Improving RMS

[l2ue]

As many of you may know, RMS is the most respectable RO server listing and database website out there. 1) It isn't filled with a thousand overlap ads. 2) The most reliable and updated eAthena-based database. 3) The best search functionality. 4) Variety of tools, settings, and downloads related to RO.

But even though I've been consisting trolling everyone including the staff, this doesn't mean I don't want RMS to succeed. If RMS succeed everyone wins; server owners, players, and the rest of the RO community that has long ago deserted us.

Website Graphics
The website graphics aren't appealing at all. Everything is either blocked, blue, camouflage, or bland. It seems as though all the effort was put on the functionality of the website, but didn't pay much attention to the user-interface quality. There isn't an easy fix to this problem because this would take talent and effort to redesign the website, including compatibility with different internet browsers and artistic talent.

However, there is an easy way of going about this. 1) Keep the design and focus on improving the quality of the images; possibly a better background style instead of a deep blue. 2) Paid attention to the font, color, style, heading, and other text related things in the CSS. 3) Make it clean, simple, and minimal.

Improving the user-interface of the website will attract a more loyal community and ultimately the overall quality and contribution to the website. RMS might actually have active accounts that participate in the community through forum, irc, events, and reviews.

Server Listing
A nice improvement for server owners would be to disable the server description word limit. It would be interesting to see what the owners actually have to say about there server instead of advertising punchlines. Better description provided to the user is better than the endless number of statistics. What would be even more interesting is for server owners to customize there server listing like a facebook/myspace page.

The rating, reviewing, and ranking system is broken as far as I am concern. Server owners needs to be self-conscious of the reviews they are getting and it should be reflected in there rank and rating. To improve the reviewing system; 1) remove the word limit, 2) allow viewers to determine the helpfulness of the review and the most helpful (top 2) reviews to be featured on the server's front page, 3) moderation of spam and false review and preventing foul play.

A really interesting thing that RMS can do for the RO community is to recruit volunteers to write quality reviews. Basically, they're like critics but with a non-bias agenda, extensive RO knowledge, private server experience, and fluent in English. A good candidate that I can think of is Yusifer, fairly knowledgeable and not completely stupid. I would suggest myself, but I would probably trolled every server and stamp yC's name all over it. This would at least help pave the way to higher quality reviews.

Forum
The 'community' is dead. There are only a few 'veterans' that I still see lurking around but everyone seems to be inactive as time goes by. New members don't last long and most people just complain, whine, complain, whine, complain, whine, ask for help, don't speak English, ask for help, complain, and whine.

The overall atmosphere of the forum is grim because moderators are tired of everyone (so tired that I am not even banned/warned/moderated once for nearly months now) and veterans don't even play the game anymore. In short, RMS has no community and this is bad news for everyone.

Any forum improvement, however insignificant would be better than nothing. I am not asking for major changes like switching forum software, purging and wiping, strict moderation (especially this one), or anything, but any initiative to show improvement to the forum would be very hopeful for remaining veterans.

Community
Again. RMS is the most respectable RO private server related website out there; if RMS show that they do care for the community, there will be a community. This means server owners will gain more players, RMS will develop a community again and gain more ad revenue, players will benefit from playing on a quality server, and everyone else will be better off.

And if you're like, "wow, l2ue u make so much sense," your welcome.

DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET. DO ET.  ROMANTIC LOVE SONGS HERE. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. DUET. yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC yC  OMG OMG OMG OMG.

That is all.

[Relics]

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b393/aznFalco/sgaeh.jpg?t=1306706164

BEHOLD

a simple illustration of the inevitable truth




ps i would actually love to see RMS grow

[Triper]

A better theme for the forums[or some to choose from a list] would be a nice start, let's face it, when someone come here and go to some other forums what people think? RMS is a bit fugly ;(

[yC]

l2ue, in an ideal world there is no time dimension.  But this is not the world we live in.

Website Graphics -- yes obviously functionality goes first.  Too much graphic or too much detail slows down the site for everyone, that will lower the usability.  I prefer to keep things simple.  

Yes simple, you said it.  But your "3) Make it clean, simple, and minimal" contradicts your "1) Keep the design and focus on improving the quality of the images; possibly a better background style instead of a deep blue.".  Like I have a higher quality version of everything on the site but I choose to use the acceptable-quality because they will otherwise slow down the site loading and use more bandwidth.  Font, color, style, heading are personal preference, no one have to agree with anyone.

Server Listing -- I am clueless as to where do you get the idea that there is not enough space for server description.  I am seeing they are not being used enough or blank server description everyday.  Take a look at the recent trend please.  Anyway any no-limit means spam will be disastrous, is that your ultimate plan?  -.-

You have to remember huge control need to be put on this site because of the amount of people that are constantly trying to abuse the system.  

1) remove the word limit - answered
2) allow viewers to determine the helpfulness of the review and the most helpful (top 2) reviews to be featured on the server's front page - you want to deal with the abuse?
3) moderation of spam and false review and preventing foul play. - We are trying everyday, i need someone(or the more the merrier) to actually get onto a server whenever I suspect a server is cheating.  That'd be most effective. Yet no one is taking that role.  Not to say I am not doing it myself but I don't have that much resource to keep everything under my control.

Long reviews can be written freely in the forum.  Other than Yusifer can you think of anyone else that will stay active and do as you say continuously?  Yes everyone can use some featured detailed reviews, where to get ... Don't want to open a dead section on the site.  I am currently having the same problem with the RO Guides  & Writing blog site.  There are barely any new guides submitted.  Want to help?
  
Forum - theme/layout.  This was answered in the forum if you have been reading.   There's newer versions to SMF obviously.  I am undecided on whether to upgrade first then new theme or simply new theme without upgrade. Also this has to do with Riotblade.  He managed the forum for years before I see him kind of left so I am getting my hands dirty here.  Many stuff installed previous are outdated, broken, no longer have an upgraded version.  This code we have running the forum are heavily modified by human and add-ons.  I hesitate to upgrade because the worse case would be a wipe (or back to this ... I have some ideas on moving forward but don't have time to try yet in case of consequences).  But I am not ready to get a new theme and stay with this code until it is broken to the core then need to upgrade and get a new theme again.  I am also thinking to switch to IPB since upgrading with SMF isn't exactly any easier.  With all these ideas, nothing ever gets done.  I do have a few people offer to design a new theme for the forum.

Community - this one is out of anyone's control.  no comment.

[DarkDevine]

yC, the current graphics of the layout are huge and take s*** of time to load.

Whats up with that table-layout? Especially those bordersets to round the blue boxes?
They take much time to parse and load.
RMS actually is slow as hell.

These could be divs (One HTML element instead of ~30 for the same effect) and CSS borders, which work in every current browser.
0 images instead of 4/8/9 for each box on the page.

RMS really needs some optimization in this direction

As for the description, what about adding dynamic features? RMS allows setting true/false for a few chosen features, why not let the owner decide, which features he wants to show and which not? If they completely modified their server and got some awesome features, they can advertise like 4 or 5 of them on RMS, everything else takes the viewers one click on the website of said server.

As for the community, the only "Community" RMS has are the users of this forum. But what about those thousands of people that use the main site of RMS daily? They look up their item, got their description and close this site again.
What about implementing some community features? something in a direction like a RO social network?

just my 2 cents

[jTynne]

yC, the current graphics of the layout are huge and take s*** of time to load.

Whats up with that table-layout? Especially those bordersets to round the blue boxes?
They take much time to parse and load.
RMS actually is slow as hell.

These could be divs (One HTML element instead of ~30 for the same effect) and CSS borders, which work in every current browser.
0 images instead of 4/8/9 for each box on the page.

RMS really needs some optimization in this direction

As for the description, what about adding dynamic features? RMS allows setting true/false for a few chosen features, why not let the owner decide, which features he wants to show and which not? If they completely modified their server and got some awesome features, they can advertise like 4 or 5 of them on RMS, everything else takes the viewers one click on the website of said server.

As for the community, the only "Community" RMS has are the users of this forum. But what about those thousands of people that use the main site of RMS daily? They look up their item, got their description and close this site again.
What about implementing some community features? something in a direction like a RO social network?

just my 2 cents

Sorry, yC, but I have to agree with this post. The website coding is incredibly un-optimized, and is circa web 2005. Heck, possibly 2001, as DIV layers were becoming the web standard even back then.

Making the transition to a more optimized website, sure, will suck, and will take time. You have an ungodly amount of content that will require hours upon hours upon hours to re-code. However, much like investing in a renovation, or taking your car in for an oil change, it improves the quality for some time to come.

I'm not saying the current site is garbage - that'd be extremely far from the truth, however, I am saying that there is plenty of room for improvement for the future, that would lessen loading times across systems, and could still adhere to your desire for a simple design.

[yC]

I'll accept 2 cents or even 5 cents or whatever cents.  But the fact is everything is easier to say than done.

This discussion comes up from time to time and I am tired of answering it already.  I don't have people with different talents to line up and work behind me unfortunately.  You can name people to do the work while you say what need to be done.  Things that are not in my priority list will be done when there's time to spare.   But where's the time to spare when you consider the site itself needs up-keep time on a daily basis and update time on a regular basis.  Plus there are other things in life that everyone need to work on.  

You can suggest what's good for the site and I am not going to disagree.  I have to make it clear that agree does not mean they will get done in your life time.  Reason stated above.  It's like you come to my house and say this thing need to be changed, that thing need to be replaced and the other thing need to be upgraded.  Yea yea yea I know better than you it's my house but who is going to do it and who is going to pay (not money issue just time in my case).  Then the next time you come to my house again you see nothing changes and you bring up the same thing again.  

I'll just say things will get done when they are done.  When they are not done I can't tell you when they will be done.  I am more of a developer and developing more useful content is better than making the box nicer on the outside.  What's the use of a very nice fast loading optimized site when there is no content.  

As for the div, I am sure there are more div than table.  There are pages that I tested with div and it doesn't work for all browsers so I let them stick with tables.  Especially those with dynamic content where things can "bleed" out or shift around without a table keeping them in place.  Tables shouldn't be used for layout but still used for presenting data, I try not to force myself to use div when the rule of using table is not broken.  

About dynamic features, they were WITH the feature list (the last 3 were customizable with yes/no) BEFORE the review system upgrade.  Now they are all combined in the "Other Feature Highlights" field because I see how the 3 fields/boxes were used previously and it is for the better.  

RO social network has already been done or failed?  Haven't keep myself updated with the few that was around.  Update me please.

Since it is l2ue brought up this for this time.  You always say "RO is dying" or "RO is dead" or "You are 5 years late to the game" when replying to newbies.  With you around here, it sometimes make me wonder if it is worth the time to keep making the site better for everyone.  But now you are contradicting yourself by saying you want the community to be better.  When you believe RO is dying or dead.  How does that work?

Actually why do I care to answer that much.  It's a troll or a troll bait anyway.  Look who this summoned.  The good old troll as old as lemon are coming back (post deleted for trolling yet again).  You got your answer.  I'll just lock this now.