Special Announcement - Fleet Website Updates

Posted on Fri Mar 27th, 2015 @ 9:02pm by Captain Tim Williams

Hello everyone,

Over the last few weeks, the PFA has been hard at work on making some changes Pegasus Fleet’s brand image. As I’ve already announced, Admiral Maddox has already created a number of profiles for us to improve our web presence in the social media spheres. Today I am excited to announce that we are launching a whole new website design.

While our home has always been pegasusfleet.net, in the new design we have eliminated the splash screen, and replaced it with the IFS home. However, you will notice right away that the site layout and appearance have changed considerably. From the home page, you can log in on the right side and access your IFS functions as you could before, so for COs the monthly reports and manifest updates will remain unchanged. What has changed is that the navigation menu that was previously on the left side of the screen has been moved to a navigation bar just below the main header. From there, you can access all of the same pages from before, but now they have been grouped into several drop down menus by category. Also in the navigation bar is a link to the PF Forums. Going there, you’ll find that we’ve implemented a new look to the forums, completely with a matching header and navigation bar, making the two sites better integrated and more seamless. You will, however, still need a separate login for each site. In the top right hand corner of the header we’ve added links to our social media sites, and above the login menu we’ve added the current Fleet year. As you can see here, we’ve also updated the newsletter to use the same graphical design of the new site.

Perhaps the page with the most changes is the Sim Listing page. Here we have changed the format for displaying the sims to create more balance for the page. All of the ships have new graphics associated with them, reminiscent of the shape of the backing plates on the PF logo. There are also two new features added to the sims listing page, the [website] and [information] links. The website link will act as just another way to reach your sim from the sim listings page, in addition to the name and the sim image. But the benefit to adding the link is to make it more obvious that it is a link to the sim’s website, and also helps those who are using screenreaders.

The [information] link is a new features. What it does is takes the name of the sim, and sticks that at the end of a URL to our wiki; if the sim has a wiki page, it will take you straight to it. If it doesn’t, then it will take you to where that page will be, and prompt for one to be created. Most sims already have at least a stub page on the wiki. We hope to use this to increase sim visibility and make them easier to find.

There’s also a new field, which comes with two extra fields that can be completed on the view manifest page; Mission title and mission url. If neither are set, then nothing on the sim listings page changes. If the mission title field is set, then it will show the current mission name on the listings page; if the mission url field is set, it will also link directly to the part of that sim’s website for that mission.

I know that this is already a lot of changes at once, and I promise you that we are not done. We still have a lot in store for the Fleet in the coming months. I hope everyone can take some time to explore the new site. If you find any problems, or if you have any questions or comments about the way the site is laid out, don’t hesitate to ask. Please direct those questions to webmaster@pegasusfleet.net. I hope you all enjoy our new look, and stay tuned for more updates.

Live Long and Prosper

Alex
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Vice Admiral Emily Quinn
Pegasus Fleet Commanding Officer
pfco@pegasusfleet.net

Category: Website Update
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