The Zork Library Has a New Home Page!

[KM3K]

If you visit the website by directly going to the forum address (http://www.thezorklibrary.com/forum) or if your browser's cache is stale, you may not have noticed the news. The Zork Library has a new home page! Go directly to http://www.thezorklibrary.com to see it.

This home page is part of a new effort to clean up and improve the website. The home page will feature Zork Library News on the left and links to the larger pieces of content and our social media presence on the right. The background image on the home page only works on Firefox (tested), Chrome (tested), Safari (untested), Opera (tested) and Internet Explorer 10+ (untested). Internet Explorer 9 and older will show a plain black background. The home page is designed to be a portal to all the content on the site. There's a lot of content here, but not all of it is easily accessible and that's something I'd like to change. This design is currently a work in progress and may change over time. I plan to add a "What is Zork?" feature on the home page in the near future to better introduce people to Zork. Suggestions are welcome.

[Nowhere Gaming]

Looks great so far! Personally I missed the old site and think just having a message board was a bad move. If you need anything in the way of graphics (its what I do for a living) or help writing the "What is Zork?" section, let me know.

I'd also like to contribute a "book" to the "library" about the Twenty Treasures, as I am collecting the real items for display in my home. I would like to work with you about a format for it so it flows with the rest of the site.

[KM3K]

Looks great so far! Personally I missed the old site and think just having a message board was a bad move. If you need anything in the way of graphics (its what I do for a living) or help writing the "What is Zork?" section, let me know.

I'd also like to contribute a "book" to the "library" about the Twenty Treasures, as I am collecting the real items for display in my home. I would like to work with you about a format for it so it flows with the rest of the site.

Thanks for the kind words! It's been a small but growing desire of mine to renovate the website ever since I took over for DataAngel about 3 years ago. At that time I didn't mind using the forum for content organization, but I now tend to agree that it may not have been the right choice. I recently did a lot of work to get the phpBB configuration and style cleaned up and working better because over the past couple of years more and more bits of the forum have been breaking due to security updates for phpBB not being totally compatible with old phpBB mods and styles that were installed. Since I finished that work in the last week, I feel a lot more free to get my hands dirty building up the rest of the website. I still have a lot of files and resources that are included with the website that I need to go through. There's a ton there, but most isn't very accessible and I need to reorganize it so people can find it. If I need any more graphics, I'll keep you in mind.

I'm just starting to get my thoughts together on the "What is Zork?" page. I prefer to keep it a simple overview or introduction rather than anything comprehensive. I'm working with Arjak on this a little already, but I welcome any contributions or suggestions. Feel free to PM me with ideas or use my Zork Library e-mail (in the list at the top of the forum or in the sidebar on the home page). I'm thinking of developing a flow with the "Books in the Library" where the "What is Zork?" page leads into a "Where to Get Zork Games" page, which leads into the "How-To: Installing & Playing Zork" page, which leads into the Zork Compendium and other resources about Zork. I think your Twenty Treasures would fit in there perfectly. I remember you posting about them previously. I'm planning on using PHP to keep the background, header and sidebar the same on all new pages and using plain HTML/CSS for the content of the pages. If you know HTML and wish to make up a page featuring your Twenty Treasures, I can merge that in with what I have easily. If not, you can send me some text and images via email and I can put a page together from that.

Long term, I plan to move the posts in the "Zork Files & Information" section out of the forum into their own pages. For now, I want to focus on this new content and promote the website and Zork itself.