Whut

[Dot50Cal]

Hellos! Long time no see people! In my absence, I've been thinking about what to do with the site. I have a couple of ideas, but I'd like to hear from the community on the matter. Would you like to see us become only a forum? Become a portal page where users can post news/articles with a forum being the focal point?

I've long given up on the idea of the site becoming the end-all-be-all for Resident Evil, but I think we have a lot of interesting topics here, and a huge amount of awesome people from the community from both past and present. So it pains me to see that some links aren't working (4d executer stream link on the feature page), and the terribly outdated/not working upcoming releases section on the main page.

So, what are your ideas? How should we proceed with the site? Feedback is encouraged, no matter how drastic!

(One thing I would definitely like to do is hire someone to make a proper THIA Vbulletin skin)

[Darkmoon]

Honestly? Just fixing the main site, and starting to add new articles, would be cool. We have enough creative people lying around that we could probably do some interesting and creative stuff outside the kind of thing you see from BioHaze or Project Umbrella on the more technical side of things and the like.

Combined with the forum getting a decent skin, and we should be gravy.

[AsteroidBlues]

... (One thing I would definitely like to do is hire someone to make a proper THIA Vbulletin skin)

... Combined with the forum getting a decent skin, and we should be gravy.

I've skinned Vbulliten sites before, albeit for earlier versions of Vb. I'd do it for free, and if you didn't like it you could look into hiring someone... And in the case of you guys liking it, I could use a snazzy new rank. <_<

As for suggestions regarding the main page, I definitely agree with Darkmoon. I think that some really cool things could be done via the main page other than just news. Art contests, the occasional prize drawing when possible, monthly contests where the winners get a special rank for the following month.

[Rombie]

I am willing to help a bit with things, maybe some features and what not. Without really having a site to run anymore I just like freelancing a few articles and helping out where I can. I sent you and Carn a PM.

[Carnivol]

If John doesn't get back to you on it, I'll hit you up soon. (I guess we could pretty much already say "Welcome to the team" ;D)

[Weed]

Is the site ever going to see any enhancements to the design? What is there is so old and out-of-date that it just needs to be cleaned up and simplified.

Plus, the source code seems to be missing the first like... 5 lines of code (no DOCTYPE, opening HTML tag or opening head tag).

You should also look into monetizing the site a little. There's a lot of potential with THIA and, if done right, you'll have more incentive to push updates.

[News Bot]

What can THIA bring to the fold in terms of articles?

The site has had a higher focus on modding and hacking the past few years. I think some reorganization and expansion in those areas would be nice. Quite a lot of findings are nothing more than forum posts from several years ago; it should be worth assembling it all into articles.

[Carnivol]

We've kinda wanted to keep THIA ad free and non-profit, but we have a bit of history...

I wouldn't be opposed to getting the ball rolling again on the site again and totally not opposed to the idea of compensating people for their contributions

[AsteroidBlues]

What can THIA bring to the fold in terms of articles?

The site has had a higher focus on modding and hacking the past few years. I think some reorganization and expansion in those areas would be nice. Quite a lot of findings are nothing more than forum posts from several years ago; it should be worth assembling it all into articles.

I used to write for Blogomatic3000 for several years. We hit number three multi-media blog in Europe (I'm American though xD) and over 500,000 monthly readers during my tenure. I even set up partnerships with Syfy network (NBC Universal basically), the ECA and the Bruce Lee organization.

As a matter of fact, that may be more in my wheelhouse than the Vbulletin, cause I went and studied up on what had changed since earlier versions and realized I didn't recognize any of it. O_O

[Weed]

We've kinda wanted to keep THIA ad free and non-profit, but we have a bit of history...

This is pretty much the biggest reason why THIA hasn't seen a real update in (quite literally) years. We're still being told that E3 2011 is coming up, and that sort of update is literally a ten second job, yet still nobody will do it?

It's not even a joke at this point, it's just depressing.

Incentive is key to fixing that.

[Carnivol]

Well, we used to have a pretty easy system for updating the release schedule and stuff, but it somehow broke and no one bothered to fix it.

It's true, though, if we added what I guess we could call "money" to the mix, chances are things would happen and motivation (or "reason to care") would pop up.

[TheBatMan]

Any chance of the infamous biohazard 1 section appearing?

[Carnivol]

Would be pretty cool to salvage it. Dot50Cal's got all the material for that, though - so it'd be entirely up to him to get that rollin'

[Rombie]

If John doesn't get back to you on it, I'll hit you up soon. (I guess we could pretty much already say "Welcome to the team" ;D)

Hah, no prob. What I can do I guess depends on the focus you decide to take with the site. I submitted previously an article for Yama over at Biohaze under his user feature thing a couple of months (although not via the forums) which hasn't yet been posted, but once it's up if you guys like the style of it (although not the same content) I can write something like that again looking at other aspects of the franchise. But then again if you're going for a more specific technical look at things, that might not be so good. So I'll wait and see.

[Spera01]

Good to see you again Dot! The main thing I would like to see is a proper Vbulletin skin. I miss the old forums that we had (design wise). As for if the site should just become a forum or not... Well I rarely use the main site. The first thing I do is come directly to the forums, especially since the news posts are visible on here anyway... But I mean it's up to you.

If you want to continue working on the site, by all means go for it. Otherwise, just keep the forums I say... As long as they get a proper skin of course.