August 30th, 2008 - State of the Community

[Lavarinth]

As your representative for Campaign Creations, as previously mentioned, I come at you today to update you on the state of the community. I simply use the term community to represent this site, Campaign Creations, as a whole. In reality, the community is typically regarded as the modding community, that being additional sites which also serve the same purpose. However, in this speech, I shall regard it only as this sole site.

First, and foremost, I would like to thank you all for your aid in making the community a much more lively place. It nearly brings a tear to my eye to experience the community slowly healing to a state of what it once was. Below is a graphical overview of how the community has improved in terms of our forum usage:

[imgwh 550x394]http://www.campaigncreations.org/news/0808-chart.jpg[/imgwh]

As you can see we had a few up and down moments, however are currently are on a steady upwards stream. Now, I do realize this could all change in a matter of days, but it is nice to have moments of glory. I could find no records of how Campaign Creations used to be in the past, other than our ever-friendly Web Archive, however for this day and age, I believe we are on a steady pace to a greater future together.

In terms of the website itself, long-time member Taeradun has stepped in to help Campaign Creations in it's first attempt to move the site to a fully functional content management system. What does this mean for Campaign Creations? A content management system (CMS from here on) is a different management process for our content. Yes, duh. In more detail, it allows us, the staff, to manage our pages in a much simpler process than through our FTP. we will access the site pages through the CMS and make realtime edits without the need to know HTML. The simple use of BBCode, much like in our forum, will allow the CMS to understand what you are attempting to create and display the page properly for you. This will allow our staff to update their pages whenever they like and however they like. Later additions to the website are hopes to track which pages are more popular, what campaigns more players prefer, and how many downloads are being performed per project. One step at a time, however.

A few of you have contacted me personally in terms of a follow up contest to our previous contest. I will mention here, officially, that there is more than one contest in the works at the moment, and hopefully if things go as planned we will begin to host multiple contests at the same time. However, before this begins, I must set myself in rhythm for these by crafting the "contest" section of the website and placing all submitted contests into those pages, alongside winners. I would also like to apologize for the winners of our last contest for the delays in your prizes as this is my first time, after all, hosting a contest. Future prizes will not take as long as the first. This is all, after all, trial and error as we involve Campaign Creations in more activities publically than we ever have.

As we update the website with the previously mentioned items, we also attempt to work on our Podcasts. Campaign Creations Podcasts require some effort to put together, however. Future Podcast, unlike the previous, may have a more varied appearance of staff instead of the same old three voices, and may at times, not even include myself, for example. We have discussed a lot of "serious" topics in the Podcasts, however, for the sake of entertainment, we may release some more comical Podcasts at times as well.

Campaign Creations strives to be the main supplier of quality projects and mods for your Blizzard products. However, we cannot do this alone. We need you, our community, to spread the word. Our background is stockpiled with quality. If you visit a forum who you think would find us interesting, let them know to visit our site. If you see something you think should be showcased more, let us know what ideas you may have to do so. We are only as big as you let us be. Help us push forward, and we will respond with affirmative action.

I thank you all for reading this post, and any feedback you would like to respond with, feel free to do so. I may have a more free spirited attitude in my posting in other threads, however I do take this position in administration seriously. Thanks again.

Your Administrator.

[Zilla-]

lol, so with taer on staff your plans for a secret takeover err... "acquisition" of SA are swiftly moving ahead?

[IskatuMesk]

HEY NO PROBLEM MAN ANYTIME JUST GIVE ME A RING U NO?

[Maglok]

Sounds good Lavvz.

[omega20]

Sounds good Lavvz.

What he said.

[AA7Dragoon]

This is great news, Lav.  I appreciate the post graph because it highlights the growth of this community.    In two years, Campaign Creations has re-ignited the flame, and we are on our way back to the glory days!

It seems to have happened overnight.  One day, I found myself posting at CC again and then... kept posting and posting again.  Today, I find myself posting just about every day.  I used to post at SA all the time (all the old CC vets went there) but that place is a ghost town now.  I don't know what happened.

We've definitely come a long way.  I want to thank and appreciate Lavarinth, our Administrator, for investing a lot of time and energy into this site.  WarBringer did a good job to help keep us afloat, and now Lavarinth is running the torch to victory.

I'd also like to thank the CC Staff, returning Staff, and Desler for involving themselves with the community.  We share a lot of history together, and CC's renewed activity is largely responsible by your active membership.

And I've really been enjoying all the newbies we've been having! 

[Frozty]

And returnees!

[AA7Dragoon]

Indeed!  Just over the last week or so we've had more returning veterans and I'm trying to convince DoW to come back too.

Lavarinth, I have a request.  Can we have tags for threads?  It's a list of tags like "News, Gossip, Games, Serious, Weird, Video, Youtube," that's next to the thread title displayed on the forum page.  Currently, it's slot is being replaced by just blank sheets of white paper.  I'm sure there's a graphic artist on staff who can create these tags for you to upload onto the forum? 

[Lavarinth]

I'm your graphical artist, sir, and I'll get on that!

EDIT: A list of ones you'd highly recommend would be appreciated

[AA7Dragoon]

Awesome, Lav!  I think these will spice up the forum a bit:

Here's a rough list:
Creepy, Humor, Games, News, Satire, Thread (default), Youtube, Curious, Serious, Spoiler, Gross, Love, Hot!, Movies, Religion, Weird/Stupid, Music, Rant, Surprise, Fabulous (for me), Birthday, Congrats, Newbie, Politics, Sad, Sorry, Thanks!, StarCraft, WarCraft, Diablo

I'm sure you can have a lot of fun creating the fonts and colors for each of these tags.  Looking forward to see what you come up with, Lav!

[Hercanic]

August 2006 compared to the other Augusts on the chart definately show a substantial growth in activity. The peaks and dips in activity, though, I would hypothosize are due to Summer and Christmas vacations giving people a lot more free time, whereas the deadness of ~April is likely due to finals and other such obligations.

Subject/type tags would be a great replacement for the otherwise useless message icons by communicating more information about the thread (rather than just a gimmick to draw more attention to a particular thread).

[Lavarinth]

That I could agree to. I'd make a smiley set as well, alas, I'm not one to do them very well.

[Lavarinth]

In the process of making icons as well as messing with forum theme colors to.. How should I put this.. Add more variety.

[IskatuMesk]

orange is a horrible forum color where ever did you get that idea from

[Zilla-]

WHY THE FUCK IS EVERYTHING ORANGE