Posted Feb 14, 2010 - 1:48 AM
) ecstatic to finally see the transition and discover the new name.Speaking of which, let's address the name first, shall we?
What's in a name?
The name change has been a long time coming. ff14site.com was originally chosen because I had hoped to get a jump on the FFXIV hype back in June. I thought that due to its keywords and short length that it would perform well in search engines, be easy to remember, etc. In retrospect, I should have gone with ffxivsite.com instead (which I later purchased but never ended up using (except as a redirect)), but that's beside the point.
When I finally realized that ff14site.com was rather bland and lacked personality/character/flavor, the search was on for something superior. At first, I thought of all possible FFXIV + 3-5 letter .com combinations (e.g. ffxivhub, ffxivalpha, etc.), but nothing really stood out. In fact, after running things by Momotaru and giving it all some serious thought it became clear that I was falling into the same trap as the first time and coming up with a list of names that were both bland and very limiting.
The search continued.
At one point I almost went with Reviving Shiva (nice sound, a play-on-words of Killing Ifrit (opposite action/summon)) and even registered it, but something didn't feel right—it didn't really capture the spirit of the type of site I hope to see us become.
Nothing else felt right, either.
After finally deciding to give it a rest, guess what suddenly popped into my head one day?
It's funny how things always seem to happen as soon as you stop trying to force them. I've never been a big fan of that!Anyway, this is your end product. Welcome to Beyond Vana'diel!
Why Beyond Vana'diel? What does it mean?
Beyond Vana'diel is a name which represents transition, encourages adventure and spans the gap between Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV. It's very open-ended and leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
A work in progress!
Along with the name change comes a change in site/forum software. Previously run on MyBB, the site is now running on IPB.
But what's the difference (aside from a couple hundred dollars)?
For those of you familiar with the previous software, some of the changes will be rather obvious from the get-go. For starters, almost everything is formatted differently: navigation, profiles, posts, control panel, etc. There's too much to detail in this post, but you can see the Help documentation for full details. For information on how to format your posts, please see the BB Code documentation.
Suffice it to say, these are very positive changes for our community.
The design...
I realize the design (and front page in particular) is rather bland at the moment, but that will change in the future.
Technical difficulties?
Some of your passwords may not work if they use certain characters. If that's the case, please use the following form: http://www.beyondvan...ection=lostpass If you still can't seem to sign in, feel free to send an e-mail to admin@thissitesname.com (replace the portion of the e-mail with this site's URL) from your account's e-mail address and I'll help you out.
Smilies in posts that were made during the time of ff14site will not show up properly anymore; however, the same smilies are still available to use in your posts.
If you find any other bugs, feel free to start a thread in the Site, Feedback, Assistance section of the forum.
ばんざい！
