rejetto forum

Software => HFS ~ HTTP File Server => Topic started by: TSG on January 21, 2009, 04:56:54 AM

Title: RAWR-Designs is changing.
Post by: TSG on January 21, 2009, 04:56:54 AM
RAWR-Designs is looking to improve your HFS and Web experience. A new website is being designed to incorporate new features such as Tutorials, RSS feeds, Forum and Search engine optimisation (Google friendly directories).

Eventually we will be starting up our own forum, limiting activity on the RAWR-Designs board to only HFS related talk. This change will open up our website to the web a lot more than it is now, and give people a place to ask anything they like. The tutorials will be used for HFS templates, HFS in general, Web Programming, Web Design...Want to know how to make a shiny vista gradient? Want to know how to install RAWR-Player on your website? Want to know how to write a basic JavaScript function? Want to know how to remove a startup program from your windows pc? Anything! Whatever comes to mind we will post, and you can comment, hopefully a couple each week depending on time constraints.

We are also looking to make more web objects, possibly as tutorials so anyone can make them. Depending on the object of course, if it is too complex we will simply post the object and a tutorial on how to use it. Eventually we may even open up tutorial creation to anyone who has an account with our website. This will take some time to implement though and will not be available until we get the forum up and running.

Thanks to Fysack for the very generous donation, it is good to know that some people really do appreciate the work we do for this forum and the web community. Donations go a long way to help pay for the web hosting of http://www.rawr-designs.com, if you want to donate just visit the website and follow the paypal link. Consider even $1.

I have attached a prototype of the homepage for those interested.
Title: Re: RAWR-Designs is changing.
Post by: Kremlin on January 21, 2009, 04:57:04 PM
Great! Looking forward since this will with no doubt get people to get creative and generate more ideas for everyone to use on their HFS servers.
Title: Re: RAWR-Designs is changing.
Post by: Ranger on January 21, 2009, 08:57:10 PM
Ah this is great news! Looking forward to it.
Title: Re: RAWR-Designs is changing.
Post by: TSG on January 24, 2009, 05:30:08 PM
Here is the latest prototype, its an evolving monster, we keep coming up with ideas and trying to work out how to fit them all into the design within the old colour scheme. We are liking this one though, feel free to share your thoughts, we want to continue with the current colour scheme for continuity, we want this site, from the face, to look like an improved version of our old website. Until such a time a new design is in order.

As soon as I am happy with the template for the homepage and the new look is finally online, just awaiting features, I'll begin on the updates to the RAWR-Player and the bug fixes and improvements for the templates.

At this point in time we are focusing on getting the site working to the stage of the old website and slowly adding features as we finish them. But then there is the large task of allowing user generated content. The security considerations for account access and control are a headache, we thought of using a pre-built CMS, like MODx (http://modxcms.com/) but in true RAWR-Designs style, we are going to attempt to make it all ourselves. It provides a challenge and is a very good learning experience for both Richard and I. We've learnt a lot from the current RAWR-Designs website, we see it as a kind of portfolio showing what we can achieve as a team.
Title: Re: RAWR-Designs is changing.
Post by: Kremlin on January 25, 2009, 12:28:57 AM
I congradulate you and Giant Eagle for your enthusiasm, and I can quite relate to your point of view on the learning process through struggle. In my opinion, RAWR-Designs seems to be going in the right direction from what i've seen in these prototype 'pics'.

Now then, as sugestions I think you should enthesize in the creativity aspects of generating new features and designs for HFS templates as we all use them for different purposes, and by everyone sharing new information, we can all grasp more tools to give our own little touch to our own web-pages. Other than that, tutorials should not only resume to XHTML/CSS language, and should proceed also to Javascript and Flash as these allow the creation of new applications, which have already been seen in ToG, RAWR and Terayon.
Title: Re: RAWR-Designs is changing.
Post by: TSG on January 25, 2009, 11:44:27 AM
That is the intention, the Tutorials and Reviews will be about anything in general, obviously categorised and tagged for easy searching and navigation. The added ability to talk about things in our own forum will be essential, especially if it is totally unrelated to HFS or our own templates issues. I'm hoping to increase the number of templates, and the quality of templates for HFS. I miss the days of different templates and designs popping up on the forum. I think it is because they get lost in the forum, that there is no place for people to host and show off their own templates, is what is causing the lower level of template creation. I am hoping that there are other people out there that use their web design and developing capabilities with HFS, some may shrug it off due to 'real' servers using php, sql, etc. But I love HFS for its simplicity and power, and that's what I think a lot of us enjoy about it.

I hope that people can make new templates, by learning from their experience using our templates, their own, and extending on ideas. I'm all for creativity. I don't like carbon copies of our own templates with just a delete function tapped onto it, unless of course the user releases it in the form of a Tutorial instructing a user how to install such a feature. We will have a quality standard for hosted templates.

Of course we don't mind if our template is modified and released under the same license we use, as long as it has some sort of noticeable changes... I don't like it when people host the entire template archive of say... 'RAWR-Template with Delete' on the forum, people hit those download links and the data is not recorded at our homepage, we lose track of the amount of people using our templates this way, there isn't enough different about the 'RAWR-Template with Delete' to define it as a new template. At least with the files hosted on our own CMS we can monitor and show file hit counts, with the ability for people to rate templates with a star system and comments. Numbers are a key purpose to keep the project alive. Without numbers or donations, the project will stagnate and we will eventually abandon it entirely as we move forward with our life.

It might be just wishful thinking that this website upgrade will make us a permanent and recognisable part of the rejetto HFS community, more-so than just template providers. I want our website to be THE place to go for HFS templates and template deviations, a fun place for people to get creative and innovate with HFS templates.

Remember, the templates we HFS users create are the external interface and an advertisement of HFS for the friends and family using these personal servers to transfer files. So be proud of what you create, dress up your HFS in a way that reflects the quality of the product hosting it.

I am hoping to speak with Richard tonight, hopefully he has the time to read the thoughts displayed here. So far I have 3 possible moderator candidates and 1 confirmed, Foggy will be a resident moderator and poster on the new website.