On 7 Jul 2001, at 0:59, Meera Barry wrote:

>          Geocities likes to think it's a community, but its logo
>          got annoying a long time ago.   (Not to mention how often
>          it tries to crash my browser...sigh.)

Yeah, the "annoying popups" came up in the chat.
 
>          From a personal standpoint, I'll start with:
>          no frames.

The evilness of frames also came up.

>          No changing the colour scheme.
>          First, it's irrelevant, but phoenixes are hot and firey.  My game 
> is cool       and subtle. [grin]  Second, it's too transient...

Actually, the notion was more along the lines of "standard format, 
but with variable color scheme customized to each game" rather 
than "same color scheme for each game."  See the oldold picture 
for an explanation (though that creaky old format would *not* be the 
one we'd be using).
 
>          [Off-topic note: that thunder is menacing me.]

Hooray for uninterruptible power supplies.
 
>          I can amend my look to take in the Phoenyx logo on the same place
>          on each page, as necessary.  It wouldn't be my first choice.

I think it's going to take more than the logo.  This'd be a 
replacement for the navbar, for one thing, and include more, clearer 
links to other games.

>          I would be willing to have a standard "opener" page.
>          (Something like, Phoenyx logo, name of game, more information,
>          maybe   something like letterhead/cover sheet.)

I've thought about this, but some people go out of their way to then 
avoid sending people to that page.  (Naming no names, there's one 
Phoenyx game that has mirrored its entire site, so as to fulfill the 
navbar requirement while maintaining the primary site without one.  
The claim is that they just haven't gotten around to putting the 
navbar on the new site, but it's been a year or so.)  Which is why 
I'm bringing up this sort of thing... if I'm going to make 
requirements, people are going to have to buy into the need for 
them, and not try to weasel out of them.

>          I don't know how to standardize the content unless you could
>          maybe have an "ingredients list" sort of thing for each page:
>          Number of players, moves, some other statistics... nah.  Not
>          quite right.  I guess I was thinking of something like a way to
>          find information about a game and compare it to others in
>          a quick fashion.

That'd be the Game Summary page, which we stopped requiring a 
long time ago and will probably start requiring again (in revamped 
form) Real Soon Now.  There's a template for the old version (which 
IIRC still talks about batch processing, which will tell the old-timers 
here just how old it is) at 
.  We've 
thought about streamlining that and opening it up to non-Phoenyx 
PBeMs, as a sort of game registry.

That's kind of a separate subject, though.  I'm not looking to 
necessarily standardize the content, just everything AROUND the 
content.

>          This would be fun: A way to grab random quotes from
>          the archives.  Nevermind.  That could also be too dangerous
>          and too out-of-context.  And not relevant to the question.  OK.

I've been pestering everyone to volunteer stuff for the Quote of the 
Week (see the mainpage), but so far no one has.

>          Hrm.  It can't be TOO subtle, and it can't scream "Whoo-hoo!
>          Phoenyx!"

Hey, there's nothing wrong with screaming Woo-Hoo once in awhile.

>          What do other sites do?

I was trying to come up with this last night, but there really isn't a 
site I could find that parallels us.  I was particularly disappointed to 
find out AncientSites is gone.

>          Letsee.... similar colours and page breaks/graphic "lines and bars."
>          Frames... loud obnoxious graphics...

The colors need to be flexible, since I'd just as soon not override 
the local game's flavor. Ditto the graphics, and anyway I don't want 
to serve up a *lot* of graphics.
 

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