Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

I'll start with the bad news: on this incarnation of the Plaza, there is no easy way to let admins/mods (other than someone with direct code access) create those headers that appeared just above many of the forums (you know, the "Welcome to Forum XYZ!" boxes with ruler icons and thread links and such.. or that horrifying Philolas pic in LLL).

What I can add though, is a simple text-and-image type setup inside each forum's custom HTML. I did this myself for Mordor and The Shire when I was building the site (quite lazily as you can tell), and @Aigronding Mordagnir recently sent me a nice image to put at the top of Rivendell temporarily.

Anyway the point is that I can add a picture and/or some text to any forum, so we're looking for volunteers to come up with some nice banners for the Kingdoms. This definitely goes for The Shire and Mordor as well, unless you really love my own graphic design skills and want to keep what you have, in which case... thank you?

So, in the spirit of Plaza Jr's intrepid self-organizing principles, we're asking you all to work together to come up with banner images for each Kingdom, if you want them. Post your completed works here and I will add them as they come in. I'd recommend figuring out who will take on what in your Kingdom OOC planning threads, or here, or in whatever fashion doesn't result in 2 people making a banner for the same place. They can be brand new, or dug up from the WayBack machine, or some wild hybrid of the two - the only thing I request is that they be something that would make sense to have in place for a long time since they can't be updated very easily - so just don't include time-sensitive announcements or things like that.

*If you want a banner image plus some kind of intro text above or below it more like what the old Plaza had, that's fine too - basically if you can make it look how you want using BBCode in a post in this thread, I will more or less be able to recreate it in the header. (But as a disclaimer, a single image is probably safer if you want to avoid my own utter lack of aesthetic sensibility being involved).

Note that @Aerlinn has tentatively volunteered to make a banner for the Cottage of Lost Play - other than that, everything's up for grabs at the moment. We look forward to getting your creations up and making your plaza homes feel a little more like home.

Is there an ideal size for these @Narv ? Or should we collectively decide on a mostly uniform size, just for looks?

The map in the Shire header (600x357) looks about the right height to me, striking without overwhelming my little 13 in screen. But if people wanted to add more text/information it could be wider? Though, on that note, I'm clueless about website building but is there anything to be done about wider banners being cut off on phones? I'd be perfectly willing to make two different versions/sizes but I don't know if that actually helps!

Anyways, I'd call myself...a capable amateur volunteer? No where near a professional graphic designer. But I'm happy to help with other kingdoms, icons, and thread banner images if anyone wants.

I have faith in @Sil making Mordor shiny, or well dark and evil :D And only cause I know she can do it already :P

I’d be happy to try messing around with some stuff.

@Aerlinn the size range of The Shire / Mordor / Rivendell images seems about right to me, but I don't have exact dimension specs for you. It's a simple enough thing to make them resize on mobile so they don't stretch the screen (I just didn't think to do it for The Shire and will fix that today, but Rivendell's works properly, I think), so the only thing to watch out for is that text in the image itself should still be readable if the banner were to shrink down to phone-width.

@Aerlinn (and everyone else), my simple Shire and Mordor images should now be resizing correctly on mobile, if you want to get a feel for how that ends up looking.

Well, you can have this dark and dusty image for free and gratis - I used my best skills on Paint, since that's the extent of my art and design programs.
Please don't worry, I won't be offended if you don't use it!!

[Edit: LOL, didn't even check the border was the same all the way round ... gah - gimme a min]
[Edit 2: okay]

Thank you Ears for your submission!! It will be a wonderful addition to the "imgbb.com image not found" forum I've been planning

AHAHAHAHAHA HUSH!

Ok thank you for real this time I've put it up!

Feedback is welcome as these get added, especially from regulars (do we have regulars yet?) of the forums involved -- I'm especially interested in whether people like the decorative touch, or if it causes more scrolling than it's worth. Possible futures for each forum range from full-sized banners, to just smaller ones, to removing them for mobile users, to removing them for everyone and embracing max professionalism.

Hello I would like to request this be the banner of the Movies forum because it brings back many fond memories of discussions there.

My concern is that that image would probably be better suited at the top of the entire website, or at the very least, on top of every individual forum.

This tweet would make a good (temporary) banner

https://twitter.com/TeawithTolkien/stat ... 60192?s=19

For KD, sir.

Nice @Oro, I put it up - lemme know if I have captured the essence of your vision adequately.

Hey @Narv- I dug around and found this old MT banner (unfortunately unsure of the source), but we'd love to have it up decorating our wee corner of the world!



Also, I know very little about image sizing, etc.-- so this is just the original size so far as I can tell... hopefully that works all right?

@Mor Toast That looks like a great size to me, I'll try to get it up in a little bit

Hi @Narv, we're hoping we could have the following text and banner added to the Shire header? The banner is one used in the Shire previously:

Fangorn has discussed and come to an agreement on this being our banner (not sure if it will need re-sized or not) but we like how it captures the sense of age and "closeness" that Merry and Pippin described while still having some sunlight and all the features of the forest with stones and lichen and water.

I can resize it of you need that done.

No worries, I've been doing a little resizing / web optimizing on all of them anyway. Thanks, and I'll get those Fangorn and Shire banners up shortly!

You mean....momENTarily?

He means Shiretly

Thanks @Dwim for getting the new Shire banner organized! And @Narv for putting it up of course.

My pleasure Menolly. And thank you Narv!

you are very welcHOBBIT everyoENT

not the only punmasters around now are you

(let me know if either banner is wonky btw)

Since I volunteered to do this before CoLP was very busy, I now feel a little bad not putting it up to vote or something first. But there wasn't an en masse planning thread set up already and I kinda got on a roll just now...anyways, @Narv, I 100% don't mind if it gets changed out anytime. Especially if someone wants to draw something original. Call this a nostalgia-inspired placeholder.


(link: https://imgur.com/iq1sJpe)

(Edit: Quote as is or add a citation?)

Done And it seems like everyone on the Plaza knew that CoLP was from Book of Lost Tales except me so the unattributed quote seems fine IMO.

Narv wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2020 5:48 am And it seems like everyone on the Plaza knew that CoLP was from Book of Lost Tales except me

Can confirm this is not the case

Also @Aerlinn I really like it, thanks for making it :smiley8:

n.b. all the banners are awesome, well done everyone!

I hath made one for Imladris. Is the size appropriate?

Thanks @Quill! I've been resizing the others down to max height of about 350px, partly to keep things clean/consistent across forums but in truth also to help a little with bandwidth usage. So keeping with that, the banner would look like this: https://ibb.co/bHNLhqX

Are you alright with that? I can bump it up some, but probably not a whole lot more than that.

That looks great, Narv! Thank you!

Right on - it's up

I mean I know I said no Isengard Forum yet... but I didn't say anything about no Underwater Isengard Forum.....

LOL @ "then, everything changed when the forest nation attacked." and the credit to Tolkien.

If you have an underwater Isengard forum, you could host snorkeling races or other aquatic sports.

Party kingdom!

That's the ticket!

I mean, we have to live up to our reputation as being the fun party kingdom, right?

PS I am still accepting forum headers/banners anytime, if anyone would like to add something for any of our currently headerless fora... cough Rohan cough

and cough Mordor if you don't want to keep my lazy garbage one forever cough

Are you looking for this?

Permission to light the thread on fire, Sir!

Well, I've seen that now.

My EYES

Nope! Nope! Nope!

WHAAAAaaaa?! I didn't make it!!