My first week at MapleRoyals and I must say, staff and members alike, have made me a true MapleRoyals lover (lol). The staff gives the same fair treatment to every user, at least that I've seen, whether it is good or bad, and I can respect that. I do have some suggestions though: The Shoutbox: Definitely unique-looking and user friendly, but have have you guys ever thought about implementing an IRC Channel instead? Not as user-friendly or unique looking, but definitely gives the staff and users more control like adding different levels of access to different people, proper control of its users, events, topic change, you name it. Ban Appeal: Do love the idea of Ban Appeals as it gives the user a chance to explain the situation, but they are all open for all eyes to see. For the member who is appealing's sake, I believe moving completed Ban Appeals to a section such as "Completed Ban Appeals" where only the staff can see, will benefit in the future for both staff and members. Staff Applications: I love the format that is set-up - it's almost like a custom resume, but like the Ban Appeals, I believe completed ones should only be seen by the staff, just so no one attempts to copy any information from another application. Although I have no doubt that any forgery will get passed any of the Administrators, I also believe locking completed applications will save them some heartache time of reviewing thread after thread. Site: Love the simplicity of the Website and the Forum, but using different generators such as vBulletin, BBulletin, etc in the past, I've found PHPNuke to be very customizable, secure, and easy. On top of that, they have very smooth themes to choose from. If MapleRoyals was generated under PHPNuke, I believe the sites setup and look would jump from an 8.5 to an 14 on a scale of 1-10. If you have the time, please let me know what you think of the suggestions. Whether they are taken into consideration or not, I'm still here for the long run.
I will respond to each point as they are very valid ones. I have years of experience and still to this day use IRC on a daily basis. However, it has been discussed several times and we concluded that IRC is not the best choice for this environment. The shout box worked well on the old forums and while I don't like it as much here, it still seems to get the job done. Ban Appeal & Staff Applications: There really is no need to hide ban appeals as it keeps the process transparent as well as making others aware that the staff is active, we are watching for hackers, and we are keeping the community as legitimate as we possibly can. If you notice for both of these boards, the thread can only be posted in by Staff and the original poster. That keeps out the "peanut gallery" from these types of posts. Additionally, upon a staff member being hired, we soft delete the thread from Staff Applications so that Staff can revisit the thread if necessary but is removed from public viewing. As for the site, a long term project of ours is a complete redesign. I believe a design has already been created and really, a backend CMS like phpNuke makes no difference in what the site looks like. You could use CSS to make a non phpNuke site look just like a phpNuke site if you wanted to as well. Thank you for your suggestions and I am glad you are enjoying your time here so far!
Looking at ban appeals is informative by keeping u aware of ur actions and whats a reasonable case to get banned or not. But everyone agrees the main purpose is to LOL at some peoples appeals XD
