website/forum suggestions

[gorlab 4,321]

I don't mean for this to come off as an attack on the BoD or anybody else, but I just want to use this written VHL.com to highlight a few points, specifically related to the website, where I see room for improvement. Unfortunately, most of these improvements can only be implemented from a user account that has the privileges/commish/admin forum role, hence why it may seem like an attack on the privileged elite of the VHL, but I again reiterate that it is not.

 

Website maintenance and improvement, imho, is something that always seems to slip by the wayside in sim leagues. I can speculate on reasons why this happens, my main theory being that it's time consuming to keep on top of forum software-related duties, or maybe people don't think it's relevant/important enough to maintain because they're too busy locked into circle-jerk discussions about the aspects of the fake hockey roleplaying, but this observation is not relevant to just VHL, but to most sim leagues.

 

This is from the perspective of someone who uses a PC browser (chrome/firefox) on a computer, not a mobile device, to access VHL most of the time.

 

1) Emote/Emoji cleanup

- The emote list on the website/forum needs an overhaul. The 'default' emote sub-section is half-filled with broken images that are still tied to reasonable keyboard shortcuts like and and , etc. It also seems like the emote/tag prediction pop-up windows stop working, and basic text navigation stops working, as soon as one of these broken emotes are used. (As I'm posting this and adding adding these emotes, I can no longer press 'return' to input a page break into the forum text-editor, and my keyboard arrow keys no longer respond to move the cursor)

 

- There is a 'flags' sub-section within the emote context menu that has 3 generic flag emotes. Delete this. Because of the numerous 'sub-sections' used, it buries relevant emote sets like TEAM LOGOS and WORLD CUP from the pop-up context menu. VHL-emotes should display higher than Animals & Nature, Travel & Places, Objects, Symbols, the aforementioned half-broken 'Default' sub-category, etc.

 

- Should make it open/accessible for members to submit their own emotes/smileys. I started this movement with most of the "New" sub-section emotes back when I was last active, but there are numerous people on the website who know how to crop/cut pictures, and having a rich/funny emote database is a great forum feature imo.

 

2) Forum Themes

- VHL currently has two forum skin options. "Black VHL 2.0" created by boubabi (so it's at least 18 months old) that does look great and I'm glad someone at least set it to be the default forum skin. Then we have 'Default' which is an unedited, very bland/basic invisionboard default skin. Is it really that hard to maybe do a couple of color palette skins? I haven't researched it because I'm not in a position to implement any change like this, but I have to assume there are pre-built forum skins available to download, or at least some invision-created tool to at least adjust color palletes?

 

- Maybe invisionboard forum skinning is extremely complex and difficult, hence why the lack of options are a re-occuring problem in multiple sim leagues, but the 'Black VHL 2.0' has a great custom banner designed by boubabi. We have numerous members here who could submit different site-banners to go with different color palette skins to add some variety. Maybe there might even be an option for new mobile skins for our seemingly large-amount of mobile users. Even a custom-banner for the pre-existing 'Default' blue/white forum theme would make that one at least a little more inviting/usable.

 

3) This Thing

What is this broken pixel.gif image? Can it just be removed? To me, having the IRL money donation section of the website have broken/dead links on it looks extremely unprofessional/scammy as fuck.

 

 

Again, I would like to pre-apologize to any BoD member who thinks this VHL.com / the language & demeanour used within this VHL.com may be a personal attack on them because of the suggestion that one of the most basic/foremost responsibilities of their group is to maintain the website/web forum, instead of jerking their little peckers for weeks/months on end about fake hockey roleplaying, how much TPE is too much TPE to give out, or which members are worthy of GM positions, etc.

 

 

Thank you to everyone who read this far. Feel free to post your own league suggestions as a VHL.com/media spot, or hell, even in the 'Suggestions and Complaints' sub-forum if you don't care about finessing tpe out of them.

[Beketov 8,789]

1 hour ago, gorlab said:

What is this broken pixel.gif image? Can it just be removed? To me, having the IRL money donation section of the website have broken/dead links on it looks extremely unprofessional/scammy as fuck.

I did read the rest but would need to look into it to know for sure that’s possible and what’s not. This I know off the top of my head: that’s not us.

 

When you make a donation button you are given the code by PayPal for the button. We have no control over how it looks or what it contains. I’m not sure what they broke but something definitely did. I know when we switched currencies we had to switch to a new button that looked like shittier quality so I’m not sure what’s going on. @sterling could possibly generate a new button and see if that fixes things.

[Beketov 8,789]

1 hour ago, gorlab said:

"Black VHL 2.0" created by boubabi

Also of note, so far as I recall anyway, Black 2.0 wasn’t created by boubabi. You’re thinking of the old 50th anniversary theme I think that had a lot of black and gold elements. He made that one but we retired it a long time ago since we’re several years removed from the 50th at this point. I do agree we need new themes though, @Will and I discussed it a bit ago.

[Will 4,647]

49 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Also of note, so far as I recall anyway, Black 2.0 wasn’t created by boubabi. You’re thinking of the old 50th anniversary theme I think that had a lot of black and gold elements. He made that one but we retired it a long time ago since we’re several years removed from the 50th at this point. I do agree we need new themes though, @Will and I dis

 

Yeah I heard that in the boubabi cast too - but it was actually me that made black 2.0! 

 

But yes I'll go shopping today.

[Beketov 8,789]

1 hour ago, Will said:

 

Yeah I heard that in the boubabi cast too - but it was actually me that made black 2.0! 

 

But yes I'll go shopping today.

I took Boubabi mentioning it as thinking of the 50th skin as well. That would have been the default when he was banned. I’m guessing he is seen stuff since but doesn’t fully remember what everything looked like.

[gorlab 4,321]

I had just assumed, based on the site banner, that boubabi made the current skin as well. 

 

Kudos to the god @Will tho, it looks awesome. This VHL.com was in no way directed at you, since I think the Portal, and amount of work to implement said portal, is one of the best and most important improvements to the VHL in a very long time.

 

This was meant to spur on one of the lesser commishes/BoD members.

 

 

[sterling 1,990]

On 8/17/2019 at 3:55 AM, Beketov said:

I did read the rest but would need to look into it to know for sure that’s possible and what’s not. This I know off the top of my head: that’s not us.

 

When you make a donation button you are given the code by PayPal for the button. We have no control over how it looks or what it contains. I’m not sure what they broke but something definitely did. I know when we switched currencies we had to switch to a new button that looked like shittier quality so I’m not sure what’s going on. @sterling could possibly generate a new button and see if that fixes things.

Do you need a new button generated?

[Quik 4,113]

On 8/17/2019 at 4:26 PM, gorlab said:

I had just assumed, based on the site banner, that boubabi made the current skin as well. 

 

That's actually not boubs' banner either, but there are certainly similarities between this skin and the 50th. A large part of why most of the skinning options got deleted is that, when we made the latest forum server switch (I believe it was the server, wasn't blue at the time so not 100%), a lot of stuff broke, including all those emoticons you mentioned.

[Beketov 8,789]

2 hours ago, sterling said:

Do you need a new button generated?

Couldn’t hurt just to see.

[eaglesfan036 4,585]

2 hours ago, sterling said:

Do you need a new button generated?

You gonna recreate?

[sterling 1,990]

1 hour ago, eaglesfan036 said:

You gonna recreate?

No.

[sterling 1,990]

1 hour ago, Beketov said:

Couldn’t hurt just to see.

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_top">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations" />
<input type="hidden" name="business" value="H94VS8HA3JSFU" />
<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="CAD" />
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" title="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!" alt="Donate with PayPal button" />
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_CA/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1" />
</form>

 

[Will 4,647]

11 minutes ago, sterling said:

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_top">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations" />
<input type="hidden" name="business" value="H94VS8HA3JSFU" />
<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="CAD" />
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" title="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!" alt="Donate with PayPal button" />
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_CA/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1" />
</form>

 

 

For whatever reason I can't seem to get this to work properly anymore. Can you give me a direct link to the donation page and we'll just wrap the image in it?

[sterling 1,990]

3 hours ago, Will said:

 

For whatever reason I can't seem to get this to work properly anymore. Can you give me a direct link to the donation page and we'll just wrap the image in it?

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=H94VS8HA3JSFU&currency_code=CAD&source=url