The pipes and site changes

[aero]

Alright so I'm making this thread for some final input on site changes. The way I see it is the SMBX World + GFX + Links are redundant because they just link back to the forums, and the wiki is dead and will stay dead. We don't really need the pipes, and we might as well make the forums the main and only page for the site. There isn't much of a point to 2 pages that link back to here, 1 page that has links at the bottom of every forum page, and keeping a dead wiki. The content that was on the wiki still exists, but finding something to do with it just hasn't been a priority. Nothing would really be lost, but more compact essentially. There have been ideas pitched before for alternatives to what is featured on the pipe pages, so if we just get rid of them for now that doesn't mean that something else won't pop up eventually.

On another note I was looking at the home page because it needed to be updated, and I compared it to the main page for SMBX2 and concluded that maybe it would be best if it was scrapped too for now and something entirely different and more community centric can take its place. Personally I'd like to see it as a page with blog updates, newsletter snippets, and more artistic than what we have now which is an honestly inferior download page for SMBX2. I can convinced otherwise though, because there are a lot of other potential things that we can do.

And just as a reminder SMBX still exists off site and the original site had a videos page. I went through the archive and made them into a YouTube playlist. That could be a pipe that makes a come back, but maybe not the flash games and illegal mp3s lol. When it comes to new pipes use your imaginations, because we can probably find interesting solutions. Here's the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... Q-r3Hfx66A

I'd like some input on this before any actions are taken. I already discussed this with the staff here and there seems to be agreement on this, and I'll work on getting the wiki content archived in some form if/when this stuff happens.

[Novarender]

Well, I agree with this. I think that the Worlds pipe is a decent way of showing off episodes, but if there is a better possibility, then I'm all for it. And the main page desperately needs updated, so I'm glad that's finally coming around.

[Emral]

I like that idea. Reminds me of forums like terraria and smwcentral that post news on their front page.

[computerfan0]

I don't think the wiki should stay dead. I really think there needs to be something describing the game and it's episodes and levels.

[Cedur]

That could in fact also be a way to give more attention to the forums as most people downloading SMBX probably never glance over the forums. I also agree.

[Taycamgame]

Hm how I'd do it is this:

Home page - stays the same but is renamed to "Downloads". Reason I wouldn't scrap it is that not every newcomer knows about the SMBX2 site so there should still be a very obvious place to download it from this site. However, I would certainly swap the positioning of 1.3 and X2's sections of that page, since X2 really should be the first version people see there (reason I think a lot of newcomers use 1.3 is that it's the top download link on the home page).

Newsletter / blog page - to avoid cramping it on the home page turned downloads. This is just basically a page that contains all the newsletters (maybe just link them to the forum pages, maybe we can post the newsletters directly to that page though?) and blog posts. Having a pipe to these would increase number of viewers (since for example, currently the newsletter is in the General forums and tends to become hidden as other threads get bumped to the top).

Tutorials page - I think this would be pretty useful for newcomers. Quickly accessible at all times without having to search through the forums or Discord. As an example it could possibly link to all of Enjl's tutorial videos (the lua ones etc.) and the new SMBX2 Documentation site? Basically this pipe would be a list of tutorials. Could also give some general game / level design tutorials, e.g. 4-step level design videos.

Events page - Basically a quickfire rundown of current events and contests as well as a link to their respective discussion / rules threads in the forum. Maybe not needed if the Newsletter page would handle this well already, though. Could also have a link to level of the month thread?

Discord pipe - literally just an instant invite link to the SMBX Discord server. Just makes it much easier for people to find it for the first time. Essentially replaces the Links pipe.

Forums - you know the drill.

I think atleast some of these ideas are pretty useful especially for newcomers (download, tutorials and discord pages). Newsletter / blog page would be extremely useful in the long term. Not too sure on the events page in the case of a newsletter page being added though it might be useful.

Hope these ideas are somewhat useful in other's opinions. I'll probably make a mockup later on of what some of these pages could actually look like.
The one thing is that I'm not sure how much customisation there is over the pages in this site (though I guess it just uses html rather than php).

Thoughts? Are some of these completely pointless, or would they be of use to atleast some people?

[Emral]

Just gonna drop these here after that complicated idea:
https://forums.terraria.org/index.php
https://www.smwcentral.net/

[Blake Izayoi]

I 100% agree with this entire post, I'm fine with these changes moving forward.

[Murphmario]

I don't think the wiki should stay dead. I really think there needs to be something describing the game and it's episodes and levels.

This. One could be set up on another site if that's alright.

[Chanceux2]

Yeah Updating the main page would be a good idea.

[Valentine]

I thought this was gonna be about fixing the cutoff and got scared that you'd actually do something as horrible as that

[Sonya Sanchez]

Update the main page? Yes do it. The Episodes are good but the problem is there so old and stupid probably everyone is the entire world will be thinking "update the main page now!

Can you stop? They are still okay to play but not stupid Jesus.


I do like the change that you are planning for this, after all neither the gfx or world pipes have gotten any updates in like 2 years.

About the wiki, I guess there are people who don’t want it dead but then again nobody really got the time to write anything on there. Plus there would be a lot of abuse probably from other people who then outright edit or even delete the article.


The other ideas are good, but I don’t see much future for a wiki that has been dead for long.

[Taycamgame]

Just gonna drop these here after that complicated idea:
https://forums.terraria.org/index.php
https://www.smwcentral.net/

Idk, while it might be easier to keep everything in one page, it might end up feeling a little cluttered in there with so many different things going on (contest news, lotm, newsletter, etc.).

[Emral]

Just gonna drop these here after that complicated idea:
https://forums.terraria.org/index.php
https://www.smwcentral.net/

Idk, while it might be easier to keep everything in one page, it might end up feeling a little cluttered in there with so many different things going on (contest news, lotm, newsletter, etc.).

Those communities are much larger than ours and never have too many things going on for it to become overwhelming. Your suggestion would result in people having to navigate to like 3 different pages to be caught up with all the news, which is tedious.

[Taycamgame]

Hm, fair. Didn't really think of that aspect, so yeah I do agree with the idea of having it all on one page.

[aero]

Alright I let Quill know about this, so sometime soon the other pages should redirect here and the pipes should be gone. Right now for the home page I think the SMBX2 trailer + the blog RSS + an ATOM feed for the newsletter would be sufficient for its return with new pipe pages. I'd like to do a bit more than that and have a more creative page, but with that as the core content it should be fine and would always be up to date.

[Chanceux2]

Thats great! For once the main page will be up-to-date than just 2018 stuff

[cato]

Should there be a side bar that scrolls like the pipe so that users don't have to scroll up and click the pipes?

[Cedur]

Actually I'd suggest a layout in the form of

-> SMBX2 trailer / download
-> Newsletter
-> Link to forums
-> Link to Chat

and maaaybe think of some kind of replacement for the outdated Featured Episodes? A collection of memorable episodes with descriptions of what they are like and what skill of play they're suited for? so new players have some basic lookout over famed episodes?

[Cedur]

So what exactly changed in the meantime (if anything)?