the main page of mapcore

[Nexus]

There was hardly any news beyond the job postings, which we replaced with the much better recruitment forums. The spotlight was also rarely updated. All in all, the front page didn't receive much interest and took focus away from where the real activity is: the forums. Indeed, when you came across the front page before it was hardly even apparent there was a very active and fun community behind it — it was just a dull page that looked dead.

MapCore isn't really a site IMO, and hasn't been for many years. It's a community, and so to me that seems like what should be on the front page. Why hide what the site really is behind a boring news page? It's best to keep the forums front and centre, show off the nice active community, etc. We might as well be honest with ourselves: MapCore is a community first, and possibly a news site second. It'll never be the other way round.

The general concept I had in mind was a fairly conventional forum listing on the front page much like we have now, but with the top area much more developed to include a spotlight section, a proper page menu, news headlines, etc. Similar to Interlopers but with more focus on the data coming from the forums themselves.

One idea I do like is basing news headlines on the gaming discussion forum. At the moment we have a cool mix of people posting various news-like threads and more generic gaming discussion, both of which usually generate nice discussion. I think it'd be good if mods could tick the best news-like threads and then they'd appear in the news headlines in a box at the top for everyone to see, thus kind of making everyone a news editor and ensuring news is frequent. An RSS feed and whatnot could be provided too. Perhaps people whose threads are picked often could receive a spotlight-like honour.

All ideas, anyway. I do think something can be done that everyone will be happy with, and I personally wouldn't want to see anything done that'd compromise what works pretty well right now so time needs to be taken to do it properly. If you have any things you'd like to see just post them here. The spotlight is an obvious thing everyone wants to see back.

Then we can try to atleast make better forums and improve the boards. New fonts and perhaps new theme for the forums.......

mapcore is better then interlopers . I think we should inmplement a rate this post system (as on youtube with the + and - thumps up)

just ideas

[Psy]

New themes and fonts? Those are unnecessary additions.

[Thrik]

One critical problem with the design discussion is the way our forums are organised. I've been looking at detailed statistics I've been gathering for a few months now, and the overriding message seems to be that we have too many design forums. People are diluted too thinly between them, and a lack of activity in each discourages people to start new threads.

I did suspect this was a problem before I gathered actual data, back when I did the first major restructure/prune of various forums. I considered making changes then but decided not to disrupt people too much and just restructured the more general forums.

I think what I'll do is just go ahead and fiddle with the design forum structure a bit tonight/tomorrow. I think trialling a different arrangement I have in mind could very well increase activity.

Edit: Actually I'll do this next week or so as I'll have more time to actively keep an eye on the changes and their effects.

[dux]

Can this be the new core logo? I can't stop laughing everyime I look at it. It's just so mapcore.

[Thrik]

Certainly!!

[Psy]

lots of words

I very rarely visit anything other then the level-design board and I'm sure other people don't pay interest to some of the other WIP boards as well. You could merge them all into one, single "Work In-Progress" board and everybody who visits them will be able to see textures, models, levels and this will probably lead to a bit more activity.

[kleinluka]

If it ain't broken, dont fix it... I think the core is fine the way it is... No need cluttering it with useless graphics and themes..