Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
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Hmmm
« on November 6th, 2011, 06:35 PM »
The last day or so I've been working on a one-off site, pretty privately. The site has a lot of potential to it, and regulars on another forum will probably know what the domain name for it is too. But I'm not prepared to share that here, not yet.

The technical design is one-off, utilising a modified forum backend as the admin area (and only the admin area) while not showing anything of the forum on the regular user side, at least not directly. (The site blog will be using SSI to pull from the forum, the login system will use the forum login core, making use of the API to handle authentication and registration, with comments going back to the forum too)

What I will say is that it will be powered by nginx, PHP, and Wedge (though, really, there's no reason why I can't do it in SMF, I'm not using the forum core, but it will mean I have to fix the API) and make heavy use of the GD or Imagick libraries (might be a good time to learn that really)

But I'm stuck primarily on the site's look and feel (generally; I already have some of the very specific elements on the site planned out and even drawn in some cases).

What I guess I'm wondering is whether anyone has any resources or places they go for general inspiration for design. I don't even have a colour scheme at this point in time; time is the theme of the site, and I did contemplate doing some kind of steampunk clock motif around the border (since the majority of the main content is its own thing), but not sure about that at this time.

Sorry I can't give any details out, trying to keep this one sort of a surprise until I'm closer to being ready with it.
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Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
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Re: Hmmm
« Reply #1, on November 6th, 2011, 07:28 PM »
Hmm...
I don't really have a site where I go. I just browse the web and keep the sites I like in a 'design' tab group.

Long ago, I was very much into CSS Zen Garden. I think it's still active... A real eye-opener.
Other than that... Heck, I'd like to know which sites are the ones that matter when it comes to borrowing some inspiration.

Arantor

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Re: Hmmm
« Reply #2, on November 6th, 2011, 07:42 PM »
Hmm, I spent some time looking at deviantART for time and clocks and stuff like that but little is jumping out at me, unfortunately.

Jorin

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Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
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Re: Hmmm
« Reply #4, on November 7th, 2011, 01:18 AM »
Thanks for the links, I'll check them out, hopefully it'll give me something to work with :)

dorje

  • Krabi krabong: the wedge of martial arts. :P
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Re: Hmmm
« Reply #5, on November 8th, 2011, 12:02 PM »
Quote from Arantor on November 6th, 2011, 06:35 PM
The technical design is one-off, utilising a modified forum backend as the admin area (and only the admin area) while not showing anything of the forum on the regular user side, at least not directly. (The site blog will be using SSI to pull from the forum, the login system will use the forum login core, making use of the API to handle authentication and registration, with comments going back to the forum too)
Well, I'm going to do something similar (using SSI for login, permissions, ...) for a project. But I've noticed a bug[1] in smf, so I ask mysqlf if wedge still maintains this strange bahaviour...

The point is: if I want to use custom login and logout urls (after logging in and logging out), I've to store urls in the session array: $_SESSION['login_url'] and $_SESSION['logout_url'].

Well, with a fresh install of SMF, the $_SESSION['logout_url'] works fine, the $_SESSION['login_url'] doesn't work. I've to edit the LogInOut.php script to get the desired redirection (for some reason, $_SESSION['login_url'] is empty before executing the Login2 function - but I didn't have enough time to check where and why).

 1. Or feature? :)
Krabi Krabong & programming :D

Arantor

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Re: Hmmm
« Reply #6, on November 8th, 2011, 02:09 PM »
That's a bug in SMF, been there since at least 2009 when I first encountered it. Not sure why it happens but I'll investigate and make sure it's fixed in Wedge if nothing else.

billy2

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Re: Hmmm
« Reply #7, on November 10th, 2011, 08:50 AM »
For something to spark off an idea,
http://layersmagazine.com/

Tutorials on creating layers etc - its all Adobe based with some great ideas within Illustrator.
Perhaps you might find something that sends you on your way.
Billy
 
<br /><br />cough, cough.