I figured its good to give the site owners some input/feedback/suggestions whatever on what people would like to see from a competitive community site. different sections what not stuff like that. you know, 2 heads are better than 1 or w/e.

Suggestion List:


New section ideas:

-League Section (subdivided for all of the different leagues that have L4D) This seciton could include highlights, predictions, results, rankings, news, etc for each league

-Tournament/LAN section - News and info about upcoming tournaments and LANs, and also maybe results from LANs.

-Demos/Movies/Screenshot/maps(once sdk is released) section (media) - coming soon

-File Section(i believe graham said you are working on an uploader) - coming soon

-Match section (stats, current/upcoming matches, upcoming shotcast, tournaments etc etc)

-Team section: a lot of teams dont have thier own sites, a place where users could create a team page(logo, rosters, leagues, records, accomplishments, bios stuff like that, something they can edit and keep up to date) make it required that they have them approved by an admin before they are listed in teh section so there arent teams that dont really exist or have a half assed page.

Possible Changes:

-Frontpage left hand column:


add a section above latest forum posts for the Community news section of the forums that shows recently posted community news or maybe just stickied community news (things like this should be fairly easy to implement with vbulletin when we get it, not sure about fireboard)

-news post images

-site skins/graphics

-flash news post at the top center with images that highlight the 5 most recent frontpage posts


fixes:

-Fix the post/thread preview. (not happening, waiting for vbulletin)

Other Suggestions:

-Advertising campaign for comml4d

-article writers

-ventrilo spy

-arcade

-Minor css color fixes, for instance the submit/cancel buttons are white text on a white button (I understand this is a work in progress)

-A strategy section; I was looking online for tips on versus gameplay/teamwork and there wasn\'t much info anywhere. This could probably be achieved through a board on the forums.

-Upcoming competitive events

I\'ll keep thinking.

The site is being promoted as \"The home of competitive L4d\", and I like that, but there\'s very little emphasizing that on the site itself.

I think that it is great as a marketing tool for the site and would like to see more of that mentioned here as opposed to just on IRC.

Haggle wrote:
The site is being promoted as \"The home of competitive L4d\", and I like that, but there\'s very little emphasizing that on the site itself.

I think that it is great as a marketing tool for the site and would like to see more of that mentioned here as opposed to just on IRC.

the site has only been live for 24 hours, there are more features to come that will emphasize this from what ive been told, the about section mentions it. The news posts are all pertaining to competitive community things.

I understand that, and was simply posting a suggestion I had. I\'m aware that the site has only been live for 24 hours and would like to see it grow as you do.

I think this site is great for being 24ish hours old.

Here is what I think it needs:
-Downloads Section (Videos, Maps, Demos, Screenshots)
-League Section (subdivided for all of the different leagues that have L4D) This seciton could include highlights, predictions, results, rankings, news, etc for each league
-Tournament/LAN section - News and info about upcoming tournaments and LANs, and also maybe results from LANs.

This is all I\'ve got for now. I will keep thinking.

still gettin my inbox spammed from notifications.

the buttons on the reply are still white on white

I agree with the league sections. There also needs to be some sort of advertising campaign. I mean if i wasn\'t active or in the community i wouldn\'t know about this site. L4d411 is the biggest. People who aren\'t informed about this stuff currently have no way to find out about it.

dmonixed wrote:
still gettin my inbox spammed from notifications.

the buttons on the reply are still white on white

We have subscriptions totally disabled but I think you were automatically subscribed before we turned them off. We cannot delete users\' subscriptions so you\'ll have to unsubscribe from \"Great JOB!!! by m3rker\", \"Site ideas? by dmonixed\", \"Infected Cup I (a communityl4d.com event) by dmonixed\", and \"Dead Before Dawn Teaser by dmonixed\" yourself.

Alex wrote:
I agree with the league sections. There also needs to be some sort of advertising campaign. I mean if i wasn\'t active or in the community i wouldn\'t know about this site. L4d411 is the biggest. People who aren\'t informed about this stuff currently have no way to find out about it.

I will be working on the League section in the coming days. We are also working on a few publicity deals as I speak. Thanks for the suggestion, Alex.

You need sweet article writers, and figure out how to get shoutcasting working so we can get schetter onboard with this.

forum private messages would be nice

forum posts per page needs to be increased, 30 seems like a good number.

dmonixed wrote:
forum private messages would be nice

forum posts per page needs to be increased, 30 seems like a good number.

We\'ll get the PM system up shortly. 30 is now the number per page.

Graham wrote:

We\'ll get the PM system up shortly. 30 is now the number per page.

Just got this up.

Once Graham gets the League setup finalized I\'m going to fix the CSS and make it live. ETA should be tomorrow afternoon.

Testing the image sizing...

http://www.google.com/images/web_logo_left.gif

Works!

Fix the post/thread preview. :x

Ravager wrote:
Fix the post/thread preview. :x

On it. In the meantime I fixed youtube embedding:

{youtube}2M0EbYuzJBc{/youtube}


There\'s a button in the post editor for it.

When signing up for an account or editing it, the fields are what looks to be a white or another unreadable color in a white box.

Damian wrote:
When signing up for an account or editing it, the fields are what looks to be a white or another unreadable color in a white box.

Got it, thanks.

Here\'s a really great idea that just came to me to help increase users of this site. Most of the people that use IRC and idle in the l4d channels already know about the site, but what about all of those people signing up on CAL to play this season for l4d?

I think that we should try to get one of the admins to send a mass pm to all the registered cal-l4d players to inform them about the site. If not, then perhaps there is someone or a few individuals that would like to volunteer their time to go through the teams list and pm everyone themselves.

We did post this thread on the CAL L4D forums:
http://forums.caleague.com/showthread.php?t=277343

It would be great if you guys would bump it.

I might try to do some of that PMing business once the season gets going but the teams aren\'t settled down at the moment. One way that you guys can help us spread the word is by adding me to your friends list (my Steam name is Skazzle). I will invite you to the CommunityL4D.com Steam group and you can go from there and invite every L4D player that you play with or against to the site\'s group. It would be great if everyone would link the site on their clan forums or any third party forums.

Image resizing works now. Sorry about that.

Ventrilo Spy.


Also, is there anything we can come up with to make the site a little more interactive other than the forums that could draw more attention to it and get more registered users?

Brainstorm Ideas Below:

predictions page
recent matches
arcade? lol <- vb has this and i know it entertains some forum trolls.

Predictions section is good. i will be making them each week either way.

Yea we are working on a predictions section at the moment. Until then, feel free to post your predictions in a thread for each CAL week.

How ABOUT a DONATE button right in between Servers and About? Personally I think that would work just fine! However, it\'d kinda need to be a business style donation none of this christopher.johnson@gmail.com 413 N Maine St. Houston, Tx XXXXX LOL. How bout a legit CommL4D donation? ehh ehh ehh? Maybees?

there is a donate link on the front page..

NOT BIG ENUFF!!! And that\'s definitely what she said... BTW for those of us who don\'t visit the site for n e thing but the forums... where do u think my bookmarks or quick connect go to? ehh ehh ehh ur homepage or our forum? ehh ehh ehh? <3

couldnt sleep, and i had a few ideas, not really important stuff but just things i thought that might make the site look a bit better and what not.

Also before i make any suggestions, is there anyway to skin the front pages and make them look any less cookie cutter template style?

this post will probably turn into a rant of the dreary headed who cant sleep, already heading that way.

On the front page at the bottom of the news section we have this

<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 Next > End >>

Its very small and plain, obviously serves its purpose, but this goes back to my idea of skinning of the pages to make them more unique, possbly having a background and different type of font, or are we basically stuck with how it is because of the type of site?


I think each news post, or at least a majority of them should have a image posted at the top of each post, to give a quick idea of what the news is and give the site a better look, basically a banner graphic for each news post.

Also is it possible to have a flash news post thing at the top center with images that highlight the 5 most recent frontpage posts?

Frontpage left hand column:

move the server browser and polls below the latest forum posts

add a section above latest forum posts for the Community news section of the forums that shows recently posted community news or maybe just stickied community news (things like this should be fairly easy to implement with vbulletin when we get it, not sure about fireboard)

turn off flash header images on forums, it looks awkward.

more info on the about page, future plans, staff members, contact info etc.



Possible New Sections On top menu bar:

File Section(i believe graham said you are working on an uploader)

Team section: a lot of teams dont have thier own sites, a place where users could create a team page(logo, rosters, leagues, records, accomplishments, bios stuff like that, something they can edit and keep up to date) make it required that they have them approved by an admin before they are listed in teh section so there arent teams that dont really exist or have a half assed page.

updated OP to summarize all suggestions and took out things that have been done.

Done:

- move the server browser and polls below the latest forum posts

- turn off flash header images on forums, it looks awkward.

- more info on the about page, future plans, staff members, contact info etc.

- flash banners link to pages they are identifying

- Fix the post/thread preview. - No dice, I spent a few days tracking this down and came back dry. Waiting on vBulletin.

Coming Soon:

- Demos/Movies/Screenshot/maps(once sdk is released) section (media)

- File Section(i believe graham said you are working on an uploader) - As soon as we tweak the graphics, the Media section will go live. Members will be able to upload videos, screenshots and replays.

- add a section above latest forum posts for the Community news section of the forums that shows recently posted community news or maybe just stickied community news (things like this should be fairly easy to implement with vbulletin when we get it, not sure about fireboard)

Also Needed:

- Text formatting buttons in Fireboard scroll you to the top of the post, so annoying.

I\'d love to volunteer to do coverage of individual matches for the infected cup.

Not sure if I can spectate games yet or not, but if so I could sit in on a match record demos and do a match write up after the game. If not I would be willing to look over demos and do match write ups that way.

good work ben, not sure how i like the look of the left hand column with the changes, how do you guys feel about it?

For the files section, some additional categories to suggest to add are demos. Also a section for server/user files like maps (only good ones) and configs.

Need more supported file types in the File Sharing section, especially for rar, zip and 7zip.

Once CAL picks up and possibly CEVO, there should be a section for COTW. Give teams the ability to post what they believe is a great clip, and let a panel decides what stays on the site. BEST POUNCE TO DATE, FASTEST DEATH OF A FULL HEALTH TEAM, BEST TANK CLIP, etc.

Damian wrote:
Need more supported file types in the File Sharing section, especially for rar, zip and 7zip.

Got it. Let me know if there are any other formats.

Site needs a section for preds. pick top 5-10 matches per week and each member of the pred panel makes preds for those matches. jinn and i talked about this a few days ago.

Just added the donation total and target to the donation module on the frontpage.

Also fixed redirecting after login/logout, sorry about that.

What about a section on the forums or site for L4D Artwork? People can post their works, and other can request for things like sigs, banners, etc.

Damian wrote:
What about a section on the forums or site for L4D Artwork? People can post their works, and other can request for things like sigs, banners, etc.

Filesharing section -> Images

Here are some of my ideas.

-Match bets. Every week, people will make predictions on each match and points will be scored or lost depending on the outcome. This would be for bragging rights and make a prize at the end of a season. This was really popular in the ET and DOD communites.

-Have a top 10 for each league. People will vote for their top 10 teams and it will be added up and posted. This will be reset every 2 weeks. It can display which person voted for which teams. An example would be top 10 for Cevo and for CAL (if it ever comes back)

-We should have some type of system on the main page where teams can go and look for scrims. Basically, your team posts a time that they would like to scrim and another team can accept it. Think of it as a random Gamebattles match but would be for scrimming. Looking for a scrim tomorrow at 9pm? Post it and someone can set one up with you. You can possibly set it up so multiple teams can accept the scrim request and you can pick which one you want to play from a list. It would be a very simple process. You only need to fill in team name, time/day, bh/nm and a comment section.

-Have a picture of the week on the main page. Every week, one picture that people send in will be selected and displayed. It can be from something like raping another team to glitches to plain old funny bullshit. You can also photoshop stuff in. Just make sure it is L4D related. Have a comment section for people to rant.

(Fixes)

Get rid of the most recent commentary list. There is really no need for it since we only get a new one every few weeks.


Here is a preview.... (rough edit)

http://i39.tinypic.com/2lavdc7.jpg

I like the idea of bets, sounds like a fun little side thing that I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy doing.

The stock/bets thing is a nice idea, seen it done several times before and was always entertaining. Scrims thing just sounds like a lot of work for nothing, eventually we'll have some cal scrim channel for main teams but in the mean time somebody around here should be able to make a successful invite-only scrim channel.

I like the idea of bets, sounds like a fun little side thing that I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy doing.

This

we used to have a cod stock market in cod. picking up/buying the teams and selling and raising your stock. was pretty cool.