I have definitely thought about the game giveaway option. Once I get the site running right and work on the whole SEO thing to get more traffic pushed to the site I will try to do something like that. I am on a very limited budget so I can't go hog wild... 🙂

I would love to hold some sort of competition and would like to award prizes for the top gamers or maybe I can get some developers to host some prizes as well its a few things I was looking into especially with a few games coming out soon.

On the CafePress. I have never heard of this website or service until you mentioned it. Definitely a interesting. I will look into this and probably start a thread on this to see what people would be interested in and of course any text/images they would want to see and maybe some free stuff to the person(s) you have the best ideas or images for these things.

Thanks very much for that feedback Kestral I will definitely revisit this very soon.

Potsmoker66 link to the XWA site has got me thinking maybe we should have a sticky thread with links

to these type of site in the show off section of the forum. ❓

I can definitely do something like that or I can add these useful likes to the game/links page as well?

If someone wants to start the thread and do some compiling of some links I will gladly sticky it for ya 🙂

Hey Darkone

What do you think about bringing in a rating system for posts? The Frontier Forum has this as well as a button to flag certain posts to the Admins. Just a thought.

I have definitely thought about this feature and can look into some mods that provide that if people think it is beneficial?

This is actually already there, if you go into any post and as you are reading each one you will see in the upper right of the post a 'quote' button and a '!' button. That '!' button is the report a post button, if you mouse-over that icon you will see it.

I have been putting off some maintenance that I have been meaning to do to remove a mod that isn't needed. And to do some general cleanup in the root of the webserver. But I need to do a fully download of the entire site which takes many hours to do first (that download area takes up some space).

Thanks for considering what I said Darkone. 🙂 Sure if the forumites don't want it, it's no big thing. The only reason I mentioned it at all is because it's quite a common feature on my forums these days.

You know I never noticed that little triangle till now when you mentioned it, I must need glasses! 😎 😆

Ok Geraldine I have the post ranking mod in place after some tweaking because my SEO mod was messing it up. It should be working, or least it seems like it with my quick testing.

See here for more info: kb.php?a=55

Yes I did notice, nice job Darkone! 😀

I have some experience with PHPbb, may I suggest a quick reply box to posts, something like this

Quick Reply is often abused, and can quickly make a mess out of a forum. I am hoping that DarkOne intentionally omitted it.

In this thread, perhaps a Quick Reply might be sometimes useful (like for your suggestion, for example). In most threads the feature causes more trouble than it solves.

However, changing the word "Quote" to "Reply" might be helpful to users who don't understand the importance of using Quote when making a Reply. But even that is optional, since there is already a "Post a Reply" button, and since most people quickly become accustomed to the way that the forum works. 🙂

Quick Reply is an option, but I disabled it on purpose when I created the forums just because I thought it would spur better conversation because it might cause the members to read more of the posts before posting. And in quick reply not all of the bbcodes and quoting functionality is there.

Nice!

Rock on, DarkOne!

I like SpaceSimCentral enough that I donated a few bucks. At least I think I did. I clicked all the buttons and got a receipt.

Er, anyway! This place is great, good people and fun conversations. I always find great games or news bits that I might have missed in other places.

Thanks Digitalus. And it did work. I have changed your rank.

There is definitely a lot of people coming to SSC, its just getting them to post and stop hiding in the shadows. I used to have to really work hard at pulling in all the latest info on games and projects and now most of the areas do get some coverage because the members help out a lot in finding the news on their favorite games/projects. So it is coming together nicely and I hope to get a real solution soon for the Knowledge Base.

Because the KB that I have seems like it is some work to maintain and get things published on. I might go back to MediaWiki since there is a PHPBB bridge that is being worked on which isn't perfect yet but its a start. I just need to read up more on the whole security aspect of the wiki. Because I think the KB is a nice thing to have its just that it needs to be tied to the site database and it takes up some space. But this is for a different post.

I have a bit of experience with PHPBB3 and web sites in general (in no way am I an expert) If you want some help send me a PM I will take a look at what I have done to some of my old sites.

I currently run an animal website in Wordpress which is very popular and is very much automated now. (www. supporttheanimals .co.uk (remove the spaces to go to it, I have added them as I am not sure how Darkone feels about me posting a link to an un related site here.))

I did use the knowledge base in an old website I run for a while when I was running a gaming clan. I will see if I can find the files and set them up on my virtual server to play with.

That is a nice website you have there Dramacius and it's ok to post links to anything in a post as long as its relevant to the discussion and of course the content is generally kid friendly 🙂

I have thought about using Wordpress for a frontend to SSC, I just would need to have a good bridge to connect the two and use the user base out of phpbb3 for wordpress. The mod I use for the portal (stargate portal) is ok but its not too flexible and there is really no SEO behind the code at all. I thought about wordpress or another blogging software that integrates into phpbb because then maybe I wouldn't need a KB/wiki for the games. I could just create a blog page for each of the games. I basically trying to find the easiest to maintain but a tight integration as well and that seems to be the issue. With my template and graphic skills at a 10% level I stink at styling anything. Thought about paying someone to create a theme and logo for the site to give it a more WOW factor 🙂

But I have no problem people posting good examples of setups that they either use or know about. I am just trying to get a good layout that will help more people communicate and also get the word out better.

Well done Digitalus! 🙂 Every donation no matter how small, helps to keep the SSC going. Also glad your enjoying being on the site, there really is no better place on the net for those who love space sims. Long live the SSC! 😎

Did some looking into the phpbb3 and wordpress bridge and there is something being worked on here: http://www.wp-united.com

Looks very promising and I would probably at the least wait for the next release before starting some testing but would prefer v1.0 to install on the site itself. But looking at the tight integration of WP and PHPBB with this bridge does have some appeal and can be really useful in advertising some of the great projects inside 🙂

Geraldine - Your always to kind 🙂

How can I change my name from my real life 'Jamie Grant' to my usual online modding name 'Tokus*Maximus' - do I kill my current threads, rejoin and rpsot or is there an admin power that can quickly do it all while preserving my threads and posts?

Keep up the great work Darkone, as always.

Tokus*Maximus

I was wondering the same thing, as I dont have the most inventive of names 😀

As for my opinions on Space Sim Central. Well they are only good, I would have to dig very deep to criticise this site.

But most of all I like how this is a 'free and open' site. People say what they want without fear of the giant hammer of +1 banning. 😉 (*Cough* Egosoft)

This means a lot to me, as I can't stand 'censored' sites.

Its also great how you offer a centralised location for indy devs to host their games, if it wasn't for SpacesimCentral I would still be scouring the internet for elite remakes 🙂

I sure can, and I can make it 'TokusMaximus' for you I don't allow those extra characters or spaces. Is that fine Jamie?

And s20dan, I can change your name to anything you want just let me know what you want. And thanks for the kind words, my whole goal all along is a free exchange of opinions and with any luck a hub for gamers and developers to interact and make the best games possible. I guess I have always had faith in people and gamers to act responsibly and be respectful and I have yet in two years ever have to PM anyone about behavior so it has been a great ride so far and hope you and I can be having this conversation 20yrs from now 🙂

SSC has been a great learning experience so far and there is still so many things I want to do its just the know how that sometimes gets in the way 🙂

I have to admit this is the friendliest "LARGE" community of any time I have ever been on, its a pleasure to come back time and time again to read up and post (all be it not as often as I would like) on the various topics.

I am just wondering what you direction is, are you aiming to be a general gaming community or are you planning on keeping it Space/Sci Fi?

Oh, I dont know about that S20dan, perhaps you would feel better with this as your avatar. 😉

And here I thought SSC was a small community because there is just over 1000 reg users, but there is definitely a lot of lurkers here.

I don't think I have the bandwidth to ever expand outside of that. Plus space/scifi is where my interests and passions are. So I will do my best to keep SSC a focused community on what matters most to all of us here ... 'the inner geek' 😉

A thousand people is a very large forum community, DarkOne.

Where have you been hanging out that is larger? 🙂