Site Relaunch - Setting our goal - 1st December

Site Discussion Team Discussion
21

Chris here…

Mark, I really appreciate everything you’re saying my friend, but, honestly, it’s cool. Certainly for the time being it’s cool, I’m passionate about this site and am enjoying the feeling of contributing something of value to it once again. I’m a happy baker, LOL! :smiley:

I’m not going to deny that next year I do expect to be busy and I won’t be able to devote as much time to the coding side of things as I currently am, so I do think there would be some value in you guys learning how to perform at least simple updates to your sections. But for the minute, I’m happy baking the pie and eating a little of the tasty fillings whilst I’m working…OK, too much pie analogy is making me hungry, LOL! :smiley:

MannyC, although I haven’t heard back from him yet, I asked Neil whether in return for my working on some of the front end coding for the Toy Section he’d be prepared to grab some screenshots I need from episodes of the cartoon, in order to complete this site’s Episode Guide. Right now there are like 60+ episodes that I still need to grab some screenshots from, which will take me hours. Would you be willing to help as well, or perhaps help me out by doing some simple photo editing I need doing for some stuff in Photoshop (such as applying watermarks to images)? In this way, I can be working on my favourite aspect of working on the site (the coding) and helping you guys, and you guys can help me out with some of the content for my section as well? :slight_smile:

Take care… :slight_smile:

22

I also took offence with that. To sum up why I didn’t directly respond to it…my reply would not have been pleasant.

I was waiting for this…I have never witnessed someone be so ignorant as to disregard someone who felt they were adding a major contribution whilst at the same time consulting the teams input. Coming in days later with the fact you wasted your time as I’ve already interviewed the person isn’t nice at all. I have major respect for you Manny, cos I would have exploded!

Well I do. We had fun working on this stuff and nothing anyone says will change that. If need be we will take content elsewhere, where it is appreciated and respected more.

Manny has been the most laid back member of the team and doesn’t upset easily. I’m losing what respect I had for you Mark.

We never expected Chris to do the work and still don’t. So please don’t use Chris to make us look like the bad guys here.

Now your being patronising, which I hate. Manny has every right to be ****ed off.

No we haven’t and we stated about a zillion times that we were against the upgrade on the basis that we are not that great at page building and I still don’t fully understand Wordpress. Nothing ‘is on us’, this is not a case of us slacking and they telling the team we are not ready at the last minute. We always stated that we were not working on the re-design of pages. However if you wanna see it that way, it’s your choice. I’m happy to take all the toy section and host it elsewhere. All I’d need to do is change the nav bar on each page and the copyright name at the bottom…something I can do in Dreamweaver.

I didn’t set any goals and neither did Manny. Maybe you did, which while we are on the subject of…caused more *****ing to me about folk being ‘harassed’ by you to get something done (well that’s how they felt) I guess we might as well all start being honest here.

You forgot the 4th. Neil and MannyC quit and take their section elsewhere.

Will reply asap! but I’m happy to help, just need to see if I can still make them though! It’s been a while!

In closing, I’ll be honest and say that I’m weighing up my options and seriously considering leaving the team and taking my content elsewhere as I know a few sites are lacking a dedicated toy section. Also like I said up above, it would take very little work to turn the toy section pages into a site of it’s own. In saying this I suggest you halt work on the Toy section Chris for now. I can only apologise for potentially wasting your time and will try to make it up to you :frowning:

23

Guys, come on. There seems to be a whole lot of arguing over a misunderstanding.

We’re all pulling in the same direction - but clearly, our personal lives take precedent and ThunderCats just isn’t gonna be that strong, popularity wise, over the winter break. February sounds fine. Let’s keep this together. It needs to be fun for us and not a chore.

24

Chris here…

I agree - I think Mark wrote a post in a hurry, chose his words extremely poorly and it’s blown up from there. :frowning:

However, on the flip side, I do think that both Neil & MannyC raise very legitimate concerns that deserve to be addressed properly.

Listen to Nick for he is wise! :thumbsup:

Neil: Just to say that, as requested, I’ve stopped work on the Toy Section transfer for now. However, I would say that it would spoil the site for me personally if the Toy Section info we have over here were to relocate - the whole point and purpose of ThunderCats Lair in the beginning was to collate experts in all fields of ThunderCats fandom (the toys, cartoon, comics, etc.) and gather it under one roof. We’ve done that, and been bloody successful - to be honest, if we lost the Toy Section, it pretty much kills the site, and I don’t want to see that happen. :frowning:

I’m really grateful to you, my friend, for agreeing to help out with the screenshots and I would consider this an equitable trade for helping out with getting at least the lion’s share of the Toy Section ported over, as you’d be saving me hours of time, giving me extra hours on the other end. :slight_smile:

To state yet again, if you guys are willing then I’m committed to keeping this site’s Toy Section located here, online and active, and will do anything in my power to keep it that way. :slight_smile:

I do think perhaps we would benefit from having a proper Team Meeting early in the new year to discuss, sensibly and calmly, some of the issues that have arisen from this relaunch and the way it’s been handled, as I strongly believe we can move forward from here. :slight_smile:

Take care… :slight_smile:

25

Then why continue to do so and then become patronising and insulting thereafter in later posts.

Besides it’s not just about that one comment and we all know it.

26

I’m done apologizing for nothing. You think its easy stepping into the breach to try and make something, anything happen on this site? You think I like pestering you guys to lift a finger to work on a shared project? This is supposed to be an escape for me, a fun place to hang out and enjoy my passion with like minded people. But despite the beautiful work done on the site when we started, and I love the toy section I really do, we all know this site has gone stale and some people care about changing that, and some people want to go on and on about how we’re a “fan” site, and would be quite happy to become Cheeezey’s f*ucking ThunderCats zone.

That’s not me.

I’ll send the rest of what I have to say to Neil directly so as to stop this ridiculous flame war in the forums.

27

Chris: I can help out with screenshots just let me know what you need and we’ll go from there. Can you shoot me a message on how to gain FTP access gain, its been a while and truthfully i forgot how to access.

Mark: If you want to point fingers for us not doing anything or slacking off I suggest you look back at yourself when we first started. You had whatever issues for a very long time and we understood it. Now you want to take reigns and tell us we’ve been slacking.

Mark and on another note you can keep that interview to yourself and host it wherever else you want. I have made the decision that I will not utilize it or host it in the toy section. I will do my own work on this and do not need someone stepping on my toes and coming to me and say that they have had this for weeks without consulting me on anything.

Neil: We can work out what our next step will be. Shoot me a PM and we can discuss this at length

28

What a load of nonsense. I’m going to step out and cool off before I get really angry, but let me say this… I think you two have been unnecessarily RIDICULOUS about all of this.

29

Manny will certainly do that. We have a lot to discuss!

As for your pm Mark, it was obviously constructed to rile me up further, otherwise you’d have said it here to keep transparancy and not hide behind pm’s.

I can confirm however that I officially quit the team here. I will be talking to MannyC over the next few days or so, then hopefully we can start discussing the dividing up of the site. Who actually owns the forum, MannyF or MannyC?

30

Guys I have officially banned Mark. I will air out the dirty sheets if need be. If he wants to play dictator I can give him the same treatment

He can host his stuff elsewhere at his timeline

I suggest we do a back up of the site.

31

I’m only gonna post them if requested by other team members. Manny I think you should unban Mark, as he does have equal rights to have his say here. I know how I’d feel if I were barred and it wouldn’t be nice.

32

I know man…Im fuming right now because I dont take it when a friend of mine gets talked to the way he did. Thats all and the fact that now you have quit because of him and his way of doing things around here

33

I think we need an emergency Team meeting to sort this all out. Truth be told I don’t want any ill feeling from or toward anyone. I just want my content and that’s it. No squabbling and banning people. Come on that just isn’t us! Manny please for **** sake unban Mark! :frowning:

34

He’s unbanned…

Im with Neil on his decision and will back him up 100%. With that said our section is backed and we will move it to its own site or hosted on a different site.

35

Well this has been quite the s#it storm hasn’t it?

For what its worth I’m done trying to organize / lead / co-ordinate things here. Doesn’t seem to matter how hard I worked on the site or how much I tried to bring others along for the ride… I’m suddenly the villain that is tearing the site apart, and who 'bitcches everyone out all the time". Then I’m the sneaky jerk who has to hide behind PMs and who is selfish beyond belief… then I’m banned from the site. I’m some kind of massive jerk I guess.

And I’m now supposed to apologize first and I’m supposed to entice Neil back if I don’t want to see the toy section leave with them.

The best I can do is say that I’m sorry you guys misunderstood me, it’s just not reasonable to believe that I have some kind of disdain for the toy section… far from it.

I have no regrets for standing up for myself and things I care about when it comes to this site. I would have preferred I kept my cool a bit more when my value came under question… but you know what, I’m hardly the only person who over reacted here.

I’d like if you stayed and kept the toy section here at TCL where it belongs, if it helps your decision(s) I plan to stick to my sections and I’ll keep doing that in wordpress until we get the relaunch done. If you stay I’d like to see you learn wordpress too so we don’t keep expecting Chris to do all the lifting around here. I’m done with herding cats so you’ll hear a whole lot less from me. It’ll be nice to only have to worry about my own areas for a change.

36

Ok I’ve been chatting to Manny and he’s convinced me that it will only result in ruining the site if the Toy content goes. That’s not something I want to happen :frowning:

So I’m gonna bite the bullet and give Wordpress another shot. I know Chris has worked hard and that’s why I’m doing it.

Mark, I guess we just don’t agree on a lot of things. Let’s leave it at that.

37

Okay Neil, I look forward to burrying the hatchet with you on this. In the end we disagree heatedly because we care.

38

Chris here…

Guys I’m just back from the Willows’ Christmas Party and am beyond shattered, so I can only be brief… :slight_smile:

I want to start by saying that I’m glad Mark was un-banned, LOL! :slight_smile: I agree with Neil, whilst I understand sometimes it’s very easy to lose your cool, he’s a TCL team member who has contributed a lot to this site and so I’m very glad that he was un-banned. :slight_smile:

Neil & MannyC - I’m very, very glad that you guys are willing to keep the Toy Section here at TCL. I give you my absolute word I’m committed to doing everything in my power to help you guys and will strain every sinew to keep that content online and active as the site moves forward.

In terms of the WordPress stuff, I spoke to MannyC earlier today and told him that I think I may have come up with a MUCH better way for you guys to work with the LJN template I put together - I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before! Like I said to MannyC, I’m getting old and thick!! :duh:

So hang fire for a minute guys because I think I may have a key to unlock this door - give me 24 hours from now and you’ll see what I mean…

In terms of some of the other Toy Section stuff that needs doing, I’m happy to help out, both now and for future updates. I love coding websites, and feel confident that if you guys can help me out with screenshots, watermarking images in Photoshop, and other stuff I need, we can work together very effectively and well! :slight_smile:

I do believe that there has been a misunderstanding here and I’m very heartened to read Mark’s closing remarks in this thread which makes me think that perhaps you guys have spoken or there’s been a move forward? :slight_smile:

The reason you guys have clashed is because you’re both passionate about this site. That’s a good thing! :slight_smile: It means there’s still passion in the belly for keeping this site alive and kicking and it’s not just some dead site left to rot in cyberspace! :slight_smile:

I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE to have a Team Meeting soon where ALL of the team (including MannyF) can be in attendance and we can talk calmly and rationally about all of this. I passionately believe that we can move on from this and again I’m 100% committed to doing everything I can to keep the team together. I love you guys like a family (and I’m not even drunk when I’m typing this!!), we’ve been through a hell of a lot together…OK, I’ll stop being sappy now!! :wink:

…And yes, this for me counts as a “brief” post!!! :smiley:

Take care… :slight_smile:

39

Cool. You were right about one thing Mark and that’s the fact we should be looking forward, so I guess let’s just concentrate on moving over the site right now, then we have nothing to argue about :wink:

Anyway on to more positive news… myself and Manny have been working on the pages based off Chris’ template and so far this is my progress:

http://www.thundercatslair.org/relaunch/toys/ljn/ljn-toy-guide/tygra-with-wilykat-14-backyoung

http://www.thundercatslair.org/relaunch/toys/ljn/ljn-toy-guide/tygra-with-wilykat-14-backold

http://www.thundercatslair.org/relaunch/toys/ljn/ljn-toy-guide/tygra-14-backold

http://www.thundercatslair.org/relaunch/toys/ljn/ljn-toy-guide/lion-o-with-snarf-orange-hair

I assume the location of the images will not be altered or if need be the complete folder will be ported over to it’s new location. I say this because we have linked the source of the images from their original location from the old site.

Hope these are ok? To be honest this is easy. It’s the other pages where we do not have a template that might prove difficult…

40

Chris here…

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: I am VERY HAPPY to read this! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Neil, these aren’t just OK, they’re absolutely bloody brilliant! You guys have done a PERFECT job with these! :slight_smile:

In terms of the images, as you rightly say my only worry is that when the WordPress site gets moved to the main directory these image links will break, which is why I had created the new folder, “toys-images”, for all this stuff to go in. However, I’d say carry on as you are for the minute - when MannyF had a play around with these I think he still linked to the images where they were originally located (like you guys are doing) and he’s the one who knows the most about WordPress so quite honestly I think it should all be cool! :slight_smile:

Re: the other stuff for the Toy Section, what I can do is for things like the Prototypes pages that are all laid out in pretty much the same way, I can create another template that you guys can then update like you’re doing here - the same principle applies to Matt’s Custom figures and (I think) a lot of the Variations pages! :slight_smile:

The rest of it really isn’t a massive amount - in fact specifically its the Paul O’Grady article, Bootlegs article, Foreign Figures sub-section, Cardbacks article, the Price Guide, the Checklist, the AFA Museum, the mini-catalogues article, the Dealer catalogues article, and the Prototype toy art - anything not listed there I’ve probably already done. I reckon I could easily knock that lot off by the end of January (famous last words??), or if you get the hang of WordPress we can work on it together - whatever works! :slight_smile:

Take care… :slight_smile: