New Website Live!

[Tbone]

The new website is live!!!

First of all, I have to give a big thanks to Lithium who has been working on this (and other iterations of this) website on and off for over a year now! I also have to thank Manic for working on multiple version of the theme for this site, despite me constantly wanting something completely different than whatever he had just finished. We're still not done with the work yet, but we felt we were in a good enough place to start adding to a live site rather than working behind the scenes.

So ch-ch-changes! We're not in Postnuke anymore. This is SMF (Simple Machines). It's cleaner and is still actively being updated. We tried to mirror the look and feel of the old site the best we could, as we wanted the transition to be smooth. For the most part, the blocks on the side work the same, but there are some differences.

One difference is the top menu. For ease of navigation, you can use the menu at the top to get around. It's a small but welcome difference. A huge difference for me is the front page news that is tied to the News and Announcement forum (FINALLY!). I've been wanting this for years, and now we can finally take advantage of it!

Any FA member may post in the News forum. The post will be pending approval and, when approved, will automatically post to the home page. What I'm hoping this allows is that everyone works together to keep everyone else up to date on news - specifically FA news and Oculus Rift news. As this new site denotes a shift towards the Rift and away from SWTOR and EVE, news for those games should stay in those forums. I don't want our Rift news to get buried by "EVE happenings of the day"

Another big change is the openness of our website. Any guest can come to the website and view most of our forums and content. If they want to post, they'll need to register. If they want full Teamspeak permissions and in-game permissions, they'll need to apply to become a member. We're still working on that application process, but it will be much simpler than our challenges in the past.

From there we may end up with chapters for specific games. Currently we have a SWTOR chapter and EVE chapter, and entry into those chapters may require a more complex application process. The same may happen if we end up with an official "Minecraft" chapter or "Strike Suit Zero" chapter or "Everquest Rift Edition" chapter or whatever - we'll have to see. The important thing here is that we start much more open and, depending on how involved members want to get, certain permissions or information may be sectioned off.

If anyone feels like they can help in any way with the new site, please let me know! We have a lot of projects we want to start to get going - streaming Twitch, dev discussions, etc., so please feel free to help out! For now you can leave feedback on the website at this thread.

Thanks everyone!

[likwidtek]

Love it guys.  Thank you so much for all your hard work.

[Akiya]