The sidebars are customizable. I can remove them on any page. In the upgrade, I will be creating template pages to fit the needs of each section.
As for the links, I’m not sure what you mean?
Chris here…
I didn’t actually try and copy-and-paste, I just tried to type the first thing that came into my head, LOL! Yep, I did switch the tab to Code - hang on, I’ll try it a second time…
Aha, now it works for me! No idea what the problem was before, but this looks more like it! I still have almost zero idea how to use this stuff, but, I’m getting there! 
Take care… 
I tried to copy and paste this page
http://www.thundercatslair.org/toys/toy_guide.html
Everything showed up except the links that lead to each individual toy.
Chris here…
I know I’m being kind-of dumb here, but my one question is, the whole look of the site isn’t going to change to this kind-of sterile, blog-style look is it? I know it’ll have ThunderCats graphics and such, but I’d hate to see us lose the free-flowing eye-candy appeal that this whole site radiates in favour of a kind-of blog style appearance…
Take care…
I agree with Chris on this one.. I would love to see this system implemented I just hope we can customize the page design enough to resemble our existing site appearance..
What you reckon..??
http://www.forestfortrees.com/
All of these websites use Wordpress and none of them look like a blog site.
I decided to use Wordpress because it’s a cheap and easy alternative to upgrade the site.
May be it’s just me, but with the exception of the cartoon area (which Kyle and Chris are doing a great job with) I feel like the site is a bit stagnant and the reason being is because it’s hard for everyone to contribute. I’m suppose to be the leader or whatever, so I’m just trying to give everyone who can’t contribute in it’s current state an opportunity to be able to do so. Personally, I’d love to start working on the movie section, but seeing as my time is limited when it comes to hobbies, it’s practically impossible for me to do that. My original position here was to do the design and layout for the site…if I can’t do that, I don’t think I’m relevant to the site. 
I haven’t really contributed very much in the past two years except watermarking and grabbing screenshots, which is cool, but it’s not much in my opinion. As much as I like writing on forums, I do enough writing on my college papers which means I’d rather not write anymore than I have to.
I’m not sure what else I can say. :?
Anyhow, sorry if I’m going all emo…I didn’t mean to write a long post again.
I think at this point its hard for some of us to envision how it would look like. Personally I really like it and looking at some of he websites that use it I’d say lets go for it. TCL has been online for almost 3 years and in that time Manny you havent failed at accomplishing what is best for the site. Each one of us has a job to do and I think you have the hardest one yet, to make sure everything fits smoothly and with a layout that stands out among the rest. Manny, seriously dont EVER think you havent contributed much. Your role is a tough one to have and i applaud you for what youve done
I’d say lets do this Manny, once again youve come up with a brilliant idea and Im sure this will make updating the site so much easier
Thanks Manny.
Chris: Does this help?
http://thundercatslair.org/blackpyramid/?page_id=59
I did that in 45 minutes. Again, it’s not perfect, but with the exception of the bubble quotes and a few minor differences, it has a similar layout to what we have now. This was done without using tables.
In the upgrade, this would be called the template page. If you want to make a new page for the episode guide, you’d choose this template from a drop menu and you’d just modify the text and the images…and hit publish. Probably will take 15-30 minutes depending on how much writing you expect to do.
Dude I totally dig it and wit a comments option below it that would be really cool. Im really liking this and truthfully i cant wait to see the rest of the features
Manny, click on any of the images!! It’s super cool!
Dude Im drooling. Man that is THE coolest way to show pictures, man Im really like this.
Hopes its better than He-Man.org’s new layout
http://thundercatslair.org/blackpyramid/?p=71
It’s as easy as pie too!
I doubt it. They are spending tons of money to overhaul the site.
We’ll do a makeover for the forums too. I’ve been testing out some cool stuff as well (thus you saw the color change)…just don’t want to do it right now.
Yeah I can imagine how much money…if you figured that when they where at 1/8 of the sword they had collected around $2500 so by my estimates the site overhaul will cost them anywhere between $15-20K, at least $10K.
You know what though, I really cant see why they would spend thousands of dollars. Its really beyond me, I mean could there be any reason to drop that much money???
I can work on the forums too, which could take a burden off you. I really enjoy working with the forum features. I am always in the admin panel looking for better features to implement on the forums. So far we have 6 different styles to choose from and I have found that they are rather easy to make once you start playing with it and testing the different schemes of colors
Yeah, they’re gonna do some amazing stuff to the main site. I think their gonna go for the more user-generated type of interface though, like wiki-style. I can’t imagine them not going that route. I’m pretty sure Val knows that there is something new for MOTU which is why they are doing a overhaul. We have some new stuff coming up for us too, but we still have a lot of time to work on the new upgrade.
For the forums, do you know if you can test out styles without having it go public? I want to test out some color changes to the default style without anyone seeing it.
Well it would still be public, however they would be under the template that you name it. You would be able to see progress by switching via the drop down menu on top
Hmm…I kind of want it to be private. May be we just missed that option. Like with He-Man.org, I’m sure they were testing out the new forum design behind the scenes…I want to do the same.
Sorry Manny when you start building your template click the option that makes it so regular users wont be able to select it. It will be visible to you but nobody else. I tested it with my wife’s account and the template I chose not to show up didnt show up on hers but did on mine.
You have to build a new template and play around with it. Its the best way I can think of to test out colors
Where it says Allow User Selection click no
Perfect. That’s exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
Actually Manny all you have to do make another template but using the parent of Default Style and selecting the option to not allow users to be able to view it. It will show the colors we use now so you will be able to see changes as you go. The template i made for you is named Manny’s Style, its essentially the same as the default
Chris here…
Hey Manny, that does actually help a bit - my question would be, there are a number of things I’d theoretically want to change (about the template, not about the individual page), in this format would they be possible to change? For example - all of the pages I’ve seen so far created using WordPress have utilised the same font for the text, it might be Times New Roman. If I wanted to use a different font (such as the Trebuchet MS most of the site utilises now), can that be achieved?
I was pondering this earlier, and whilst all the WordPress pages I’ve seen have been fantastic in the sense that they are really clearly laid out, I think part of the thing with them for me is that they remind me of some of the early desktop publishing programmes I used to use when I was a kid for the RISC OS operating system, whereby they were clearly laid out but you were limited by the rather sterile-looking template that they gave you, ditto in some cases you had a very small number of fonts and such to choose from. I think a lot of this site’s appeal is in the design and layout that it has now (and, I will say, the design it had originally, which was a lot better than you thought it was my friend!), when speaking to folks like original comic art collectors I get a great deal of compliments about the look and design of the site. Now, I’m not saying I think that the site as it is has reached the pinacle of how good it can look, but what I am saying is that from a purely visual perspective I’m reluctant to see us fixing what isn’t broken.
I think some of my reluctance is because I have no idea how customisable the WordPress design is - i.e., whether you can literally make a site created using WordPress look absolutely any way you want it to. Whilst I’m not suggesting that this should happen, theoretically if you wanted to, could the current template of this site (so, the logo, the nav bar, the white space with the red bars at that width, with the page header, footer, fonts, etc.) be replicated in exact detail, or does WordPress have limitations? If you were to turn round to me and say “The only limitation of this is the limitation of your imagination!”, that would ease my mind a lot! I definitely have a monumental amount of faith in your eye for graphic design, the proof of that pudding rests with the very site design I’m too anal retentive to let go of - however, like I say, I would hate to sacrifice the sheer beauty of this site unless it was to replace it with something that looked even better.
I realise I’m very much the only real “naysayer” of this, and to be honest I feel very badly about it - you’ve worked bloody hard on this site, MannyF, in fact heck, without you, there would be no site, and as such, in some ways I feel as though I should just be quiet and accept whatever you, as Site Leader, believe is in the best interests of the site. I’m immensely proud that you guys allow me to be part of this team and please know that whatever I say on this subject, what I want is the best for this site. Whilst I am someone who dislikes change, I’m also a very pragmatic person and so am always happy to look at these things with an open mind. I’m extremely grateful to you, my friend, for taking the time to listen to my concerns!
Oh, and BTW - I agree with MannyC, that way of displaying the screenshots is absolutely AWESOME! Is there a way from loading a screenshot that you can navigate forward or backward in the way that the production material in Mark’s Animation Art section does? To be completely honest, Kyle & I had alternative plans for displaying the way screenshots open in the current Episode Guide template but never got round to researching the coding needed to implement it - if the new technology would allow them to be displayed like that, the thought of correcting that would certainly warm me up to the concept!
Take care…