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So, I’m thinking about making a couple of changes to the site, and I want to see what people think of them. First, I’m thinking of getting rid of the splash pages entirely so that people come straight to the wordpress site. I think it might be easier, and provided something of a cleaner user experience that way.
I’m also thinking of turning on the option to use “pretty” permalinks, so that you’d see something like dreamhart.org/forums/ rather than dreamhart.org/?page_id=405.
Finally, I’m thinking of adding a forums.dreamhart.org subdomain that would point at dreamhart.org/forums/ so that it’s easier for people to go straight to. I may also add some others, over time, to help make navigation to specific topics easier.
This may, in the short term, bork a few things… but I will work to get all of the bugs out of the new system as fast as possible, and I can do it even faster if you guys use the bug report forum to let me know if you find any once the change happens.
So… what do you guys think? Good idea for a change? Let me know, this is your site too. 
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Oh, you do all that tech stuff I don’t understand; I’ve got my bookmark on the forum, and that’s all I need.
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Well… this might change the address of the page you have bookmarked. But I’ll try to make sure that all of the old pages seamlessly redirect to the new ones, so the bookmark should still keep working anyway. 
Ancient of Days
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Sounds good to me. I definitely approve of ditching the splash page. It seems kind of old-fashioned these days.
I have no opinion between forums.dreamhart.org or dreamhart.org/forums. Unless there’s some technical difference that I don’t understand, that makes one preferable over the other.
What I would love to see is an alternative skin option, with dark text on a light background in all areas of the page. The white-on-black is not so easy for me to read.
Ancient of Days
Fambly
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I don’t think any of this sounds like a bad idea. I’m all for the KISS method myself. Shortening the links and getting rid of that splash page, I think, would be a huge improvement.
~Tenshi
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I think I’m going to go ahead and do the migration then, if there are no objections. May not be till the weekend, tho.
Cas: I’ll work on the style selection, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Particularly with the forums, there are several overlapping style sheets to deal with as well as the main style for the site. I’ll see what I can do, but it may take a few weeks to work out something usable.
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Okay, I’m going to ask the really stupid question. What is a splash page?
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Claude said:
Okay, I’m going to ask the really stupid question. What is a splash page?
This. The page that shows up before the main site.
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Ohh that! That’s cute though! Or maybe I’m just easily amused?
Ancient of Days
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Jarandhel Dreamsinger said:
Cas: I’ll work on the style selection, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Particularly with the forums, there are several overlapping style sheets to deal with as well as the main style for the site. I’ll see what I can do, but it may take a few weeks to work out something usable.
There’s no worry if it’s too complicated. I thought it was just a case of finding and downloading a template, like you do with wordpress themes. As the main body of the posts are black-on-white and it’s only the supplemental stuff, I can get by as it is.
Ancient of Days
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(argh, I’m really finding this post editor hard to use. structuring quotes especially is proving to be difficult. I can’t seem to get out of blockquote once I’m in it; clicking the quote button again indents another level, rather than toggling off.)
Jarandhel Dreamsinger said:
First, I’m thinking of getting rid of the splash pages entirely so that people come straight to the wordpress site.
Splash pages are nice for new visitors, but can tend to get annoying for repeats. If you’re thinking of creating subdomains, that could be a good compromise: those who come for the first time to dreamhart.org can see the splash and those who know they want forums.dreamhart.org can just go there and skip it.
“Pretty” permalinks are nice too.
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Arethinn said:
(argh, I’m really finding this post editor hard to use. structuring quotes especially is proving to be difficult. I can’t seem to get out of blockquote once I’m in it; clicking the quote button again indents another level, rather than toggling off.)
That’s weird… as long as I’m on a newline, clicking the quote button toggles off for me. I’m not sure what would be causing that.
Splash pages are nice for new visitors, but can tend to get annoying for repeats. If you’re thinking of creating subdomains, that could be a good compromise: those who come for the first time to dreamhart.org can see the splash and those who know they want forums.dreamhart.org can just go there and skip it.
I’m just not sure if the splash page adds anything for the new visitors that wouldn’t be served equally by an “About Dreamhart.org” section. And I’m really trying to encourage all visitors to become repeat visitors, as much as possible. Hard to really form a community of commenters and forum members without that.
“Pretty” permalinks are nice too.
*grins* Yeah, should make it much easier to link back to stuff, rather than trying to remember page ids all the time.
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