Transparency on the Website

[Anore 2015]

 

A "Complete" Breakdown of Lord of the Crafts 2(+) Year Long Website Redesign

TLDR: Administration (this includes me) and their constant bureaucracy continues to make month long projects take years and still doesn't get done. Also a lot of spelling and grammar errors that I am too lazy to fix.

 

I wanted to type up this post to provide some transparency on the project to redesign LoTC's theme and fix a lot of the issues on the forums that are incredibly outdated and have been for seemingly the last 8 years. To my knowledge the process started back in July of 2020. I was a moderation manager at the time and I heard through the grape vine that the community team under Muffins and administration were starting the process of trying to update the website. I managed to weasel my way into that chat and initially found out their goal was primarily to update the home page image and maybe the logo. While I am no expect on web design by any means I wrote up a little  DOCUMENT HERE on some areas that I felt really needed to be addressed in order to make our home page more user friendly and just not an eye sore. Additionally there were so many background functionality issues on the forums that were not being addressed.

 

In early August of 2020, I was kind of getting impatient with the pacing of staff team and the lack of anyone with web design experience on staff (I'm sure there were many in the community with those capabilities, but you know how it is with staff blacklists and nepotism of other team leaders not wanting certain people on staff). I got in contact with a web developer and together we worked up some concepts for the web design in this presentation PRESENTATION HERE. I liked the general concept and with the go-ahead from administration I decided that we would work with this web developer and out of pocket I paid for 75% of his services, it took convincing for the server to pay their own share for this project. In total it came out to about $800 of my own money for this design (money wasn't really the concern to me, GameStop only goes up, but it sucks to pay for something that never comes to fruition).

 

In late August I was promoted from Mod Manager to Mod Admin unfortunately, I like to believe that I paid for Admin because I definitely was not the best choice at the time. I believed that with my new position as Admin I could have more power in pushing the Website project forward and ensuring that the website would launch at the same time as 8.0. I was wrong. For the first few months from August - October of 2020 the web-developer and I made great progress and by the start of October we had our FIRST PROTOTYPE for the forums, this was not finalized in any way but it was ready to start importing and re-skinning onto the Invision board forum system. This is where the problems started arising.

 

As our web developer didn't have a separate license to create a custom forum theme (which we knew going into this) we created an account with limited dashboard access for him to skin the design onto our forums and get them working. Since, like all things apparently, staff likes to keep the stuff going on in the background a secret, the developer could only work on items for the site that wouldn't alter too much continent until we were ready to launch the new site. We ran into some issues where there were certain functionalities and plugins needed to be added to our Invision Forum for it to work and myself and the developer had to wait for Tythus to purchase them (for like less than $15 USD). We then ran into overall structuring issues that we needed a member of our Tech team, specifically Lyonharted to fix in order for it to work. 

 

Over the next year (yes I said year) the project consisted of long 3-4 month at a time waiting periods for me to get Llir or Lyonharted to fix issues on the forums in order to continue the design process. The amount of unanswered messages I'd send to Lyonharted rivaled only that of a player trying to contact an admin. I brought up countless times to Llir that we need to bring on someone that can handle fixing issues in the website but as we all know, staff is very selective and even the most mildly controversal member of our community can't be brought on to the team even if they are way overqualified for what we need. (That is unless another admin is friends with them). In addition our external web developer went through some pretty stressful life events that caused them to kind of put the website on the back burner, but in the end it is not like there is much they could do while they were waiting for staff to fix the situation.

 

On my side of things, I have to be honest, I could have done more, in the year+ that I was admin I found myself taking on way more responsibility than was necessary of me and having a hard time delegating tasks. I found myself heavily involved in World Team activities such as developing the new map, community team activities involving content creation as well as running the moderation team. I was in over my head and was not equipped to do the job. The only reason I applied to staff in the first place was to not have to deal with locked doors. I could have done more to push this project along but I fell into the classic Admin stagnation state of working on too many projects at once and finishing none of them. When I finally realized I was hurting the server more than I was helping by staying on as Admin I stepped down in April of 2021. I passed off all the contact information and assets I had related to the website redesign to the other admins and cut ties. The money I paid in my mind is gone, but that's just how it is sometimes.

 

Where is the new website at?

 

As far as I know there has not been much if any changes to the site, I believe it is still just a selectable theme that the admins and maybe a select few staff and select and look at as progress has not yet changed. I wanted to make this post to own up to the mistakes I made in letting this project die, but also to bring attention to the work we were trying to accomplish and bring into question that now after two years how this project is still not completed.

 

Google Doc Link if Post is annoying to read

[Crevel 7557]

It is always good to see the firsthand experience of a former Admin on the innerworkings of a team and the greater staff as a whole. There's a lot of bureaucracy and protocols, which can sometimes be obstructive for a moderator trying to enforce rules. Nepotism is rampant and people who should be removed from teams for their inactivity, bad behaviour, etc. aren't being removed because they know the right people who keep them on those teams and at times even elevate them to higher positions when there are people who should be put on teams that aren't despite easily making good replacements or additions to a team. There is some change necessary to LotC but the website is without a doubt one of the most important platforms that need updating and it's something that from my understanding everyone agrees with. Hopefully we see a new website by or during the transition to the next map whenever that may be. Good post.

 

Spoiler

Also, what is this supposed to mean?

 

[Anore 2015]

Just now, Crevel said:

 

 

  Hide contents

Also, what is this supposed to mean?

 

 

Website borked idk

[Smmer 2441]

put me in charge of redesigning the webbysite, it will be very pretty very 2000's a lot of sparkles and neon bright colors along with permanent embedded music that constantly repeats aka me looping pigstep. 

[Laeonathan 5889]

5 minutes ago, Summerisdumb said:

put me in charge of redesigning the webbysite, it will be very pretty very 2000's a lot of sparkles and neon bright colors along with permanent embedded music that constantly repeats aka me looping pigstep. 

Was this Pfp taken of you while trying to make the website?

[VonAulus 2082]

Please implement the new theme! It is a much needed update and was supposed to roll out with the release of this map. This brown forum theme has been tired since it was implemented!

[Cepheid 4304]

The website prototypes and designs that are in these links are absolutely gorgeous. I hope this post makes it so we can actually finally see the new design implemented. This is something that the players have been asking for since I joined the server in 2019, especially considering how outdated they are. I do hope it gets pushed through. 

[Smmer 2441]

7 minutes ago, Laeonathan said:

Was this Pfp taken of you while trying to make the website?

 

pls do not disrupt work in progrez i am hammerin dah buhgs

[ReveredOwl 5639]

It truly boggles the mind why llir and co would not want this new forum design that somebodies put a lot of time and effort into. The fact you had to wait several months just to get a reply from your own team is truly shocking and just proves a vast majority of the admin team just need to be replaced with people who have more motivation and willing to get stuff done now, not in a years time.

[Werew0lf 24181]

50 minutes ago, VonAulus said:

Please implement the new theme! It is a much needed update and was supposed to roll out with the release of this map. This brown forum theme has been tired since it was implemented!

Hello there, I am a reddit poster. 

 

I just wanted to inform you that you have just made a very racist comment. Why are you bored of the brown forum theme? We struggle so much on this server, and people like you are rampantly exuding toxicity across the board. Please consider your words thoroughly next time. 

 

Thank you. 

[tasty_cheesecake 2298]

3 minutes ago, Werew0lf said:

Hello there, I am a reddit poster. 

 

I just wanted to inform you that you have just made a very racist comment. Why are you bored of the brown forum theme? We struggle so much on this server, and people like you are rampantly exuding toxicity across the board. Please consider your words thoroughly next time. 

 

Thank you. 

i aint readin all that

i'm happy for u tho

or sorry that it happened

[LPT 771]

Thank you for posting this. The more info I get on this whole situation the more and more annoyed I am by laziness of people at the top. It's ridiculous and I'm frankly surprised LoTC has made it this far, but think of the growth the server would see if someone actually gave a shit. 

[Nug 2011]

 

[Daisy 9735]

Why's everything have to be drama and a conspiracy?

 

I was fully behind this redesign, but web design is completely out of my skillset. I would have brought on someone besides Lyon as he was already dipping out of activity, but nobody with the skills ever applied. This isn't an issue of staff exclusively, but rather a lack of talent willing to work for free. Trust me, if I could conjure a person who knows Invision to my team, I would.

 

I don't think the admin team really ever put a halt to any of this. From what I recall we were moving pretty quickly through any approvals and discussions, though I had very little to do with this project. You were working with the designer and kept us updated, you had the same level of access to the backend of the site as I did to adjust permissions and other issues, and as far as I knew you were going to Lyon for anything Invision related. Also I never recalled the reason for not wanting things to impact the main site was secrecy, but rather I just didn't want our main website to be broken while this new theme was under construction. I was pretty out of the loop on this outside of what you showed to admin chat. I'm sorry I wasn't able to help more with this but my strong suit isn't web development, and definitely not Invision themes.

 

The current WIP theme is too broken to work, Lyon is on indefinite hiatus, and nobody has the skills to finish it. Themes for Invision are complicated things that not a lot of people know how to work with. You also ignored my messages for quite a while after you left admin and I tried to figure out where this project was or get access to the assets. I only just got them recently and have shared them with CT who wanted to realign the homepage, and I'm actively looking for web developers but unfortunately for the scope of the work that needs to be done, nobody with necessary skills in the community has stepped forward. I have a general plan but without coders it's not going to happen.

 

tl;dr our forum software is old and complicated and web development isn't easy

[LPT 771]

25 minutes ago, Llir said:

Why's everything have to be drama and a conspiracy?

 

I was fully behind this redesign, but web design is completely out of my skillset. I would have brought on someone besides Lyon as he was already dipping out of activity, but nobody with the skills ever applied. This isn't an issue of staff exclusively, but rather a lack of talent willing to work for free. Trust me, if I could conjure a person who knows Invision to my team, I would.

 

I don't think the admin team really ever put a halt to any of this. From what I recall we were moving pretty quickly through any approvals and discussions, though I had very little to do with this project. You were working with the designer and kept us updated, you had the same level of access to the backend of the site as I did to adjust permissions and other issues, and as far as I knew you were going to Lyon for anything Invision related. Also I never recalled the reason for not wanting things to impact the main site was secrecy, but rather I just didn't want our main website to be broken while this new theme was under construction. I was pretty out of the loop on this outside of what you showed to admin chat. I'm sorry I wasn't able to help more with this but my strong suit isn't web development, and definitely not Invision themes.

 

The current WIP theme is too broken to work, Lyon is on indefinite hiatus, and nobody has the skills to finish it. Themes for Invision are complicated things that not a lot of people know how to work with. You also ignored my messages for quite a while after you left admin and I tried to figure out where this project was or get access to the assets. I only just got them recently and have shared them with CT who wanted to realign the homepage, and I'm actively looking for web developers but unfortunately for the scope of the work that needs to be done, nobody with necessary skills in the community has stepped forward. I have a general plan but without coders it's not going to happen.

 

tl;dr our forum software is old and complicated and web development isn't easy

Just. Fix. The. ******* Grahpic... It's not that hard mate. That's a mark on you and the entire administration. You should be embarrassed that you can't even update a single graphic.