Dungeon Master Forum

I've uploaded a couple of new styles for these forums. If you go to your profile, and scroll down the page, you'll see a drop down box next to the option for Board Style. There's now two new styles: codexdark and codexLight.

I was originally developing these as styles for integrated forums on my DM site, but since everything is moving here, I've decided to drop integrated forums and link straight here.

I thought you all might as well have the benefit of using these styles. They are not 100% tested, and the light style has some colour issues with links and the like, which I'll fix at some point.

Feel free to make suggestions about improvements or if you spot any bugs.

Dark is a bit too ... dark for my taste, but the light one is very stylish. Nice add-on, Gambit!

Regards, PitD

Personally, I love both of them, but the dark one is my new style now Top notch work

Yeah, I like the dark too.. However, you seem to be missing a certain quicklinks menu?

I agree that the dark one is great: it is now my default style too.

Thanks for the positive comments guys!

I've made some changes to the layout of these two styles, and tidied up some of the problems with codexLight. It still has a problem with a couple of red links at the bottom of the view topics page, which I can't seem to fix! Quicklinks have returned too. I'va also changed the 'new topics/posts' buttons: if you don't see them (they look like the Dungeon Master text in the logo), you'll need to fully refresh the page or empty your cache and reload.

Not all pages are tested, in particular private messages and Search/FAQ. If you find any problems here, please let me know.

This is more for Cowsmanaut, but I welcome thoughts from everyone.

Cow, how do you feel about me 'stealing' the forums to be part of The Dungeon Master Codex? I have been experimenting and found a way that I can link to these forums and force the codexDarkFull style to override user settings. If you select this style yourself, you'll see that I've wrapped the forums with the navigation for DM Codex and removed the references to Dungeon-Master.com

The reason for this is that I would like to link to these forums as part of Dm Codex, but I'm keen that users get the full 'look and feel' experience of everything being integrated.

Obviously, users still have the option of specifying a different style, and the style will only be forced on users who navigate from the Codex, not on anyone coming directly here.

I don't want to take anything away from the fact that this is your portal, and it might be confusing for people who don't realise that it's the same forums. I just thought it might look nice to have everything looking consistent for users of the Codex... I do understand if you'd rather not.

What do you think?

Although it might be confusing for some users, I think this integration idea is nice. I could also be interested to integrate these forum to my site once the forums are merged...

this interest anyone?

http://www.php-chat.org/

moo

at the moment, there is an irc-chat available for being in quakenet.
server: irc.quakenet.org
channel: #dungeonmaster
there a few regulars and its mainly quiet in there.
if we decide to move to another network (like euirc), we could have a java-applet to chat with, which is far easier to use than mirc....
the problem is, that there are always idlers needed to start a chat

My point to the php-chat was if someone perhaps saw someone else online here at the same time they could perhaps send a chat invite and then they could chat without frequently checking to see if there is a new post or what have you.

I don't expect it to be massively popular but all the same..

I suppose a link to a java IRC link up would work fine too.

I've made some very minor changes to the codexDark style, in an effort to tidy the index page a little.

I've removed the list of moderators from each forum description, and made the description slightly smaller. I felt that these panels were a bit messy, and one doesn't really need to see the moderators as you can see this at the top of each forum when you enter them.

I've also added an "Expand All" option to the right of the screen. What's this for you ask? Well, you might not have noticed, but you can collapse all the categories except the one you want to view by clicking the category name, such as "General". There's no obvious reversal to this process though -- although you can click the small "Dungeon-master.com Forum Index" to expand everything, I thought an "Expand all" button was a little more obvious.

Please let me know if these changes are OK. If not, and you want it the old way, just say so, and I'll change it back. If everyone agress it's a useful change, I'll do it to the other styles too.

Cow, do you have any thoughts on the codexdarkFull style wrapping the forums with the Codex navigation? (see above)

the changes are very ok
im a bit of a purist (look my dungeons!)

I tried the codex full with the menu bar.. it leaves a big blank column on the left side of the screen as you scroll down which leaves me feeling off balance.. but if it served a purpose I suppose it would be fine.

Personally, if it means you get your site done sooner all the better.. I've been waiting like 3 years or so to see it.

'Course, I'm not much of one to talk as people have been waiting about that long for me to complete the GFX set.

anyway.. it's all cool. I'm running into a point where I'm not really sure what to do with my site.. it's lacking a certain level of usefullness I think these days. I have not done any new portraits or stories and no one has offered to do any new profiles/stories for any of the incomplete characters.

I was thinking of redoing the images to set them in their 'homeland' ie before the dungeon..as it is they are all in the dungeon. Which can be a bit dull. However.. that's just fancifull thinking as I have next to no time now anyway.

..but I digress..

moo

At the very least, I think it would be cool if you could take all the pics you've posted here (and in the Network 54 archive -- there's lots of them!), and make them available in your artistry page. As I was going through the old posts during the conversion process, I'd forgotten how much good artwork you've produced. It would be cool to have it all in one place.

As for codexdarkFull, well, it doesn't necessarily mean I'll get the site up any quicker! I know what you mean about the "off-balance" thing, not much I can do about that now... I'm certainly not changing the design again (not soon anyway!) oh well!

Yeah, I suppose I could do that.. there are all there.. so it's a simple matter of making a page and then putting in thumbs of them all.

however, besides those in the inn of lost souls.. all my newer work (within the last year) *is* all in one place.. http://cowsmanaut.gfxartist.com

in fact there are some there, I didn't post here.

moo

Very cool. But I agree with Gambit: I would appreciate a more complete archive of your fantasy artwork very much.

I'm afraid I've had to delete the codexLight board style temporarily. I've completely screwed it up, so I need to rebuild it. Any users who had set it as their style have been reset to subSilver for now. Apologies!

Ahem, cowsmanaut... I'd vote you put a sticky post of the link above in the artwork section... it might get lost here at some point with new posts coming in and I'd like to be able to find the link again... cool stuff there!

Am sure others will think the same!

Regards, PitD

The gallery is a great idea! Many thanks to coswmanaute and gambit37!