The Intergalactic Highway

Greetings Everyone!

As you may have noticed we have recently upgraded our forums!

With the spit polish still fresh it's time to take stock of what we've got and see if we can bring in some new features and functionality to our home!

Foremost on my mind was a new set of ranks.

Currently we've got Super Poster and Ultra Poster at 400 and 1000 posts respectively. I'd propose that we increase the number of ranks. Here's a quick list of ideas.

Protoform
Cybertronian
Fuzor
Transmetal
Transmetal 2
Autobot / Decepticon

At roughly the fuzor level custom titles would probably be unlocked or something of the sort.

Got an idea to improve the forums? Suggest it! We're open to all your ideas!

Except the ideas that involve world domination, economic sanctions and the cooking of grilled cheese sandwiches.

In all seriousness though, bear in mind that we can only implement so much and that some ideas may not be workable after all.

I really like that idea! And whooo! Avatar icons are back!!!

I love the new look! It's especially easier to read certain colored fonts in the RPG that players use. Awesome!

Oooh. First post on the new intergalactic highway

I'm down with the cybertronian rankings Razor has suggested (I totally wanna become a TM2 ) buut, there's a request of a "if you can do it easily then cool, otherwise its not a big issue" variety. I like my shiny gold star and "ultra-poster" status. Would there be a way of maintaining that for those who have already achieved stars as well as the new protoform, etc. statuses? If its too much hassle or just plain impossible, thats cool, maybe those who want that can throw it into their signatures instead

Ah! Mr Green! Hee hee look at him all happy #looks around# what?

That's a splendid idea Razor! I like!

For about four seconds I thought I was on the wrong website

Sounds like an awesome idea Razor! It is quite a sleek look, let us go forth and explore our new board, where no BWInter has gone before....the final frontier.

...sorry, there's been a Star Trek marathon on all day

#starts talking like William Shatner on Family Guy# My... car...brokedown

Lol if you really look around Jagna, you can see this place is now built to hold a much higher number of people than before. A lot of that is background support, but still, the design is more than just shiny - it's practical too! *is still giggling over things like the "foe" feature and report buttons*

Mmmm, where'd you get your progression inspiration Razor? Other than 'bot/d-con = oldbie, I'm not sure how those reflect posting level ? (mind you, I could also just be really overtired and not seeing it due to sheer mind-numbing tiredness)

It's kinda like the tech progression. Lemme see if I can take a whack at this and see if I'm following his crumb trail correctly. But another idea that I have would be if these ranks weren't based upon posting amounts, but rather the chronological time that they've been around. Either way can work. That'd be what two cents I'd toss into this. That way, lurkers that have been around for a long while might also have a ranking.

Protoform - Babies! LOL, not really, just those who haven't posted much. They're still in their base stage. (So, almost like the Sparkling/Youngling thing that's kicked up since the movieverse kicked into gear.)

Cybertronian - BW Season 1, organic beast mode. "Obsolete," as Megsie put it before Dinobot put a club to his face.

Fuzor - Season 2, still have some organic nature to them, but it's more "unnatural." These people have been around for a while, and are getting to know more than a little about how the forum and the inhabitants within.

Transmetal - No more organic nature, obviously more powerful and able to take more damage than a Fuzor.

Transmetal 2 - more powerful, organic nature is now fully integrated with Cybertronian nature. Theses people have been around for a long, long time. Hopefully. They might also be spam-bots. *ducks waffles*

Autobot/Decepticon - They're the heavies. They can take and deal damage like nobody's business, and it takes a lot to take 'em out in comparison to the BW crew. These people have been around FOREVER, have posted on a lot of stuff, and know their stuff.


*looks it over* Then again, it's late, and I could be just nattering on about something thinking that I'm making sense ...

Weeell, on the note of lurkers and general activity, you might be able to have the Tech Tree above for length of time people have been with a site and give different classes (as in the new War for Cybertron game) for people's posts.

e.g.
0-1000 posts = Scout
1000 - 2000 posts = Medic
2000 - 3000 posts = Soldier
3000 - 4000 posts = Leader

hmm.. 3000 posts... thats alot... although #looks at people like Jagna and OOP# never mind

Or maybe the other way around.

So a really enthusiastic newbie could be a Protoform Medic if they're really keen in the first 6months/year. Alternatively, lurkers who have been with the site for a long time could be an Autobot Scout, or a Decepticon.

Actually, on that last note, did you want to include factions as well? On people's accounts you can choose Maximal or Predacon, then it would be cool to see what our community stats are and so forth.

I haven't looked into the guts of website/forum design so I'm not sure how involved all of this may be, so the mods are quite welcome to disregard my blithering insanity if it just plain can't be done

It's actually Scientist instead of Medic. I think that idea is pretty cool too, although I'd go with Scout > Soldier > Scientist > Leader.

I don't mean to be rude, but let's discuss this stuff later AFTER the body font is set to a substantially lighter color. I get a headache if I'm reading more than a few posts.

It is kinda dark, gotta agree with Beastbot. I've also noticed I'm not getting any email notifications now on replies or PM's, which I use to before the shift.

--Do we have a bug thread to post in? So we can voice our thoughts/concerns/bugs we notice? (or have we already got one and I didn't notice it?)

I've passed along the request for the font color to be changed, but I'm not a phpBB code programmer by ANY long shot of the imagination, so I have no idea what the process would be to change the font, or if it's even possible because this does happen to be a free template that was designed by the same person who did our old board design.

I'm not sure why you're not getting email notifications, LV. I haven't tested that function of the forum yet. Yay, growing pains.

Well, I know that most if not all of the mods are pretty flat out at the moment so we can't expect Rome to built in a single astrosecond (see what I did there? eh? eh? ) so we'll just allow them the time to make whatever changes are necessary so soon as they can get to it. In the meantime, we at least have a newer, more secure website so I'm happy with that

I haven't been getting notifications for a while and I spoke with one of the mods and was informed that my email account was bouncing the requests back. I need to go through my email account anyway (because its chock full of thousands of ancient emails which I have been too lazy/haven't had the time to, sort through and delete/store). But you know what I do? I go and check the forums to see whats going on. I simply jump on every couple of hours or so, just to see whats happening. I don't see it as a huge issue, especially if someone is overly active, but thats my perspective on it. I think it is a problem from my end from having a stupidly full email account so I'm not sure what your one is like LV but maybe you're in the same boat? If you are definitely tidier than me (not a difficult job ) and you have a fairly empty email account then that disproves my theory Please let us know what yours is like and that could be one of the answers to this current problem. Cheers