Well, it looks like people are excited about the idea of designing the back room, so who am I to stop you? ;-) Here's the rules: 1) Reasonable page sizes. A lot of people still use modems. 30kb tops, and smaller than that would be very nice. 2) Page design should convey something to do with writing, literature, words - something to do with this forum. (Background images of Vicki in a temple with a sword doesn't seem quite appropriate here.) ;-) 3) No fancy coding. I don't want to break anything here. 4) Nothing that breaks TOS. No XXX images, etc. (Has to be said, as silly as that seems.) Please bear in mind that some people have vision problems, so please allow for good background/text contrast. Probably the easiest way to submit design ideas is to take a screen shot of the design and post it. If people don't like that idea, I could post the submissions in the backroom itself, but that will get cumbersome for me. (But if there is a big public outcry for it, I'll do it.) How long do people want to submit their entries? I'd like to say 1 week so I don't have to look at the barren walls too long. Would that work for everyone? If you have multiple design ideas, feel free to submit multiple times. This isn't an official contest. And of course you guys get to vote on which design to use!

I guess I am kinda dumb. What? No surprise? So, lemme ask this question: What are we designing? The entire page with mock links positioned? Or just the image to be pasted to the background of each page? Maybe my question isn't even intelligent. Sigh...

Wouldn't they have to be mock links because we wouldn't know what the actual webpage addresses would be until the backroom contents are more fully developed? That is a question, I think. What you would be designing, I think, is the "look"...the graphics, the title, the background, frames or no frames, tables or no tables, the set up on which the text would be displayed. That's what I'm thinking would be wanted. I'm no ace in the web design field so I'm guessing I'm the last person on this list who should be guessing.

I think frame design is a no-no. I learned that from the policies distributed by our government agency. Not all browsers support frames. Otherwise...I wondered if they wanted just a BG pic and will just be superimposing text links above it. Otherwise, then someone may want to design hover buttons or graphic buttons that have to be sliced...etc. Also, having been a participant of a few web designs, one must decide on using a theme throughout or using a different "theme" for each hyperlink chosen. AS a stupid example, let's say there were links for HORROR stories and a link for LOVE stories. One might think that the design may cater to each...instead of a general purpose design that covered all. I guess I'm making too much out of it...sigh.

Well, some people insist on using frames and micro type even though its hard on the browser (computer and human). I think it's up to you whether or not each button has a different theme or if there is a consistency. But are we posting stories in the back room? How much space is in there? Kind of hard to tell when it's so dark in here. Crescent really needs to put some light fixtures in here. Maybe a few cozy chairs. A rug. A fireplace. A bar. A picture of a snake over the mantelpiece...oh, sorry, wrong thread. Anyway, I really think the design is kind of open to opportunity at this point, don't you?

I've never like frames, personally. There's several issues with them, including people putting links to the main content and the navagation going missing. I think all browsers now suport frames, but I still think frames are a pain in the butt most of the time. (I have seen some well done ones, but many are not needed.) It's a personal preference, and if someone submits a design idea with frames, I'll gladly post it with the others. :-)

I'm looking at designing the entire back room page, and it should be consistant for every page in the back room. I figured people would enjoy looking at color choices, etc. If you are more comfortable with just making the banner and buttons, submit those and we can decide on the page background color, etc. I'm trying to give everyone as much design opportunity as possible.

I don't have a huge amount of space for the backroom, but text doesn't take up that much space. There will be some stories and poems posted in there (including the winners of the Renderosity Magazine contest and other contests down the road.)

Right now, we've established that this is going to be a coffee shop/book store, but we need to decide on what style of furniture, where to place the expresso machine, where to put the book racks, etc.

SpectreOfDesire has posted a design possibility if people want to check it out. I have some extra space on my personal site so I can host some design choices if people want to package up their files and send them to me. (Please put any image files in a subfolder called images for consistancy.)

Hope this helps, and thanks for all the interest!

By the way, the few graphics on that test page are free to be used, if anyone wants to. :) Spec

my isp will probably shoot me, but I can hook a section of my comp up to be storage for the contest / ideas for the backroom. got around a gig of hd space I can use for it. ( this won't be able to be long term, or I'll lose my connection )

I can host as well. I'm way below my web space maximum. (Too many contests, too little time, lol.) I appreciate the offer! Now all we need are more designs so we can fight over who has the privilege to host them during the contest! ;-)

Question: Where do we send out entries?

... I could make a bunch more designs, if you need more choices. >_< ;) Spec

bellamorte, send them to cresent, she is the moderator. if she gets to much I can pick up the whole thing, the server I was referring to is on my own comp, so it is limited by my free hard drive pace not my isp limit.

crescent@fallencity.net (And PLEASE don't sell my e-mail addy to spammers!) ;-)

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/jr_neophyte/backroom.htm

The picture is really well done but it's 88kb. That will take a long time for modem users. (It's worth it for a gallery posting, but I think some people would be annoyed to have this delay for information pages. Another problem is that I didn't even realize at first where the buttons were. They blended into too well with the image. (Putting in Alt tags would help take care of that, and I can help with the code on that part.) I hope you don't mind, but I played with your idea a bit and I found a way to reduce the file size substantially while turning your image into more of a background image so it's easier to read any text on top of the image. I can post what I did if you're interested. (I didn't play with the buttons as I didn't find them until after I was done with the image itself.) Thanks so much for all your work on it!

I would be very interested to see what you did with it. I knew it was huge, but I figured I would go for broke on the concept and whittle it down to size later if needed. The entire background was one gif, with only the book buttons separate, and i had plans for alt tags for those. There is lots of work yet to do on it if it is the concept that people want, but it was just that...a concept. Thanks for the quick reply. Tres

ps...I know I am incredibly spoiled with DSL. Do you have a target size for the page? Will it have the R'osity sidebar?

Attached Link: http://www.fallencity.net/backroom/tresamie-first-page.htm

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/tresamie/test2.html

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/tresamie/test2a.html

Since tresamie isn't done yet, we only have one submission. I'd like to give people another week and see if anyone else is interested in participating. (No offense to SpectreOfDesire, I thought it would be better if there was some competition so whoever wins does so from good design, not by default.) I take it everyone is busy this week with P5, either merrily rendering or angrily cursing at it? ;-) Cheers!

I am sorry for my inability to come up with a suggestion. Actually, the truth be told, and as simple as it is...I kinda like the "brownish page" thingy. It's simple. Smacks in a weird sort of way of old pages in an old book. It's not over-burdonsome (sp?) with beautiful graphics that one might expect in a more graphic forum. It seems like a good color scheme. If I thought I could meet the size guidelines and do something better, I would try. Just my three cents worth.

Well, we'll put it to a vote in one week and see who likes what. After that, we just need to put in lots of content! Cheers!

The brownish page thingy, lol, is an old book. I took a photo of an old book, and cut a section out and made it a bordered tiling background! what you are seeing is one page and edges and cover...neatly trimmed and aligned. :)

I like it. I'd like the type face a little larger but I think it's a classic design and well suits the theme of the forum.

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/tresamie/testa1.html

And I do appreciate it. What a cozy little room that is. Very cute indeed. I like it. :)

I was going to enter a page design as well, but I've been running around all week and ran out of time. Ah, well.

Here's the two entries:

Back Room 1 front page.
And the inside pages.

Back Room 2.

I'll give this a few days for people to vote, then put up the winning design and start filling it up with more content.

Thanks everyone!

Cres

I think both of them are nicely done and I appreciate the participants spending their time and creativity on this project. Good job! I vote for the Back Room 1 front page and inside pages, only because I can only choose one and it's particularly appealing to me. What can I say...I'm an Agatha Christie fan and the cozy study is a lovely tradition (I don't have one in reality but it would be nice to have one virtually).

Oh, if anyone is uncomfortable publically voting, just IM me. I'm honest - I'll give a tally of actual votes. I'm not in the state of Florida, after all. ;-)

#1

I got no choice but to vote for #1 because the site that #2 is on couldn't be found :)

#1 for me too

#1 for me too if I am not too late just found out about where to come to vote LOL. I like the feel of this one.

Well, I'm seeing a trend here, so Room #1 it is!

Thanks everyone for helping on this! As soon as I get the files from tresamie, I'll put the page design up.

Don't forget to look at the forum banner entries - we have some very nice designs to decide between. Look here for the designs.

Good work, tres! Feels good, doesn't it? Oops, guess I'm tieing into my other thread...LOL.

Thanks all for voting for our entry. When Crescent started talking about the back room, I kind of pictured is as a cozy home library. Not many of us have the space to have a home library, so I thought it would be nice to have one here. By the way, the picture hanging over the fireplace is one of Knot4U's terragen renderings, you can see the original in his gallery. And Chuck, yes it does feel good, but I really did want all of the members here to feel good having a nice place to work from.

Speaking for myself, I think it is a very nice place to work from. I'm very happy you took such care to design such a lovely backroom. Congratulations!

Congrats tresamie I just love the feel to this design so cozy :O)