VERSION 4 UPGRADE COMPLETED!!

[Stormrider]

June 4, 2005

The Version 4 Upgrade to the site has been completed!

You will need to reactivate your account by signing in with your login and password.

Underneath the Tolkien's Ring Banner will be a comment on which of the following steps you are at. Just scroll down the page to see the prompts.

A prompt box will appear asking for your birthdate. You can select an option to allow others to see it or not.

Then a prompt will appear asking if your email is the same as when you first signed in. If not, you can type in your current email address. Then an activation number will be emailed to you which you will have to add in to the prompt area (a link will also be provided in the email)

Then you will be ready to go!

I have a busy weekend and won't get a chance to see and use the new features much until later this Sunday. But I will be back to see what's new.

The Quick Time icon took too long with this dial up connection to see what was in store for us so I never sat and waited for it to load! I hope the rest of you have quicker connections and were able to view that clip.

[Stormrider]

I was just checking out some of the management functions and see that we can create several different "looks" (called "skins") to the site so that members can chose which skin they want! Council of Elrond has this option also!

Does anyone get tired of the Gold Leather skin? What other color schemes do you think would look appealing for this site? I, myself, like the Gold Leather skin but I am open to suggestions from others on what they think would be appealing for other skin options.

[Desi Baggins]

How about a dark, evil skin for those that think more like black riders............black and gray....muahahahahaha!

[Desi Baggins]

Our avatars aren't showing anymore I miss my dancing Desi Baggins!!!

[Stormrider]

Black grey, fiery reds, etc. Good idea! Themes for all the lands of Middle Earth! Mordor, Moria, Isengaard, Rivendel, Lothlorien, Fangorn, Beorn's home, Edoras, Gondor, The Shire, Bree, Mirkwood, The Lonely Mountain, Bree, The Grey Havens, Valinor.

Call to all artists! We need banners and some background wallpaper images developed! This could be a project that might take a little while to develop!

Anyone interested in helping out with designs, please post on this thread.

***

Yes, I am going into my profile to see if I can get my avatar back. I think all members will have to do that.

Hmmmm....I put my avatar URL in in the place they said and it still is not showing up....Back to the profile!

[Stormrider]

I just checked the support forum. Many sites are having trouble with their custom avatars drop down and also for avatars if a member wants to add their own custom image.

It seems we will need to sit tight on that one along with the memberwide email mailing problem. I have reported these in the "Bug Reports" area of the support forum.

Hopefully things will adjust.

[Vanye]

Oh! I really like the Gold background! I'm not tired of it. I've looked at a couple of sites that use a dark background like red, blue or the worst of all black & even use like red on black printing! My eyes simply cannot deal w/that! So I'm happy w/the background as it is. What I want to know is how to get my avatar back? I've gone to my profile & could not get any help there. So can someone please relieve my ignorance
Vanye

[Stormrider]

Vanye:

Desi and I have also tried to put our avatars back. After the upgrade, it seems that when you save your update on your profile after adding your avatar's URL, it does not save it.

Also the avatars that are options for members to chose from with the drop down option are loaded on the site, but they are not appearing either.

This is a glitch that the proboards team has to work out yet. I have posted our site as having that problem so that they are aware of it. I don't know how long it will take.

***

I like the golden leather look too! That will not go away. But now with the upgrade to proboards version 4, we can create several different skins for this site. Members will be able to chose whichever one they like...or they can keep rotating the skins for a different atmosphere when they visit the site. Won't that be cool!

But....first we have to create some designs and looks so that we can make the different skins to choose from! That will take time! And don't you fear, the Golden Leather look will always be one of the choices offered.

[Magpie]

uhh.. I know I'll regret asking, (I can get sucked into projects when I have no time for them) but... what do you need to design 'skins'. Is there more than just a background image? If there are colors to choose from, how many and for what? I have three more weeks of school and then have two off. I still haven't done anymore Valar pictures, although I had an idea for Ulmo that I wanted to try... and I just did a piece for school in scratchboard and I really liked it. (And I've got tons of housework to do...) BUT, if I knew what was needed for a complete skin design, I could think on it.

And just for the record... I like the leather, also.

[Desi Baggins]

One thing for creating a new look is new banner...........So if you come up with a new background color make a banner that says Tolkien's Ring using that color.

[Stormrider]

Magpie:

Thank you for your interest and willingness to give this a try! I really appreciate it. It is nice to have help with a project like this. It is wonderful to have other member's art reflected on the site. It gives us a broader range of ideas and talents to work with!

What I was thinking was that each skin would be a theme based on one of the places of Middle-earth, like Valinor for instance.

I picture it with a lot of white, very pale blue, silver and gold tones. I would need to know the HTML color code numbers that you use in your banner. White #FFFFFF, blue #COFFFF, silver #D9DCDD, gold #C7A230, etc. to use them for the forum colors, too.

We would need a banner about the size of our current banner, which is 5.847" wide x 1" high. It should state "Tolkien's Ring" on it and perhaps a smaller title "Valinor" beneath the main title. Of course, some artistic picture depicting Valinor. If it could be animated that would be very nice, too. Just a small amount of animation not a whole lot.

Then we would need a background tile image with the color scheme of the banner. I think a background that is not too busy looks nice, but would be willing to play with something busier to see how it looks....say clouds or stars. If it is too hard on our eyes or distracting, we can go with a softer background like the leather.

I am not sure if we will be able to change the buttons at the top of the site that say HOME, PROFILE, HELP, SEARCH, etc. for each skin or not. It would be excellent if we can do it. If we can we would eventually need those, too.

The rest would be administration functions, picking the font and divider colors, etc.

So if any place of Middle-earth strikes your fancy and you want to give it a whirl, post which theme you are working on and the rest of us will pick something different.

I would like to try Edoras, Rohan as my theme (being the Rohirrim fan that I am!)

Thank you!

[Magpie]

urg.... just typed a response, hit send and got a message: too many connections to the server. Try again in 30 seconds.

And, I lost my message.

Thanks for the info Desi and Stormrider. It gives me something to consider. My first inclination would be to do something for Lothlorien. However, since I'm not making a commitment, if someone else is excited about Lothlorien I would happily pick another one for consideration.

(I think there was more in my post, but if I can't remember it after 3 minutes I guess it wasn't important enough. Doing Control C before hitting send. Wish me luck.)

(Well, I'm glad I did Control C... got the busy signal a number of times. This is an upgrade?)

[Stormrider]

ANYONE! If you get the message that there are too many connection and you should try back in 30 seconds, just hit the Back button on your internet tool bar and you will be back to your message in edit form! Then you can copy and save it just in case before you try to post it again in that 30 second interval! It worked for me several times.

I guess there are a lot of bugs that need ironing out with the upgrade and perhaps a lot of people are trying to post problems, emails, and any other comments about what's going on right now so we have to hang tight and wait. Hopefully everything will straight out soon.

Also another thing that should be pointed out is: bmps are not an acceptable form of avatar for proboards because they are just huge files and eat up way too much bandwidth according to the support team. Jpgs and gifs are the only accepted art form for avatars, etc.

[Magpie]

I did hit back.. and it was blank. Perhaps it's my browser, Firefox, but I don't have good interface with proboards. I was tempted for a long time to continue using Internet Explorer even after the US government said not to because it's such an insecure browser. But I got some nasty spyware that will hijack IE. Firefox, being more secure, won't let it. And yes... I've run numerous spyware and virus programs but I can't seem to get rid of it. Aside from reformatting, I may be stuck with avoiding IE.

[Stormrider]

Really? The government said not to use IE? I had not heard that.

Anyway! I have been working on the Rohan Skin and hopefully it will be available by the end of the week.

Magpie, Please do the Lothlorien skin! There is NO RUSH to get it done, so take your time. This will probably take a long time for us to get through all the places in Middle-earth so please don't feel you have to get it done in a week--take a month or two if you need to!