when making a site..

[• oriftastic!]

what do you do first. do you focus on boards, codes or the skin?
also, when you decide to make a site, why did you choose to make it? did you just want to be an admin, or did you believe you had a great idea and you wanted to share it with the world?

i, myself, focus on the codes and then the skin and then, at the very end i do boards and that's when i usually give up on the forum. before i've actually made the boards, i wanted to make the posts and such, but i put it off and when it actually comes to it, i can't be bothered because i have no muse for it.

when i decide to make a forum, i normally choose to make it because i like the subject, or i just want to create a forum for the sake of it.

what do you do?

[krista!]

i focus on the codes first. i get the forum to the width i want it and such and then work on the skin. the last thing i do are the boards, but i usually write them all down on a piece of paper first so that i don't forgot what i envision in a forum.

i love making sites. like literally i am addicted to it. i find it thrilling and seeing new members join is a joy for me. (: i like meeting new people through roleplaying and it's so much fun. the reasons why i make sites though are for different reasons.

heathington i made a while ago with jac because another forum we were on was dying and we wanted to make a site together. it's taken a bit for us to grow but hey, we're still growing. jac and i worked hard on that and we came up with the finished heathington in less than a day, although we've been adding and taking away stuff since then.

this site i made because i wanted an active roleplaying community that you really didn't have to roleplay on (if this makes sense). the sites i was on that kind of focused on that didn't meet my expectations. i realize that we aren't very active right now but for a new site we are and we're getting there. i love coming online and seeing the posts you guys make. we're still a community and it's great.

i'm in the process of making another site right now but it's not going as smoothly as i want it to go. there are three other admins, two of whom haven't kept me updated in a couple of weeks and one of whom has barely done anything thus far. hopefully that changes because i'm very antsy to get that site in the open but can't do much until a plot is finished. the reason why we made that one was because we were missing the said old site that jac and i used to be a part of.

this is only slightly relevant and very irrelevant. i apologise.

[» candy]

I almost always start with the skin. Its best to actually start with the banner at the beginning because that's where you should get your colors from first. Then progress to the rest of the skin. Then after I have the skin done as in all the images done, I go and code out the site, then apply the skin to the site. Its usually easier to do that way since some codes that I like to use require images depending on how I want it to look.

I love making sites, but lately I haven't done that much. People nowadays need to think of originality rather than how to beat out someone with their site. They need to actually put time into their site and not give up on it before its open to the public. I myself usually get friends to help who actually like the idea, so I can't back out of it.

[• alan]

I'm a scatterbrain so I would probably make everything in an odd order. Do a few codes, do a few boards, do part of the skin, and repeat until complete. I've never made a site though so I can't really say for sure.

[panda]

I start with an idea. I nurtured my current game for 2 years before I launched it. I had to get the ideas right--I didn't want to be another admin who abandonned a game after 2-6 months. I'm a lifer in gaming and in admining (or I strive to be), so the idea and getting the information right is the most important thing to me. Once the game concept is clear in my head, then I can flesh it out, make sure everything makes sense and add extra bits as I go.

From there, I sort out my forum of choice--phpbb3, I have the benefit of owning my own forum software-- and have a bash at skinning. I am not big on making sure it's a gorgeous layout--just so long as it's readable/says something about the game. Because of my game format, I do not have the luxury of premade skins so I have to do it myself. Because of this my layouts develop slowly, get gradually better until I think I have it sussed.

From there I'll work on the customisable bits--what mods will be useful? How should I set up the game format? Do I want APP or APC? (Account Per Player or Account Per Character), what rules are necessary, how can I best communicate the need-to-know information without overwhelming the players?

The idea, however, is the most important part of the game. I wanted to start my game because I was on to something unqiue (genuinely difficult in HP) but it needed to be nurtured and worked on.

[Vertigo.]

Always, always, always focus on making the board look nice first. This means codes, codes, codes, and more codes! Headers and footers are my best friend the first few days of making a site. [= I always love my sites to be about 70-80% width with a cute little table on the side just like everyone else's (I'm soooo original). =P Then I focus on skins, banners, buttons, all that jazz. After all that's done, I finalize coding and make all the boards/topics for rules and whatnot, then do add-ons and put polls where they need to be. But after I do all the creating, I advertise the bajeebus out of the site for about a week straight and then just wait for members. That's uuuusually when I give up on the site. =/

When I decide to make a site, it's a mix of wanting to be an admin and having a great idea. The first time I made a site I just thought it'd be so awesome to be an admin. Man I was wrong. Lol. I got so lost within the first week I gave up, studied, and now I have three sites of my own and make graphics.

[taeko monster]

well, i've only opened the one site, but i think its best to start out with the banner. that's where you get your color scheme from, then work on you skin and coding and all that loveliness. after that the boards and then you start refining. in my case, i took a month and a half before i actually opened the site.

when i made my forum, my friend and i were just hanging around after school on a wednesday, and we starting coming up with the idea. we both decided to create universes off the idea separately, then smash 'em together. hers was more based around a school and a group of teenagers (sort of buffy-style, i guess, minus the vampires), and i wrote my version, which turned itself into my forum.

[jenya ☆]

Because I use IF board more, so there's something different from Proboards. I would find a nice skin first, and add a table/sidebar code. I then would build some forums, and sometimes I would go back and write the plot or rules and then build some forums. Then I would make some graphics, build some forums, post some important threads... it's like a circle and I would keep doing them until everything had done. I might change the skin a few times before I made the graphics.