Once more, I am proud to announce Xbox User Space at stage 2!
Tons of changes have been made the past week we had our downtime. The Site feels completely renewed with the great Vortex Template!
ABOUT XBOX USER SPACE
Xbox User Space is the Ultimate Xbox Live Community for all the Xbox Gamers out there. You can create your own XUS Profile and showcast it to your friends. Communicate with all the Gamers out there, bring your friends with you and enjoy tons of new features we give you.
Excellent module display! The one suggestion I would make is that when a module is being displayed you should change the title to be activated, as in with some orange, maybe the gray circle? Know what I mean? Either way, the site looks great!
I signed up for your Xbox User Space and this is what I would call an extremely well done and well thought out site.
Kudos to you. I have been investigating templates that work properly with extensions and when I found you message topic tonight on this thread I looked closer and I am so pleased I did, and also that I signed up for your awesome site.
I am looking for a template that works properly with the following Joomla extensions:
The goal of my site is a regional news portal with a focus on local area news, member blogging, member connections, casual gaming, and the very important member community forums.
I have the following extensions that work but have some issues with Ja bellatrix template from Joomlart, so I think maybe the Vortex template will resolve this. It is also a template that I know works with the following, now that I have logged into your incredibly easy to navigate XBox User Space site.
1. SMF forums and the SMF Joomla Bridge found here, or the same one you are using on your site.
2. An invite extension and now I have seen it in action, and I think it will be my next purchase for an extension.
3. iJoomla News portal extension. Still very new but they have a demo on their site and it uses the same template you are using.
3. The Vortex template. I am currently getting more and more frustrated with Joomlart's templates, as there are too many issues with Joomla extensions and some of their coding practices, and I am always have to hack code out of their templates and this is frustrating. Since I am learning and no PHP master at refining templates. But I am willing to learn what I can, by investigating and learning from others.
4. I also want my members to create their own profiles and essentially be able to do every much what you are doing but for the audience of members that are into local area news, connecting with each other, and then some casual gaming. I get requests to move more towards the younger XBox Gamer crowd but I leave that to experts such as you. I am a rank amateur when it comes to XBOx even though I was exerienced at Game development and game ports back in the 90's for EA and WestWood Studios,. Owned the company and managed the teams that ported Command and Conquer to the Mac for WestWood and developed games for EA.
So now that I have seen an excelllent example in what you have done with the Rockettheme Vortex Template I have made the decision to join and get rid of my frustrations of the JA templates!
Would appreciate any heads up you can give out to me on issues with the Vortex template and all the extensions you have installed to make it look so slick and easy to use?
Any feedback appreciated. And I'll definitely be adding a link to your site to my area members and visitors that are looking for a site like yours rather than casual games found on my site. I'll also use the invite friends on your site and let a few avid XBOX people I know about your very well done site.
It looks like you are on the road to success with what you are doing.
Yes I am using the fantastic Vortex template I managed to insert and organize within a week of xus downtime. I am very glad with it and it comes with so many awesome features that it even ate 700 of unneccesary loading speed I have removed easily though. I can help you out once you get Vortex template however there are also tens of very active people on the Rocket Theme Forum which usually respond to you within 10 minutes.
XUS is using alot of commercial extensions, therefore it's so well done and greatly featured. Most of the CB Plugins are from Mike (you can find him in the JSMF 2.0 board under p9andloadsofothernumbers) which has also helped me alot and makes extensions a normal freelancer would ask hundreds of dollars for.
I am no Coder either, I don't know any coding language except for html. I do learn it pretty slowly by looking at the plugins sources and replacing codes. I am more of an Organizer and Founder, Manager and Leader. If I had the money, I would hire a coder for the site myself but I am still very young and currently dont even have a job anymore.
Anyways, so I paid alot of money I own my parents back for doing this site, but I am really hoping to earn back the money with the site. The good thing though, is that I barely have to pay any more money now as I already purchased most things.... soon though I will need to get vps hosting which might be another 60 bucks a month and thats alot for me.
I am very glad you like the site and I hope it can be an example to a really rich Joomla Site out there as I see lots and lots of really basic "news" trying to do all of this but just keep reaching a maximum of 100 visitors a day..
I am also happy that you might show some support by linking to us. The XUS Community is still very small but all people who post in our nice SMF Forum, expect the site to become very big. However, we still don't have anything big to support us.. we are looking for serious advertisement on our site and a main sponsor. The only awesome thing that helped us raise the number of users was a very random announcement on the frontpage of www.xbox-scene.com, which the admin (one of our first 200 members - I dont know him) recommended our site and we got overflown by visitors and guests a few nights.
I'd be glad to help you out with your site. If you really want something as my site I recommend hiring me for a few dollars so I can organize things at your site.. but who am I to recommend that... right.. all I need is some money to support xus more.
You've been the owner of which company??
Edit: Oh if you do signup for RocketTheme, please ask me first so I can give you my ref. link
« Last Edit: February 15, 2007, 02:31:37 PM by Jordan »
This is a little long, but you may find it interesting. It's my biz plan in brief, and why I was asking about the templates, and why I came here to learn more about the SMF Joomla Bridge.
I went and bought my membership to Rocketheme after looking through your site and the iJoomla demo news portal. I bought their new news portal component, and when I installed everything today I was so pleased that all my extensions just worked without me having to hack around in the template like I did with the Ja Bellatrix template from Joomlart.com. I had a decision to pay my yearly membership again to Joomlart.com, or go with RocketTheme and I am extremely happy with my decision.
I will give you and iJoomla's Merav credit for helping me with my decion to go with the Rocketheme templates and Vortex. As I was so impressed with what you did with your site and also with the iJoomla stuff in their demo news portal and they use the Vortex template also.
THE SMF to Joomla Bridge I have to also thank Wolverine, or the developers of the SMF Bridge because without it I would not be able to do what I did today on my in development site at: http://www.bcunplugged.com and also what I did the past two days on my http://www.westkootenayunplugged.com site.
I spent more money than I thought this past few weeks and I do believe that a PayPal donation is in order for the gentleman that created the excellent bridge. That's on my list of things to do on Friday or by Monday next week. I can't forget that without it I wouldn't have both SMF and Joomla functioning the way it is.
I will see if I can insert your reference link into the RocketTheme stuff, so you can get a credit. I signed up earlier today and I have many things already installed on my new domain site at:
I need to update the logo etc, and all the other extensions, and then once I have done this I will start migrating all the content, and games across from my current site to this new site.
Why the change of plans? My biz plan called for the following:
2006: Find the best CMS solution. I found Joomla and it was the best choice.
This is a regional site, and I got it going and started testing the site UI and everything from Dec 1, 2006 to Feb 1 2007. Since I have not been pleased with the template, I started looking at others.
3. I registered these domains: wkunplugged.com, bcunplugged.com, ekunplugged.com, okunplugged.com, and the full names of westkootenayunplugged.com, eastkootenayunplugged.com, okanaganunplugged.com, and bcunplugged.com, bajaunplugged.com, and many others.
My goal was to start in my home regional area, and then branch out in stages, from Stage 1: West Kootenay region of BC: westkootenayunplugged.com, to Stage 2: East kootenays of BC, then Stage 3: Okanagan, then all of BC later this year at Stage 4: http://www.bcunplugged.com , once I got things established on the initial site. There are over 4 million people in BC Canada, and 33 million in Canada, and all eyes will be one BC this next few years. I have worked with the Minstry of Tourism before on software based marketing for BC tourism back in 1990 and the project was a huge success. This was in the early days of multimedia. Sinc ethen I have built 2 software companies that pioneered new media technologies, then got sick after breaking my back playing hockey and was paralyzed for a while, so I decided to walk away from everything in September 2000 and travel while I could still walk. Doctors advice to enjoy life while I could.
I learned a lot not being directly in the thick of the software biz this past 5 years, since 2000, and when I started WK Unplugged, I wanted to get initial feedback from the early adopters, and this past few weeks I have been meeting with them face to face, for feedback planning sessions. I am helping many of them get their business online with Joomla sites tied into my main portal site.
After this feedback, valued site members I made the decision to just go straight to Stage 4 of the Biz Plan, and started setting up: http:/www.bcunplugged.com because the province where I live in called British Columbia, Canada (everyone just calls it BC), is my target in Canada, and I can go after all regions at once now, instead of one at a time in stages throughout the whole year. And why not just accelerate my plans and go after all of BC with Stage 4 of my Biz plan, and then promote BC and regions of BC to the world. I'll get more support from the BC Ministry of Tourism and many more advertisers also, and also many more site members in the next year.
I am finding the West Kootenays region (120,000 people) does not have enough people to justify all my efforts to maintain a full fledged news and casual game portal site, so I am going to stage 4 now, as the site is an advertiser driven revenue model and my advertisers want to market to all of BC, and to the world, especially leading up to the summer tourism season, and next winters tourism season, and I have my eyes on 2010.
This also reduces the bugs I have in the current site, fixing missing links etc, and also removes the keyboard dyslexia problems that people have had with typing in such a long URL name. Yes, I will lose the SEO stuff I have already built up, but I am in for the long haul and have done this type of marketing and thing before, and have done very well with millions back in return back in 1990's until 2000 when I took a break from the software industry for 45 years to travel.
In the next year, and especially the next few years British Columbia Canada and Whistler BC will be getting a lot of attention leading up to the Winter Olympics in 2010 and my biz plan took this into account.
As far as needing help. Perhaps I can work more closely with you, and since your focus is different but compatible with my focus in the long run, I can help you gain members by pushing them through to your site for the XBOX stuff. I learned before, do one thing or 2 things very well, and don't try to be all things to all people, and most times you fail to satisfy them all by being stretched too thin.
And I am not so up on the XBox and games anymore, but I do know the younger crowd in BC and my area love the XBox.
THINGS TO DO If you can make me some ad banners 4 your site (with the links to where you want them directed) and then send them to me in the next few weeks, I will place them on my new site in strategic locations so I can push XBox people through to your site on a good recommendation.
I will see about coming up with some funds for you if I can find some things that need done, and I have some other site work (Joomla sites similar in scope to what you and I are building) that I have been turning down because I have been so busy, so maybe I can take the work on and funnel some of the work or specific parts of it to you, so we both can get paid, and then our pay for our own sites, with some bonus on top? Does that sound of interest?
I have always been a risk taker, and software and building a large membership base of dedicated users is what I know best. I am more the visionary, marketer, promoter, biz founder type, like you, but this time I wanted to do all the development, except the tough deep core coding, as I found that having too many technical employees meant a big salary payment each month in startup stages, and then a bigger baby sitting job later, and it was too much stress before. That's why I chose to learn Joomla, and that's why I test and pay for the plug-ins I use, and the SMF bridge is on the list of 'donate a payment of appreciation' to the developer of the bridge, then I will also write up a good review as it appears to be doing what it says it will do.
I'll get the the RockeTheme people now, so you can get credit somehow, OK.
I am also here to find out some other small items that I want to check before I start populating the new site with extensions and content.
I have some testers lined up for next week.
Will keep in touch, ok!!
RandyMac
« Last Edit: February 16, 2007, 04:24:21 AM by RandyMac »
But I noticed that you need advertisers, as that's your ticket to payback for the job you are doing to create this slick social gaming community of XBox users.
I know Don Mattrick, who used to be the head of EA Studios until he left last year. I also know Paul Lee, as I used to have lunch with them when I lived and had my offices in Vancouver back from 1988 to 2000. I haven't kept in close touch with them, but I could contact them again, and perhaps I can rustle up some other marketing advertising contacts to see if EA Canada Studios and EA corporate itself might be willing to become a sponsor for your XBox site? I can't promise anything, but I will see what I can do for you.
There are also many other ways that you can generate a revenue, and I will do what I can to help. You have an installed base of users and a lot of members and that's your bargaining chip to get advertisers on board your site.
Have you looked at the Frontpage Slideshow module from Joomlaworks.gr? I installed it and set it to user1 position and it just worked flawlessly. I looked at the other stuff with the tabs, but I find that I need to keep track of my advertisers and the Front Page slideshow is the best solution for displaying new content and cycle paid ads in between.
Keep up the good work, cause one day I will be able to say, hey I saw his site when he just got going, and that's something else I can do, is write up a site review and send it out to all my contacts in the industry. I always managed to get our 20 person company tons of press, by being focused on planned and targeted PR.
Push and Pull. Somehow you are doing many things right at your age and within no time (the next few months probably) your parents will be pleased when they start to see all your efforts are driving back the start of a healthy little site income for you. That's being an new media entrepreneur, and you are definitely on the right track Jordan.
Keep up the good work. I'll be looking at some things I can do for you and get back to you later on it.
Must get some sleep as these 18 hour days are killer on a old software industry has been like me.
Oh yes. Where was I back in 1995 to 2000. I founded my second software company Totally Hip with some former employees after I was ousted from my first company by a greedy VC wannabe back in 1994 shortly after I broke my back playing hockey in a gentleman's tournament. I was partially paralyzed and couldn't walk so they thought I was of no value. That's the sad part of the software industry is greed and poor treatment of founders after money people get involved.
The second company did ok, but not like the first one. Too much old news, but just before I left and gave away most of the $$$ proceeds to my company over the next few years from 2000 to 2004 to people in Mexico that needed it more, I walked onto the stage at an Apple Developer Conference to pick up this Apple Design Award with my chief engineer for one of our interactive video tools, that at the moment was way ahead of it's time and used by all the major studios to do interactive QuickTime Movie Trailers and other cool things. It doesn't get much exposure as a company now, and Totally Hip has kind of crashed and burned, and doesn't do very well financially, but then I only own one share.
Here's a few links to the some info on the Apple Design Award:
The Apple Design Awards is a special event hosted by Apple Computer at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The event is meant to recognize the best and most innovative Macintosh software and hardware produced by independent developers, as well as the best and most creatives uses of Apple's products. The ADAs, as they are commonly known, are awarded in a variety of categories which vary from year to year. The Apple Design Awards have been presented each year since 1996, though for the first two years of their existence they were known as the Human Interface Design Excellence, or HIDE, awards. Apple dubbed them the "Heidis", but this name was dropped in 1998, in favor of the simpler Apple Design Awards.
Most Innovative Product
2000 Winners * Winner: LiveStage Professional, Totally Hip Software Inc.
Best Apple Technology Adoption
* Winner: Thinking Home 1.0, Always Thinking, Inc. * Runner Up: LiveStage Professional, Totally Hip Software Inc.
That was way back then and in software years it was a lifetime ago.
I also designed and developed a product called ADDmotion and ADDmotion II for Apple's HyperCard 2.0 multimedia authoring tool, with a very bitght small team of good people, and that was eons ago, and I was able to get creative and licensed the animation engine and technology to majors such as Apple and Corel and many other companies for millions back in 1990 to 1994, to help finance the 1st companies growth.
Now that's going way back. Corel Rave inside CorelDraw, (which I feel could have been a much better animation tool product had they followed the design docs I left for them) and it was based on ADDmotion code licensed to Corel from my first company for $2.4 million back in 1992-93. I also licensed it to Paul Allen (Microsoft co-founder and his company Asymetrix for $1.2 million) and also licensed some other technologies such as Color Tools to Claris and developed many other award multimedia products (I had very good very focused development teams back then) for many other major companies from 1990 to 1994. Then the hockey accident.
Now the new media Web 2.0 software industry is being driven by young people like you Jordan. And it sit back and do what i can to help and watch people like you and Wolverine and many others come up with innovative things. I feel I can help younger entrepreneurs and help them avoid some of the traps when things start making money. That's when money attracts the greedy people, and things can wind up not being so much fun anymore. Unless your careful.
On to bigger and more exciting things, and to live in the Now. And time to get some sleep. I have a big day tomorrow with Lois. It's time to take a few days off.
RandyMac
« Last Edit: February 16, 2007, 05:35:55 AM by RandyMac »
I mean, what you're saying about yourself is.. pretty big. And if you can help the site become big and I can help you with some stuff you want then that's awesome. Then I'm a very lucky guy.
I know that now I'm supposed to post a huge post like you did 3 times. But I'm more of a chat guy and usually interrupt everyone every next sentence. You can contact me however you want, here, xus forum, xus pm, xus contact, etc.
Yah, I get a little long in the tooth sometime sin posts. I guess I am used to posting messages to some people that require all the info.
I had some client work to do this past 5 days, and I have a relative in from out of town so I have been real busy.
I didn't forget about contacting EA Canada for you and doing what I can to help you out. I check into your site every few days to see what's new, and I see you have been busy.
I have a message into Paul Lee, and a few other people. Hope to get a message back soon from someone at EA in Vancouver.
I joined the RocketTheme template club and I have been updating a client site. I am now working on my WkUnplugged site and a new site that will use RT Vortex.
I have decided to use the Sporticus Gator Theme on my WK Unplugged site, and I am having some real estate issues with all the User Profile stuff and everything. The modules need to go onto the right side of the page, as I will be using the iJoomla News Portal on this site starting next week.
I have a few questions about the modules, CB and SMF if you don't mind:
1. On your XBox User Space site you use drop down or sliding modules, which helps with screen real estate issues. I would like to do the same type of thing on my sites. It helps resolve the clutter and scrlling down the page to find things issues.
Are you using SliderJP from Joomlaprodigy.com to do this? I noticed there is a new version. If so, I guess I should donate and get this Slider on Friday so I can do something similar to what you have for all the module stuff and member stuff, users online, etc.
2. You are using SMF, so how did you get the CB login issues resolved in the RocketTheme templates. I think I found the solution tonight on the RockeTheme site, but I am checking with you to see what you used. I found a thread on RT tonight and I downloaded the Joomla-SMF Login Flat module and use it now and it seems to work, but I had some issues with the code that I was supposed to insert the index.php file as it causes and error, so I removed it for now and everything seems to work.
3. Have you put out a Press Release for the new site, and posted it to all the news sites in North America, to Gamustra, and all the gaming news places?
If not, I can help you put together a Press release, so you can get some major exposure for your site with all the news sources, and especially the gaming news sites. Let me know, and I'll make it a top priority to help you put this together, as I have extensive experience in PR, and do believe it will give your site some good traffic and exposure beyond what you have right now.
And yes, I can use chat or whatever online communication method you find most appropriate.
I've been working with Joomla SMF for 3 weeks right now and my site is sux compared to yours. You should be very proud! I like the left menu, very slick and an awesome way to maximize your space.
The only thing I can think of is your forums need the same template as your site. If its a rockettheme template maybe it's available?
I'm thinking about buying an Xbox360 over a PS3 because of this.
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v2 released now 
