What type of site?

[Parzival2600]

I am about to purchase a domain and begin designing a site for my proposed archive. Not sure what type of site to use. database? Traditional? Forum? Thought I would get some feedback on this from the community as this is for you guys. Let me know what you think works best for a quicksand art/video/story archive. Still looking to complete the story archive. Few stories I remember still missing. Maybe there are even some I don't know of. Suggestions?

[Parzival2600]

That's a qood question. While male content doesn't do anything for me, I certainly don't discriminate. So sure why not? As for your suggestion, I had been thinking about the forum idea, just don't want to step on any toes, if the folk's who run this forum give their blessing, I'll certainly consider that route. Thanks for the input.

[Viridian]

For an archive, I'm not convinced that a forum is a good idea. It's a relatively clunky design for browsing contributions, whether they are stories or artwork. You can have comments, but a forum seems unnecessary, especially as it's pretty much a carbon copy of QSF. While I'm not objecting to having a forum, considering the low amount of traffic we have on QSF in general (e.g. the story sub-forum has many reads, but very few comments), I imagine a forum on a library/archive would be vastly empty. It would be a low priority, in my opinion.

I'm not sure what the line is between traditional and database, but for an archive to be (more) successful, it should be able to:

Have tags
Be searchable by various criteria (author, genre, submersion, male/female, length, etc.)
Have room for a description for each item (practically no other current storage, except deviantart, can do this)

I don't know if this matches what you have in mind, but I think this would make a site a) usable and b) worth using.

[Boggy Man]

Wiki?

[Viridian]

Wiki? Great as a collaborative project. Sub-par as an archive. When it comes to the community making contributions for stories, images and videos, it's even clumsier than a forum.

[Parzival2600]

Thanks for the imput Viridian. I agree about the forum idea, the point of the archive is to have a place where the community can go to see all that makes the QS community what it is, not really a place for discussion. QSF, I think, is the place for that and doing a good job. I've been browsing web database types. I am liking the PHP designed variety as it's easy to work with and gives me alot of options. I intend to have descriptions and what not, as I feel it will make navigation of the site easier. I'm going to have to figure out how to get permission for alot of the work I have. I don't know if alot of the authors are still around. I suppose I can post a request here, if I get no response I can post them and should the author pop up and not wish to have them posted I can remove them. What do you think?

[Fred588]

Thanks for the imput Viridian. I agree about the forum idea, the point of the archive is to have a place where the community can go to see all that makes the QS community what it is, not really a place for discussion. QSF, I think, is the place for that and doing a good job. I've been browsing web database types. I am liking the PHP designed variety as it's easy to work with and gives me alot of options. I intend to have descriptions and what not, as I feel it will make navigation of the site easier. I'm going to have to figure out how to get permission for alot of the work I have. I don't know if alot of the authors are still around. I suppose I can post a request here, if I get no response I can post them and should the author pop up and not wish to have them posted I can remove them. What do you think?

Great idea. Descriptions and categories will make finding what you want very easy.

And if you cant find an author? Go ahead and post it. Smart idea also to give a disclaimer,in case they don,t want their stories posted there. Simply label those stories as AUTHOR UNKNOWN. If the stories are good,more than likely those writers will want their name known quickly.

"Author unknown" is only acceptable if it is legitimately true. Stories should NEVER be republished without permission. When an item cannot be positively shown to be in the public domain it must be assumed to be so. If permission to republish cannot be obtained then one does not have that permission.