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FantasySquare Articles Revival (Version 6.0 Article) [ Author: Webmaster ] I never knew that there would be a version 6.0 for FantasySquare, because back a while ago, I remember Titus once mentioned that he wouldn't be doing anymore layouts for FantasySquare. I don't exactly know what the reason was, but it could be due to the fact that his hard work wasn't appreciated, and the outcasts were having a personal attack on both him and myself back in year 2000. Most of the dust has already settled, since it's been a while since we last saw most of them. Speaking of them, there's still a few of them whom I still talk to occasionally, and Cameron (Chalk) has even come back to our forums a few months back to apologize for the damage that he had done to a few of our members' computers. That's a real brave and mature action I must say. They aren't that really bad people after all, since most of the time in the midst of crisis, people react instead of act. I'm included in this categorization of people as well. The outcast incident in 2000 has made me a changed man. Looking back at it, I really don't know how I survived it. So, why did we have a change in layout? Or more interestingly, why such a big colour change? Well, before I go on, I must say that version 5.0 is a fantastic looking layout, with a great futuristic look that not many can replicate. The only problem with 5.0 is that the userbility level is pretty low and the navigation of the site is not very user friendly as well. You have to go many levels in order to find what you need. The focus and theme on 6.0 is "simplicity", which is why we only have a top and bottom header using web-safe colours and a side navigation on the left. Yes, it's really simple, but that's exactly what I wanted in mind: ease of use. One look and you can tell what we offer, and you navigate them easily in a single click. While it's true that there's no fantastic looking futuristic layout this time round, what you get now is a simple, easy to use and a layout that loads real quickly. 56 k users will find the loading speeds of 6.0 faster, and will save about 20 KB per page. Given the average 3.5 KB/sec transfer for 56 k users, that saves about 6 seconds. That's the main advantage we provide. In case you're wondering who did the layout for version 6.0, it's done by Jin Xian (Ramza), my younger brother, the webmaster of My Cool Designs. Kudos to him. In case you have not already noticed, we also provide FF news from our subsidiary, Final Fantasy Fusion dynamically. That means that whenever FF Fusion updates their news, the news at FantasySquare also automatically updates to reflect the changes. FantasySquare Online also allows easier access to other sections at our site, and also allows you to view the other users that are also currently online at the moment. In future, we are planning on loading different modules on the main page based on your preference, as well as different kinds of accounts. FS Online is an interactive ASP script written by myself, and you won't see it on any other FF site. If I am not mistaken, we are the one of the few, if not the only FF website that runs on ASP technology. Throughout these 4 years, I realised one common thing about many FF websites : they always like to mimic FF Online's layout design. A top header, then with those X, IX, VIII, etc to indicate the sequels' navigation. It really puzzles me to why webmasters like to follow that. Sure, I agree that FF Online is a great FF site. Their content is really first-class information. They deserve to be the top. But why copy their style? I love originality, but we like to be different and we're proud of it. That's why you can also be a proud member of our website. Originality is the game we play. In the last 1.5 years, I have learnt a lot of business skills through experience. With the guide of my dad, FantasySquare is slowly converting to be a business. We are now a locally registered company with the Singapore authorities, have an office location, and will be hiring a staff in April 2003. On top of that, we now also own 5 subsidiary websites, and have shares into another 2 private websites. We also also currently in the midst of expansion into the local market sector, and will be selling consoles such as PS2, XBox, games and accessories by June 2003. We are really growing. I think a good term here to be used is "commercialising". If you think it's all luck that we got this far, then think again. The success we have today is the result of many failures, and the support of my great team of staff members. While they are not paid to help me maintain the site online, our strength is built based on a passion and a great friendship. Back in Dec 2002, I travelled to Australia in Rockhampton and Sydney to visit 2 of my staff members, Dave and Luke. Although it was pretty awkward and hard to communicate due to the fact that I'm chinese, I think the friendship that we had is so strong that it brought me all the way to Australia and considering the fact that I have never travelled alone in my life, I think that's quite a big achievement. These people at FS are one of my greatest online pals I have ever knew. Well, there's a reason why I call this article "Revival". You see, back around Jan - Feb 2003 earlier this year, there was a lot of chaos going at FantasySquare. As we all know, no one is perfect and I made one of the biggest mistakes/decision here at FantasySquare. I will not go into details here on what exactly happened, but you could say that it caused a crisis at FS during that period. It was a period of dryness, uncertainy in many people, especially the staff at FantasySquare. It was one of the biggest moments where I could feel welfare and community spirit of FS going downhill. During this period, a lot of my pals stood beside me, people like Ling (my girlfriend), Dave (Norco), Luke (SpaceD Ace), Chris (Grey Fox), Enrique (Krelian) and lot of others. Even though Enrique is no longer part of the team here at FS, I am eternally grateful for his help here at FantasySquare. I never ever feared the fact that FantasySquare would be lost in such an incident, but it did occured to me that many relationships would be affected and that the heirachy of FS would be severly shaken. Pretty much on the contrary, during this time, lots of people continued to give me their support. Before long, everything was more or less resolved, and FS is now in it's rebuilding and upgrading stage. During the past month, I haven't been more busy than I have been in the whole of the last 6 months. We now have a dedicated newsletter editorial team, a group of webmasters, as well as other small subsidiary websites planted all over the web. It was like a stumbling block turned into a stepping stone. It's like an outburst of growth. So very often we see of people being very excited about an idea, work hard on it, and when it gets stale, give up on it. I've seen a lot of FF websites that are like that. I really wish that we could have worked together somehow because I admire the passion and strong will that so many webmasters have. We're started version 6.0 with a different aspect. Instead of trying to run the whole show alone, here's the motivation that I'm running on: "Delegate and Produce". Our key focus would be productivity here at FantasySquare. There's going to be more new sections and updates in version 6.0 onwards. You might not see it at the moment, but there is a lot of backend planning that is going on. A lot of us are very excited about the upcoming changes. I'm sure everything will be for the better in time to come. It's like we've broken through to another level this time round. There's a few people that I would specially like to thank for the release of version 6.0:
To sum everything up, there's a few important things that I learnt from the transition of version 5.0 to 6.0.
Like I mentioned in the forums earlier, FS isn't perfect, but we aim to bring the best to everyone. To everyone at FantasySquare, you made a difference in my life. Thank you so much. Love, |
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