site and starting anew might not be such a bad idea.

[JG]

I don't think Hyperguy's talking about blowing it up and starting over from stratch - we'd lose too much great content.  I think he's just gauging the community's feelings about cleaning house: getting rid of stuff not needed and consolidating things not utilized to their fullest potential due to lack of interest or ineffective management of the area.

I'd support a reorganization so long as he doesn't wipe out any of my VIPER boards*, one of the few areas that actual gets new content on a regular basis.  Of course I have to work at it to keep it that way; the other boards all need dedicated moderators too or any reorg is doomed to fail.




* If you're thinking about doing that then I'd prefer to get a backup of the database and transplant the VIPER boards over to SDM.

.....In fact, you better make a backup before you start changing things anyway, given the measure of success of past site updates.

[Moge]

Can't imagine a Hyperguy site without teh Viper prOnZ.  Guy probably wouldn't exist without them.

[bfg00]

I concur with Moquin and JG00, it just wouldn't be right to axe the Viper board.

[Hyperguy]

However, I think we should keep the banners and shoutbox as the banners are classic and the shoutbox tends to actually get used quite a bit.

Yep.  Of all the things that've been added over the years the shoutbox is still one of the most popular mods.  Personally though, since the addition of the congressofawesome.net domain name I'd like to see new banners with the new url.  Once ideas for layout have been finalized I'll be able to say what dimensions to make 'em.

First and foremost: a new attractive template.  The white font on black background makes this site look prehistoric.

I'm a bit torn about this.  On one hand  I'd love a new template, while on the other I still feel that red, black, and gray are the Congress of Awesome's colors.  I guess the most logical comprise would be a template that included these colors while still looking fresh and distinct from the current one.

Then again, an all new visual style and colors would be cool too.

And oh yes does this site need a complete restructuring.  Abandoning this site and starting anew might not be such a bad idea.

If by site you mean 'this particular forum software' or 'presentation' then I agree to an extent.  I'm always looking at different forum systems and content management systems in hopes of finding something that's overall better or easier for members to use.  Sometimes conversions like that would mean having to start from scratch.  At the same time, CoA isn't CoA without it's content, and I'd hate to throw away the great threads.  Luckily, there's lots of forum integration and conversion software too.  After all, the original CoA started as a PHPBB forum.  Now that PHPBB's stepped up it's game I'm considering it a little more.

Ultimately though, systems are secondary to good forum management. @_@

I probably spend way too much time researching mod and themes when what's really important is to make a good forum through managing it well, not spending 36 hours towards installing the best YouTube tags mod. D:

I'd support a reorganization so long as he doesn't wipe out any of my VIPER boards*, one of the few areas that actual gets new content on a regular basis.

Fear not.  I leave the management of the Viper boards to your discretion.  I'll just sweep around you as I'm nuking/building forums.

Of course I have to work at it to keep it that way; the other boards all need dedicated moderators too or any reorg is doomed to fail.

This.

The way I feel about moderators at the moment is that there isn't a lot of content being pushed around to moderate, but I very much so, do want people who are interested in managing a forum specific to their interests on staff.  Responsibilities would include typing up their own set of guidelines/FAQs for the forum, moving threads to and from it, answering general questions, writing up a catchy description for the forum, and generally sparking discussion.

A forum where people could institute change would be neat too.  In other words, polls and voting towards changes that people want to the forum, and the ability to nominate yourself or others for positions or responsibilities.

Some extra help managing regular forum things would definitely allow me to focus more time on implementing more complicated stuff. X_o

.....In fact, you better make a backup before you start changing things anyway, given the measure of success of past site updates.

Backup made as of 7/3/2009.

Can't imagine a Hyperguy site without teh Viper prOnZ.  Guy probably wouldn't exist without them.

Yeah.  It's like the radioactive spider that bit Spiderman.  Viper'll always a big part of CoA, though I think at this point making room for other things is long overdue.

[JG]

Some extra help managing regular forum things would definitely allow me to focus more time on implementing more complicated stuff. X_o

What more are you expecting me to do?  I'm moderating the other boards as well - removing duplicate/spam posts and moving threads to the correct board when needed.  The problem is, there's just not that much need.  Am I missing something?  Something you do that I'm not aware of?

[Hyperguy]

What more are you expecting me to do?  I'm moderating the other boards as well - removing duplicate/spam posts and moving threads to the correct board when needed.  The problem is, there's just not that much need.  Am I missing something?  Something you do that I'm not aware of?

Nothing more JG.  No complaints here.

Essentially what I do is, well, everything else, and sometimes working on one thing takes time away from working on another.

An example I could give is when ROMate was actively generating discussion in Revenge of the D-Pad.  It was one less thing for me to worry about, thus I was able to focus on generating discussion in Lurker's Haven.  But when something on the forum breaks, I'm not able to use that time to generate discussion since I'm spending time fixing things.

And it's not like admining the Congress of Awesome takes as much time as a full time job, but I do put my man hours in and if I got a few more people helping out than I think I could do much more.

Like, if someone was put in charge of a new forum and took out the time to write up the description, guidelines, and actively generated discussion and filtered it's threads.  That'd be one less thing for me to worry about, and I could use the time saved to generate discussion elsewhere, or add custom features and such.

[JG]

Well then, Asukachan99 and/or 黒い灯影 can probably mod the new Projects forum.  Asukachan has his VIPER-CCR project and 黒い灯影 has his RSR translation and SGS decoding projects.  This would be a good start in adding new moderators to help distribute forum duties.


If there's something more you'd like me to do admin-wise I'll try to help.  Just tell me what you want done and I'll look into it.


And I agree, it's all ROMate's fault.

[Hyperguy]

Really glad I backed up before making those changes. >_>;;

[Moge]

When can we expect drastic changes Hyperdude, and will this forum have to shut down for another excruciatingly long time frame?

Also, what will the +10 hidden guests do during the down time? 

[Hyperguy]

Last night I killed the Super Arts forum, migrated its threads to Lurker's Haven, set up the Hentai(TM) and Projects boards, and added new forum descriptions to Lurker's Haven and Revenge of the D-Pad.

So far I've never had to put the forum into maintenance mode to add new features, so only expect downtime if something breaks as I'm modding.

As for a new theme, I really don't have the time or patience to make one from scratch so I'll probably download one from the official SMF theme site and heavily modify it to suit our needs.  Of the ones I've scoured the internet for I'm partial to Noize, a 1UP-ish looking theme by Dziner Studio.  That and DSV1, another theme by the same people.  There's demos of all their themes here: http://demo.dzinerstudio.com/

Content managementwise it's a bit of a toss up.  I want us to have a robust content management system so we can articles for the purposes of generating the lulz, and there's a few options available that I'm considering.  What sparked all this?  At this point I really hate Tiny Portal.  Some issues I have with it are format being lost after an article saves, blocks losing their settings or not having the same interface when you edit them, and just general grievances like navigation making no fucking sense.  Thankfully, you can forego their article system completely and just makes threads appear as articles, but that's a standard a feature on forum portals and I feel, not worth putting up with the other bullshit for.

Anyways, at the moment other possible candidates are SimplePortal or a Wordpress Installation with an integrated forum.  I haven't dabbled with SimplePortal too much, but from the demo I toyed with it I can tell that it's much more streamlined and supports many of the same features.  That'd mean it wouldn't take too much voodoo to keep the shoutbox and other features.

The Wordpress installation's essentially the Congress of Awesome Blog.  At the moment, there's a half a dozen ways to either integrate or assimilate the forum, but no simple way I've found that doesn't require heavy modding(In fact, I've already broken and fixed the WP several times in order to get some of them to work).  So far the best option I've found is to set up a WP and integrate it with BBPress, and then use a SMF to PHPBB to BBPress converter in order to import all of the forum's threads and users.

If I got that working, essentially the front page would look like this:
http://demo.arrastheme.com/
And the forums would look like this:
http://www.arrastheme.com/forums/

...And I think that'd be ideal.  There'd be seamless integration between the two, and the layout'd look sexy too.  WP's article system is really powerful too.  I could further customize the look also.

The caveat?  Getting everything to work takes time.  Functions don't always work as they should, and some of them even render databases unusable if an error occurs during installation, which why I've had to make several backups for testing.  That, and I don't want to suddenly throw everyone into a system that doesn't work.  I owe everyone that much that if I do make drastic changes it's something we can recover from or something that above all else, works and is error free. ~_~;;

So yeah.  I'm working on it. X_o

How much longer?  I wish I could give an ETA, but the most I can say is that's dependent on how successful testing all of these alternatives are.  To cover myself, I wanna say a week, but if everything works the first time and my rl schedule isn't too demanding, three days or so should do it.

And the guests can play Viper V16, or at least they could if they'd just register, make 10 posts, and buy it from the Forum Shop.  That reminds me.  That thing needs to be reworked too. X_o

Ah well.  Whatever route we end up taking I've got a feeling it'll all work out in the end.

[MMX]

You're not very easily satisfied.  Be careful or you'll never know when to rest.



oh and...

I’m sorry Miss Nanako but it looks like we won’t be able to go the beach like I promised.

Hey phuyk yu buddy provoking an emotional response how dare you.

... sob

[Moge]

Good work on the redesign, Hyperdude! 

The upper right corner could use some work.  Seems like a huge waste of space to dedicate it to a Ratty fried chicken promotion.  You aught to shorten the title of the site (to CoA) and incorporate it there.

[JG]

Well I have to say I'm disappointed in this SimplePortal thing.  Sure its a little less cluttered, but it also seems a little bland (too much black background showing.)  And noticably slower load times.

Also, it has a PHP on line 857 (see very bottom of this page), its Javascript is not supported by IE (use of window.addEventListener around line 60 - varies by page), and it ate my PM reply and won't let me get back to it (tries to run history.go(-1) on a page loaded via AJAX, which does little good)

[bfg00]

Getting back the shout box on one of the sides would be nice, as well as recent posts.  Trying a slightly new color scheme wouldn't go amiss either.

[Hyperguy]

You're not very easily satisfied.  Be careful or you'll never know when to rest.

That's what she said!

Thought I'd give the DS-Natural theme a spin.  Let me know what you guys think.  I think it looks really great out of the box and I wouldn't mind modding it to make it look betta.

Well I have to say I'm disappointed in this SimplePortal thing.  Sure its a little less cluttered, but it also seems a little bland (too much black background showing.)  And noticably slower load times.

I noticed slower load times too.  Please let me know if they persist.  I still have to configure it some, and it may be all the calls to modules that's slowing down the front page.

Also, it has a PHP on line 857 (see very bottom of this page), its Javascript is not supported by IE (use of window.addEventListener around line 60 - varies by page), and it ate my PM reply and won't let me get back to it (tries to run history.go(-1) on a page loaded via AJAX, which does little good)

The PHP on line 857 was from TinyPortal's modified code on the HGAlpha template.  I'll have to manually fix it since it uninstalled correctly.  I went ahead and made a backup right before I turned it off and turned on SimplePortal just in case.

Getting back the shout box on one of the sides would be nice, as well as recent posts.

Roger.  I'll try to get the same blocks that we had before on the main page up.  Getting the old Shoutbox to work is a little trickier, but it's definitely a high priority.  Worst comes to worse I may have to install a new Shoutbox.

[bfg00]

I like the new color scheme altough it is currently difficult to tell what threads have new posts.  Also the Shoutbox and other stuff only appears on the front page for me and not on any of the others.