Get this puppy skinned TF Styleeee!

[gdpwatson]

Hey guys,

I love the forum and hope to make myself comfortable here as time goes by. But one thing that i think you should look into is the possibility of getting this place skinned out with some TF related designs.

Forums are great, and it's the people that use them that make it work, but there's something about a forum that's left with it's default skin that doesn't sit right with me.

Other than that keep up the good work.

G

[Deadpool]

Seconded, it would make the forum seem more user friendly IMO.

[SOUNDWAVE]

It is been worked on.

Any suggestions for designs?

Logos, characters?

[Ger Hankey]

Well, this might be a good time to ressurect the "Design an Irish TF character" competition that was knocking around the MySpace page a while back...

[gdpwatson]

I second that notion.

'We' (look at me, just signed up and already consider myself part of the furniture... how presumptuous) should have our own distinct character or mascot similar to the way that TFW2005 have.

And running it as a competition would be great. It wouldn't need to be an art competition, primarily the comp could be about coming up with a character biog and overview. Then perhaps at that stage it could be passed onto an art competition. Not sure how that would work really.

But yeah, an Irish Transformer would be cool!

And i'm more than willing to offer any input i can into the design.

Perhaps the best way to work out a skin, if not already doing so, is to find one that reflects the hi-tech nature of the Transformers Universe - ensuring that it is still user-friendly and keeps the interface usable and clean, then installing that on the board and simply tweaking the graphics from that rather than building a new one from scratch.

I would suggest that the colours be green, white and gold but i'm not sure how that would go down on an Ireland-based forum. I guess that'll need to be decided by the powers that be. And i do of course refer to the political situation wherein those colours may be construed as insensitive to certain individuals.

[Ger Hankey]

We'd be safe enough with green & white, thus reflecting the football strips of all nations of our little island and diffusing any political nonsense right off the bat.
I should have been a politician eh?

(On a side note, somebody one told me that the orange part of the tricolour represented the prodestant community, the green the catholics and the white was the peace between the two. Don't know how true that is though...)

[Just Anotha Stupid Online Name]

Ger's got the right idea- I proposed a while back (maybe at the first meet up?)that anyone who wants rto can come up with an Irish style character or TFIO mascot. I didnt get chance to organise this due to several different and 1 hilarious reason, but now seems like a good time to reboot the idea, so I put it to Soundwave and Hot Rod and Nemesiis that we set up a thread were we display peoples drawings of acharacter exclusive to TFIO ousing whatever design(g1,movie,animated,any line or series) they want, we post to the email address then it set up as a vote in the thread so that everything is fair andeveryone get fair shot. Along with the tag of being creator of the character, winner gets a prize (,I'll dig out something). bonus is if we get couple of great designs, could somehow lead to a mini strip of somekind.how that sound to y'all?

[Rodimus Prime]

I would like to point out that you can select a skin for the forum in your profile. At the moment, there are 3 - Autobot, Decepticon and Predaking.

I am working on some more at the moment.

I'm also 100% for a TFIO mascot though.

[gdpwatson]

Jan 8, 2009 14:44:44 GMT Ger Hankey said:

We'd be safe enough with green & white, thus reflecting the football strips of all nations of our little island and diffusing any political nonsense right off the bat.
I should have been a politician eh?

(On a side note, somebody one told me that the orange part of the tricolour represented the prodestant community, the green the catholics and the white was the peace between the two. Don't know how true that is though...)

Interesting, you think we'd know if that was true or not... then again ignorance is bliss!!

As for the football team of our nations, i'm in the camp that can choice either and as such i choose Spain! LOL!

Jan 8, 2009 16:46:13 GMT Rodimus Prime said:

I would like to point out that you can select a skin for the forum in your profile. At the moment, there are 3 - Autobot, Decepticon and Predaking.

I am working on some more at the moment.

I'm also 100% for a TFIO mascot though.

Yeah man, i saw those. After my eyes stopped bleeding i set them back to the default skin. I kid, i kid. But really i'm not just talking about the colours but the actual graphics, icons and overall look and feel. I'll leave it up to you though, this is your party.

Jan 8, 2009 16:39:10 GMT Just Anotha Stupid Online Name said:

Ger's got the right idea- I proposed a while back (maybe at the first meet up?)that anyone who wants rto can come up with an Irish style character or TFIO mascot. I didnt get chance to organise this due to several different and 1 hilarious reason, but now seems like a good time to reboot the idea, so I put it to Soundwave and Hot Rod and Nemesiis that we set up a thread were we display peoples drawings of acharacter exclusive to TFIO ousing whatever design(g1,movie,animated,any line or series) they want, we post to the email address then it set up as a vote in the thread so that everything is fair andeveryone get fair shot. Along with the tag of being creator of the character, winner gets a prize (,I'll dig out something). bonus is if we get couple of great designs, could somehow lead to a mini strip of somekind.how that sound to y'all?

1 Hilarious reason?? Oh please share!!

As for the competition, it might be better to wait until there are more members signed up to contribute. At the very least we could all spread the word amoungst the boards that we go to. Announce a competition being run and for people to sign up and have a go at designing a character.

That might lead to too many accounts being created that are never used leading to some bad housekeeping so another alternative might be to create a googlemail address and have people mail their entries to that.

Just my ideas though. I'm all in favour of whatever is decided.

[Rodimus Prime]

Jan 8, 2009 20:01:08 GMT gdpwatson said:

Yeah man, i saw those. After my eyes stopped bleeding i set them back to the default skin. I kid, i kid. But really i'm not just talking about the colours but the actual graphics, icons and overall look and feel. I'll leave it up to you though, this is your party.

ALL MY HARD WORK!!!! HOW DARE YOU!!!!! j/k

I'm gonna put some more together tonight anyways, and we are taking steps towards personalising the whole thing so that it's a bit more US and alot less THEM.

But your suggestions are welcome. We can only go on what we're comfortabe with, so we won't know any better until someone says otherwise.

Keep em coming buddy and welcome to the forum.

[gdpwatson]

Thanks man.

Hope i didn't come across as too much of a dick. I was just fooling around. Building a web forum, tweaking it and get the settings right then trying to skin it all takes time. It's early days for this forum and after all, Rome wasn;t built in a day.

I'm sure when you look back in a year you'll see that this place has come on leaps and bounds!

Thanks for the welcome.

[Rodimus Prime]

Well, we're hoping it all comes together. Alot of it is trial and error for now.

And we are taking on suggestions. We're working towards putting a banner across the top etc, but as the forum is run by an outside source, it's fairly restricted.

That being said, we're looking into, how shall we say, "bypassing" some of the restrictions.

Oh oh. I've said too much.

[Just Anotha Stupid Online Name]

gdpwatson said:

As for the competition, it might be better to wait until there are more members signed up to contribute. At the very least we could all spread the word amoungst the boards that we go to. Announce a competition being run and for people to sign up and have a go at designing a character.

That might lead to too many accounts being created that are never used leading to some bad housekeeping so another alternative might be to create a googlemail address and have people mail their entries to that.

Just my ideas though. I'm all in favour of whatever is decided.

Exactly what I was thinking, anyone,member or not can send entry to the gmail account, but only registered contributing members will be able to vote. Having not drawing in a while how long do you reckon for a time frame to draw up somthing, betwwen people working,and general life getting in the way?!! 3 weeks from announcement, maybe?or more?

[gdpwatson]

Jan 8, 2009 20:53:41 GMT Rodimus Prime said:

Well, we're hoping it all comes together. Alot of it is trial and error for now.

And we are taking on suggestions. We're working towards putting a banner across the top etc, but as the forum is run by an outside source, it's fairly restricted.

That being said, we're looking into, how shall we say, "bypassing" some of the restrictions.

Oh oh. I've said too much.

Hah! You wee scally-wag! Be careful now!

I'm more than willing to contribute anyway i can to forward helping you achieve your goals. I have some photoshop skills and work as a web designer, so there may be something there that i can do to help.

As for skinning the board, well i've skinned some other things and know it can be a nightmare but you'll typically find resources available to help you.

If it was me, and this is just me throwing things around, i would buy an actual domain name such as tfionline.net and point that to this board. That way you're still getting a nice domain name but not pissing off the proboard people as the current url will still work too.

Me being me though i'd just host the whole damn thing myself and cut all ties to mandatory advertising and un-wanted ad banners!

Obviously though that's more to do with the fact that i am a web designer and have done similar in the past. And, as i said, this is your party. All i'm doing is offering my services as best i can.

Jan 9, 2009 0:25:52 GMT Just Anotha Stupid Online Name said:

gdpwatson said:

As for the competition, it might be better to wait until there are more members signed up to contribute. At the very least we could all spread the word amoungst the boards that we go to. Announce a competition being run and for people to sign up and have a go at designing a character.

That might lead to too many accounts being created that are never used leading to some bad housekeeping so another alternative might be to create a googlemail address and have people mail their entries to that.

Just my ideas though. I'm all in favour of whatever is decided.

Exactly what I was thinking, anyone,member or not can send entry to the gmail account, but only registered contributing members will be able to vote. Having not drawing in a while how long do you reckon for a time frame to draw up somthing, betwwen people working,and general life getting in the way?!! 3 weeks from announcement, maybe?or more?

If you were going to run it i think that a month is plenty of time to allow all potential entrants a chance to get something done. That gives those people working full time jobs a chance to squeeze in a few hours over the course of the month. I'd also limit it to one entry per person just to make it fair. Otherwise those with more time on their hands could submit more entries than those with little free time.

Assuming that this is was going to happen then i'd set Saturday 28th Feb as the deadline and would get things setup for judging with what's left of January. This means setting up the voting system, email address, rules, terms, potential prize it any (even something simple like a Voyager class figure). Then toward the end of the month when things are set up the competition could be kicked off proper with that deadline locked in place.

[Ger Hankey]

Yeah what he said. An announcement on the 1st of Feb and a closing date of the 28th would be loads of time.