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11 Aug 2006, 13:32
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#1
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Hibernating
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Team Kesha
Posts: 1,621
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New portal design
I feel that planetarion could really use a new portal design + lay-out.
The one we have now looks like it was designed back in 1994 or something and tbh it kinda looks like crap.
This portal page is the first contact people make with planetarion before they sign up so it's in our best intrest to make it look as good as possible.
It should also incorperate some new features, like news-updates about the universe (what ally hit another one, who did good in wars, ...), alliance recruitment section, ...
I'd gladly help doing any graphic work required for it, but to do that I would require the planetarion logo's, graphics, etc.
Any comments plz post or mail me on this forum.
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[InSomnia]
Official designated driver
[ToF] - [eXilition] - [Rock] - [Denial] - [DLR] - [eVolution] - [ODDR] - [HR] - [Ultores] - [Apprime] - [Ironborn]
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11 Aug 2006, 13:43
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#2
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Mastermind
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 430
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Re: New portal design
I totally agree with you here VdM.
Make it happen please and spread the link once again!
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Community Leader
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11 Aug 2006, 14:38
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#3
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ROCK biatch
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 92
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Re: New portal design
Same here.
Portal would be better if it was designed again and have graphics on it like we had r4/r5 they were class... make the first impression a good one I say tbh.
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Insomniac
[VanX][ToF][xVx][PK][Subh][InS][Omen][Destiny][ROCK]
Proud to been a Member of Gal 1:6 R18
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11 Aug 2006, 14:40
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#4
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No Alliance
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: England
Posts: 125
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Re: New portal design
definately agree would be brilliant the whole layout even onece you log in should be updated to make it look nicer, i know its only a web based game but frankly it does look dull at the best of times
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How about i paste all my co-ords form previous rounds below, it might make me look more important??
or not
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11 Aug 2006, 14:41
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#5
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CRASHING BEATS 'N FANTASY
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Cold Country.
Posts: 1,912
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Re: New portal design
As if PA would have nothing else to improve bar the portal layout
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Ią! Ią! Munin F'tagn! - [*scendancy]
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11 Aug 2006, 15:05
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#6
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The BOFH
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 463
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Re: New portal design
The website is desperate for updates. A few ideas I'd possibly recommend:
Regular news updates: News should ideally be posted every 2-3 days, the month of July got a total of 2 news postings. Nobody is going to visit a site which rarely gets updated.
Developer blogs: To show the playerbase whats going on with future developments of Planetarion. It might encourage more development to be done, as well as showing people if anything is being done. It really should show the life of a member of Planetarion staff.
Overhaul all content pages: Any content pages should have a consistent look across them. The manual should also be a part of the main site, at the moment everything it split up quite badly.
One other thing which is needed is a decent design, just take a look at some of the previous versions of the portals from archive.org - http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://...anetarion.com/ and http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://...anetarion.com/. Most of them are awful and unappealing. If any new site is to be used then it needs to have a professionally done and near perfect design, instead of the awful homepage look which most volunteers manage to produce every time.
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11 Aug 2006, 15:10
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#7
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Inactive peon
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 6,050
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Re: New portal design
Quote:
Originally Posted by GReaper
The website is desperate for updates. A few ideas I'd possibly recommend:
Regular news updates: News should ideally be posted every 2-3 days, the month of July got a total of 2 news postings. Nobody is going to visit a site which rarely gets updated.
Developer blogs: To show the playerbase whats going on with future developments of Planetarion. It might encourage more development to be done, as well as showing people if anything is being done. It really should show the life of a member of Planetarion staff.
Overhaul all content pages: Any content pages should have a consistent look across them. The manual should also be a part of the main site, at the moment everything it split up quite badly.
One other thing which is needed is a decent design, just take a look at some of the previous versions of the portals from archive.org - http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://...anetarion.com/ and http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://...anetarion.com/. Most of them are awful and unappealing. If any new site is to be used then it needs to have a professionally done and near perfect design, instead of the awful homepage look which most volunteers manage to produce every time.
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news updates: theese happen when there is news - a fair few websites don;t have this happening very often.
blogs - personally I would like to see all memebrs of pateam keeping a blog on the portal so people can hear about the progress of their individual departments
design - a new design is in the works.
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11 Aug 2006, 15:33
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#8
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The BOFH
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 463
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Re: New portal design
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal
news updates: theese happen when there is news - a fair few websites don;t have this happening very often.
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Make news! Instead of creators hour you could accept questions into a weekly questions news update, similar to UO's Five on Friday or The Camelot Herald's Grab Bag. If you don't make enough news to get enough visitors then you are doomed to make another failure. Players won't visit a site which doesn't update often enough, web developers won't bother to update a site which doesn't get any visits.
Anyway, a couple of questions:
When will the new design be due? We've seen many promises in the past year and nothing has appeared from them.
Are you going to assign someone with the role of webmaster? The current team structure shows no specific webmaster role. Perhaps if someone had the specific job of keeping the site updated then things wouldn't get into such a bad state every year or so.
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11 Aug 2006, 15:41
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#9
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Inactive peon
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 6,050
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Re: New portal design
Hopefully the new portal/passport stuff will be done for next round. The new portal design isn't hugely compatible with the current portal so we probabaly will have to wait - I'm not sure we have a specific date in mind, but I'd imagine the target is to have it ready for the next round.
I'd imagine a webmaster would be responsivble for the technical side of the site, not posting news...
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11 Aug 2006, 15:56
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#10
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The BOFH
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 463
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Re: New portal design
A webmaster can still be responsible for the content of the site. Will there be someone responsible for keeping the technical side updated? Will there be someone to keep the content fresh and updated?
There is little point deploying a site unless someone maintains it, instead of allowing it to die due to a lack of updates.
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11 Aug 2006, 16:02
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#11
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Inactive peon
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 6,050
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Re: New portal design
Quote:
Originally Posted by GReaper
A webmaster can still be responsible for the content of the site. Will there be someone responsible for keeping the technical side updated? Will there be someone to keep the content fresh and updated?
There is little point deploying a site unless someone maintains it, instead of allowing it to die due to a lack of updates.
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our basic problem is that we have very limited coding resources, and they tend to get prioritised towards the game.
So basically we would need someone he can probabaly invest 4 hours per week, every week to have a dedicated webmaster who maintains the technical and contents sides of the portal - now if someone wants to volunteer...
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11 Aug 2006, 18:06
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#12
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Hibernating
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Team Kesha
Posts: 1,621
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Re: New portal design
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal
So basically we would need someone he can probabaly invest 4 hours per week, every week to have a dedicated webmaster who maintains the technical and contents sides of the portal - now if someone wants to volunteer...
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If you make a decent portal then why would you need a dedicated webmaster to maintain technical? Even more, the 4 hours content can be reduced aswell, there's no need for huge amounts of contents every 2-3 days, just a few minor updates on what has happened in the universe and like GReaper said a pa-team blog so we see what you guys are working on
If you make a portal with CMS (Content Managing System) then updating the portal shouldn't take more than 1 hour.
btw I volounteer for any graphic work that needs to be done, even if it's just a 2nd opinion or something. I graduated as a graphic designer so I know what I'm talking about.
And to Heartless, yes there are more important things to do than making a better portal, but to attract new people this portal has to look it's best.
Put yourself in the position of a new player, why would he start this game when the first view of it isn't very good when he can play another game where he did get a good first impression of. In essence allmost all tickbased games are the same so the only look on it you have before you start are the graphics and the amount of news on the portal.
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[InSomnia]
Official designated driver
[ToF] - [eXilition] - [Rock] - [Denial] - [DLR] - [eVolution] - [ODDR] - [HR] - [Ultores] - [Apprime] - [Ironborn]
Last edited by Veedeejem!; 12 Aug 2006 at 13:58.
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11 Aug 2006, 18:29
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#13
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Mastermind
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 430
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Re: New portal design
http://www.clawofdarkness.com/pawiki....php/Main_Page
sth like the pa wiki newsbox would belong to the PA portal aswell. as VdM said, its the first impression for people who are looking for a nice game to play, and we had several "give us fresh blood" discussions going on. Portal needs to be revamped, I put my faith in you guys because I still love that damn game.
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Community Leader
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11 Aug 2006, 19:14
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#14
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[Vision]
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: The Netherlands
Posts: 897
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Re: New portal design
Quote:
Originally Posted by Veedeejem!
And to Idler, yes there are more important things to do than making a better portal, but to attract new people this portal has to look it's best.
Put yourself in the position of a new player, why would he start this game when the first view of it isn't very good when he can play another game where he did get a good first impression of. In essence allmost all tickbased games are the same so the only look on it you have before you start are the graphics and the amount of news on the portal.
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I mentioned that about 3 rounds ago repeatadly, you can have all the neat features ingame you want, but as long as the game looks bad/boring/dead from the outside no one will ever use them .
And its alot better to first make a clear plan (also known as designing) about what you want the game to become in the future (where you want it to go) and build it from there, instead of building random features in when you happen to have had a idea or comment from players. Without a decent design/plan for the future there won't be much to work for nor talk about to the public.
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[Vision] in a lost dream, contributing to The 5th Element at present
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11 Aug 2006, 19:22
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#15
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Inactive peon
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 6,050
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Re: New portal design
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wandows
I mentioned that about 3 rounds ago repeatadly, you can have all the neat features ingame you want, but as long as the game looks bad/boring/dead from the outside no one will ever use them .
And its alot better to first make a clear plan (also known as designing) about what you want the game to become in the future (where you want it to go) and build it from there, instead of building random features in when you happen to have had a idea or comment from players. Without a decent design/plan for the future there won't be much to work for nor talk about to the public.
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I agree entirly, but its not exaclty an easy task.
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11 Aug 2006, 20:10
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#16
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Domestic Diva
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Just past a sort of reddy moon, you cant miss it!
Posts: 702
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Re: New portal design
i know that in the past there wasnt a "webmaster" but there was a "portal editor" who was responsible for updates. If i recall it was DragonLord for a long time.
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Its Only Nasty, When Its Not True.
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11 Aug 2006, 22:56
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#17
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I see you!
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: In any girl
Posts: 2,825
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Re: New portal design
Do people even view the portal regulary? I think I only look at it like once or twice a year.
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11 Aug 2006, 23:12
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#18
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Hamster
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Crewe, England
Posts: 3,606
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Re: New portal design
The portal has throughout its history been the single biggest waste of space this game has ever seen. More time has been spent on redeveloping thsi every couple of rounds than have been spend on the game and even when the portal was the first page of the game no-one really bothered to read it because any official portal is bland and boring and over restrictive.
It would be alot eaiser to either a) use the announcement forum as pre portal PA did to post updates on a regular basis (which would force people to look at the forums and maybe get more people involved) or b) just throw up a copy of wordpressand use this as a development blog
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Wakey
PD and Suggestions Moderator
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Cos anything else is just an alliance
Join our public channel at #f-crew
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12 Aug 2006, 00:00
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#19
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Inactive peon
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 6,050
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Re: New portal design
The portal in its current form is not really designed to be viewed regularly. This is why announcements also appear on the forums.
However the address www.planetarion.com is probabaly one of our most valuable assests and something productive and useful does need to be done with it.
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12 Aug 2006, 05:27
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#20
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Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,663
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Re: New portal design
I'd like to see a Hall of Fame with winners since R1 (planet, gal, ally).
Also a small history of the different races (kind of an ID sheet, with a pic, so we can at last see how a xan woman looks like... )
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12 Aug 2006, 11:22
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#21
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This is bat country
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Norway
Posts: 1,693
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Re: New portal design
I dont really have a issue with a new portal as long as its being made into a proper and active forum. (Why was I eveven mentioned :/)
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Burįrum!
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12 Aug 2006, 12:06
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#22
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Inactive peon
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 6,050
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Re: New portal design
Quote:
Originally Posted by I am Idler
I dont really have a issue with a new portal as long as its being made into a proper and active forum. (Why was I eveven mentioned :/)
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My personal viwes on the portal:
Needs to have a clean professional looking design
Needs to show that exciting things are always taking place inside the game - maybe some of the statisitics you get on pilkara like top owned planet that type of thing
Needs to have interesting content to make people use it
Needs to show that PATeam do activly do things during a round etc.
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12 Aug 2006, 13:50
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#23
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The BOFH
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 463
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Re: New portal design
Quote:
Originally Posted by wakey
The portal has throughout its history been the single biggest waste of space this game has ever seen. More time has been spent on redeveloping thsi every couple of rounds than have been spend on the game and even when the portal was the first page of the game no-one really bothered to read it because any official portal is bland and boring and over restrictive.
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Has any portal actually looked good? Most of them have looked awful and cheap, instead of being well designed and appealing to players.
Content is vital, as well as regular news. Also the content shouldn't be duplicated everywhere to give people a reason to visit such a portal. The forum currently gets the full content of every news posting, instead it could get the first paragraph of a news posting from an RSS feed (vBulletin supports this). The ingame MOTD should point to portal news items instead of pointing to a forum thread. Doing these two things should encourage people to visit the portal. An important thing to remember is that it still needs to be a good portal, forcing people to view an awful site isn't going to do any good.
As Kal mentioned, most of the effort goes into the game. Usually any website/portal development takes time away from game development - which it shouldn't. The main website should be an important part of Planetarion, it should get enough time and effort to make sure it gets maintained well.
There still is a potential to make a decent portal/website, however the mistakes from every other portal needs to be taken into account.
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12 Aug 2006, 13:57
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#24
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Hibernating
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Team Kesha
Posts: 1,621
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Re: New portal design
Quote:
Originally Posted by I am Idler
I dont really have a issue with a new portal as long as its being made into a proper and active forum. (Why was I eveven mentioned :/)
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Sorry, i meant heartless, i'll edit my post
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[InSomnia]
Official designated driver
[ToF] - [eXilition] - [Rock] - [Denial] - [DLR] - [eVolution] - [ODDR] - [HR] - [Ultores] - [Apprime] - [Ironborn]
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