Idea for Consideration: Front Page Invitation for Content?

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Yeah, we're all pretty much mods. Ed Sullivan is the coder of the site (he is/was actually a VBS developer, if I remember correctly).
 
T

Terentius

Guest
I could help with some coding if you guys want. Not a wiz with the front end/css stuff though.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
We don't really need coding at the moment - just some wording for an invitation to post on the forums that I can post on the front page :)
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
So it would be visible right off? Well, how about...

Welcome to the Casual Players Alliance. We're a Magic: the Gathering fan website founded in 1999 as an offshoot of the Magic Dojo. Some features of the website are now obsolete, but feel free to check out our message boards, which are still going strong and feature discussions on a wide range of Magic and gaming topics. If you're interested in publishing articles on the front page, contact Spiderman on the message boards.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
I should note that the header for the message boards themselves reads "CPA Message Boards" and the front page link to the message boards reads "Community Forums." Those are synonyms and most native English-speakers would figure it out, but for optimum clarity, they really should be called the same thing in both places.

Actually now that I think about it, the invitation message should have a hyperlink to the registration page for the message boards anyway, if that's possible...
 
P

Psarketos

Guest
I believe that the following html changes, replacing lines 19 through 23 in the index file of the main page, would achieve what you are looking for as well (if that is a possibility). Text provided is example only, and font size / color adjustments would be a good idea as well, though I would leave that to the administrative palate.

<td width="63%" height=82 background="/images/adback.gif" bgcolor="#336699" nowrap><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial" color="#ffffff"><b><font color="#cccccc">Create an account on the forums to submit casual Magic content and engage in discussion!:</font></b><BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td width=130 height=82 bgcolor="#336699"><img src="/images/trans.gif" width=130 height=82 alt=""></td></tr>
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I don't want to *change* the front page to put some constant "Come Post" type message. That seems obnoxious to me. Just a one-time or semi-annual post on the front page where I make announcements. Right now, the last announcement is from two years ago so there's not a worry about it disappearing anytime soon anyway.
 
P

Psarketos

Guest
I definitely understand your concern about not being obnoxious with such an announcement. The html change to the page index I suggested above would only be as large (by default) as the Latest Replies type is right now, would replace that broken / probably not used front page space with something helpful, and would have web spiders such as Turgy mentioned grab an invitation to the page rather than a broken set of links to 2014.

Understandable if that is not the route you want to take, but it is one way to approach the concept that I think can be done without being obnoxious necessarily (unobtrusive front page presence of whatever size / color / etc. you would think best of a single sentence in the page header, essentially).

I would add that if you do not want a specific invitation to take that space, the text involved could be anything you think would be good for an automated web crawl to pick up about the page. Replacing the outdated replies portion with something else could be entirely seperate from an invitation to participation.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I've looked around and don't seem to have access to the front page code, so I'll ask Ed if he has the time to do some minor cosmetic changes like that.
 
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