Neverside

Luke,

Just like the rest of the community, the staff at Neverside is a diverse group of individuals. For example, I am a designer, not a developer. I have no idea how to write php beyond a simple include, which I only know because I asked Scott how to do it. Similarly, Scott is a developer, rather than a designer. We each have specific roles that we are more specialized in, so doing a redesign is definitely not a waste of time, as I couldnt have really done much else as far as development goes.

The redesign has absolutely nothing to do with the sparse development. I'm sure Scott is even more busy than I have been, and I hardly had time to relax last year at school. I really dont care about making money with neverside, thats not what I am here for. I am interested in making a community, but I just dont have the ability to spend much time doing it.

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Hello. I am Joe Shoop's Portfolio

The number of active users reported by the forum software is most likely buggy and wrong (in my opinion). I really don't know, since I didn't program it - but I suspect it is wrong based on the fact that hundreds of users online would cause quite a bit more activity than is the reality on Neverside.

So far as ads, Neverside makes almost no profit with ads, even when they are present. This is a well-known problem for forums that's difficult to overcome, since members of forums quickly become almost completely blind to the ads and never click them (or else some click the ads "too much" trying to help the site out, but end up getting the site's ads removed for click fraud - i.e. Google AdSense... though fortunately that has not happened here). Neverside also gets far less visitors than it used to at this point. That doesn't mean I've given up on ads though... I'm studying as we speak on methods to improve in this area (in case anyone's interested, check out what Lee Dodd has to say, and also join up at one of his new forums earnersforum.com).

Down is correct.... doing a redesign is not a waste of time. A few designers have had the time to do so lately, designers who don't have anything to do with the programming of Neverside. The programmers on the other hand are not available right now, but that doesn't mean the designers shouldn't do anything either. If anything though, the efforts of the designers making a new redesign can be encouraging to the development team or in gaining the interest of new additional developers. Also, though we're infinitely grateful to Aeon for the excellent design he did for NS, we have a new direction we want to go with the design.

I know it was probably buried within a large post of mine above so you might have missed it, but please recall that I am in discussion with the staff right now about migrating back to vBulletin or another solution, if we decide that will help us get moving and be best for the community. We may continue developing NeverAPI in the background, and move back to it when it's truly ready (as should have been done in the first place). Like I've said, building our own unique and improved custom software was a great idea, but it just hasn't worked out so far.... since I am solely "responsible" for this site, I've got to make the hard decision now to take us a step back if necessary, if it is what needs to be done. If we decide as such, every effort will be made to include and preserve the studio. Personally, I'm not interested in building software - I'm interested in building community.

You may not remember, but at the time Neverside was originally conceived, TF was already in a state of greatly declined activity - NS was an idea proposed to confront and hopefully overcome that. We bit off more than we could chew, and here we are.... but I have some new plans for NS and I believe things will change for the better soon.

Thanks for your comments, and please keep them coming

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-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

Is NS going to have all kinds of misleading text ads on the site with the redesign comes?

Nothing against you Dave, but AbsoluteCross is ridden with misleading text ads.

I personally like the bigger fonts, tan bg and simpler layout.

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Why are we friends? Srsly...

Rider, no it won't. And so far as misleading links on AC... not sure why you'd say "ridden with misleading text ads"... I assume you're referring to the top link bar.... I can see how that could be considered misleading (though the links do point to good sites, including NS). The main thing is I have to give a certain amount of clicks to my main sponsor or I will lose the only funding that's been keeping AC and NS running. Other than that there are Google ads, and all have been approved and encouraged by Google. The Google ads are actually doing much better now and may soon relieve the need for any other ads. Do you find the current Google ads misleading? The intent of the images next to them is to overcome ad blindness and get people to at least read the ads and consider them... it seems to me they are quite clearly ads as soon as you've noticed them and begun reading what they say (i.e. it says Ads by Google, and every link shows a www.Domain.com link showing it is an off-site link)..... let me know if you feel they are misleading though (via PM - so we can stay on-topic here).

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-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

Hi all!

Thumbs up over the new design i like simple! One thing i noticed here over the previous site (TF) is the dark colours (mainly the huge amount of dark grey that is present on both sides of the content area) could this not be a lighter colour?

also the ad space (or lack of) im sure there was more than one ad location on TF and as most people dont hang around at the top of the page would it be worthwhile adding add locations at the bottom of the page and maybe every (n)th post just increasing the amount of ads displayed and maybe even the clicks per page view?

im sure i like any user would not mind the extra ads if it helps keep this place alive! (as long as it dont go OTT like some sites).

BTW the forum re-laying out seems to be ok overall! maybe moving the Showrooms under Web Development?

You talk about maybe porting across to vB will the studio element still stay if this was done?

Hope these comments prove useful

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Current status: Taken
Somethings Coming: 07/07/07
**stewis lubs Sarah **

@AbsoluteCross

I'm not sure what to write here honestly, I have never really 'used' neverside, I don't post in the forums, I don't even read them. I've never used the studio etc, so you could say I'm not a member, but I have been following the site for a over a year, just watching you could say, as it has always intrigued me as something that could be quite successful.

I know you have said that your programmers are busy, and I know how you feel, but in reality, that doesn't really cut it, the content is what needs improving on this site, that's what will help NS. Doing a complete redesign is not going to get you new users, or even create more interest for the site, don't get lost in that. Albiet it might help, but the studio, forums and new features is where you need to focus, that will build this 'community'.

Now for the redesign. It looks like you have a good base to work with here, and you are correct about the beige background in the other version, it looks shocking, the grey is much better, but could still use work. The white background is too bright, which has been mentioned so I won't bother with that.

I can't really comment much on it as it's only a forum page, mabye a look at the Homepage will help, as that's the first impression your visitors are going to get, that needs to be top notch. However from the little bit that forum page shows us, you need to look at the little things, like the footer. You've got a single line copyright on the left and links on the right, then you have the 'Site & Graphic blah blah' underneath, but that's two lines, and has that unnecessary shadow effect. It unbalances the footer and draws attention where it shouldn't be.

I know that's picky, but there's not much else to look at on that page, so not much to comment on.

Anyway, keep up the good work, keep working with that design, it is a promising start, and I think you have the potential to do good things with this site, just make sure your goals are heading in the right direction. Also good to see you have learnt XHTML/CSS, it's rewarding when you know it huh? Feel free to reply to this, in fact I'm expecting you to!

Cheers,
Ben Lilley

I like it, change is good.

I've liked this site since TF, I like it now though it seems the studio hasn't been working the way it was planned but I know things will get better with time.

I'll always stick around because this is a very open minded community, I know my comment doesn't help at all and I haven't been the most active user, but I really admire the time and effort of the people who are still interested in NS. Good work!

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"¿Por qué buscais la felicidad, oh, mortales, fuera de vosotros mismos?"
~Boecio

Good CSS book btw Dave, I'm reading the same one.

One thing I always hoped to see here was a tutorials section.

Maybe that's not with this site was designed for but I think there are a lot of tabs to fill and it wouldnt be a bad idea.

Absolute cross I know if anyone could come up with some sick tutorials it would be you!

Also I like both versions, I'm not really into graphic design anymore so I'm not completely sure why I come here so often but I love this place so I keep coming!

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My Blog

A tutorial section is definitely in the plans... in fact that's really the core idea this whole thing was originally founded on. I believe there will be onsite tutorials, as well as a comprehensive database of organized tutorial links. I plan on tying any resources created by each member to their profiles as well (i.e. your user.neverside.com page will have not only your studio entries and latest posts, but also all of the other content you've contributed, such as tutorials, articles, code snippits and scripts, etc).

Thanks for the compliment bout making tutorials I'm planning on releasing the rest of Robouk's tutorials within the next few days, and have a couple nice ideas for some new ones of my own.

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-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

I'm working on messing with the layout Dave. Since I'm going home this weekend, I'll have time on the bus or back home to give it more attention.

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Neverside - In Development. Expected Release: Unknown.
Tortustudios.com - In Development. Expected Release: Summer 2006.( You can visit it now)

A suggestion to gain money if needed for the development/design of this community is possibly to offer a donation link to either pay any donation, or maybe even a monthly subscription, but @ that point, there would definately have to be something new contstantly. I wouldn't see it as feasable @ this point, but it could be useful in the future.

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Well, seeing as how I was apart of the April Fool's joke back on TF, I was guarenteed exlcusive member privs, a case of Bawls (which I never saw), and a lifetime subscription. So yeah, I'm taken care of! The other people can do that monthly subscription once new things get to rolling out

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Neverside - In Development. Expected Release: Unknown.
Tortustudios.com - In Development. Expected Release: Summer 2006.( You can visit it now)

I like it. It should be simple! Besides, I think NS lost a lot of the TF members due to the heavier graphic. People want forums to work fast!

It's sad that NS isn't what TF used to be. It's made me look more and more for other forums. I hope a layout remake will get some new members. It shouldn't take 1 week to get a response on a forum in a thread. That's what it feels like now

Originally posted by instats:

I like it. It should be simple! Besides, I think NS lost a lot of the TF members due to the heavier graphic. People want forums to work fast!

NeverAPI is blazing fast compared to TutorialForums' vBulletin. Look at the bottom of this page, it's all parsed around 0.03 seconds. NeverAPI is much faster as far as parse time goes. As far as graphics are concerned, Neverside's are probably faster then TutorialForums' were (plus the CSS helps, even though Neverside's CSS is crap). But despite the fact that Neverside is likely faster in all respects, that doesn't mean that Neverside is better. I still preferred TutorialForums' design and atmosphere.