Tendo City

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This place needs a front page with regularly updated Nintendo news, previews, reviews, features, etc. How about a DS Lite makeover? An Animal Crossing Wild World on-going feature much like the game's homepage. A history of Samus Aran/Link/Kirby Chronology/et al.

How about a tag under your avatar that has your DS, and soon to be Wii, friend codes?

What about giving select individuals, specifically those who can write well, a blog on the front page? They give their opinion on the industry with respects to games, news, previews, whatever. An individual could potentialy gain a fanbase, get linked to on other forums given their strong arguements, or get people who read just to find something to disagree with.

This place is home to what I think are some of the best video game message board intellects that I've come across. That is, many of you have sound or cogent arguements with a flair for conflict. USE IT. Why not write some articles? The result will either be people who agree with you and take your side (possibly joining the message board) or people who disagree and want to argue the finer points (also joining the message board). Why not discuss why the Gamecube sold the least of any Nintendo console? What Nintendo needs to do in order to reign king in the handheld market? How the Wii could become number one by being everyone's second console? Does Nintendo NEED new franchises? Can they continue to survive by simply putting new twists on characters we've come to love? Which characters have been played out? Is Mario THE gaming icon? What is Mario's appeal? How Sony's recent blunders may be Nintendo's opportunity to rise to the top. A look back at Rare; Are we missing anything? Forget next-gen, new-gen is almost here. So many more. Get some attention.

How about turning the whole site into a myspace type place, where everyone has a homepage with blog, and everyone can come together at the message board?

Oh, and drop the title of "PS3 is a steaming pile...". It seems rather juvenille.

EDIT: How about having some fun with a photo contest with your DS? "The DS Lite is a sexy peice of kit, so it only makes sense that it makes those who play it sexy as well. Show us!"

How about a front page poll of are you getting the Wii?

EDIT2: The top 10 Nintendo games of all time. Reveal one a day and make it a two week feature. Whatever game was being discussed should have a in-depth article as to why it's so great, especially among so many great games as Nintendo has.

Design a logo contest.

A countdown on the front page to the Wii release (once you know the release date, that is).

A list of the dates for Nintendo's Fusion Tour. Have someone attend and report back. I'm going to try and go to the one in October.

There's alot you can do with the front page...and you're going to have to do something with it in order for this place to grow. I think that, if you got serious about this, you'd also find quite a few Nintendophiles who would be willing to help out in any way they could with no compensation. It's an exciting time right now, what with all the hype surround the phenomenom known as the DS, and the curiousity and excitement over the different experience the Wii will be. Who knows, you could get popular, get sponsored, get free games for previews...in any case, you're going to have to start somewhere.
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Actual suggestions? And some decent ones? Wow! Didn't take long for this forum to possibly become useful then... :D
Good ideas, all. Some we've had (and attempted) in the past, others not.

There's always a killer, though, that being commitment. Who here has the time to commit to such a prospect?

I don't personally have much, but I'd be willing to go along if I knew I wouldn't be on my own. And, honestly, having a site would be great, but my design skills are several years outdated. Having someone with more knowledge than myself would be a plus.
Quote:his place needs a front page with regularly updated Nintendo news, previews, reviews, features, etc.

We've tried all these things at various times, but with the current tiny userbase here... (for instance, in 2002 and before we had a real main page. LL went to E3 2004... we actually posted news and revews onto the main page... etc...) I mean, I don't get very interested in writing reviews that I think like five people will read...

Note though that there is of course a reviews section. And there is a main page -- though I think only Ryan knows the password that is used to update it and the software is pretty outdated... I had the PW at one point (note how I added a few games to it once?) but I lost that and anyway I don't really like that software or the review/preview system it uses.

Anyway: more features are good. I agree, we need them. A real main page again would be great, with news and stuff... That by itsself won't get more members, though... these days I don't know how we would do that. You need to be tied to a site of note in some way...

Anyway, I'll do something, if there's anything I can do...

Quote:Oh, and drop the title of "PS3 is a steaming pile...". It seems rather juvenille.

Any admin can change the title whenever they want. :)

Anyway, back to comments... one thing is the site name. tcforums.com doesn't seem like a "real fansite" name, just a forum name... I know there's nothing we can do about that, though, having lost tendocity.net quite some time ago... but yeah, a new front page system with content to back it up is of course a good idea. The problem is finding a front page system and then finding the time and effort needed to actually get it working... and then seeing if we can actually get any more people to actually come here... :D (unlikely perhaps, but we should try at least...)


Oh yeah, and Paco, you don't help much either, what with it usually being months between your visits here... :)
Quote:There's always a killer, though, that being commitment. Who here has the time to commit to such a prospect?

I don't personally have much, but I'd be willing to go along if I knew I wouldn't be on my own. And, honestly, having a site would be great, but my design skills are several years outdated. Having someone with more knowledge than myself would be a plus.

You have to start somewhere. Starting off small or slow is better than nothing. I might know a few people from Teamxbox who'd be willing to contribute a review every now and then.

It doesn't have to something fancy. If Nintendo's recent success is anything to go by it's simplicity and focus that counts, and an elegant design as well. I don't know much of what you have, but it doesn't have to be much in order to be a success. I'm not talking IGN or Gamespot success, but just making a community out of this place. Something unique.

Quote:we actually posted news and revews onto the main page... etc...) I mean, I don't get very interested in writing reviews that I think like five people will read...

Anyway: more features are good. I agree, we need them. A real main page again would be great, with news and stuff... That by itsself won't get more members, though... these days I don't know how we would do that. You need to be tied to a site of note in some way...

Anyway, I'll do something, if there's anything I can do...

There needs to be some unique feature articles. Personally, I'd love to read an in-depth history of Samus Aran (not on wikipedia). A perfect time to release such a feature would be right before Metroid Prime 3 released. That article would be quite an undertaking given all the games, but it's something that can be worked on between now and November when the game releases. Same thing for a Zelda article if anyone were up to making one.

How about a bit of humor. Lazy has a knack for well written, clever non-sense. Imagine it being a letter from one of the animal crossing characters and having readers then send him letters via the game? Most well written and silly one gets published somewhere on the front page.

You can get attention by getting some well written, sound, and a bit controversial in nature, articles on Nintendo's current situation. Get someone in here to write an in-depth arguement on why Nintendo could trump Sony this generation. That will get some attention. Write something on looking back before the DS launched, how great a risk it seemed up against the PSP, and now how it's outselling the PSP at a staggering rate- why is this happening?

Quote:Oh yeah, and Paco, you don't help much either, what with it usually being months between your visits here...

ermmm...yeah...umm...eek. It's because the topics I post hardly get any replies. Granted, most of them are in the multiconsole section and you guys mostly don't care, but none the less, it's almost pointless.

I don't know. I would love to help in any way I can.
I'd be willing to contribute once in a while, but I wouldn't have too much time to make it a regular thing. I'd definitely be willing to redesign the site if no one else wants to, but I can't guarantee it would be done in a timely manner.
So I think this place needs a makeover, the front page more than anything, so I came up with a few designs and I found myself loving the idea of going all black with a throw back to old Nintendo. Out of the few websites I've done, I usually start with a header image so...

[Image: header3to8.jpg]

It would certainly be different (read, unique) from any other Nintendo website I've ever come across. If you like it, I have an idea for what the rest of the site could look like.
I was thinking we could put a banner in the sigs of the other forums we all visit.
:amunk:

I really like that banner.
Paco's? Yeah it is good
I usually spend about 1-2 hours every day writing, on top of what I spend posting on 3 message boards. So, yeah...
I've actually gotten the itch to write about videogames more. Maybe not reviews, but more opinion stuff about the state of the industry. This is a really cool time for videogames since they are really starting to become more of a mainstream thing. If we get a site going I think I can definitely find time to do some writing.

And that banner is great Paco. If you aren't as good with the HTML side of things I could do that if you can work on graphics. I'm pretty up-to-date with all the CSS/HTML standards and all the work-arounds to get things working correctly in IE.
DMiller Wrote:I've actually gotten the itch to write about videogames more. Maybe not reviews, but more opinion stuff about the state of the industry. This is a really cool time for videogames since they are really starting to become more of a mainstream thing. If we get a site going I think I can definitely find time to do some writing.

And that banner is great Paco. If you aren't as good with the HTML side of things I could do that if you can work on graphics. I'm pretty up-to-date with all the CSS/HTML standards and all the work-arounds to get things working correctly in IE.
I know some css/html, enough to make some basics sites, but I'd much rather work on graphics.

Also, I've been doing a little bit of research on some free content managment systems since Ryan mentioned what we currently have might be outdated. One of the most popular and well praised, also customizable, is Modx. I was actually going to download it and play around to see what I could do since I've never worked with a cms before.

I also noticed that the domain name tendocity.cc is not taken, or something like tendo-city.com is also available. That is, if you were looking to get the name back in some respect.

Let me know what I can do to help. :)

EDIT: I also think that trimming some fat off this message board would help as well, at least for the time being. We have a very small number of members that seem to prefer different parts of the forum. It might seem more active if we had a couple of general areas- Nintendo Discussion, Other Console Discussion, Off-Topic. The other forums like 'Wheel of Time', 'Comics', and 'We need to figure out how to get more members' should be sub-forums or don't need to exist at all.
A content management system would be a good way to go since it would cut down on the time people need to devote to the site if they want to contribute something. I haven't used any on my own website since I just use FTP to upload and change things so whatever you can find that would work would be great.
Quote:EDIT: I also think that trimming some fat off this message board would help as well, at least for the time being. We have a very small number of members that seem to prefer different parts of the forum. It might seem more active if we had a couple of general areas- Nintendo Discussion, Other Console Discussion, Off-Topic. The other forums like 'Wheel of Time', 'Comics', and 'We need to figure out how to get more members' should be sub-forums or don't need to exist at all.

No. :)

... we could make more of the mods/admins only or something though, like several already are (Forum 5, etc)...

Also, the Wheel of Time forum actually is supposed to be the 'changing topic forum' which regularly changes topics, but we gave up on that and just stopped using it... could start it back up though (it's been the Anime forum, Star Trek forum, etc).

Comics we're definitely keeping, though I'd like for it to be moved into a broader "creativity" section whenever it is that we finally get the old archives, including the OLD creativity stuff, back online... :)

'We need to get more members' could be a subforum somewhere, though. It was just already here (the 'OB1 and ABF debates forum'), and became useless when he left, so I made it this...

Quote:I also noticed that the domain name tendocity.cc is not taken, or something like tendo-city.com is also available. That is, if you were looking to get the name back in some respect.

Something like that might be nice, yeah.

Quote:A content management system would be a good way to go since it would cut down on the time people need to devote to the site if they want to contribute something. I haven't used any on my own website since I just use FTP to upload and change things so whatever you can find that would work would be great.

Yeah, mine's just done in Mozilla Composer and uploaded...
I think our first order of business should be getting people that are already members to post more...
What, we can't work on multiple things simultaneously?
We've tried that before GR, it is always of limited success... we also need to do more. :)
Okay, so I'm still all for making something of this place. The last three days were somewhat grueling with homework and tests, but I have the next few days to relax before I have to hit the grind stone again for finals.

Anyway, I did download and install Modx on the webspace I have. I only just started looking around but it looks exactly like something that would greatly benefit a site with multiple contributers, and make it all relatively painless. There are a wealth of tools and it's going to take some time to figure out the process of creating and maintaining a site using modx, but I think it will be worth the effort.

I'm going to start creating some template designs tonight. Doing so, I need some guidance on exactly what WE want it to be. One idea, with simplicity in mind, is that we only have a main page. Perhaps each current Nintendo console could have it's own table that gets updated regularly. The table could hosts three or four links to the most current articles, the rest archived and searchable; a main feature table; a side feature (like an ongoing Animal Crossing feature or something); another side feature (like a look at the Zelda or Metroid series; perhaps a retro section looking back; and I'm open for suggestions.

The second idea, one that would require more work for everyone, is to have the main page and then give each console its own page as well. I'm thinking it would require too much effort to keep up so many pages, or at least keep them updated and interesting.
I think we should go even simpler than that to start out. Reviews and Features should be the main focus. Maybe have the 10 most recent of each listed beneath the links to their sections, and the rest can be accessed by going to the respective section. As we get more content and perhaps some ongoing features they can have their own links from the main page.
Can there be News posts and stuff that link to forum threads that cover the same topics? Either in their appropriate forums or in a 'news' forum (like the unused "homepage news" forum that we have now, but different. :))...

As for Reviews, what would be the best system? Having them stay where they are and just be linked to with little newsblurbs that say "this is a new review", or move them to some new system where they wouldn't just look like forum posts...
The problem with news is we would have to update it all the time or it wouldn't look very good. Maybe if there were a way to automatically make a news post when you post something in the forum, but I don't think that's possible.

I don't really have a problem with the way the reviews are laid out now, but we would have to integrate them into how the new site looks.
DMiller Wrote:The problem with news is we would have to update it all the time or it wouldn't look very good. Maybe if there were a way to automatically make a news post when you post something in the forum, but I don't think that's possible.

I don't really have a problem with the way the reviews are laid out now, but we would have to integrate them into how the new site looks.

It's possible. I was seaching the vbulletin.org forums the other day and saw a mod that does exactly that.

Dmiller, could you make a mockup of your design idea? I'm not sure I follow what you wrote.
Plenty of Nintendo fansites don't exactly keep up on the news, so I don't think that it'd make us look THAT bad... and we already mention the important stuff, at least, in posts... why not on this new homepage too?
Paco Wrote:It's possible. I was seaching the vbulletin.org forums the other day and saw a mod that does exactly that.

Dmiller, could you make a mockup of your design idea? I'm not sure I follow what you wrote.

I'll try to find time to day to whip something up, otherwise I should have time Sunday.
I whipped up something to show you my thought on the side menu, but this is by no means what I think the final site should look like. Just some quick CSS/HTML to give you an idea.

Link
I see. That would be different. I like it..I'll make a mock template with that, too.
Ya, so I haven't had alot of time for this but I am working on it. The next four days are going to be really busy regarding finals so I'm not going to have any time for this. I'll leave you with what I've done. It's just a jpeg at this point, to see what you like about it, what you would change about it...
Question, are we thinking a theme redesign for tendo city ie a new theme, a portal sub web, or a complete site redesign? Let me know? By the way I would be more than happy to host.
Paco, ryan wan'ts me to build a working model of your idea in dot net portal, can you provide me with the source .psd (photoshop) file for your mockup image. I think I can pull apart the parts and make a working site.
etoven Wrote:Paco, ryan wan'ts me to build a working model of your idea in dot net portal, can you provide me with the source .psd (photoshop) file for your mockup image. I think I can pull apart the parts and make a working site.

I made it in fireworks, actually. I'm not sure if that will work the same. In any case, it's just a rough design. I was going to fix the table sizes to take advantage of more space and I was going to add a few more things. It's a huge file- 396kb. Give me your email addy and maybe I can send it that way.
Quote:Question, are we thinking a theme redesign for tendo city ie a new theme, a portal sub web, or a complete site redesign? Let me know? By the way I would be more than happy to host.

It would be a new front page -- you know, the thing you clicked "forums" on once, before bookmarking the main forums page? :)
Paco Wrote:I made it in fireworks, actually. I'm not sure if that will work the same. In any case, it's just a rough design. I was going to fix the table sizes to take advantage of more space and I was going to add a few more things. It's a huge file- 396kb. Give me your email addy and maybe I can send it that way.

Size is not an issue I'm pulling 1 T1, however I need some kind of photo shop friendly format, perhaps maybe a layered tiff (with layers intact)? Something I can pull apart.

mail it to: etoven@tovennet.net
Ok, I sent it to you as a tiff. Again, I apologize for all the layers but it was only a rough draft...one still in progress as you'll see a few new things on it already. I'm not nearly finished with it.
Paco Wrote:Ok, I sent it to you as a tiff. Again, I apologize for all the layers but it was only a rough draft...one still in progress as you'll see a few new things on it already. I'm not nearly finished with it.

I received the file but all the layers were flattened, thanks though I will still try to use it.
etoven Wrote:I received the file but all the layers were flattened, thanks though I will still try to use it.

hmmm...I didn't flatten it and there was no option on export to decide one way or the other.

If it means anything, I'll eventually end up making a template out of it in Dreamweaver, but not until I'm completely done with it.
*creeps in...

So yeah, I'm still working on it. After I was done with summer school I spent my remaining days before the fall semester in a drunken and lazy haze. Now I'm tired...and school has started again...but I'm in the mood to keep working on this thing, this project.

[Image: tendoprototype01sl9.jpg]

I think it's coming along quite nicely. No, I haven't started making it a template yet, but that's because I'm not sure what this site is going to turn in to. Anyway, tell me what you think. Likey or no likey...
Looks quite nice... :)
It's a great look, maybe too dark but otherwise very commercial and easy to navigate. Anyone heard how etoven's doing?
Very Impressive!
We still have a mainpage?
Wow, I need to show up more often.
I miss tendocity.net
The current one is so infrequently updated that for all intents and purposes we don't, which is what we are (not very quickly, it seems...) trying to change...
A Black Falcon Wrote:The current one is so infrequently updated that for all intents and purposes we don't, which is what we are (not very quickly, it seems...) trying to change...
Perhaps if I was given some direction it would move along...

etoven, have you had any success in creating a template?

EDIT: Okay, I'm ready to start making it a template. Etoven, or anyone else concerned with the backend of the site, I need some specifications on exactly how I should make it. You probably have more experience than I do with creating style sheets and such so I'd like to leave that to you, or anyone else willing to make it.

I don't know...we really need to start getting together so it can progress...
:(
Paco Wrote:Perhaps if I was given some direction it would move along...

etoven, have you had any success in creating a template?

EDIT: Okay, I'm ready to start making it a template. Etoven, or anyone else concerned with the backend of the site, I need some specifications on exactly how I should make it. You probably have more experience than I do with creating style sheets and such so I'd like to leave that to you, or anyone else willing to make it.

I don't know...we really need to start getting together so it can progress...

http://www.louisrepa.com/

Did no one read my post?
No one actually comes to this forum anymore, apparently (just look at all those posts in the last two days!).
Dropping in to save a copy of the Web site mock up I made (I seemed to have misplaced the files).

I think it still looks nice almost three years later.