I have a lot to cover in this, so you better be willing to read!

First up is the subject everyone is curious about, the ZE website! After much discussion the staff has decided, basically, to take things slow. The problem with this big ordeal is that zoidsevolution.com is now pretty much secondary to the forums. Zoids Evolution Forums IS our content. In reference to the time Duowolf had the wrong URL on zoidsevolution.com, our starting mission statement shall refer to our prospective new site as:

A site in which fans of Zoids and its related titles can easily find and access the Zoids Evolution Forums.

So currently we're gonna aim for a splash page. This is just a small start and is, by NO means, the ultimate end to our goals.

What Does This Mean?

1. We are going to humbly decline DrkX's offer to merge with ZGO.

2. We are going to put DT's ZIT project on hold. I don't want to fully decline his idea, but the goals are too high right now and we need to settle on some smaller issues first.

3. The forum staff (admins/super mods) will be leading the project. This is because I trust them and their opinions. I know we can function as a team and I know what they're capable of.

4. Until hosting issues are worked out, we're starting out with a mock up site.

5. The forums are not moving.

The MOCK UP

Let me stress: THIS IS ONLY TEMPORARY. I registered a little space on geocities for us to start a splash page on and play around with. Which I've done a little.

http://www.geocities.com/zoids_evolution

Yeah, I drew myself, Tilly and HaTcH there, I may add more staff later, because I enjoyed drawing that. Though I suppose we SHOULD have something more ZOIDY, it's TEMPORARY and the staff is free to add/change it as they like. Once we get hosting issues straightened out we'll move to something not so yucky.

Board Skin

I'm gonna aim for a more Zoids related skin for the forums if possible, not just some color changing... especially after Tilly's made such fun icons! So keep a look out for that sometime.

Planning Schedule

ON HOLD. I'm afraid that due to college I must take a two week leave from the board to really punch out work for my classes. After that I should have a lot more freetime to pour into this project. Until then I ask that people please be patient and wait for me.

Thank you.

If you still have questions, please ask. Also if you REALLY need to get ahold of me, e-mail is the way to go.

You got rid of the purty invision buttons I helped KW put in...T_T

lol well it looks good so far...as for the icons, the spirites look nice, though the text could improve, but overall I like it...

And you all had better like the icon thingies or it's the DEADBORDER PIT for you!

Or not.

*pokes the ickle Zenebas symbolssss*

I like it. It's neat and original. Only comment is, why only liger? No wolves? Deadborders? Deathsaurer? All well, still pretty cool though.

@Jammer: Nice drawing of Tilly, Hatch, and you, as anime characters. Pretty sweet.

Some of them were confusing though, but I got use to them. Will we also be getting a new background, that is not completely blue?

Because I draw cats better...and Koenig Wolf gets the front page.

I figure the stompies can take comfort in the old-school faction logos, as the OJR is where stompies were king.

Zenebasssssyyyy...

Why not at least run some ads or something on the mockup page, I've heard that even without much visitors, or none at all you can manage to earn a little bit of money with Google's Adsense....

Yes!

Lol.

Well, nothing much to comment on, I was following this in the admin forum.. but it seems to be going smoothly, I do like the new buttons and such.

Ah Tilly got the card icon up, good....König is spelled wrong...what are those little icons next to the topics?

Ooh, new icons... They're all Zoidy now and actually fit with what the board's about! I think this is a first!

Gah, you all make me so jeleous. I can't draw for crap, especially not on a computer. But I want to draw so BAD! I'm getting tired of just thinking about the characters and scenes I make up, I want to DRAW them! But I CAN'T ;_; When will the torment end!?

EDIT: The delete/edit/quote thing is Christmas colored... Coincidence? I think not.

Tilly has a tablety...so she has it easy...ahh I want a wacom tablet! argh! wait, Chrismas present!

yayayayay

a Chrismas theme? hmm...that'd be nice...

:lol: Ah..the forum looks better..Very interesting..Every thing that Jammer discuss is great in my opinion...It keeps getting better and better...^^

Keep up the good work Admins of ZE...^_^

I'm fast replying, because I like Blade Liger more that Shield Liger. XD
*pats Shieldy* There, there. I love you too.

I like the new buttons, although it was scary when the page first loaded.
"What the??? This isn't ZE!!"

EDIT: Argh.. the delete button is so tempting to push!!

Tee-hee, Jammer has finals.

Crap, me too...

Actually, I do pixel stuff like that with a mouse...the tablet wibbles too much with my unsteady hands.

And it is coincidence...those are the old faction logos. Guylos for DELETE!, Zenebas for Edit, and Helic for Quote. Somehow appropriate, yes?

Geocities = bad start, IMO.

Sure it's just reserving the space, but Geocities does not support PHP, and that, I think, is something important if we want to bring back a ZE site. I highly recommend "reserving space" on a better host.

http://www.100webspace.com has MUCH better stuff than Geocities, but I've never tried it out so I don't know how well it is.... Still, it'd be better than Geocities because of the ads and the features (PHP, MySQL, space, bandwidth, etc.).

This isn't meant to do anything special, it's meant to be *found* and visible. The other stuff will be taken care of later...

I really like these changes, and how you guys came about with it. great job, folks! Love the drawing on that pager, Jammer, and Tilly's drawings rock as usual. :3

Well then it is something to keep in mind ;)

PS: Koneko, nice av!

Thanks, Blade. ^^ (It looks better when it's not stretched like that. o_O;; )

I said the same thing, and got the same reply. XD

But that host isn't that great, nowadays if you go for the hosts which as supported by forum posts you get WAY better features, and most of the time, no ads. Geocities has the WORST ads, because they take up such a huge chunk of space, get in the way, and aren't even frames at least because frames can be easily removed, and the little arrow stays in the side...

Banner ads, flash ads, and even Google text ads can be removed easily as well. Just get Firefox, the Adblock extension, import the Filterset.G ad filters into it (or, even better, get the Filterset.G updater extension which automatically syncs your Adblock list whenever there's an update, and still allows you to add your own blocked things which aren't in Filterset.G), and relax as you enjoy the (nearly) ad free internet.

Yea you mentioned that in the topic when Tilly said she purchased ad removal...but ads PAY for hosting, if everyone had ad blocking..then well sites like geocities would be gone no? Along with so many other free services..

Not everyone can get Firefox, now, can they? I mean sure it's just a download away but you have to understand that a lot of people are so used to IE that they don't care for Firefox or any other navigator.

And yeah...not everyone can get Firefox. Some people use family computers in which they're restricted from downloading such navigators. What are you going to do about those people? I think it's actually a fair percentage of the people that you're ignoring there.

Heck, I'm one of those people who doesn't want to download Firefox because I'm used to and satisfied with IE for what I do.

And is the Adblock extension a free service? I mean if it is, then it's cool (although it doesn't solve the problem of people who don't want to/can't download Firefox), but if it's a paid service, that leaves out even more people from getting that.

I'm hating Geocities for what they did with the advertising. I'd rather have a couple of popups or ads than what they've done. Hence, I'm suggesting a free host that's better than Geocities and has only a banner ad, which a lot of people would take rather than the Geocities advertisement.....

Key word(s): "I'm suggesting..."

*Ahem*

Why are we discussing hosting when I've offered it several times? Not only do I offer a free hosting service personally, but I do also offer paid hosting.

Rofl.

REASONING

1. GEOCITIES: Though tacky I chose geocities because it's ABSURDLY easy and also because I know Yahoo! and Google will pick it up in time with their search engines. The main goal at this point is to have something that's EASY TO FIND, not spiftacular. It's TEMPORARY too.

2. FREE HOSTING?: I'm interested in paid hosting, but currently there are a few issues holding me back from getting it. If I do I get paid hosting for ZE there's a good chance I'll do it through DT.

ANYWAYS. Back to homework for me.

Yes, Adblock is free. All it actually is is a frontend for something you can do on any browser. The thing is, that's the hard way; you have to manually edit a CSS file which filters out whatever you put in it, and that works on IE too.

I'm just tossing out info here for people who are sick of ads and can or already are using FireFox, so just ignore me :D

Ah, let me do a little speech here.

Without ads, these companies would not be around. I'll admit, through my free hosting, I'm giving the option of being active on my forums or letting the user put ads on their site. My forums also have ads on them. They make a lot of money, and without it, we wouldn't be round.

So don't block the ads, people pay good money to display them.

Must have missed it somewhere. Wasn't sure what was going on witht he multiple topics spurring up that related to this issue.

Just a reference, you know :\

Okay, I think there's been enough on the topic of ads now. The morality of blocking ads is up to one's self to decide, and since most of the places which have ads that I visit get thousands of hits each day, I don't consider it much of a loss since, as Blade said, most people still are stuck with IE and are forced to deal with ads (unless they are 1337 and know the hard way).

Now, moving on *cough*

Uhm, it is actually much of a loss. Any newb who gets a new computer usually has McAfee or Norton, both which come with ad blocking built in.

Now, on some sites, more than 70% of users are ad blocking. The sites really do lose a lot of money.

Really it's pretty immoral to block ads. You're actually wasting money of companies, believe it or not. The ones who advertise, especially here, pay GOOD money to have their site advertised. (I know of certain web hosting companies [Not mine] who pay over $10,000/mo on ads)

*glances around*

*posts link*

http://www.zef.zoidsgenesis.com/
^Tilly and me downloaded lots of topics, you can search them over there...since invisionfree's search is down...

My head still hurts....

@ DT: Most ad blocking programs deal with popups.

@@ DT: I don't really care for ads! =]

Then again there is my hosts file, which (when updated) keeps the ads out indefinately and with out any extra memmory consumption. They just... arent there! He.


~*HaTcH removes non-topic specific posts. There was no real content here and all parties are aware of eachother's responses. Thanks. Please stay on topic!