SpringFiles v3.0 Preview

[Johannes]

That looks cool, but maybe make the grey background match more with the white part?

[jj]

Thanks for all the compliments.

How the white part would blend in the dark one?
I think it should not.

[zwzsg]

I don't care as much about the look as about the functionnalities. Must be intuitive to browse, have a good search box, I must never wonder why I landed on this page or how to go to that other page.

[TradeMark]

Yeah, dont waste time making epic layouts, as i said before... its pointless

[jj]

Trademark, your statement is right, but is has to look good and clean.

Another important thing i have to say:
I'm planning to host resources for other games also.
- Command & Conquer
- Total Annihilation
- Supreme Commander.
- Other suggestions

Why? Because it will give more exposure to spring. Lots of people playing c&c never heard of Spring, same for supreme commander.
With more visitors i could also invest in greater and better hosting/servers without being dependent on gifts from the spring community.

Any help with uploading content for these games is greatly welcome!

I'm also looking for good VPS hosting with 100GB diskspace / 1000GB bandwidth to start with.

Since quality VPS hosting is expensive, it could be a good idea to keep the site on the current server (which is reliable) and host the files on cheap VPS solutions. Any suggestions for VPS solutions?

JJ

[Jazcash]

All these mini-Spring sites and projects should focus specifically on their primary objective. We don't want another news/downloads/screenshots/guide All-in-one.

This is why Forb altered SpringInfo to focus on News. Please, keep your site focused on Spring downloads. The last thing you need is to have the burden of having to deal with 3 or 4 other major communities when it comes to hosting their files.

I fail to see how you can go from struggling to host Spring's files alone due to exceeded diskspace and insufficient funding to wanting to host files for every major RTS on the planet.

I actually loved Spring Files the way it was, a makeover would've been nice but it served its purpose absolutely fine. Please don't alter the current function and purpose of Spring Files as you already hit the spot.

Suggestions for improvements you could make to give me a hardon instead of a turndown:

• Redesign the site, give it a new layout and some purty graphics to aid in navigation
• Add some more statistics to show users peak download times, average downloads per day, and other creative things I'm sure you could come up with
• Have ads as well as donations, the more self-sufficient the site is, the better, mind you, users won't want to be sifting through piles of ads every time they download a file so make them noticeable, but not intrusive if you know what I mean
• Hire some people to sort all the maps out into proper categories and add more filters to make finding new maps a much more useful experience. Currently, the filters look like this for me on my old PC, Firefox and Chrome:

  

  filters.jpg (20.79 KiB) Viewed 2136 times

Before this escalates into a flame war, I want you to know I admire all the work you put into Spring Files and for the money you've put into it, don't see why you should listen to me. I'm just offering advice and what I would personally do.

If you want some help with the redesign or some icons/other graphics, feel free to drop me a PM.

[jj]

Thanks for your advice.
The reason for extra game info is that SF is for some people the first visited site about spring. Extra game info would be needed for them in order to get their attention.
In other words: more new spring players.

PM is on its way.

[SirArtturi]

I think complete make-up can be done.
But on the other hand, there's nothing wrong with the current concept as it serves the purpose very well.

So, I prefer keeping the old layout as basis. Trademarks mock up was great imo. It's easy to browse...

And yes, I vote for more statistics!

[TradeMark]

I fail to see how you can go from struggling to host Spring's files alone due to exceeded diskspace and insufficient funding to wanting to host files for every major RTS on the planet.

Indeed. Although, this could be possible if jj stops hosting files completely and start relying only at the mirrors.

Also, the problem with Spring's popularity isnt how many people actually know about it, but how keep them playing and not quitting after a few games.

Also, how many people actually came from Supcom etc. other commercial games into Spring?

--

About the statistics, the only thing i was interested about was the daily downloads to see how popular some map is or was. But you removed it for some reason?

[jj]

I don't want stopping hosting the files, because i like to host it.
I want to host more game resources, just for the fun :)

Yes, the daily file downloads where very cool.
But the hosting provider was complaining about high database usage.
It will come back in the new version and will be updated with a cronjob.
So it will get a delay of ~ 1 hour. But it will return, you have my words

[koshi]

Any suggestions for VPS solutions?

http://www.isgenoeg.nl/ks/ while they also have vps like hosting, I would discourage from using those, since they only have quota on a SAN.

[Licho]

You can also host it on my springrts.com server..
I said it numerous time..

It has no problems with traffic - 3000gb at 100mbit and then unlimited at 10mbit.

[jj]

Any suggestions for VPS solutions?

http://www.isgenoeg.nl/ks/ while they also have vps like hosting, I would discourage from using those, since they only have quota on a SAN.

Thanks alot koshi! It sounds very good. I think i go for their dedicated server solutions..

[Forboding Angel]

You can also host it on my springrts.com server..
I said it numerous time..

It has no problems with traffic - 3000gb at 100mbit and then unlimited at 10mbit.

^^This

[luckywaldo7]

Feature Requests, if they haven't been requested already:

1) A rating system for content. I have especially maps in mind, that some excellent but obscure maps will be more findable.

2) Tagging content. So lets say I want a desert map, I can quickly bring up maps tagged "desert". Or else I want to play a map recommended for 5v5 or 7-ffa, I can just search for those tags.

I guess I have maps in mind for these. But good maps are not played nearly enough because they are hard to find. But with these, suppose I have 4 people who want a ffa on a snow map, you could just be like Bam! there is a recommended map.

[Gota]

Hardcore mode sounds good..

[jj]

Feature Requests, if they haven't been requested already:

1) A rating system for content. I have especially maps in mind, that some excellent but obscure maps will be more findable.

2) Tagging content. So lets say I want a desert map, I can quickly bring up maps tagged "desert". Or else I want to play a map recommended for 5v5 or 7-ffa, I can just search for those tags.

I guess I have maps in mind for these. But good maps are not played nearly enough because they are hard to find. But with these, suppose I have 4 people who want a ffa on a snow map, you could just be like Bam! there is a recommended map.

Your first request is already there, except that it is not searchable atm. I will fix that in 3.0
I've already started some preparations for tagging content. Right now you can only add some tags i have predefined like FFA or 1v1. It would be much nicer to have a free tag system and a tag cloud on the main page. Of course this will get searchable.

[Jazcash]

[TradeMark]

Looks cool.

Few fixes to make:
1) make max width to 1000. (adverts width not counted).
2) smaller font for titles, it looks ridiculously large compared to plaintext font size.
3) rename "map filters" to "list maps by type" or something more informative about the action you do when you click it. actually, i dont think that has to be at the front page at all, could be put in a search page instead. I actually never used this feature on jj's site...
4) remove percents from "most downloaded files".
5) latest downloaded files is useless information that serves no purpose.
6) statistics at front page is waste of space. except "total files" etc is nice to see, or that bandwidth thing jj had before.
7) remove polls, they are useless, if needed, make them small and merge them in the news portion.

sorry for "whining"

[luckywaldo7]

Ah, didn't notice there was a rating system already ^^

Actually I would recommend switching to something more like a simple Like/Dislike button, like you see on pretty much everything else nowadays.