MapCore Job Census

[Thrik]

The problem with the front page is that who's going to actually maintain it and make it interesting for people to go out of their way to look at? It's not like you need a front page for a successful forum community, as we've shown with LucasForums. Our forums do a great job of having an always-fresh front page that takes no work to maintain.

I'm opposed to the idea of just having a front page because we can. As MapCore itself has demonstrated repeatedly, when we do have a front page it gets everyone excited for a few months and then becomes a stale, dead fossil. Even the news forum went totally dead and averaged three posts per year as of about 2005.

I also prefer it when members (or staff) post new threads in the gaming discussion forum about news and hot topics (Which they did anyway, even when we had a news forum!), as it encourages discussion. By splitting it into a separate forum or area it just dilutes the conversation.

IMO the forums are what MapCore is mainly about these days, and we shouldn't get distracted from keeping those as the focus — indeed, I almost put them on the top-level mapcore.net domain when I moved them. Another approach might be for me to work on a custom phpBB theme that is more akin to Interlopers, in that it has a top menu with links to areas that could be presented more like static pages rather than threads (but still be threads underneath), and contain our job census, tutorials, etc. These would of course be really nicely presented and look like proper pages, maybe with company logos, etc.

So MapCore would effectively become a full-blown site with sections, but the forums would be the front page and focus — not some news page that nobody really cares about. It could be put on mapcore.net instead of forums.mapcore.net to reinforce this direction.

[FrieChamp]

It...would be just nice to get the spotlight galery back....all I'm saying..

[Thrik]

lol

I wasn't really responding specifically to you Frie, but more to the general notion of a front page. There've been a number of times it's been mentioned over time and I'm just addressing how I feel about it.

It is something I've generally thought about and I do like the idea of a forum with actual page sections. Kind of like Interlopers, except without the front page (which I believe would be unnecessary for MapCore). Instead we could have spotlight entries and tutorials built into the header, which may or may not only appear on the front page of the forums (again, similarly to how TribalWar has news in the header).

[Hourences]

Trying to run a frontpage with news and similar is madness, no one will keep that up for long enough. What I always liked about the original frontpage was:

-The featured levels

-The recent forum posts

Basically it acted as a nice summary tool, nothing more. It would be nice to have a frontpage that simply highlights a number of things, such as the current best work, the latests posts, the current job openings posted in the pro job forum, the current mod recruitment posts, and a place perhaps for this thread. A "Mapcore in the industry" page. That would also be good to make the site look more special/professional/serious/however you want to name it, as there are clearly so many professionals visiting these forums. Basically trying to not come across of random forum community #6789114 full of a million random noobs, but be something more than that.

My point is, the front page shouldnt distract from the forums, it should actually promote the forums by offering the most important and valuable information in an easier way.

[FrieChamp]

Ok not sure if this is still the right thread to discuss this but I just wanted to say that I completely agree with what Hourences and also what you said Thrik. Nobody needs another game news site and nobody said we should get exactly that up what has been there before. The news part of the frontpage was absolutely unnecessary, but I also believe that there is a lot of cool stuff buried in the forums that gets too little exposure. So I see this like Hourences. The spotlight galery was a step in the right direction, something we should bring back in my opinion, maybe in a slightly altered way. The "new posts/new pms" link was also handy and I don't have anything against a poll IF mantained regularly. But more importantly we should try to bring more of the "cool stuff" that is posted here to the frontpage, to attract visitors that don't like to dig through every thread. Hell, even I don't check "random model thread page 21847217" each day and when I do I am always stunned what cool new WIPs have been posted. Or some of the discussion threads that are interesting and valuable to read could be mentioned with a snippet on the frontpage. The problem of the spotlight galery was that it merely focused on 100% finished work, for which feedback was mostly obsolete and additions came in too rarely.

Summary: Let's link more cool stuff that the forums spit out on the frontpage

[Thrik]

I suppose utilising a front page for showcasing the best of the forums (eg: job census, cool WIPs, etc) is a good compromise. It's still relying completely on the forum-generated content rather than trying to become something else, but is a bit more structured and serves as a good introduction to what MapCore is all about if nothing else — and of course useful for people who can't check every thread.

I definitely wouldn't want to see it so detached from the forums like the old front page, though. The consistent design of Interlopers is the thing I like most, while our old front page looked completely different to the forums.

[-HP-]

Yes, that would be really great! I loved that banner on the old index with the maps spotlight tho. Maybe we can have something similar with WIP maps as well

[Psyshokiller]

I'd really like to see those ideas for a new frontpage come together.

Zbrushcentral is utilizing a similiar technique to highlight wip stuff. There's the Spotlight gallery on top of everything and if you look into a subforum, there's another gallery showing thumbnails from the first page of the selected category.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/forumdisplay.php?f=2

I don't know how the thumbs are being organized there, since someone has to make them in the first place. Maybe we can add a function for the thread starter to add a thumb if he likes.

[Ginger Lord]

Having the spotlight stuff and the latest professional jobs/mod positions on the frontpage could be good.

[Thrik]

OK, feelings acknowledged.

[kleinluka]

Well, I am quitting Grin and just signed a job at Eidos Montreal to work on Deus Ex 3. Fun times ahead

[Cybbe]

omfg!

[insta]

Well, I am quitting Grin and just signed a job at Eidos Montreal to work on Deus Ex 3. Fun times ahead

Said it a million times before, but congrats man

[-HP-]

Well, I am quitting Grin and just signed a job at Eidos Montreal to work on Deus Ex 3. Fun times ahead

Holy s...!

You are so lucky Klein, I feel a bit relieved for knowing that a mapcorean is working on the next DeusEx.

I hope you played and loved the first one, because that's the same experience that I'd love to have on DeusEx3.

[FrieChamp]

Montreal -> Barcelona -> Montreal

Sometimes I'm also thinking I should go back to Frankfurt...anyway, congrats Klein! Cool to hear that it worked out