THE NEW ZELARON PORTAL! (No, it's not launched yet, but we need YOUR ideas! Now!)

Why hasn't anyone mentioned reviews yet? (Aside from my hypothetical book club.) Game reviews, movie reviews, book reviews. Definitely with unique elements that separate us from other, more established review sites. 20-word reviews? Image-only reviews?

If this works out, we could attract a lot of attention. If it goes exceptionally well, publishers may in turn contact us and give us pre-release games, possibly invite Zelaron reviewers to screenings and such. Either way, we don't have anything to lose. The forum will still be around.

As for front page articles and news; they will definitely be there.

Customizable stock ticker that enables you to pick which ones you want to monitor on top of the market as a whole. Sports ticker with updated scores on all or any games you choose.

Weird, you posted that while I wrote my list of ideas with the stock monitoring element. Stock and sport tickers/marquees do sound better than separate pages. The fewer clicks required, the better.

Anyway, I know you have more ideas! What are they?

For the reviews, we have them already, and there's only like two members that can actually sit down and write good material..

Well, no. I think the case is that there's only two members who will take the time to sit down and write good material.

If all of us put aside time to do it, then we'd have 30 or so members sitting down and writing good material.

It'd be like homework!

Oooh! We could do that!

Have a rating system put in place, with a grade for the number of good ratings you get! Say 80% of your ratings are positive, then you're on track for an A, but if only 60% are positive, then you're on a C.

We would need Raziel back to write most of the reviews, or to at least grade and redline all the ones that get submitted.

This needs to be the main page:

Well, no. I think the case is that there's only two members who will take the time to sit down and write good material. If all of us put aside time to do it, then we'd have 30 or so members sitting down and writing good material.

I know personally I could write decent reviews for material I know relatively well. I guess you're right, most of us just don't want to take the time to sit down and actually write stuff up.

If there were a manga / anime section on the portal I'd be more then willing to update it with new fansubs and scanlation lists. Nothing would be hosted on the zelaron servers, only links to sites.

I'll draw some idea up later today when I'm bored.

Well, I already have a script to leach Animesuki's data and make it many times more usable. The only work that would need to be done is anime that they don't cover, which will mostly be licenced.

ORLY?

Come on guys, we need more good ideas.

I'll write reviews. I can't promise the topics will be current or consistent, but I watch enough movies and read books often enough to provide something at least. Not sure how this would help a revamped portal, but I'll see if I can get to work on something soon. (Halfway through Ender's Shadow right now).

I remember when we had a Review forum. I contributed a bit to that.

I like the game reveiws idea! The ability to look at what people think of games without bothering to search for it would be nice. Maybe also some by zelaron members. That could be the reward for 3 rep bars!

Having Zelaron members do the reviews is the idea...

Bump! WetWired has worked quite a bit on the portal project, which I haven't had time to be involved in for a long while now.

Anyway, here is a list of the suggested features, arranged by myself based on how important I regard them as:


Very important:

• Pre-selected Google search field (Replaces the need for using Google as your start page)
• Reviews by members (Games, movies, books)

Useful:

• Customizable module layout of portal index
• Customizable calendar with personal notes
• Easily reachable arcade games
• Software downloads
• Shipment tracking
• Gmail login
• User-definable RSS feeds
• Torrents
• Local weather and news reports

Unnecessary but possibly interesting:

• Customizable member profile pages (e.g. username.zelaron.com)
• Wallpapers
• Customizable stock ticker
• Sports ticker
• Dictionary
• Babelfish translation
• Links to funny videos (Or videos in general? Some kind of YouTube integration?)
• Links (To general, useful sites)

Available:

• Perfect integration with forum database
• Portal styles match forum styles
• Recent threads
• Weekly poll
• Wikipedia search
• Private messages
• Birthdays
• Buddy list
• Activity bars
• Shoutbox
• Users online
• Community statistics (Member, thread and post amount; newest member)

Post more ideas!

How are reviews going to be done? Within the portal itself?

I said a couple of days ago, in the Chatbox, that we ought to resurrect the Reviews forum, seeing as it generated quite a bit of activity in its time. If it is resurrected, then it could be linked with the Portal - the newest/highest rated/most viewed/most replies Reviews on the front page, maybe a specific Reviews page with the latest reviews/see above, and then a link to the actual forum.

I had been posting some game reviews/impressions on 1up, but their site's gone all batshit, so I wouldn't mind posting here. Just need to finish some more games. And write stuff.

And I'm all about the customizable RSS.

How are reviews going to be done? Within the portal itself? I said a couple of days ago, in the Chatbox, that we ought to resurrect the Reviews forum, seeing as it generated quite a bit of activity in its time. If it is resurrected, then it could be linked with the Portal - the newest/highest rated/most viewed/most replies Reviews on the front page, maybe a specific Reviews page with the latest reviews/see above, and then a link to the actual forum.

Sounds excellent! Currently, moderators and administrators are able to choose specific threads to add to the news feeds on the portal, thanks to WetWired's customization. That is, a brief (currently (up to) 800 characters) version of the first post of a thread will show up on the portal as a news entry. Something similar could be done for reviews.

I had been posting some game reviews/impressions on 1up, but their site's gone all batshit, so I wouldn't mind posting here. Just need to finish some more games. And write stuff. And I'm all about the customizable RSS.

Great, that's promising. I'll likely be able to do some album (mostly electronica/ambient) reviews, and post about interesting art events and/or links.

Keep working hard! This will improve my connection to what is happening in the outside world. I didn't even know Brawl was going to exist until a month before the release.