FOG's Latest Changes

Sorry the board went down without warning tonight, guys! We apologize for any inconvenience. (I hope none of you were in the middle of posting anything important, like a role-play post, when it went down!)

Tony/Axiom had a few ideas suddenly occur to him for ways to make FOG even better looking. I also had been considering redoing the forum icons for a little while lately too, so we decided to go ahead and get to work.

As you can see, the banner has been changed, and we've rounded some more corners throughout the board to go along with it. We've also completely done away with the border going around the message board, along with the Chatbox at the bottom. No one really used that anyway, and it was taking up unnecessary space/cluttering the site. (So, if you guys get the urge to chat live, check out our chat room link at the top.) We still might do one more semi-big thing as well.

Axiom made new forum icons, but we don't like them at the moment. We don't like the colors of them, and they're also a little big. He's going to be redoing them, but it's going to take some time. He spent a lot of time making them in the first place. I don't have the original forum icons saved any more either for us to revert back to, sadly. So, please bear with us with the icons. They will be improving!
EDIT: Ahh, well, looks like Axiom just fixed them.

This is a little outdated now, but here's the old layout for comparison:
https://2img.net/h/i111.photobucket.com/albums/n152/Syren_Song_Fate/FOG/FOGBoardLong2.png


We hope that you guys enjoy all the new changes! Thanks again for bearing with us and for being so patient! I tried to keep you guys updated, for the most part, along the way. (Were you guys reading the updates while the board was down?)

Sighlent was giving me updates every time your little message changed, Fate XD

Lol glad they were useful!

Yeah. I kept refreshing the page every so often, and I liked that you changed the message once in a while. It gave me hope that it wasn't going to last for an eternity. ^^_^^

Honestly, not a fan of the icons but it doesn't really bother me.

What does, however, is the fact that everything takes forever to load now. Just sort of locks up the browser until it does fully load, which takes well over five minutes...

Also, I wasn't reading the updates. Didn't really pay enough attention to see they were there, just waited long enough to see it was still down (yes, it was taking forever to load then as well).

...what the hell just happened, Fate? The icons just inflated on my computer and I dun like it...

Edit: My bad...it's fixed XD

I'm sorry that you don't like the icons, Melancholy.

Which images exactly are taking long to load for you? We saved them for Web and Devices in Photoshop, so they should load faster than they normally would.


Axiom was messing around with stuff. Lol I freaked out too, Gunneh!

I'm glad it's mostly an update of the look we've all gotten kind of used to rather than a massive overhaul. I was sort of afraid that I'd be facing pastel colors or some other radical change the next time this place was back up.

As I said, it doesn't really bother me. They just don't fit in well with everything else in my opinion is all.

Not any specific images, just the entire site. A few moments after clicking on something the screen goes white and it just sits there until everything comes up at the same time.

hahahah I was afraid of that, too, especially after Fate said something about worrying about his choice of colours... and the fact that behind the logo at the top the background was bright red for a bit. ^o_o^

Yeah... I kind of agree that the icons next to the threads really aren't cohesive with the theme. I can't remember what was there before the little paper and pencil, but it looked better to me.

I would agree about the icons, though I can't say that they really bug me. I am sure I could get used to them. As for the rest of the site, I like it Great job!

I like the changes. But I was thinking, "Oh, not much longer" and ended up refreshing FOG every few minutes


I probably refreshed FOG like thirty or forty times no lie.

Lol.

But the changes looked nice. I watched the banner slowly morph and change. It was hilarious. Especially when the top part over the woods picture was all bright red, I was like "Poor poor Fate, must have a lot to do."

I like them all, especially the new icons. O: Very nice job, you two.

I just read The Melancholy Spirit's comment, and agree somewhat (not on the icon look, but elsewise). I have noticed that it takes longer for the site to fully load up. Not a much greater time, as I'm during the early morning and have probably the best internet connection I'll have all day.

But I can see this, later tonight, serving as a nuisance. Why might it be taking longer to load? Perhaps the larger image banner at the top of the screen? Or is there some kind of coding or something that might create a tiny lag?

I'm not sure exactly what's taking FOG so much longer to load for some of you. The banner itself is actually smaller in size than the old one lol. So, that is a bit confusing.

The icons for the forum still may not be finalized. Tony was extremely tired by the end of the night, since we ended up staying up till 2 in the morning, so he still wants to work on some things and tweak other things.

Lol the colors Tony originally chose were some yellows, oranges, and pinks, and blues, which I was not crazy about, and that's why we had a huge problem when he finally finished making the icons, since he had to redo them all. Like I said though, he still wants to work on improving them and some other things. We just seriously ran out of time last night.

Yes, I also noticed that there is no difference between normal topic icons and popular topic icons. Are you going to change that or keep it as is?

Oh, I actually wasn't a fan of the popular topics icons, but I can have Tony make those if you guys like them.

I'm actually surprised though that you guys don't think they really fit the theme. Is it the colors or the objects in the icons themselves? The main one is a paper and a pencil, which I thought went along with writing. Did you guys just prefer the darker icons? Tony actually ended up finding where our old icons were uploaded to, so we still have those.

The slow render-time is most likely due to Forumotion. Its running fine for me at the moment, I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Keep in mind that Forumotion is constantly tinkering with their servers; claiming to "increase their effenciency", but in reality they end up doing more harm than good, and whenever the problems are solved the end result is just the same as it was before they started screwing off.

Changing FOG's pictures and CSS should have absolutely zero impact on the render-time. Forumotion is to blame for that.

Okay, good news for all of you who don't like the new forum icons:
I just found some new ones that we're going to work on adjusting and recreating.

The pencil and paper, I realize, reminded me too much of school, and I'm wondering if it did the same for you guys. These new icons though fit even better with the theme. :]

Odd...seems like I'm the only one who likes all the new changes o_O Except for the longer loading time, of course. *goes off to curse Forumation* <--

Spoiler:

I think the icons are fine, BUT here are some ideas for icon shapes/images that might blend with the theme better.

Blue/White leaves (cartoon leaf, maybe I'll find an image in a few minutes)


etc. etc.
I think this would go with the banner having a forest-y look. And blue and white would go well with the color scheme, but the colors would have to be changed manually, and the image could be debated. I'm sure these two are just idea-starters, or bla bla and so on.
-
Blue/White ghosts

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Blue/White Smoke (this would be more an abstract shape, and would take more time to create because finding them image would be damn near impossible)

HALT I like the new icons.

Pens are SO MUCH BETTER THAN PENCILS lolz.

Oooh, I just noticed your suggestions, Eternity, since I've been offline while Tony was working on the icons I found earlier today. I like the ideas, though I wanted to keep the main forum icons more on the serious/professional side, since we already have some fun and cute icons that also go with the other side of our theme (ghosts) for our ranks. I'm glad that you like the new ones!

I definitely am much happier with these new ones Tony/Axiom made for us. He spent so much time working on them and making the reflections and the colors and the transparency and such, so I'm very thankful for all his hard work.

He also changed the links at the top of the message board to make them part of the bigger picture and more cohesive, rather than a separate entity.

I'm much happier with these icons compared to the last set. I hope you all like them as well. I'm sorry for the load times. I think it might be on forumotion's end. I'll probably be working a little more with the links at the top later. So let me know how those are working for everyone and what you think of them. Thanks for your patience everyone!

I'm loving the new icon set and I also adore (if a guy may use the word "adore") the new nav bar. It makes everything very...shiney. xD

Good work Axiom!

Thanks for the feedback, guys! We're glad that you like the new icons and nav bar, Agenda!

I agree, all of the changes are very satisfactory! Job well done

Thanks, Silvone! :] Axiom did most of the work, and most definitely all of the work when it came to all the coding.

Very nice work! I like these new icons better than the others you had. And the navigation bar is awesome! It really call just comes together!

About the icons, I don’t remember what was there before either. That, however, is what I liked about the old ones. They didn’t stand out, they were just there and it was easy to tell when something had changed. Just more a fan of things that blend in smoothing, and for something such as the icons I don’t see any reason they should look a certain way, stand out, or anything of that sort. ~shrugs~ Not my site though, I’m just along for the ride and can live with it.

As for things loading, it isn’t just that they load slower for me. They simply don’t load, at all. The page goes white and I can’t do anything on the browser at all (that includes the back, refresh, and so forth buttons as well as the tool bar at the top). It just sits there like that for anywhere between five to eight minutes until it all pops up at once (aside from one or two buttons, usually). Doesn’t really matter what is doing, just annoying as hell really. I’ve built up a decent amount of patience thanks to using dial-up all the time but when it just freezes up until everything is loaded it takes a lot for me to even bother getting the main forum up.

Hopefully it will load properly soon… but until then I wouldn’t expect much (if any) activity from me. :/