8thos.com

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DRE

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8thos is an entertainment forum with blogs, chat, albums, vids, arcade and Media Law Wiki. In reality, it's mostly just a haven for the forum posters from the old site I moderated that had no place to go after the owner shut down his site. 8thos original name was The8thLegion.com then I changed to BlackGamer.net and now it's in it's current incarnation, 8thos.com.

Ideology

Ethos describes the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. 8thos forum is constantly changing due to new ideas. On 8thos.com we're just having fun and trying to escape boredom. Some of us come from sites with a lot of rules. We only have 3. Everyone is mostly laid back. Just chillin is our ethos.

Logo

The logo font is Century Gothic and the number 8 inside a black ball is a homage to our original site name, The 8th Legion. I created several versions with the only change being the color of 'thos'. We've had several logos before but out of all of them, this is my favorite one. You can see more logos here.

8thostw.webp




Design

Xenforo's speed, intuitivity and convenience far outshines most forum softwares by following The Path of Least Resistance and The Principle of Least Effort in most areas, if not all. Xenforo's software has inspired me to make me try to match these principles as much as possible with customized menus and extra options that make browsing the site a more comfortable experience.

I've created all my transparent skins with the exception of the mobile theme from XFStop. The banner is basically a collage of the site's member proof pics. They are folding their fingers to form an 8 and a L, which stands for 8th Legion. Sometimes members ask me to put them in the header and every once-in-awhile, someone will ask me to take them off.

There are a lot of custom template modifications I've added to the site such as CSS Highlight when hovering over a message, World Time Map and Local Time in Sidebar, Style Selector in Sidebar and Navigation, and added cool Social Network Authentication buttons like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Steam in Sidebar Visitor Panel.

Home.webp

Modifications

8thos.com features special modifications that make browsing the website an easier experience. All Topic's by BirdofPrey shows threads that were created in other subforums, inside one subforum. The Most Recent Posts Sidebar by Borbole allows guests and members to easily get a glimpse of forum replies and the forum sidebar styled by Shelley makes the posts easier to read.

Conversation Manager by Syndol allows members to see who all the participants are in a conversation from the main inbox and Xenporta by Jaxel has made it ridiculously easy to create a cool main site without the headache of buying a CMS or integration plugin. Post New Topic From Forum Home by me allows members to post from the forum home page and Post New Reply Link From Thread Display by me, allows members to post from both the thread listing and the main site through the RecentThreads block in Xenporta. XFRUserAlbums shares all three Pixlr photo editing pages.

XenFans User Bar by Floris has allowed me to create really cool moderator bar links available to all logged in members and makes it generally easy for noobs to get acquainted with the site. To keep the navigation menu from being overcrowded I changed the routes of certain modifications. For example, the games section shares the same route as XFArcade, Xbox Live Leaderboards and Sportsbook (I call it eBookie). The Social Groups section shares the same route as XenAtendo. The LN Blog section shares the same route as XenCarta and the customized Help section. Albums

View attachment 29022

My recent favorite modifications Editor Templates and Premium Member BB Codes added to the quick reply box. The latter requiring an edit with the most convenient modification of all modifications on this website, The Template Modification System. Some modifications have been pretty useful in bringing the community together such as Tinychat, Taigachat, Arrowchat, Meebo and Post Ratings.


SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

A couple weeks ago I made the8thlegion.com private. My SEO went down as a result. The site is public again though and permanent redirection are in place to direct the8thlegion.com links to 8thos.com. People are still finding the website anyway. For SEO I use modifications like Azucloud.
 
I love the ability that users can easily select the thread prefixes from the top of the forum. It's so awesome, I might just add that to my own site!

prefixes.webp

As for getting Ad Sense enabled, check out Robbo's Ad Manager. It makes adding ads anywhere on the site a real breeze, and allows you full control over who will see what :)
 
I love the ability that users can easily select the thread prefixes from the top of the forum. It's so awesome, I might just add that to my own site!

View attachment 29264

As for getting Ad Sense enabled, check out Robbo's Ad Manager. It makes adding ads anywhere on the site a real breeze, and allows you full control over who will see what :)
Thanks! That is Thread Prefix Listing by Fuhrmann

Thread Prefix Listing: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/thread-prefix-listing.80/
I have ad manager by rob installed. Just been too lazy to login to chitika and or find some other ad network to replace google adsense since I can't use them at the moment.
 
Your website and Forums are superb !!
the theme, the forum categories and headings.. the posts and the sections.. all are superb !!
I wish I could emulate you even 10 %.. my forum would be made.. !!

amazing concept !!
 
Logo

The logo font is Century Gothic and the number 8 inside a black ball is a homage to our original site name, The 8th Legion. I created several versions with the only change being the color of 'thos'. We've had several logos before but out of all of them, this is my favorite one. You can see more logos here.

I tried to make the 8 with more of an "E" feel to it for the Ethos part of your Logo.
I don't think it went well.

ethOS.webp

Update: well ... it's not horrible. But definitely detracts fom the 8 ball feel of the 8 ball (which I like). I wanted to do a subtle off white ... not blue .... maybe try that. with a more of a slight shading feel (to bring back more of the 8 ball feel.).
 
Your website and Forums are superb !!
the theme, the forum categories and headings.. the posts and the sections.. all are superb !!
I wish I could emulate you even 10 %.. my forum would be made.. !!

amazing concept !!
Thanks! I don't really like the stock category heading but not saying mine is better either. I upload skins to xenforo Resource Manager everyonce in awhile so you might want to check some of them out. If you find one you like, let me know and I'll update that skin with the category headings I created for my site that I'm using now.
How do you add new buttons to the editor tools?
Install the TMS: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/template-modification-system-tms.293/
and do this: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/template-modification-system-tms.27973/page-10#post-354271

I tried to make the 8 with more of an "E" feel to it for the Ethos part of your Logo.
I don't think it went well.

View attachment 30019

Update: well ... it's not horrible. But definitely detracts fom the 8 ball feel of the 8 ball (which I like). I wanted to do a subtle off white ... not blue .... maybe try that. with a more of a slight shading feel (to bring back more of the 8 ball feel.).
Yeah I tried that and it didn't look too well either. :p
 
My site was running slow so I'm trying to set up cloudflare again but this time only hosting images and javascript from a subdomain. I uninstalled about 25 addons. I'm now down to 75. You can read about which ones slowed down my site here. I also uninstalled a fixed style. Now down to 3 styles. I also have around 70 template modifications but they are part of the 75 addons I mentioned as TMS modification packs. I moved the sidebar back to the left and am creating a Moderator Bar addon but it's not finished, you can see preview of it in the screenshot below. This Moderator Bar addon is inspired by site's like Facebook since their sidebar and menu options are mostly focused on the left side. The only thing on the right is the Search bar and the AdminCP link. The Moderator Reports queue links only show up when there is an alert.

Left.webp
 
You might want to sacrifice shoutbox for speed.
My members complain everytime I take it down. I think the main problem with the shoutbox is the smilies, which I can fix by moving them to a cdn later.
maybe you wanna replace "who has visited" with http://xenforo.com/community/resources/todays-visitors.550/ (my version adds 1 query (+1 if there are non other uncached templates , will be fixed in the next version^^), the other one adds 4 ) if it's doing the same
Hey I really like this and it looks way better!
 
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Got the portal back. My site's private and invite-only now.

Was able to make most of the site private while making the outside have just enough public material to reduce the bounce rate.

june8.webp

Attached is a list of the current addons I have running on 8thos.

addons.webp
 
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