MW2 Clan Website

So you might have noticed that I haven’t written in a few days. I’ve actually been quite busy working on my clan’s website (Nine Eleven Clan). Some of you guys are probably wondering what a clan is. Basically it’s a group of people that you play video games with, which makes me a nerd. I have my own Blog with a custom made theme, though, so “nerd” was already assumed.

Anyway, I have a few things to say about the whole experience. I’ll add some headers to make the post easier to follow.

How I made it

First I started with a wireframe, of course. I wasn’t even sure what Content Management System I was going to use (leaning toward SMF or phpBB3), I just wanted to flesh out what the site would look like. I already knew what features and things we’d need.

Once I had the wireframe it started to become clear that SMF would be my chosen CMS. It had better support for plugins that we would need, I was most familiar with it, and so was my clan.

The Design Process

I decided to take the color scheme from Modern Warfare 2 for the most part. Green was a large part of the MW2 brand, and orange was also used extensively. My initial thought was that they would clash, but I then remembered that they’ve been used tastefully elsewhere.

I decided that this would be my first grunge website. I’ve never really done grunge style, except in a couple signature images. The background texture was the easiest part, I just mixed a bunch of textures together using various blend-modes and added a gradient.

I learned a lot in the designing of the rest of the site. I used bevel in ways I’ve never really used it before (might write a post on it sometime), and had to do a lot more with putting text on top of busier backgrounds than I ever have before. Looking back, I wish I could have used fewer boxes.

I made a few decisions that go against the standard for most forums. I used a fixed-width layout, which I suppose is becoming more and more common. I also limited (through defining widths and having lots of negative space) the amount of room for posts. This was to keep posts from stretching out and being difficult to read.

I’ve gotten some complaints about it, and some positive comments. Some people don’t like the fact that signature images can’t be wider than 370px, some people like how readable the site is. I guess you can’t please everyone.

The Coding

Well, I think I’d have done the coding completely differently. I took the default SMF (2.0) theme and started modifying it. The trouble is that the CSS is horrible. It gets the job done, but it’s quite sloppy. It’s annoying to code for. I used it at the advice of some tutorials, but I think next time I’ll do more reading to see if there’s a better option.

The community was extremely helpful. I had some problems with my PHP code, and was able to get it resolved within a couple hours. Actually, one of the members was kind enough to write some of my code for me, basically. That’s probably my new favorite thing about SMF.

Not Done Yet

I should point out that as of this post the site isn’t done. I still haven’t coded my footer, and there are a few bugs. You should definitely check it out though, especially if you’re looking for an MW2 clan.