New Website

[glumshanksgirl]

Just thought I'd organize a thread about this specifically since the other one was more about new sections and getting cluttered with ideas and I can't exactly modify the top post to update new people coming in as to what's been discussed and what's been decided.

THE IDEA

To buy a domain, and erect a sort of "complete" Skylanders site, with staff running each section and subject and keeping the members up to date about anything Skylanders related. We would offer a forum community as well, and possibly a trading and buying section for those wishing to complete or expand their collections by making transactions with other members.

POSSIBLE DOMAIN NAMES

www.lairofkaos.com
www.theportalmasters.com

These are the two so far that have "the most promise". So far it is the only 2 which have been 'okayed' by most members.

(My opinion - Although because of striking similarities with another Skylanders site, theportalmasters.com takes the second seat to lairofkaos.com - which is more original in my opinion and gives the site character/theme. After all, ya gotta have some evil out there sometime ha ha. Everything else is focused on the good guys as a theme.)

ROLES

Each of the staff will have specific sections and roles in order to keep the website updated, informative, and fun.

As roles are handed out I'll keep an updated list here so that we can see what needs organizing and what is organized.

(Note from me~ - I like collecting the books and can do serious scans of the strategy guides and whatever else if needed. I used to have a Star Ocean scanlation site back in the day. Scanning pages is my thing. I'm also an image collector, and obsessively so~ So if there's an image gallery needed, I can front man that too.)

HOSTING

I plan to back the site with my money %100, although it'd be nice if others chipped in to help fund costs. If not, come February or March I'd have enough to erect the entire website single-handedly monetary wise. Shared Hosting Packages typically make you pay by the year. There are caps on Bandwidth here usually, but it is fully functional. Dedicated servers will have a much steeper monthly cost, which we can upgrade to when/if our member base grows too large for a Shared Hosting plan to handle. We could then run off of donations to keep us afloat.

GoDaddy.com has some pretty sweet and cheap deals for domain buying and shared hosting going on~. For a little over couple hundred dollars we would have our website hosting for a few years). Many of these also include forum integration, although I can't attest as to what kinds of forums it is as I've never used GoDaddy. I just thought I'd mention that their deals are pretty cheap for hosting right now.

www.justhost.com/ has nice packages as well, and probably a better hosting solution, although for domain registration, GoDaddy seems to be top in the market. GoDaddy's hosting is just "not as powerful" as others. According to many reviews I've read.

[Spyro Paul]

Def. on board with the idea, and again a willingness to help out. I wouldn't mind contributing cash at some point when we get to that stage. Have some ideas of my own as well. Although the game is geared to kids, the main reason I can't stand going on Dark Spyro for information is there are too many, and it take too much time or effort to weed through all the nonsense over there. I certainly wouldn't want to be closed off from the "target" audience of web traffic, but I think a section of the site that was more adult, could be in order.

[glumshanksgirl]

You also have to realize that DarkSpyro is not properly moderated at all. With only one admin and a whole ton of users, repeat spam threads just kinda overgrow. Even if we didn't have a sectioned off corner of forums for posting for adults, having responsible administrators and moderators would help keep the threads under check. Because mods and admins could very well merge or lock threads at will so even with the age spillover, it won't be like DarkSpyro (mind, if the admins on this one do their jobs).

[graz73]

This all sounds good to me. I dont know which of these names is best, as I think we could make a great site from any of them.

"theforce.net" has been a huge starwars site for years and that name is not so great.


any more dialog w that guy at the portal site?

[glumshanksgirl]

He's completely struck on sticking with Zetaboards and has no intention of moving or donating, and he wants the members from here to register there to discuss matters further, as I said in the 'New Sections' thread.

I personally don't think staying with Zeta is a good idea because it is quite limited compared to other software and you're looking at paying extra to upgrade with no ads and everything else. But it is eventually up to the owner here if they want to merge there and stay with Zetaboards as the forum portion.

[graz73]

I remembered another guy who might be useful....

@tradeskylanders (on twitter)

He runs the skylanders trading website. It is a great idea, but there is low traffic there too.
www.skylanderstrading.com/forums/
I got his twitter handle because he's somewhat active in a skylanders Facebook presence.
www.facebook.com/SkylandersTrading

I dont know if he'd want to merge his efforts either, but it might be an idea.

[glumshanksgirl]

I'll send out a proposal to him as well when I'm on my home PC. It's a bit hard to post from here (not home at the moment).

[Yaggleberry Finn]

Seems like there are several people doing niche things here and there with limited success. It would definitely be nice to get a central site going.

I'm on board with Lair of Kaos unless anyone has a better idea. Honestly, I feel that if glumshanksgirl is going to put up the money to make the site happen, she should have final say on what the domain name is. The sooner we get that, the sooner we can get rolling!

[glumshanksgirl]

Oh I didn't realize you felt that way. XD;; I was only saying that opinion because I already know of a portalmasters.net site and I thought the urls were too similar to be distinctive from one another and could cause confusion between potential members.

But if we go with the Kaos/Glumshanks-san themed website, I wouldn't mind pitching in web graphics for whatever as I tend to draw them quite a bit as it is (not too good at drawing the Skylanders just yet). I have a degree in graphic design, so if I can get my hands back onto my Dreamweaver program I have stashed around I'd be able to put together a website template or something.

[glumshanksgirl]

Again it will not let me edit my last post v.v.

But may I get a run down of all of the pages and information we'll need for the first version of this website? I found my Adobe package with Dreamweaver and Fireworks and over the next few weeks while we're deciding things out I can at least work bit by bit on the graphics and layout here for the website itself.

I don't know exactly what menus and sub-menus the website will have, but if we can get that worked out I can scrape up some working pages (once we decide an overall theme as well) in a few weeks/months-ish or so in between my game work, so we'll have something to show for ourselves soon enough.

I am a disability patient so things take me a bit to do, but I get them done~. If the administrator will give me what they want for a theme and sections of information, I'll be glad to make something up. If we buy a domain before then, we can just have a splash "coming soon" page up (I'll design that first for any maintenance or downtime page anyway) and a link to the forums we erect until we can get working information pages. Start small and add on as we go along~

Anyway if we can decide on domain, theme, what all is needed on front page and linking pages for the first release of the site, I'll work my best on it. I just need to know exactly where it's headed before I start designing.

[graz73]

This will be great!

Here are my thoughts for direction:

A forum that we can put in place and modify as necessary.
Sections:
An area for each game
an area for books
an are for toys
an area for character discussion
a TRADING/sales area
a CREATIVITY area for RPGs, stories, art or custom figures

the front page area of the site where contributors can post or link to any important skylanders news as it comes out

I would like a complete archive of every skylander toy. As time goes on, this gets more complicated, but for now, its not too bad.
I like the format here: www.tfu.info/2012/Autobot/BTBulkhead/bulkhead.htm ALthough it could be cleaned up some
Another nice way to do this: www.yojoe.com/action/82/cobraofficer.shtml

also, I want a timeline of in-universe events. for instance star wars is known for the stories and the continuity. Why not put together all of the skylanders events into one detailed narrative?

[glumshanksgirl]

Putting forum categories aside for now as I can't work on those until we buy out the domain and things (have we actually decided on one yet? >_> ).

I'm going to make a note of all the things mentioned:

Front page - summary of what Skylanders is, and an introduction to the more important sections. Header categories for each main page (Story *with timeline*, Characters, Figures, Other Merchandise, News*?*, Guides and Walkthroughs, Tips and Tricks, ).

Story - Brief overview of each game's story and then a timeline of events.

Characters - Introducing the Skylanders in-game story profiles and that of each character, including enemies.

Figures - A complete list of figures, including variants and specials.

Other - Books, cases, backpacks, you name it.

News - Upcoming Skylanders and website news. This will be the archive probably and 'recent news' will show up in a box on the Front Page for easier access.

Guides - If someone creates a full walkthrough, we'll have those there.

Tips - Cheats, hints, etc. separate for walkthroughs.

Then we'll have a link to forums, and maybe a gallery if we want.

[Spyro Paul]

This looks great, and I'm with graz73 about a trading page. We could actually become a significant kink in eBay scalper sales. Given that I hear so much about inability to find figures, I would love something set up to help others in our community get the figures they need. Although it's definitely been easier this time around to find the figures. I live just outside Atlanta, there are 3 Walmarts, 2 Targets, 4 Gamestops, and 1 Toys R U and 1 Best Buy all within 15 minutes of me. Even the hard to find figures have been relatively easy for me to get.

[glumshanksgirl]

I'm pretty sure the trading thing would be more of a part of the forum itself instead of the site. I don't see how we could possibly keep a trading area updated on a website itself unless someone was able to read over every member's request and key it in. But a link to a forum section where trades take place might work.

Until we know how to effectively link website page and forum section together for that, which there may be ways, but for now I'd keep all guest/member posting to a forum and keep the actual website for administrator updates and information only. We have to think inside limits of shared hosting as well.

That being said, I have enough money now to buy the domain and shared hosting, probably from the second option up there as reports say that hosing is better overall for expansive websites. So which domain should I buy out? I can do it immediately after we decide.

EDITO: Bought lairofkaos.com and some hosting for a year. If we want a different domain, I'll just buy the new one and point it and whatnot. Working on getting a forums up now (just basic, not skinned or anything).

[glumshanksgirl]

La la la, Okay nowhere near done with anything yet and I have to go to bed cause I have to go somewhere tomorrow.

But I did get the bare bones of a forum up, with basically no sections >_>;;; and only a little bit of gfx customization. But hey, I'm trying. It's hard for a one woman job~ and my computer's internet was being a fail when I was accessting FTP.....soooo yeah.

You can access new forums here:

forum.lairofkaos.com/index.php

Now I made a main account for all administration called 'Kaos' just for the lolz of the theme, as you can read in my descriptions of the forums (which my lover beautifully provided XD ). I thought it best to keep in theme across the board.

I went with myBB for now just because I'm familiar with it. It's got a good bit of functionality so we shouldn't be suffering for anything, although myBB is a new contender in forum softwares so it hasn't seen anywhere near it's final updates.

Okay i stop rambling now. Let me go sleep and I'll continue setting up soon, then add everywhere who is supposed to be admin/staff to staff and give out password to the main admin account so "KAOS" can make his updates. =.= Somuchworksomuchworksomuchwork.