You might also want to use English rather than Latin. Just a thought.

-Drac

I took a look over this thread and, although you've chosen your images -- or so I've gathered, correct me if I'm wrong -- here is a great source of concept ships and what-not, as well as several awesome sci-fi scenes. There are a few Star Wars images, sporadically posted, but just thought I'd give you a heads up in case you hadn't seen it -- not to mention it credits each artist, so you won't be hard pressed to find the original owner of the image.

Well, there's my 2 cents

Tonight's insomnia project: playing around with a free online website creator.  Here's the result: http://willtrichon.wix.com/vastempire.

Obviously, that's nowhere near "done," but the program Wix is simple enough that I can, in fact, do all the work myself.  I don't really know what I'm doing from a technical/code perspective, though... Raziel or Kadann (or anyone who knows about such things): if I basically make a whole website using Wix, can you then just copy and paste that code to redo vastempire.com and vastempire.com/main?

Bump. With the Disney buyout, Star Wars is on everyone's mind again. We may need this new main page quickly.

Wow, that banner IS chunky.  I can shoot you higher-res versions of everything, Raz.  Give me a day or so, though; a bunch of work came in all at once.

Image manipulation, and securing permission from artists to manipulate their images, are the things I am more than happy to provide.  The other stuff, though, I can't help with.  Anyone have hosting space?

Something else I think might be good to add: http://rpgrating.com/.  It's a simple system for defining specifically how much (if any) adult language, sex, and violence is permitted in your rpg, which links back to that simple, informative site.  I think that the VE in general would be a 1-1-2 on this scale, while the DJO might be a 2-1-3?  Sound about right?  Does this seem like a useful thing to have on the new main page, somewhere?

Osk would be 4-4-4

Aeos and I are working on a professional-style rebranding/advertising/marketing campaign for the VE.  She's in school for design, advertising, and marketing, and I've been working professionally as a copywriter, copy editor, and content strategist for a couple years.  We're very excited about our initial brainstorming sessions, and we think we can design an effective recruitment drive, that'll bring new members to the club...

...but the whole effort will be for naught if we don't improve the website.

Now, over the course of this thread, I've made it clear that I favor a reboot of the site, with new content and layout and, well, everything.

But I realize that such an ambitious change is easier to propose than to implement.  As evidenced by the length of time that's gone by since this thread started. 

So I'd like to offer another proposal, more modest in scope, that will tide us through the interim as we keep working toward an updated site:

Can we just rewrite the content on vastempire.com/main to eliminate all the spelling and grammatical errors, and then move that content to vastempire.com, thereby eliminating the flash intro launch page?  Those would be simple, easy changes.  And they would increase the likelihood that anyone directed to www.vastempire.com (by a recruitment drive) would actually check out the ComNet and club, rather than being dissuaded by the launch page and typos and ancient testimonials from long-gone members.

Kadann, gracious and wise sovereign of all things VE, the couple times we've been able to speak via IRC you've expressed your support for the idea of a website overhaul, in general.  This modified proposal (of just an editing pass and then a copy/paste job) would be a much quicker way to do things, and wouldn't require anyone else but you.  Please, your Supreme Moffiness, let us at least do the poor man's version of a site update.  We're begging you. 

Time to join the party of worshippers in order to make this happen!

Jumping on board the grovelling bandwagon. Would love to see this happen and some new blood on the site!

Grovelling will help?

I think that looks great, and the three paragraphs look fine!

I do wonder if the opening crawl could be cut down a little though.  Otherwise I think this is another of your masterpieces. Trick!

Trykon wrote:I've had another play with the wix site, just messing around with content.  That's upset all the design and formatting, so ignore that for the moment, but have a look at the changed copy: http://willtrichon.wix.com/vastempire

I think there're some promising things there.  The new crawl is much more succinct, and I like the tagline: "VastEmpire.com: the Star Wars galaxy, 'from a certain point of view.'"  I think the value proposition (that's the 3 paragraphs on top) could stand to be more concise, but I'm zeroing in.

Cricky that's slow to load.

Let me know what you want as font types etc and I can mirror in plain CSS on the simple site.

Will await word from Kad before putting too much effort into this though.

Requires PHP or Javascript.

PHP is already enabled on the server, so I imagine that's what Kadann is already using to change the Comnet logo.

There's no point fiddling the Wix page too much if you want the page to be integrated with the main site.

http://www.wix.com/support/forum/html5/other/other/can-i-host-a-wix-site-on-1

Weebly, for example, allows you to pack up your site to a zip and modify it and export it to another domain.

Nothing like new visuals to prompt responses!    Compare the four or five posts since I updated the wix site to the general lack of notice after I posted only edited text (on October 7, 2011 on this thread), for evidence of the power of visuals.

But as I've said, my proposal right now is the very simple, two-step site update:

1.) Replace the content on www.vastempire.com/main with some version of the shortened, typo-free copy on the Wix site.
2.) Move the updated content from www.vastempire.com/main to www.vastempire.com, thereby eliminating the flash landing page, and letting us lead people to www.VastEmpire.com directly in any promotional materials.

As for the bigger project - a proper site overhaul with new visuals, layout, UX, etc. - I know Wix isn't the way to go.  I've kept fiddling there only because it allows me to more easily show you guys my thoughts, rather than trying to articulate them in clunky prose.

Raz, I'll look at Weebly.  And for fonts, I think we could go one of two ways.  Either a the nice easy-to-read sans serif for the body text, and a slightly more stylized (sci fi-ish) typeface for headings (like what's on the wix site now), or else a more "literary" font like Garamond or Georgia for the body text, paired with a thick sans serif reminiscent of the Star Wars logo typeface for the headings.

Aeos, I absolutely would love to have a rotating set of background images (featuring at least the two main divisions, if not also some appropriate to DJO and Osk), but that's something more easily added to the new site after other details are settled, I assume.  The image I came up with for the wix site is good because we can use it (we have fractalsponge's permission to use his ship models), but there are other artist's renderings we have permission for too, like landscape paintings from Stefan Morrell.  All the social media stuff is a mess, primarily because I was working with Wix pre-sets... that's the sort of thing actual custom coding is going to be much better at organizing/designing.  My point in including it was just that: to say we should include it.    And lastly, Aeos, the functionality of my envisioned overhauled site would mirror the current set-up of our site: when you AREN'T logged in, it shows the short explanation of what the VE is (the 3 paragraph value proposition) and the Star Wars-style crawl, but when you DO log in, the content changes to be mostly updates from social media and the ComNet, and yes, a News ticker. 

That basic set-up of the current site - of one set of content for newcomers and strangers, and another set for logged-in members - seems sound.  The trick for us will be improving the system whereby "News" may be posted to the main site, either by increasing the number of active members who may post things as news, or by working out a more efficient system whereby divisional leads may share important ComNet news and/or VE Today-style articles to the main site.