UBB.Developers Forums Announcements Announcements Member Spotlight #6 Winners

Without further adieu, the moment you've all been waiting for.... the winners of the member spotlight contest for February!



PlanetPlastica.com is our top winner this month as it exemplifies a superior UBB in the anime-gaming world. The graphics and design make this board sparkle with a look that is memorable as well as professional. Read more about this exciting site and the thoughts that went into creating it.
PlanetPlastica.com



Not far behind in the total vote count was Emceearena.com with it's unique style and modifications. The site integration and creative style gave this board high marks from our team. Check it out and read what the developer has to say... Emceearena.com

Thank you to everyone that entered this months competition. We enjoyed reviewing all of your boards and again... the voting was close. You are all doing a marvelous job building your UBB's to fit your communities needs.

Cheers,

...a "congrats" and a "complaint"...
by rob kamphausen

1st, the congrats. my congrats goes out to both of the contest winners and your ubbs! definitely some good work. great board interaction, as well as some great, clean looks on both forums.

2nd, the complaint. my complaint goes out to the judges (or maybe to the 2nd place winner). other than those boards looking frighteningly familiar at times ( ;)), im disturbed that a forum not even accessible to half its audience would receive such a high nomination.

dudn't anybody else use the lowly netscape anymo'?

hmmmm, at the time of judging, several of the judges used Netscape to view the sites, and they all gave emceearena high marks. It is possible things have changed in the meantime, since some webmasters seem to always be changing their sites...

the reason i don't like these contests is the award is given to sites who's UBB format looks cluttered.

my forums are clean and simple. this way, it is easier for not internet-savvy people to access and learn how to use...it also keeps a fresh, clean look without "bloating."

other than that, i like those sites just fine.

[ February 26, 2001: Message edited by: fiz ]

Congrats to all the winners. You guys definitely deserved it.

---Skorpion

your forums are good but its STOCK straight outta tha zip file!
except for the whos online and last posy by thatz IT!
but it is nice!

go planetplastica!! i just want to show my love for the ubb that i proudly moderate - planetplastica!! yeah!! good job rodster and drewdevo and to those others out there who entered the contest, better luck next time!

Congratulations to the winners -- these are great-looking boards.

Congratulations to the winners. Well done.

thanks.

i like them stock out...except for internal code chances i personally make...i will be adding other "useful" hacks such as AIM/ICQ/Yahoo combo, etc.

I just don't want to clutter it with other "bloated" things...it may work for other forums (because of their users) but not mine (because of our user-base).

anyway, congratulations to ze wieners.

i have checked emcee's site before via netscape, and got the same missing stuff. (never on net 6, just the 4.7's, etc.). its possible it was fixed, but... i dont know. even now, its unreachable via the 'scape.

granted, maybe i was being a LITTLE extreme in my "half the visitors statement" (i should have specified the 8 netscape users :)), but still... was very disturbed that a site with such a "major" flaw passed by, when there were others that could have, perhaps, been more deservant (and note, im not plugging my own site. i didnt even enter! :))

Congrats to both winners!

Oh, how come planetplastica.com shows 588753 posts, but when you view all the forums and quickly add up the posts it's a mere fraction of that? And where are the 99 forums? Just wondering...

BTW, on EmceeArena I can barely read that site. It is hella dark!

[ February 27, 2001: Message edited by: Thradar ]

Congratulations, great boards indeed.

i have to agree with fiz to a certain extent. it seems to me that a lot of "custom" ubb sites are very cluttered. while it is impressive that some administrators have managed to get "over 50 hacks" installed, i find most ubb implementations bloated and without regard to actual user needs/wants. very few site have truly unique content or design, as they are just standard hacks that are downloaded and plunked onto existing code.

planetplastica is very flashy, and the title graphic is superb. but, there are several things that are not working correctly (like the planetary diagnostics, for example) or do not look right (like the red folders for new posts, which looks odd in a black/blue color scheme). my overall opinion of planetplastica is flashy fluff. i honestly mean no disrespect toward the administrator, but glitzy doesn't mean better.

emceearena is better, but not by much. it's color scheme is more coherent, though a little hard to read (and the orange scrollbar? what's up with that?) while catering for the 800x600 crowd with the narrow columns, it looks kinda silly with a fixed width to those of us who browse in 1280x1024. please use percentages, not pixels, your users will thank you for it.

what concerns me is something that several people have mentioned. what is with the fascination of using all of this flash stuff that is not functional to a portion of your audience (the sylized scrollbars, the DHTML mouse-over cell changes, etc)? most of this stuff doesn't work in NS. i will be one of the first people to crow "netscape sucks!", but the fact remains that 47% of my users use it, so i must cater to that percentage. if everything was up to me, i'd have a site optimized for 1280x1024x32, DHTML out the wazoo, and XHTML 1.0 documents with CSS2 styles. i've actually set that up, and it's pretty as hell, but few people can view it correctly.

so, i ask the judges of this contest: how closely did you look at the true functionality of these sites? how thorough was the compatibility testing? was useless and/or flashy stuff taken into consideration, or ignored? was the number of hacks considered, and if so, why?

i am just worried, because these boards don't impress me, because they seem to be the same "put ubb in a table, give me some menus, change the color scheme, and drop a few hacks in" formula. where is the new stuff?

well, my choice won. Planet Plastica is hands down the best of the lot. I've been telling him that for a LONG LONG time.

as for emcee, i still had other picks that actually showed some creativity, but oh well. Good job Plastica.

oh yea, and allen, i thought u were gonna post the top 10 this time around?

I had planned to make the announcement, but I was out of town this weekend when the announcements were supposed to be made, so Deb made the time to fill in. We'll get the top 10 put up later today.

Joshua, we agree with you about flash, clutter, and putting every modification known in a site, that's why judging gives equal treatment to site design, appropriate use of modifications, user experience, site integration, and color scheme. Tastes differ from month to month in what we consider excellent in each category, but every site rec'd the placing they deserved that month. Stuff like dhtml rollovers and such do not get marked down if they don't work in NS 4, since most things do not work in NS 4, but as long as they don't break on NS 4, we don't consider it a minus, rather a plus that they put the extra effort in to take advantage of the newer browsers advances without breaking on the older ones.

"Clean" design is my preference too, but a site like dreamless.org would most likely not win, just because there's no site integration, the color scheme makes it next to impossible to read, etc. Balance is key in this.

Planetplastica and emceearena rec'd almost straight firsts and seconds because you don't really notice all the individual modifications (tho I am sure there are many involved), everything just works together. When you open their site, your first thought is "wow!". Once you get past that, you also see the user experience (content, atmosphere, etc) is what makes you stay... and come back.

Everyone must remember the greater purpose in our monthly spotlight, the interviews.. and the info everyone can gain from them. Even if you didn't visit the sites once, but read the interviews, you will get the necessary knowledge to improve your own site... the greater purpose, for sure.

A reminder that next month we'll be choosing the winner from out of the six previous monthly spotlight winners, and members will get a chance to vote in this as well, with the vote counting toward a portion of the final tally. The following month, we'll be moving to all version 6 UBB's, so you'll hve about 6 weeks with the released final code to work it into your site.

Those that did not win, if you'd like private individual constructive criticism, email me, and I'll help you out... you must have entered the contest to get this tho... so please do not email me if you haven't entered.

BTW, congratulations to the winners, excellent work.

Well Thanks for the congrad's from most

..

Around most of the emcee's that visit my board are IE or Netscape 6 compatiable and that's what i urge user's to use on my board, i've added a few hack's recently that may have caused netscape to go down on it, but im in the process of fixing everything that's wrong on my forum's right now seeing as how im back at college and able to do so now..

The orange scroll bar i never got arround to changing orange used to be one of my color's for my forum's and i'm changin it right now thanks for the reminder ..

Dawg, all i'm going to say to you is that if you cant see creativity in my forum's , and have nothing better to say about them, dont visit my site, and dont let emceearena slip out of your keyboard.. simple solution!

thank you again to everyone else..

i cant wait to get crackin on ubb6 when it's the full thing.

What the...? And how can planetplastica.com only have 313 members and over 500,000 posts? According to the stats on the front page. That's wack. I don't think any of those stats work.

One version of the stats shows the total number of posts ever, it basically counts the post # in the member's profile and just adds them up. If you check the stats, there is a listing for total posts and active posts... The member post count in the thread announcing their site's win is higher than the active total for the site, just means there's been lots of pruning.

The member # looks about correct, there could have been pruning there too...

Wow!! I cant believe we won!! Thanks judges and congrats to Emceearena.com.

Also better luck next time to all who enetered.

Listen to you people, dogging PlanetPlastica... Just because YOUR site or the site YOU WANTED to win didn't win, doesn't mean anything is wrong with PlanetPlastica... A cluttered site is ugly... Less is more... I have received many requests from their staff of improvements I think should be made, and about things that should be taken off... Excuse the Owners/Admins of PlanetPlastica if they have lives as well as jobs... I have chatted with ALL the admins and mods in the LATE LATE hours working on the site trying to get as much done on it that they could... As for the forums, a few were closed because the main boardz page got a little crowded, and a little consolidation was done... Between juggling servers because of bad service and work, they get more done than what is expected, especially for a new site... Compared to some of these 'bloated' sites, (fat, if you will) PlanetPlastica is the leanest site out there... PlanetPlastica's staff have HUGE ideas for the future, and that's more than I can say for most of the others from the looks of it. I see people dissing PlanetPlastica as a way for them to try to convince themselves to the contrary of the thought that theirs wasn't good enough... Regardless, PlanetPlastica won, and only the TRUE UBB ARTISTS would, and have, congratulated them on their hard work.

By the way, CONGRATS P2 AND ALL THEIR MEMBERS AND STAFF...

Hey, chill..

One comment on the subject..

Design is as design does.. very few people can agree on what is good or bad design. It seems every time one of these contests happen, there are always criticisms and accolades, both from entrants and non-entrants. I'm sure those who judge the sites do so carefully and with consideration for various factors. I think, from reading comments in the past, the most heavily weighted factors are the appropriateness of a design for a site and a sites users. If you're not a user of a particular site, it might not appeal to you, or your tastes. I know personally I have no interest in emceearena or similar sites. However, if the users enjoy and appreciate a site, surely that's the most important?

Ok, so it was more than one comment, but arguments about design aren't really appropriate or even fair to the people who entered, the people who won and the people who didn't win.

On that note, any of you interested in discussing design as it relates to the web, may follow me to the topic I'm about to make in chitchat, where we can tear apart the design decisions of people we don't know (always a much more healthy approach).

::: edited out links to emceearea illegal ubb :::

[ March 02, 2001: Message edited by: EminemBoard ]

btw, i didn't go off "dogging" plastica, he had my support from the start and i stand by ubbdev's choice.

and em, that is the funniest thing i've ever seen. nice nice.

as for his being a pirated board, i am confined too belive, as i've heard this from others, and usually rumors like that don't spread that far.

i'm not riled about losing thou, cause i am done with ubb. i'm getting a ultraboard2k1 for my new site. talk later.

No, I'm not criticizing because I didn't win...for obvious reasons...I was just wondering why his board stats looked so screwy. I obviously agree with UBBDev's decision, and I would support that decision EVEN if I didn't agree with them.

Some people read WAY too much into questions or crticism.

I just want to thank everyone for this great honor!! I always try to stress to our members at P2 that it's not just the admins or mods that make a site hot or not, but all the members and their participation. We have had an incredible amount of dedication from a community of fans that always offer input and suggestions and really make the whole experience a great one!!

I think all of the sites looked spectacluar and should be recognized for their hard work regardless of win/lose. Hopefully UBB6 will bring a whole new string of ideas and creativity.

Congratulations on your awards!

You've both done an excellent job. Keep up the great work on both your sites.

allen, did u not say we'd see a top 10 runners up list this time around?

congratulations to the winners.

PlanetPlastica.com is nice. I'm a sucker for anime graphics, and I also like how you have the tables lined up with the header/footer images. Good job

i was not "dogging" planetplastica. i was expressing my opinion about it's design, and questioning the judging procedure of UBBDEV. i am not bothered by the fact that i did not win, because i have won in the past, and it's nothing more than a warm-fuzzy to me, since i hear from my users how much they like my site. i was worried and spoke out because i thought there were other sites that better exemplified clean design and tasteful integration, other than PP and MC.

so, to set the record straight, congratulations, admins of planetplastica and emceearena. i was just airing my opinion. remember: "opinions are like assholes. everyone's got `em, and everyone elses stinks"...

Congradulations to all of the winners!

- DB

First off , For everyone that had positive replies to my forum's and site , i would like to thank ONLY YOU...

Secondly to dawg, Eminem And anyone else who put there two sense in about my forum's in a negative way, im the one that won not ya'll so dont get jealous, Dawg If you and this other guy want to report me to ubb, im going to have the last laugh cause for your information my board is legal and i do have a liscense for it..

Dont blame me cause your board has more colors then a bag of skittles.

Eminem i like the picture's you uploaded, what i like even more is how the site that you uploaded them two claimed they had nothing to do with my page going down, and to top that off im still laughing at the way there ugly forum's look.. Tell stryke Peel is going to have a heck of a time dealing with me.. Dont get jealous when i win and you lose, i tried to be civilized.

And dawg one last comment to you? You thought the picture's of my forum's down we're funny? keep laughing and i'll show you something even funnier ..

Btw my forum's were back up in a matter of seconds so laugh at that dickhead!

??????????????

congrats!

hey, is anyone working on an "8-year-old" hack for these boards?

seriously, guys... why not keep the bickering via email, or even in the "chit chat" forum. leave this spot for more "serious" discussion on the two forums and the contest itself.

Agreed here Rob... tho 8 years old may be pushing it.

It is ok for people to question judging procedures, I have went through them every month, very patiently, I might add. But slamming each other's sites is really uncalled for, this is meant as a learning exercise more than anything, maybe the lesson should be on maturity and professionalism.

If you wish to remain a part of this site, please adhere to these requests. Take it to email if you have personal problems with someone, keep these forums for discussing ubb design and functional improvement. Consider this your only warning.

Amen Allen, preach preacha preach!

Congratulations to both sites, great work!

my boards do have more colors than a bag of skittles, maybe a couple or even 3 different bags of skittles but my visitors prefer it. i used too use grey and orange just like yours, butmy users found it didn't fit gaming and i had too agree. the baby blue, white and orange is way better.

Jealous? u kidding? hahaha! i don't even have a response for that. I DON'T RUN MY FORUMS ANY MORE.

I bought myself an UltraBoard license 2 days ago and i'm going too be sticking with it.

BTW, those of u who were waiting for my admin av uploader, pop3 mail pm and my other hacks will have too wait for som1 else too document them, i don't have the time with my new site. i'll still send them too all those who i promised i would.

later ya'll.

congrats PLASTICA. second doesn't mean too much so i'm glad PP won. way ta go.