Floatzel.Net receiving an overhaul
 

After some time of dealing with the layout having a few fatal flaws from the coding side of things (no SSI, for instance), I decided it was about time to actually fix it up. I don't intend to remove anything, but some old features may get replaced as necessary, and a few URLs may change in the process. For now, though, I'll bring up a few important things:

Layout
The site layout has been the same since around when Black and White were released. The positioning of items on the page will not change, but the color scheme might be updated. I haven't decided yet. Obviously, the "Black and White" text in the banner will be changed if the colors change. That "Pokédex" box in the upper left has got to go; it just redirects to the dormant VGVids.

News Aggregator
That's the thingy that allows you to view the network news on Floatzel.Net. Yeah, it's definitely in need of updating. I've noticed that a few features don't work properly with it (like the tables), and the lists sometimes have issues.

Affiliation
I'll be reopening affiliation once the overhaul is complete, as it won't be a pain to add/remove them anymore. I know I've got at least 25 sites in queue to review.

If you are a current affiliate, please do not remove Floatzel.Net from your affiliates list. Otherwise, I may consider your site to have dropped the affiliation and will remove your site's icon as well. If your site hasn't been updated in a long time, brings up a lot of errors messages, or has been taken down, your icon will be removed. This link leads to the revised affiliates list. It may change before the completion of reconstruction.

New Stuff

• I think I'll fix up the History page a bit.
• Instances of my e-mail address will be replaced with a contact page. (Likewise, the "Contact" box along the left side will be removed.)
• I haven't yet decided if I'll add an XY page.
• The Mario Paint page really needs to be fixed up so it doesn't load so slowly.
• I'm going to add a "Legacy" menu item, which will contain retired sections of Floatzel.Net, like the Pokémon of the Month.
• I want to add some more pages, but I need some ideas. (Anybody have any good ideas?)

The overhaul itself should be complete by the end of the month.

Probably a really good idea Cat I wonder if there are any users here who aren't even aware of the site.

since ive been here on VR i only been to floatzel.net once

I agree, Floatzel.net needs a little update...but I have noticed that it hasnt gotten much attention lately.

This is something that it has been needing for quite sometime. Especially the layout~ A complete and full overhaul will help you go through ALL of your pages and see what needs to be kept and what should go. You'll be able to make tweaks anywhere that is a bit iffy and add more content that will help revitalize Floatzel.net so it can hold it's own once again. And of cousre, if there is any assistance I can offer, I'm open~ Good luck on this MUCH needed project!

Now I'm imagining what Floatzel.net will end up looking like in the end. Even a colour scheme change can do wonders to the "freshness" of a web site if the previous colour scheme was getting old.

I've been here a while and still not sure what the point of floatzel.net even is.

I don't think I discovered floatzel.net until about 6 months after I joined. :P

I'll be honest though, I don't use floatzel.net much... at all. But I do agree that it needs new changes because of how little the site is used.

Floatzel.Net was (I say "was" because I didn't bother with it since BW came out) my attempt at a simple Pokémon fansite with a place to host my small projects to see what worked and what didn't. There really was no reason to "use" the site more than a couple times, and anyone who is a regular forum-goer has no reason to use the news feed. I never was able to get a "lasting" project up that hasn't been moved off being directly on Floatzel.Net; the three in particular are VR (formerly http://floatzel.net/phpbb), VRAC (formerly http://floatzel.net/adopt/), and the Pokékaki (formerly http://floatzel.net/oekaki/). Pretty much everything else still on Floatzel.Net is designed to be viewed once and that's it. In fact, the only current feature that's still updated (but really ugly) is my music hosting.

I've tested out with a few projects over the years that didn't really kick off:

• A TCG listing. This didn't kick off because it would have been prohibitively expensive.
• A Pokédex ("Victorydex"). This was more of a coding exercise than a Pokédex meant to be used. It wasn't completed because Freeze took over, and the offline one was already done.
• A guide for Super Mario World. With the popularity of Let's Plays and Walkthroughs on YouTube, this was made obsolete early on.
• Image galleries for Brawl and Ranch. You don't play the same games forever, though. I do have a few new pictures I need to add to the Ranch page, but I really don't like the fact that neither of these games work with SDHC cards.

Anyway, the original idea behind Mario Minus World (the predecessor to Floatzel.Net) was very similar to what VGVids had been. It was just going to be a place to host a bunch of glitch videos and such.

Does anybody have any other good project ideas I could incorporate while revamping the site?

:ibf:

There could be a Make your own Trainer thing. Or a tourney to see who the best battler on VR is.

Bumpity-bump for this reason:
I would like feedback if anyone has any good ideas.

My only suggestion would be adding more to the reviews section. I am afraid I haven't got any ideas for new pages apart from 'Black 2' and 'X and Y' but I am looking forward to seeing the finished result of the site!

Speaking of overhauling Floatzel.net, I believe that the top-most, horizontal guided navigation needs an overhaul of sorts. You could certainly rearrange a lot of things by making what people are most interested in/are likely to be interested easily accessible from that - the topmost navigation is usually more visible on a website, considered to something in small type on the left.

Of course, the left navigation column also needs a side expansion. With wide-screen displays getting very common, and with even the iPhone joining the 16:9 era, the column now looks comically small, especially when you consider that Floatzel.net, by itself, automatically expands with the window size without limit or any significant padding around the web page content. Sometimes I feel like that Floatzel.net could get away with fixing the maximum display width to something at most 1024 pixels, if only to give it some breathing area for left and right areas of the page, when maximized, especially one widescreen displays.

Consider something like a "wrapper" <div> around both columns: the wrapper should contain the left navigation column and the right content box, as well as the page footer, and make said "wrapper" be at most a set amount of pixels (I would suggest 960 pixels - adjust as necessary):

I found Floatel.net through either YouTube or Pokemon Zone! (dang, I haven't been to PZ in FOREVER! O.O) Anyways, I was never really sure what it was for until reading this thread just now xD but I agree, it DEFINITELY needs an overhaul. I like Absol's idea about the Make-A-Trainer thing (which if the rumors are true, could quite nicely compliment X&Y) and I also like his idea on the tournament to see who the best on VR is. It would give myself as well as many other users an excuse to train more. I for one think the site needs a new design and cleaner structure as well as maybe new colors and possibly different themes like on VR.

So like i said awhile back ive been to the site once, so is the site like serebii a little bit? Like does it have its own iv calc and pokedex like some sites have? I would check it out but its under maintence.

Serebii copied the (open-source) IV calculator anyway, and it breaks the page it's on because it uses a different HTML document encoding. I tried making a Pokédex but got bored of it part-way through.

I guess that makes sense