iSoaker.net :: Soaking the world!

I'm currently working on my website, which will be hosted on a phpbb3 forum and webs.com. I've uploaded about 1/3 of the content I plan to be up in total, I still have to write the rest.

I'll give you a sneak peek in a few days with an article. Full site(s) should be up early to mid September.

Cool can't wait to see it! If you had the chance at all could you include a sort of movie section please?

I am including a movie section. With shot videos of my CPS 1100 and XP 270. Need a better camera to shoot with though so that content might not go up with the launch of the site.

Change of plan:

Most of all of the content will be uploaded to the forums and the site will also be able to be used for navigational purposes. It's difficult to explain, but you'll see when the site's ready.

Hope you all enjoy it!

Sounds good! Looking forward to seeing a new water warfare site online!

Note: I considered running a site solely off of forums, but figured I preferred the freedom of what I can do with dynamic page coding.

I like the sound of your new website, it seems different althought I guess I can't really tell until i've been on it.
The movie section sounds good as well and I would like to be able to add some of my own footage and pics to both isoaker.com and your website when I get round to it ( that is of course with your permission)
Hope everything runs smoothly for you.

mkhadem

I'm open to any content from anyone. PM me for email.

UPDATE:

Things are dashing along. The boards aren't being used for discussion, rather to hold the content of my site! I just have to finish two more articles and the whole thing will be ready. I'll have at least one post in every section except for videos; I NEED a better camera. Still open to content!

Alright, the content for launch is DONE. I know most of it is links to phpBB, but it's still cool. Here's the link:

http://soakernook.webs.com/

Pretty chill!Enjoy!

Nice! Great to see it up and your explanation about how the site serves as an interface for the forums makes sense. Perhaps you could try to skin the forums to better match the site's color theme?

Otherwise, nice start! Now, the real challenge begins: maintaining your site and growing it well!

The site template is pre-made and thus wasn't designed to convey the water warfare theme very well. Another issue is that it's on fixed width, which is something I deliberately tried to avoid when setting up my own site. Your method however, is a nice easy way to set things up even though it may not be fancy nor "proper".

I'd say, try to re-skin the site. The forum is fine. It'd be better if you could dingle around with the forum links. Remove links to forum indexes and add links that direct back to the site, and make the whole thing look cleaner and more like a website. Just some tips.

Thanks for the constructive criticism, guys! I'll try to see what I can do in terms of re-skinning it.

@C-A_99: In my signature, I include links back to the site, and I'd like to give people the choice if they want to go to the index or the website. That being said, I don't even know if my ACP can even remove the links. Free hosting makes for limited customization.

In terms of the whole "fixed" versus "fluid" layout, I've been recently having second thoughts on which is the preferred method for displaying webpages. While it is nice for sites to make use of larger screens and window sized when space is available, when pages get too wide and text blocks end up stretched out horizontally, it makes reading more difficult. Optimally, one should have pages scale to fix larger windows, scaling font and image sizes as needed, but this is not so easy to encode yet. I keep iSoaker.com fluid, but have opted to create fixed width sites for other sites/pages I've more recently been working on.

As for steelboot.'s theme, while it doesn't scream 'water warfare', it does work, IMO, for "The Soaker Nook". More water blaster/water warfare images would be nice, but the overall theme could still work well.

I saw some articles that I don't think I've seen posted before. I liked your eponymous law in the "Neighborhood Water Warfare," because it's matched my experiences fairly well. It does make the assumption that everyone brings their own water guns and they all use their own, though. Also, some links might be in order...for example, you throw out the initialism RM and some readers may not get the connection.

I'm in favor of a prominent link back to the main website, too. And I agree that trying to get rid of all inter-forum-page links would be difficult...don't worry about it. At worst it'll confuse people a little bit.

If you can find a free way to do it, a dedicated content management system (CMS) may be a better choice. A forum obviously a pretty indirect solution. But it works.

iSoaker, I feel the same way you do. It's both impractical and irresponsible (in terms of our demands) to expect all pages to look good on a really wide screen. It's really up to us, the viewers, to make things work; and as I've said, modern browsers can do text and image zoom and perhaps even remember that zoom level for a given domain. This actually works out fairly well.

That said, I think a mix between fluid and static is best. I've noticed that many websites just specify a maximum width, along with a margin for aesthetics. Up to 1024 or 1280 pixels or so, the page is dynamic, but beyond that, it's static. I'm using that elsewhere, too.

@isoaker: I did choose the image on the main site as a kind of "nook", it doesn't scream "WATER WARFARE FTW", it's more of a calm theme.

@Silence: Look in my signature: there is a link to every page in the site.

As I have said before, I like the content, and the layout/design. I hope that you can incorporate that with the forums.

Just looked at the site it looks awesome! Can't wait to see it finished.

I've changed the site around - a lot. Now, all articles are on site - finally figured out how to get a page that wouldn't go up on the menu. In case some find going through the forums preferable, I still have the link to my "Alternate Site". Update in the last week of August at the latest September 1st.

Enjoy!

I'm opting to push the content update date to Sep 6th. That way I know my new soakers will arrive by then and I'll be able to write reviews on them, and I might even be able to come up with an idea for yet ANOTHER article. I'll release a sneak peek article in a few days. Still no videos, need a better camera.

Alright, I admit to itching to release the update, but I can't until my new soakers arrive. So I'm releasing the first half right now, and the second half will wait until I have my new soakers.

http://soakernook.webs.com/

As you can probably see, I also took away the link to the alternate forum site, which I did because it just isn't necessary. I don't want to have to maintain two sites when I only need one. If anybody still wants the Alternate Site, PM me and I'll consider re-posting the link but it takes up space on the menu I could use for other things so until further notice SNk will be hosted only on webs.

I also removed the Video Section because I don't have an adequate camera to record videos with. When I get one, the Video Section will be re-added, so don't worry.

Thanks to teamfear for providing some content. The more the merrier! Am always open to submitted content!

EDIT: Video Section is back up. I recorded 11k shot vids despite my crappy camera, which will be posted on the 6th. Even more vids when I get a new camera.