Tasks That Need To Be Done On The Forum

Thanks for drawing up that list RiKo.

I think a homepage is a nice idea and would be worth having.

I like the forum width the way it is now.

My ideas for the chat were either to embed a chat room (e.g. cbox, freejavachat), use IRC or create a Discord server. I've never used Discord but it seems to be very popular with gaming communities. We can easily add a link to the chat room or Discord server to the top menu bar.

e.g. soniccity2.proboards.com/

Does anyone have any thoughts about which one to go for or can suggest any alternatives?

I agree about adding locations to the mini profiles, slightly increasing the text size and having a rules thread covering those things. Would be best not to allow any rom links.

That did bother me a bit when someone would join the forum just to beat my score and would then vanish without trace! I like the idea of introducing a rule to deter them. I think people should be able to repost their previous scores. I still have all my high score screenshots. I was wondering if we should insist on a screenshot or photo. It doesn't really prove much so maybe it's not necessary. I will always post a screenshot.

You quickly get used to the reply button but the first time I was slightly confused. Other forums do sometimes include the word 'advanced'.

Dear Friends

I finally had some time to play with the theme editor and the creation of a new banner / header image.

I created a new selectable theme based on the previous dark one, called "NGF Theme v0.1".

You can enable it by clicking on > Profile > Edit Profile > Settings > Forum Theme > NGF Theme v0.1

It looks like this:



I also allowed myself to slightly increase the general font size and also installing a Social Media sidebar plugin (which is located on the left of the side). I also added our Twitter site there.

I thought it was quite easy to handle the design of the site so far after you looked a bit into it. The rest is just figuring out!

Please, also if you have any feedback about the banner / header image or better slogans or design features, please just spit it out.

Of course it's also possible change the formatting of pretty much every button and element of the forum, so any input is just welcome! For each theme you can also set up new smileys such as this one: 

That looks really great Murikov. Thank you!

I'm using your theme now. Definitely think we should make that the default. Makes us look like a proper forum now. I like that you've got the twitter link at the side.

After having done some more research I would now favour using Discord for chat.

Thanks for all the input!

Murikov - you did an amazing job with the design - Love it! Also like how it references the link to the old NG4L site and how this is a new start. The reset button and memory card text really add to that vibe. Great work, thank you! I think we are ready for new users now the site looks attractive. 

In future I will make a small "Site History" section in the welcome thread section  about NG4L and about how this community is a continuation of that one.

Murikov - I like the new smiley too. I miss my favourite thumbs up smiley (I do overuse this!)

Post rankings - We are all Neo Geo Weeenies now guys! Great work setting those up so far Murikov. I think we should have more ranks than on the old forum. Because they run out quickly for long term members. And also do what Kaz used to do - when you reach a certain (high) number of posts, you can choose your own custom ranking.

Here are some of my suggestions For extra post rankings "Blazing Star","Shock Trooper", "King Of The Fighters", "NAM Veteran", "Riding Hero" *this one could be low down!

Boogie - Thanks very much for the offer of help. You sound the same skill-level as me at HTML - I just google and cut and paste and then play around with it until it works. But yes you can edit the HTML - I made a (very minor) change to the original design doing that - there aren't options to do everything, and also to insert the google validation code. Feel free to do try anything you want and just ask the members about any major changes you make or want to make

BTW Bojan said he wants a discord chat room too. I'm sure he will turn up here eventually. Get on here Bojan! I'm happy to go along with whatever anyone else wants on chat.

I want to suggest a new section on the old board of "Your Work" (or similar name like on the old forum) I think it makes sense to have a separate section for this (We can move any existing threads into there). Do people like this idea? Or do you want to keep it in the "General Discusson" Section

Good news - we are moving up the Google search rankings which is great for site visibility. If you google "NeoGeoForever Forum" we come pretty high up. Not high yet for just "NeoGeoForver" by itself - but we should go higher over time as site activity continues

I will definitely send Lee the new website address. I think he is pretty busy with his facebook group but he may sign up here too.

Alright, I looked into Discord and finally put up a server with a text channel and a voice channel.

I also set up (to my best knowledge and research) the server as privately as possible, but maybe someone else here may be more skilled with managing it.

I also set three roles with different permissions which can be defined for each member: Member, Moderator and Administator

If I've done this right, I can assign every new "everyone" member (who initially cannot enter both channels) one of these three roles.

Similar to the Sonic forum, I put up the invitation link to the Discord server on the navigational bar:




Please test if if it works appropiately.

By the way, the Discord plugin I wrote about earlier didn't turn out so useful - it's basically only a small widget that is implemented at the footer of the forum. Personally, I find the current solution better, or a shoutbox instead.