This has been something I’ve been passively working on for a long time and it’s great to finally have it ready to show off. Technically this is version 2, but I went though about 5 design comps before I was happy. I wanted to keep it clean and professional basically. The back-end is my own, and while it’s not the next WordPress, it should be much easier for me to do things like update projects.

It’s quite heavy in HTML5 and CSS3 stuff, so I may need to still hammer out some kinks in inferior browsers. You know the ones.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think!

Edit: Turns out the site works fabulously in IE7, 8, and 9! I love it when that happens!

Unlike the last design, the colour scheme here is dominantly white and cyan. This time around I really wanted to show that I wasn’t all dark and suicidal. That scares people away. What the lighter colours do here is invite people to come in and read (hence the dark text on white background). If you’re complaining that it makes your eyes bleed, then that’s your fault. Turn on some [more] lights and sit farther away from the monitor — you’re mutilating your eyes (glasses/contact user, here) by not doing so.

To expound a bit, this theme was derived, code-wise, from the stock TwentyTen WordPress theme. It’s a great base to build upon, despite the somewhat messy CSS. Regardless, the code is simple and it’s easy to implement your own uniqueness. As far as design, I can say it was partially based on my previous Cloudy design. I ended up spending a lot more time on this than I really thought I would.

In the end, the result is passable and I can be proud of it. Just recently I added the recent work slider and tweaked some inconsistencies in the sidebar. I still have a long list of things to either add or change, and I look forward to checking off items as the year goes on (time permitting).

As a tradition, I like to share the song that was the driving force of my inspiration and motivation to work on this, because music really is powerful! This is a great track!

To close: I’d just like to point out that every time I re-design something, it is a sign that my design or development skills and tastes are evolving. By re-working something, I am able to take what I had learned previously making the theme and apply it alongside my new found skills and tastes.

“Prairie Sky” by Jesse Therrien (source)

Before I start, I just want to share the songs that fueled me while doing the bulk of the work on the rework last night. You know, for fun. I was kind of in the mood for some energetic, synth-poppy music.

In v13 I removed everything that reminded me of the terrible colour scheme in v12, opting for a cleaner look with some cyan and gray mixed about. You’ll see a few subtle instances of radial gradients still, but it’s not really notable. As of now the header section is a bit too bloated for my taste so I may end up chopping that down eventually.

The content pages (Portfolio, Media) haven’t changed much. Yes, they’re still empty, and will probably remain that way for a while until I can find the patience to put them together. The contact page, however, has been tweaked a bit from the last version to make for a better experience with the AJAX interface. I also finished up the About page for now, but plan to add a few more things to it once everything else is done.

A lot has been added to the footer to de-clutter the sidebar. There are the typical social icons like before, but now my tweets and Flicker pictures are also being snagged from the respective services and are now living in the footer as well.

Also worth noting is the addition of the Labs. This was up for a while but I only showed it to a few people. Hopefully it’ll serve as a nice hub for my spontaneous projects. It’s not done yet, like most things on this site, though.

As always I welcome any feedback, and knowing me you can expect another major revision by the end of the year… Here’s to OCD!

If you’re not aware of what EvilChicken is, you should go ahead and skip this entry. Things are going to get in-depth and it’ll be hard to understand at points if you weren’t there from the beginning.

Before I go on, I’d just like to preface this by saying that I’m not trying to shift any blame around, but instead outline the shortcomings and faults that led to the site’s demise. This should also serve as good reference material for anyone that wishes to start a large, community oriented site.

Alright, so I’m just going to dive in and outline what went wrong, what went right, and what needs to be done before the site comes back up again.

What Went Wrong

• Traffic
  • On the first day the site was online, Max and Cam both uploaded advertisement videos to their YouTube accounts. Combined, they have over 150,000 subscribers. Less than 1/15th of that was all that was needed to take out the single server.
• Back End Systems
  • While it wasn’t evident to the end users, the system that ran most of the site was crippling out ability to administer it. We took a shortcut and ran Joomla on a site that needed a much more specialized codebase. We initially planned on coding our own content management system — but this was scrapped due to impatience. Once the site was up, we learned that you can’t run a large, comprehensive site on Joomla without hitting some big walls. We had a strenuous time expanding the site (games room, item database, etc.) because we didn’t know how the code for Joomla was setup (since we didn’t write it ourselves).
• Staff
  • While some may take offense to this, I must be honest and say that the staff was, overall, poorly managed. Some of those who were active (and a lot weren’t), didn’t know what their job was because it wasn’t clearly outlined. Yes, it is common knowledge that the job of the moderator is to mediate conversation — but there still were some inconsistencies between staff members. A bit higher up in the chain, you have the staff rank entitled “Owner”. This should be eliminated and be combined with administrators. It should be recognized that those people do indeed own the site, but they should not be placed at the top of the hierarchy for doing little in [forum] moderation/administration. Sure, they manage expenses and the like — but that’s not something that Mint can’t do. Some members of the staff seemed dwarfed by ranks such as owner — resulting in little motivation and spite against those above them. It’s hard enough to put in volunteer hours, but it’s even harder when those above you are getting the spotlight and even accept credit for the work you did, leaving you with little compensation.
• Design
  • Yes, the design did look pretty — for Firefox users. A higher percentile of users still use Internet Explorer, and when your site looks like a bomb went off when they visit, they aren’t going to change their browser over to Firefox just to use it. In terms of expanding upon the design, it would be very much a pain. Each little rounded box was encased inside a dozen other divisions, making for very confusing and messy code. I’m sure even the original designer of the theme has a hard time wallowing through the code. An in house, site-specific design would have taken a lot more time to make, but would payoff in the end due to the understandability of the code (since we wrote it ourselves!). Like the back end systems point earlier, this was scrapped due to impatience.

What Went Right

• Advertisement
  
  • Most sites struggle for weeks attempting to establish a user base. EvilChicken, however, was reached by thousands within hours of launching the site. This was because of the use of viral/social media. If one influential and popular user uploads a video and asks the viewers to help advertise it too — they will. Dozens of videos were made by community members as a result.
• Content
  • When a visitor comes to a site, it’s usually because of either hype, or specific content. If said content is non-existent, non-unique, or is simply not up to par — they will leave within seconds. In the case of EvilChicken, content on the site was submitted by the community. To be more accurate, the content came from the RuneGamer community — EvilChicken’s [main] predecessor. The large amount of guides, tips, and the like were moved over from RuneGamer to EvilChicken — giving the site a bit of a head start.

What Needs to be Done

• Rebranding
  • The EvilChicken name has some what been tarnished with embarrassment. The site was down the first day, then down again during the server upgrade, and then down once again during the domain transfer. When it was up it displayed improperly for half of its users.
• Closer Look into Staff
  • Clear roles need to be laid out for staff members to follow. While it may sound restrictive, it will dramatically save time and make a much smoother system for both the users and the staff. Inactive staff members should be pruned and the portion of the staff that put in the most dedication should be recognized and rewarded, either in the form finances or in proper attribution.
• A Complete Rework
  • A new name won’t be enough to restore reputation. As was initially planned with EvilChicken, the new site must have it’s own content management system and design that actually suits the needs of both the administrators and the users. Look around at some of the most popular sites and you’ll see that they don’t run Joomla or Drupal (ok, fine, a lot run WordPress though).
• Gradual Rollout
  • When the site is totally complete, it needs to be rolled out slowly to users. Preferably by word of mouth. This way, the server hardware can easily be scaled to suit the needs of the site. It should also be noted that the “biggest” or most “powerful” server doesn’t need to be used. If a content data network (like S3) is used then bandwidth overages can be averted and HDD space can be conserved.
• Collaboration
  • The staff needs to all join one conference and lay things out. What content will be on the site, who’s doing what, the current progress on milestones, and what’s ahead for the future all need to be discussed… periodically. In addition, the implementation of collaboration software such as activeCollab or DimDim would be very helpful.

Many people invested many hours into this site and to see it go is a shame. When it does return we will have learned from our mistakes and further, embarrassing mistakes may be averted.

I’m going to close this by reiterating that I am not trying to shift blame. I do indeed have a lot to do with most of these points, for better or worse. I’m sure I’ve left many other things out, but those should be saved for another post.

I personally hung out with Regicidal1 for a while, and we went over to Clan Wars and lost multiple times. I pwned with my Mith stuff… But hey, who cares about me?

Videos and pictures after the break.

Runescape 2008 Gathering

Video by TheUnforgiving

Here are some pictures I took in the short while I was there.

Ice Mountain

Clan Wars

DETAILS…

• Where: Ice Mountain — Worlds 125 & 126
• When: April 19th — 7:00pm (Eastern)
• Why: For fun?
• Who: Loads of people, “famous” RS players, and hopefully you.
• Picture: http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/8682/icemountainmapyi7.png (Credit: ThePwnageNinja)
• COUNT DOWN TIMER: http://countdown.pending.be/2508/

Video after the jump…

Anyways… preview the song and read a little more after the break.. Just hit the Continue Reading link.

1. Fizzed out
2. Tired of shooting
3. Out of ideas
4. Never had ideas to begin with
5. Annoyed to death by people in-game
6. Discomforted by the temperature
7. My glucose level is 0.68 below the minimum
8. All of the above

So yeah, a lot of things bug me when shooting .

    Well, all I can really do is say thanks I guess… Oh, and I guess I could make a video too … I’ll do that once I get my new computer (it’s a beast… really, it’s 5 times more beastly than the one I’m on right now). Expect that video near the end of Spring Break, possibly sooner.

    I’d appreciate any song suggestions, and songs that are energetic, that also practically scream I’M BACK (no, not the song by eminem), would be awesome. I’ll eventually find one though… Just drop me a comment.

Now, I make RuneScape videos and all (and I made Sims 2 videos at one point too O_O), but It really starts to numb your head a little.. when you play one game, and only one game. That game would be RuneScape.. duh, and the only reason I really play it is because of the whole video-making thing, but those of you that really know me know that I don’t play much anymore — but I haven’t quit!…

Anyways, I have a capture card, a few gaming consoles, and a knack at gaming (I think so at least..)… So, I can make gameplay videos, or even a series possibly (like Red vs. Blue).

The thing is, I don’t know if you guys would care to watch those kind of videos, so I neeeed to know, should I make them and post them on my main YouTube channel, a secondary channel, or not make them at all?

I have a lot of games, so here are a couple of the more interesting ones..

PS2

• Grand Theft Auto 3
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
• Star Wars Battlefront
• Star Wars Battlefront 2
• A bunch of Simpsons games O_O
• A bunch of Sims/Sims 2 games O_O
• A bunch of Need for Speed games O_O_O_O

PSP (I would need to get an A/V cable though)

• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
• NBA Street Showdown
• The Sims 2
• Star Wars Battlefront 2

PC

• The Sims 2 (I have almost all the expansions..)
• Roller Coaster Tycoon 2
• Roller Coaster Tycoon 3
• Flight Simulator 2004
• Slight Simulator X Deluxe Edition
• Sim City 4 + Rush Hour expansion
• Zoo Tycoon
• Zoo Tycoon 2
• And a bunch of others…

I don’t have an Xbox, but I have a friend that got a 360 and doesn’t use his old box anymore…

• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
• Star Wars Battlefront 2 (AGAIN)
• And a bunch of others…

…as you can see I like Grand Theft Auto, simulator games, and fighting games in general… I don’t know if any other games other than GTA would be great for any videos.. I’ll figure something out eventually, if you guys don’t help me out.

Drop me a comment below on what you think ;D

Cheers

Please be aware that this is a very old post and is no longer very accurate. YouTube has since disabled animated .gifs and most of these programs and techniques are out of date. This is being left up because it may serve as useful to some. Enjoy.

Hey, if you have any questions, you should probably ask them here. There’s a better chance that they’ll be read and answered. Same thing with comments. There is no written tutorial. However, there is a video walkthrough after the break.

The Tutorial

Necessary Programs

• Photoshop CS3
• Hypercam 2

I understand that there are other programs out there that do the same job. They may be easier or harder, but this is what I do.

For more information, please see this topic.

http://fantikerz.com/forum/

I’m the guy with the D legs during I Don’t Wanna be in Love by Good Charlotte. Check it out!

The title stands for
Makes Me Wonder Why I’m Hunting for the Dance Floor
This took one week to make, and I hope you like it! Happy holidays!
This video is worth WATCHING ALL OF IT. LOL

What I’m doing now is setting up the forum up again, but taking advantage of this time to use a MySQL database this time, which is more efficient. I am also taking the time to improve the forum and fine-tune some things.

Keep an eye out for Dora the Explorer too O_O

The video is to the Rocket Power, A show on Nickelodeon based around sports.

I’m the guy in the jester hat (lol) around the end.

But anyway, on to explaining the title… If you’re farmiliar with Grand Theft Auto, then you probably know what Chatterbox is. But for those of you that haven’t experienced that pointless fun of pixel killing rampages, I better explain. Chatterbox is a radio station from GTA 3/GTA: Liberty City Stories, and it’s mad funny. What I want to do with it is chop up the 1 hour recording of the show into 5 minute segments and make an episode for each. This can be compared to Teh Noob Show or even Paranoia.

If you haven’t heard of chatterbox, take a listen right here.