You guys do realise that the only 'supported' theme right now is the 'pgd' theme.

Otherwise you miss out on the handy header that shows all the sections of the site. Which pretty much reduces the PGD site to a crumby forums only site. :? You miss out on the staff written articles, the PGD Library, Links section, etc...

But anyhow, back to the main topic here...

So you guys find the new index page [size=9px](the one that shows all the news items, recent poll and other 'main page' type stuff)[/size] to be better or worse than the old one.

Lemme put some pros and cons out on the table here just to help jog your memory on the old one.


[size=9px]Pros to the new one:

  • Has the 'Full Story' or 'More...' feature for news items that I had planned to add to the old one, but didn't have it yet.
  • Has new Recent Poll box, allowing you to see and vote on the last forums poll, right from the index page.
  • 'Who is Online' and 'Statitics' boxes were moved up from the footer to the right side where you can see them better.
  • News system intergrates with the forums so that everything that is in one place, not two
  • Basically any post can be made into a news item now, which saves time and effort for the staff members.
  • It can later be made to work with other phpbb themes allowing for members to be able to select a 'visual style' of their preference.


Cons to the new one:

  • It is far less graphical then the previous. (news icons are gone and new article notification icons are gone aswell)
  • The script to upload an image to the site for the news items is now gone. (replaced by some external, 3rd party place to store them --not very reliable)
  • The News Archive (system) and all the old DelphiGamer news items are gone. Aswell 'Announcements' in the forums do not work their way into pages like the normal posts do, they all remain in the first page. And since ALL the news topics are 'Announcements' it makes for one very long and growing page to load.
  • New Articles and Library items are no longer seen on the main page. You have to go to the 'Articles' and 'Library' sections and look to see if anything new was added. This puts both sections out of plain sight of the visitors.
  • Not many know of this, but 'member only' and 'staff only' news items are gone too. This removes previous options for informing registered members of the site about specific events or site specific activities.
  • 'Recent Posts' box is less custom than the previous planned 'finished' version.
  • PGD Staff blog system harder to intergrate, if possible anymore.
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Well I think I've generally covered it. There are more subtile differences but those seem to be the major changes.


Anyhow... Please, further oppinions...