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Web Portals - What to and not to do

Initiate Mage
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Portal pages are super simple webpages that a user first sees upon entering your website. Though the concept is simple, a lot of people either don't get why people use them, or don't get how to use them themselves, so I'm going to go over a few key concepts regarding portal pages.

Hopefully you can use these to make your own page, or enhance the one you currently have.

What NOT to do:

- Portal pages should be simple and easy for a potential player to understand. With this in mind, your portal (as it is often the first thing a user sees) should not be overly cluttered.

Over cluttering the page with unnecessary images, videos, links, etc. all distract from the main point - attracting players.

- Don't make it confusing for the potential player. Don't add a bunch of unnecessary links. You do not need a "vote", "rankings", etc link on your portal. Keep it down to the bare minimum.

What to do:

- Have only the important links on your page. Preferably at most a link to your forums/community hub, and a link to the main website. Place these links (perhaps buttons) somewhere aesthetically pleasing. I suggest not putting them at the top if the user must scroll down to see other content. Encourage the user to scroll down and glance at all the content before moving on.

- In the same boat, don't have too much content. Examples of good things to add are: images that show the servers unique (or not so unique) features, images of users socializing, images of bossing/PQs, promotional videos, etc. Keep these in an ordered fashion and make them easy to see, but not too "in your face".

- A logo. This is probably one of the most important parts aside from a link to your main website. At the top (or middle) you should have a clear and high quality logo for your sever. If your logo is low quality, or generic it will be very off putting as it shows little to no effort.

Final Remarks:

Please, please, make sure that your portal page A. works as intended. B. Looks great (or decent) no matter the size of the viewing window.

I've seen a portal page in which the logo pops up, but the links are hidden until you mouse over them. Very dumb. Don't do this.

Portal pages are not meant to be a source of great information to current players, they are there to help bring in new players, and convince them that your server is worth trying. Also I feel as if they're a preview of what's inside. You wouldn't want to buy a car without previewing it before, would you?

Not all servers need or should have a portal page. If your server is a generic server (I.E. not much is different), I wouldn't waste your time because most people will know what they're getting into.

If you're on the edge about using one, just try it out. If you see an increase in newer players, maybe it helped! If not, no harm done (unless the portal page was crap).

If you need further help, tips, or critique, let me know.

(Mods - I hope this is the right section)
 
Experienced Elementalist
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This is a well written tutorial, thank you.

My opinions for a good web portal:
-Lightweight. Doesn't take forever to load nor force users to wait.
-Might have a small skip button at the bottom for returning users.
-Animations are unnecessary, they can be a nice touch but no huge .swf/gif files please.
-Don't autoplay YouTube videos or spam music, give your user the choice.. (The first 2 seconds of any MMV can get really annoying after hearing it start automatically every visit).
 
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Nice overview! This would be even more useful if you could identify good/bad portals and show screenshots of those.
I agree with Linkerzz, a portal should be very lightweight, and should load instantaneously. Consider hosting your portals on a static site host, such as Github pages, surge.sh, etc., so that your portal is up 24/7, regardless of the status of your game website (which is dependent on MySQL).
 
Initiate Mage
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Nice overview! This would be even more useful if you could identify good/bad portals and show screenshots of those.
I agree with @Linkerzz, a portal should be very lightweight, and should load instantaneously. Consider hosting your portals on a static site host, such as Github pages, surge.sh, etc., so that your portal is up 24/7, regardless of the status of your game website (which is dependent on MySQL).

Thanks!

I thought about doing that, but I rather not call out any particular server either way. I tried to explain enough so that they could be identified on their own. Though if anyone has any follow up questions, I'm more than happy to give my input.

I really like the idea of hosting the portal on a separate static site, and in theory it would be amazing for the portal to load instantaneously. The only problem is that sometimes slower connections may have a hard time downloading larger images, etc (in the case of Intrinsic's portal).

I definitely think loading effects should be done away with. If a portal has a loading bar, or 0% -> 100% counter, I'm out within 3 seconds. A user shouldn't have to wait around.



This is a well written tutorial, thank you.

My opinions for a good web portal:
-Lightweight. Doesn't take forever to load nor force users to wait.
-Might have a small skip button at the bottom for returning users.
-Animations are unnecessary, they can be a nice touch but no huge .swf/gif files please.
-Don't autoplay YouTube videos or spam music, give your user the choice.. (The first 2 seconds of any MMV can get really annoying after hearing it start automatically every visit).

All very great suggestions as well!

On account of the auto play, I personally use it do you find it severely negates from the experience or just a personal preference?
 
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Thanks!

I thought about doing that, but I rather not call out any particular server either way. I tried to explain enough so that they could be identified on their own. Though if anyone has any follow up questions, I'm more than happy to give my input.

I really like the idea of hosting the portal on a separate static site, and in theory it would be amazing for the portal to load instantaneously. The only problem is that sometimes slower connections may have a hard time downloading larger images, etc (in the case of Intrinsic's portal).

I definitely think loading effects should be done away with. If a portal has a loading bar, or 0% -> 100% counter, I'm out within 3 seconds. A user shouldn't have to wait around.





All very great suggestions as well!

On account of the auto play, I personally use it do you find it severely negates from the experience or just a personal preference?

Your portal could certainly load much much faster. It is currently fairly heavy, weighing in at around ~4mb without the Youtube video, and much higher with the autoplaying video. This is sort of ridiculous for a portal page, which as you said, should load very quickly. In fact, your portal would take over 15 seconds to load all images on a 4G connection (4Mb/s down)! And to add to this, your portal isn't mobile friendly.

You need to compress your images. Even if you use lossless compression (no noticeable quality loss), you will be reducing your portal size dramatically. If you use a lossy compression, you will save even more.

In my opinion, speed is everything with portals. Studies have shown (no links right now, sorry!) that users hate waiting for pages/apps to load, and the faster we can make our apps, the more click throughs we'll get.

Just something to think about!
 
Initiate Mage
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Your portal could certainly load much much faster. It is currently fairly heavy, weighing in at around ~4mb without the Youtube video, and much higher with the autoplaying video. This is sort of ridiculous for a portal page, which as you said, should load very quickly. In fact, your portal would take over 15 seconds to load all images on a 4G connection (4Mb/s down)! And to add to this, your portal isn't mobile friendly.

You need to compress your images. Even if you use lossless compression (no noticeable quality loss), you will be reducing your portal size dramatically. If you use a lossy compression, you will save even more.

In my opinion, speed is everything with portals. Studies have shown (no links right now, sorry!) that users hate waiting for pages/apps to load, and the faster we can make our apps, the more click throughs we'll get.

Just something to think about!

Yea, I believe the images are the main factor in load speed (not counting YouTube video). I'll definitely compress the locally hosted images.

With regards to the mobile friendly side of things, at the time of making it, it was not high on my list of things to do due to the nature of the site (it being a PC game), however, now that I can put time into it (and it's not the difficult) you've convinced me to make it mobile friendly.

Thanks for the tips!
 
Junior Spellweaver
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Isn't it a bit ironic for you to make a guide on how to make a portal, when yours is basically (in my opinion) a ripoff of dawnveil? (albeit theirs is (was) nicer).
For reference,
dawnveil:
intrinsic:
 
Initiate Mage
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Isn't it a bit ironic for you to make a guide on how to make a portal, when yours is basically (in my opinion) a ripoff of dawnveil? (albeit theirs is (was) nicer).
For reference,
dawnveil:
intrinsic:

Oh boy, here we go again.

The main factor that is similar is the layout of the images. This is done by using a free to use and open source plugin called .

This plugin is not owned, licensed, etc. by Dawnviel or the person who they hired to make their site.

Any other similarities are purely coincidental and based most likely off your biased opinion. Feel free to look "under the hood".

Furthermore, unrelated to whatever you may think is 'ripped', it does not negate the fact that my thread has legitimate points.
 
Junior Spellweaver
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Oh boy, here we go again.

The main factor that is similar is the layout of the images. This is done by using a free to use and open source plugin called .

This plugin is not owned, licensed, etc. by Dawnviel or the person who they hired to make their site.

Any other similarities are purely coincidental and based most likely off your biased opinion. Feel free to look "under the hood".

Furthermore, unrelated to whatever you may think is 'ripped', does not negate the fact that my thread has legitimate points.
I pay fairly little attention to maplestory servers in general, but your portal caught my eye when I immediately thought of dawnveil's. I can't see where my bias would come from, I'm in no way associated with either server, nor do I care for post-big bang servers, my first impression of your portal was just honestly that it looks like a ripoff of dawnveil. In my opinion it's better to have a unique website, and seeing as you're saying "here we go again" i suppose I'm not the first to spot the similarities.
I do agree with the last part, in fact I think you could improve your portal by following some of your own advice (ie. "Over cluttering the page with unnecessary images, videos").
 
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Initiate Mage
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I pay fairly little attention to websites/maplestory servers in general, but your portal caught my eye when I immediately thought of dawnveil's. I can't see where my bias would come from, I'm in no way associated with either server, nor do I care for post-gms servers, my first impression of your portal was just honestly that it looks like a ripoff of dawnveil. In my opinion it's better to have a unique website, and seeing as you're saying "here we go again" i suppose I'm not the first to spot the similarities.
I do agree with the last part, in fact I think you could improve your portal by following some of your own advice (ie. "Over cluttering the page with unnecessary images, videos").

Fair point.

I only said "here we go again" because we had a bit of an issue with Dawnviel players coming over and harassing us over the portal when in fact we spoke with the admins over there and confirmed that FancyBox was not theirs and open source. I totally get what you're saying though, but I neither agree or disagree, I think our portal works fine for what we need.

It's a (mostly) moot point though.
 
Experienced Elementalist
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do you find it severely negates from the experience or just a personal preference?

Personal preference, I don't speak for everyone.
If the audio from an autoplay distracts the users while not serving a purpose other than a radio, why can't the user turn on their own personal preference of radio for themselves?

*edit: I usually listen to music while browsing the internet, so loading a page with autoplay forces me to mute or pause something frantically so they aren't conflicting.. tbh this makes it less likely for me to watch a video since it wasn't initially an option. a good thumbnail and the choice to play it is more enticing imo.

Personally wouldn't mind if audio:
-fades in slowly
-is not too loud or obnoxious
-looping tracks are 1minute+
-serves a purpose without distracting from content
 
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