• PSO-World Site Upgrades



    Welcome back everyone! Virtually every portion of PSO-World has received an upgrade as part of the site's 15th anniversary. Here are some of the highlights:

    Updated Forum Software
    The forum software has been upgraded to the latest version of vBulletin 4. The upgraded forum software offers several bug fixes, security improvements, updates to existing features, new features, and better compatibility with the latest generation of web browsers.

    Social Groups Overhaul
    Social Groups (AKA Groups) has received several updates. To access the groups area, click on the "Groups" link on the secondary navigation bar of the forum index. That will present you with a GUI interface to your groups, the most recently updated groups, and newly created groups. As for individual groups, instead of having what is essentially one long thread, Social Groups will behave more like individual forums. Members will be able to create new group threads and post pictures. Group leaders will have the ability to moderate these threads.

    New Search Features
    This might seem like a mundane detail, but PSO-World has a new search interface that provides faster and better search results. You will now finally have the ability to search your private messages!

    Activity Stream
    You can access the "Activity Stream" by clicking on "What's New" on the navigation bar. The Activity Stream offers a new way to keep track of the latest forum content including group discussion, news articles, forum posts, and several other content types. The Activity Stream offers several secondary navigation bar links if you want to browse a specific type of content.

    Updated Photo Gallery
    The PSO-World Photo Gallery has always been an easy to miss site section. Featuring game art, screenshots, and fan art, the Gallery has always represented a visual history of PSO-World. With the upgrade, the Gallery link has been moved to a more prominent position and several forum integration components have been installed. The Gallery itself has received several new features. Users now also have the ability to create albums under the Gallery system and upload pictures to those albums.

    New Themes
    As part of the site upgrade, PSO-World is receiving a new default theme called "Cosmic." This scifi theme was inspired by the early-years of Phantasy Star Online 2 and is optimized for a wide-range of displays. If you don't like it, you can choose from a selection of other themes by using the theme picker at the bottom of the page. You can set a permanent default choice by editing the Details area of your Profile.

    Here is a brief overview of the other available themes:
    • Blue-Steel - This was the default theme for the site for the last 8 years. Pick this style if you want to stick with a familiar look.
    • Darkness - A modern all-black theme.
    • Midnight Blue - A variant of Darkness with blue highlights. This is a good choice if you previously used the Classic Blue-Black style.
    • Vanilla - A light-colored theme that was designed for readability.
    • Classic Mira-Bluegray - This is primarily dark gray and blue theme. It is based on PSO-World's original default theme.
    • Classic Blue-Steel - This style emphasizes a variety of blues and is based on one of PSO-World's early default themes.
    • Mobile - This theme only works with the site's news/forum sections and is optimized for ease-of-use on mobile systems.


    Don't see your favorite old theme? There is a good reason for that. The forum upgrade process rendered the old themes incompatible with the current version of the site. Any returning old theme has to be rebuilt from scratch and that is very time-intensive. We're still taking a look at the old themes and seeing what is possible to rebuild.

    Simplified Site Navigation
    The clunky left-column link boxes have been replaced with a simplified top bar navigation scheme. There are four main tabs on the navigation bar corresponding to News, Forum, Guides/Databases, and the Gallery. Each section has several helpful links that appear below the main navigation bar when you browse to that section. The Guides/Databases choice will take you to a helpful link page that will allow you to access PSO-World's resources for that specific game.

    New Front Page
    As part of the upgrade project, PSO-World has a new front page article system. This new system integrates more seamlessly with the forum software. You can search the news section using the forum search feature. When a person replies to a news article, a new thread is automatically started in the News and Comments forum.

    Video Tag
    Use the updated [video] tab to embed Youtube videos in post. This works more reliably than the old video management system.

    Mobile Features
    PSO-World offers an easy-to-use mobile theme for the site's forum and news section. You can select it by picking "Mobile" from the quick style picker at the bottom of the page.

    Older Content
    The older content sections like the PSO Item Database and Guides system received several aesthetic and usability upgrades.

    The Future
    We view this as a starting point for further enhancing PSO-World and have several exciting features in the pipeline. We are very interested on hearing your feedback on the site upgrades and what else you would like to see.

    Bugs
    If you see anything broken or something that just looks weird, let us know by posting in the bug report thread.
    This article was originally published in forum thread: PSO-World Site Upgrades started by Ryna View original post
    Comments 57 Comments
    1. Selphea's Avatar
      Selphea -
      Quote Originally Posted by [Ayumi] View Post
      I might be the only one, but I'm find it a bit harder to read in the new style formats.
      It's a bit darker and the new forums use Arial which is thinner than the old layout's Verdana so that's probably why.

      For something less boring, could go to Google Fonts and filter for Sans Serif fonts.

      Quote Originally Posted by Triste View Post
      Taking some time to adjust to the changes will probably help a little, though I also find the themes a bit 'busy' visually. Even the updated classic themes are missing the simplicity that the originals used. I'm the kind of girl who values pleasing aesthetics, and tend to lean heavily towards flat design. The classic themes had a clean and minimal approach, and I think if they were to be updated for a more modern style, looking at UI languages like Metro or Material for inspiration would make for some beautiful takes on Bluegray and Blue-Steel.
      I wish the forum would use something more flat myself but I've never seen a vBulletin board done in that style. It probably needs a lot of heavy lifting to overhaul some of the clutter innate to vBulletin.
    1. lostinseganet's Avatar
      lostinseganet -
      Quote Originally Posted by Freshellent View Post
      DAMMIT, my fav theme is gone.

      Whelp, time to pack it up.
      Don't give up yet things are just starting. They said that they may re-make a few of the old ones.
    1. BWS-1's Avatar
      BWS-1 -
      You know I expected this to be a slick update alright, but this turned out better than I expected! Good job!
    1. Ryna's Avatar
      Ryna -
      Quote Originally Posted by Sun Sol View Post
      By any chance is a PSO2 Database coming with this? Cirnopedia has been dead for ages, so if we could get a community-maintained database, that would be great. Could also ask Ricardo (owner of psublog) to list some of his guides here.
      No decisions have been made about a PSO2 database. It is something we'd like to do, but setting up an item database is always a very large project.


      Quote Originally Posted by Freshellent View Post
      DAMMIT, my fav theme is gone.

      Whelp, time to pack it up.
      Can you at least tell us what the name of your favorite theme was?


      Quote Originally Posted by Triste View Post
      Taking some time to adjust to the changes will probably help a little, though I also find the themes a bit 'busy' visually. Even the updated classic themes are missing the simplicity that the originals used. I'm the kind of girl who values pleasing aesthetics, and tend to lean heavily towards flat design. The classic themes had a clean and minimal approach, and I think if they were to be updated for a more modern style, looking at UI languages like Metro or Material for inspiration would make for some beautiful takes on Bluegray and Blue-Steel.
      We spent a lot of time trying to reduce the visual clutter on the forum pages so they would be easier to read. I think we can make a few other adjustments to certain themes to improve legibility. What sections do you think are "busy" in your opinion? Suggestions for improvement would also be appreciated.


      Quote Originally Posted by BWS-1 View Post
      You know I expected this to be a slick update alright, but this turned out better than I expected! Good job!
      Thanks for the comment. This particular update has been in development for a long time. We're doing our best to fix any lingering bug and make improvements based on user feedback.
    1. Freshellent's Avatar
      Freshellent -
      Oh sorry, I was just idle bitching. I find the changes quite nice- but I miss the Sunset theme quite a bit. At least the colorscheme. Not because I played a gold CAST for the entirety of PSO's existence.
    1. doomdragon83's Avatar
      doomdragon83 -
      Quote Originally Posted by Ryna View Post
      Can you at least tell us what the name of your favorite theme was?
      For me, I believe the theme I want back was "Mint Green"
    1. Ryna's Avatar
      Ryna -
      Quote Originally Posted by Freshellent View Post
      Oh sorry, I was just idle bitching. I find the changes quite nice- but I miss the Sunset theme quite a bit. At least the colorscheme. Not because I played a gold CAST for the entirety of PSO's existence.
      Sunset was my favorite theme too. It was easy to read and the colors worked well together. Dhylec and I spent a lot of time working on that theme. I'd like to see Sunset eventually return to if there is enough interest. Rebuilding any of the old themes is very time-intensive.

      Quote Originally Posted by doomdragon83 View Post
      For me, I believe the theme I want back was "Mint Green"
      Thanks for letting us know. We're keeping track of requests.

      The current plan is to let the just-released styles bake-in for a while so we can fix the bugs and try to improve them.
    1. [Ayumi]'s Avatar
      [Ayumi] -
      Quote Originally Posted by Selphea View Post
      It's a bit darker and the new forums use Arial which is thinner than the old layout's Verdana so that's probably why.

      For something less boring, could go to Google Fonts and filter for Sans Serif fonts.


      I wish the forum would use something more flat myself but I've never seen a vBulletin board done in that style. It probably needs a lot of heavy lifting to overhaul some of the clutter innate to vBulletin.
      I don't think it's because it's darker as I used the darker themes anyway (the brighter, the more it hurts my eyes).
      It's more of seeing which topic is which at times as they seem clamped up. And the boldness of new topics or topics with new posts aren't standing out as much as they did anymore.

      And yeah, as someone mentioned before, I think the new theme might be great for me (minus the problems I said previously) if it wasn't squished horizontally either. That didn't make matters any better at all.
    1. Ryna's Avatar
      Ryna -
      Quote Originally Posted by [Ayumi] View Post
      I don't think it's because it's darker as I used the darker themes anyway (the brighter, the more it hurts my eyes).
      It's more of seeing which topic is which at times as they seem clamped up. And the boldness of new topics or topics with new posts aren't standing out as much as they did anymore.

      And yeah, as someone mentioned before, I think the new theme might be great for me (minus the problems I said previously) if it wasn't squished horizontally either. That didn't make matters any better at all.
      Have you tried any of the other themes? Do you find them difficult to read? Do you have any specific suggestions for improving Cosmic?
    1. Selphea's Avatar
      Selphea -
      Quote Originally Posted by Ryna View Post
      Have you tried any of the other themes? Do you find them difficult to read? Do you have any specific suggestions for improving Cosmic?
      Going to throw out my wishlist here, realistically I'm not expecting 100% but do whatever you think makes sense and is time efficient.

      1. Space it out

      Check some of the fan forums of newer games like

      http://www.titanfall-community.com/
      http://tamrielfoundry.com/forums/

      It's not just about wider space for text but more generous vertical space too.

      2. Declutter the navigation

      There's a few options that are redundant IMO. Probably clutter that happened over the years migrating between different forum versions. So the idea is to look through each option and decide what's really needed, or look at Google Analytics and check what people are actually clicking. Every clickable item from the very top at the welcome bar downwards should have a purpose, so you'll have to go through each one and ask yourself questions like:

      • What's the difference between "New Posts" and "What's New"?
      • What's the difference between clicking "Private Messages" vs clicking "Notifications" then "Inbox"?
      • Should "FAQ" and "Rules" be at the top or bottom?
      • What's the difference between "Albums" and "Gallery"?
      • Do I really need to click on "Who's Online" if it's right at the bottom of the forum index?
      • Do people need to see "Replies: X, Views: Y" in thread listings? Or can it be condensed to a "Replies" header with number of replies as a simple number below?
      • Is the star rating for threads useful? To me it's just report/no report. Star rating doesn't do anything if a 1* flame war or troll thread still gets bumped repeatedly with no penalty.


      Some of these go to different places, but do they serve the same end function? If they do, would it make more sense to merge them or kill off the lesser used one? But this is not easy especially for a site with a long legacy.

      3. Modern Aesthetics


      Take advantage of faster connections over the years to use pictures where appropriate, e.g. showing the poster's avatar next to Last Post or their started topic.

      CSS is also a lot more flexible especially with Google Fonts opening up a lot of new font choices. Consider something like Lato or Open Sans to be easier on the eye.

      Also, get rid of the gradient in the top navigation. The original intent of gradients back in Web 2.0 days was to add texture back when connections were too slow for elaborate backgrounds to load. Considering you already have an elaborate background, might as well do away with the gradient.


      4. Standardize colors


      The colors don't have a consistent meaning. For example, when I click "PSO2 General", I see "Forums: PSO2 General" as the header in white. Up to this point everything clickable is white, but this white header isn't clickable. And then at the bottom of the forum the header color for things like "Currently Active Users" is actually blue.

      On the other hand, in the post editor, "Attachments" and "Subscription" are white but not clickable. The "report" button is in very faint grey but clickable.

      The "by the books" approach is that since your rank and file text is grey, use something with a hue for links, and then use white and varying shades of grey for text emphasis in headers. Of course rules can be bent and broken but it has to be in a way that still makes sense.

      5. Emojis

      The vBulletin smileys look really dated! http://emojione.com is free. Just yoink all the yellow circle faced ones or something.
    1. Sirius-91's Avatar
      Sirius-91 -
      Maybe a friendly reminder to remind people when they're replying to a post that was last replied a few years ago?
    1. Blue-Hawk's Avatar
      Blue-Hawk -
      Wow. I HAVE been gone for a while. When did this happen? Kind of like th new look. though.
    1. TheLadyRena's Avatar
      TheLadyRena -
      Nothing is green.

      Like that's it, that's my only complaint - I can't make the forums my favorite color anymore due to the theme list change.

      Other'n that, I'm quite pleased, amazing work, 10/10.
    1. Ryna's Avatar
      Ryna -
      @Selphea

      Thank you for the response. That is the type of feedback we're looking for.

      To address a few specific points.
      1. When you refer to vertical spacing, are there any specific areas you are referring to? I just want to make sure we're both looking at the same things.
      2. Building a new navigation system for PSO-World has been an interesting experience. Trying to tie together 15 years of content and several disparate sections has been challenging. We went through at least 5 unique Navigation system designs during our testing process spanning everything from fly-out sidebars to more esoteric options. The testing group liked the current one best. We also spent a lot of time trying to remove as much navigation bar clutter as seemed as possible. There are some navigation options that maybe moved/removed when we start looking at the analytics.

      The question I have for people is: Are you having a hard time browsing the site and finding things?

      3. We tested swapping the thread status icons out with the user avatar. The problem with that approach is that the forum software didn't ofter any options for indicating thread status if you make that swap. While it did look nice, we didn't want to impede basic forum functionality. We also tested having the user avatar appear in the "Last Thread Post" column. It was felt that change added to the visual clutter on the thread listing areas.

      I do plan on investigating Google fonts.

      4. The blue is a "subcategory header" color. The problem is that vBulletin doesn't use it in many places. It mainly shows up in the footer, Gallery, and on the Profile settings page. I'll take a look at the places you mentioned.

      5. The current icon set is a hold-over from our original 15 year old forum software. It has been retained since we didn't want to break the icons in older forum posts and since there hasn't been much demand for replacing the icon set.

      Is anyone else interested in seeing a new set of emojis?

      Quote Originally Posted by Sirius-91 View Post
      Maybe a friendly reminder to remind people when they're replying to a post that was last replied a few years ago?
      That is a good idea. We tested something very similar, but it ended up failing our cross-browser compatibility tests. I'm still looking for a replacement.

      Quote Originally Posted by Blue-Hawk View Post
      Wow. I HAVE been gone for a while. When did this happen? Kind of like th new look. though.
      Welcome back Blue-Hawk. The upgrade happened over the weekend.

      Quote Originally Posted by TheLadyRena View Post
      Nothing is green.

      Like that's it, that's my only complaint - I can't make the forums my favorite color anymore due to the theme list change.

      Other'n that, I'm quite pleased, amazing work, 10/10.
      Thanks for the feedback. What would you think of a green version of Midnight Blue?
    1. TheLadyRena's Avatar
      TheLadyRena -
      Quote Originally Posted by Ryna View Post
      Thanks for the feedback. What would you think of a green version of Midnight Blue?
      I think that's basically the theme I used to use anyway, which sounds pretty nice.
    1. SolRiver's Avatar
      SolRiver -
      Definitely a surprise for me. I was like wth? did i click wrong link? XD
    1. Sirius-91's Avatar
      Sirius-91 -
      Quote Originally Posted by Ryna View Post
      Is anyone else interested in seeing a new set of emojis?
      Yes.

      Quote Originally Posted by Ryna View Post
      Thanks for the feedback. What would you think of a green version of Midnight Blue?
      Double yes.
    1. SilkaN's Avatar
      SilkaN -
      Quote Originally Posted by Ryna View Post
      Is anyone else interested in seeing a new set of emojis?
      No. Just keep it the old way.

      Edit

      Also, having to click on "quote" and "Reply to thread" twice before I can get past the quick reply is somewhat irritating.
    1. Selphea's Avatar
      Selphea -
      Quote Originally Posted by Ryna View Post
      @Selphea

      Thank you for the response. That is the type of feedback we're looking for.

      To address a few specific points.
      1. When you refer to vertical spacing, are there any specific areas you are referring to? I just want to make sure we're both looking at the same things.
      The space per topic in the thread listing and between navigation elements. The latter will need to be decluttered if you want to space that out though.

      2. Building a new navigation system for PSO-World has been an interesting experience. Trying to tie together 15 years of content and several disparate sections has been challenging. We went through at least 5 unique Navigation system designs during our testing process spanning everything from fly-out sidebars to more esoteric options. The testing group liked the current one best. We also spent a lot of time trying to remove as much navigation bar clutter as seemed as possible. There are some navigation options that maybe moved/removed when we start looking at the analytics.

      The question I have for people is: Are you having a hard time browsing the site and finding things?
      Yep x.x it's functional, just feels like some options are repeated. This is really down to personal judgment.

      Is anyone else interested in seeing a new set of emojis?
      Try posting this as an announcement poll pinned across all forums. I have a feeling it'll be close, because people used to the old design are reluctant to switch, while people used to mobile and modern chat apps want a new look.
    1. BWS-1's Avatar
      BWS-1 -
      Well as it turns out, I'm really liking this Cosmic theme! Might stick with it.

      On a side note, something rather minor, but I was curious if it was possible (and if I'm not just a n00b for not knowing where to fix that) to assign what I want to see when I click on my profile as it loads for myself or all?

      Right now it's default to My Activity, but I wonder if I could set it to how it would appear on the previous site straight to Visitor Messages.
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