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Topic: Welcome to ElkArte! [Devlog] (Read 90 times) previous topic - next topic

Welcome to ElkArte! [Devlog]

Welcome to ElkArte!

We hope you enjoy using this software and building your community.  If you have any problems, please feel free to ask us for assistance.

Thanks!
The ElkArte Community.

Re: Welcome to ElkArte!

Reply #1 –
Ahoy-hoy!

This is my first post here to test out the everything. I have spent the past two days setting this ElkArte bad boy up on Nearly Free Speech. That is, I set it up yesterday, and today I wasted by torturing myself with getting the domain right. Turns out DNS takes some time.

Tomorrow I'll write down a list of things I ought to do, and then we'll crack on with making the website nice and prutty and just how I like it. It is currently... lacking... aesthetically.

This thread is henceforth a devlog.

Re: Welcome to ElkArte!

Reply #2 –
Bold = Completed!
To-do List:
  • The uptime was a tad shit for a while, but I think the NearlyFreeSpeech DNS has finally figured it out. Everything's working smoothly!
  • Change favicon
  • Change theme (Not a minimalist, but something a *tad* less 2011... That was a good year.)
  • Edit said theme to look decent, that is: Add Strauss and the pendulum sigil, replace the favicon, make the colours green and yellow, possibly add a forest background, shrink the width of the screen, increase text size.
  • I found an excellent theme! But it breaks part of the website. Notably the editor and (?) icons. I'm asking around, hoping to get that fixed :/
  • Get rid of smileys. Replace them with the Library of complex emotion. Only emoticons allowed here >:(
  • Set up categories. A general one for the blog, then for community scheisse, and so on. Another for the caste system, hwy not?
  • Get rid of most ways to choose your avatar. There's to be a pre-approved list.
  • Read through and the official add-ons and pick some, dangit.

I'm unlocking and pinning this page so people can add suggestions. There's no real reason to expect any kind of community. I haven't invited anyone, and there's no one here to read a thing. Welcome, cart! Perhaps one day, you shall meet horse!

Re: Welcome to ElkArte! [Devlog]

Reply #3 –
Alright, I've modified the original theme into something very similar to the Leisure theme.

Sadly, it is also broken. But in a different way. The question marks and editor work as they should, but there is some overlapping. And the search bar is just kinda floating over there. It can do what it wants. And it's less sexy than the Leisure theme.

I'm actually going to set up the Leisure theme as the default as it's prettier for the average viewer. If you post often (and like fiddling with BB code all the time), then you'll probably appreciate the advanced editor in the original theme. That's what I'll be using. Otherwise, just use the now-default Leisure theme.

EDIT: Welp! Turns out Leisure theme breaks awards, so the royal we're getting rid of it. Which means I gotta fix the default theme instead... *Sigh*

EDIT EDIT: It was actually an incredibly simple fix. Position:relative; All good now.
 

Re: Welcome to ElkArte! [Devlog]

Reply #4 –
The reality of hosting images:

Storage eg. images take absolute shittonnes of space on the server. So let's do some math: NFS charges me $0.01 per Gigabyte-month (I will slit your throat at the insinuation I ought to use GiB). What does this mean?

Currently, the website uses a 4K banner that weighs about 2.3 MB. That means it costs almost 3 whole cents every single year. An average fox meme jpg weighs about, let's-say- 1/3 MB. To cost me one dollar every month I would need to host 3k fox meme jpgs. 10 MB costs me about 1 cent/month. Not a small amount.

So how much am I willing to take? Honestly, I'd take up to a gig. I'd take the full $1/month. I already pay about $0.65/day - mostly for the database that adding an extra 1$ really isn't all that much. But there comes the problem. I cannot possibly let people upload willy-nilly. It would have to be important and preferably small.

So what now? I do want this to be a place where I and others can reliably keep rubbish, and there is absolutely nothing worse than dead image links on a forum. *sigh*

If you choose to upload your stuff here, I will attempt to store it as long as possible. I will likely keep archives of uploaded files. But do not store multiple versions of files, and do not store throwaway garbage, or videos etc. This is my official unofficial stance on it.