[Issue 1] Guide: How to design a thread, article or a clan page! [TWG]

[Ambitious 2,084]

How to design a thread, article or a clan page!

 

So, you are about to start a new clan. You want to make the first impression on the one who visits the clan. Unfortunately, you don't know how.

 

Or

 

You might want to post an article but you don't know how to make it look attractive.

Can you relate to this? Do you face similar problems? You have come to the right place.

 

 

The design of a thread plays a vital role in making it attractive. There are a few tankers out there that choose clans based on the design. A bad clan layout may cost you quality players.

Therefore, without further ado, let's kick start with our first step!

 

Visualization

-It is essential for you to visualize the type of layout you want. Once you have decided a design, work according to it and you will most likely receive what you want. You can also stare at a few potatoes for inspiration look at some other clan pages and take a few ideas to design yours. 

 

Font Selection

-Choosing the right font is very important. Fonts make the thread look much more attractive. Do NOT combine fonts. You surely don't want your paragraphs to look something like this: "Hello there! My name is Prince Supratik!" Try not to use more than 3 types of fonts in your thread.

 

Font recommendation

Tahoma and Verdana for headings

Lucida Sans Unicode, Arial and Georgia for paragraphs and text.

I do NOT recommend you to use Comic Sans, as it makes the entire page look ugly.

 

Remember to use a decent font size. The most common used font sizes are 12 and 14.

 

Font Color

Do not use too many colors in your text. Too many colors often reduces readability of an article, and it also irritates the reader. 

 

Use of Bold, Italic and Underlined text effects

These effects are usually used to add emphasis to the text. Correct use of these can make the page look really attractive. For example, you can use the italic effect to add emphasis to certain words in a sentence.

I can't believe he actually did it!

 

Logo Selection/Heading

Logo is literally the most crucial part of the clan layout, as it represents the whole clan. There are a few things you should look into while selecting a logo for your clan:

• Do NOT copy images from google.
• Do NOT use text as a clan logo.
• Do NOT use large images as a logo. Instead, use transparent logos with a decent size.
• Make sure the logo actually represents your clan. For example, if your clan name is "Unbeatable Tigers", the logo should represent a tiger.
• Simple logos are the best. Always remember that 2D flat logos are more attractive than 3D logos. Don't put too much detail into your clan logo. You can download a picture of a potato and put it as a logo look at the game's most popular clans for inspiration.

 

​Now that you know about selecting a logo, it's time to know how to make/get a logo. I'm definitely not going to write an entire guide on how to make a logo, but I will surely give you a few tips.

 

You can use graphic designing software like Photoshop, Gimp, etc. to make a good logo. Watch a few YouTube tutorials on how to do so, and you will most likely get a really good result! OR if you are too lazy to make one yourself really tried your best to make a logo and the result didn't come out as you expected, head over to the creativity section of the forum and ask someone if they can make a good logo for your clan!

 

For Headings: You can use either use fonts like Tahoma and Verdana or use designed text.

Organisation

Congratulations! Now, we know the basic steps to design a clan page/thread/article! We have reached our final step - Organisation. If your page is not well-organised, the steps above would make no sense. Here are a few steps to make your thread look more organised!

 

Images

Most people fail to avoid this mistake - They add a LOT of images in their clan page. This not only makes the page look messy but it also bores the reader as they scroll down the LONG list of headings, member tags, blablabla. 

 

Use images only when required. For example, you can just use text tags for clan members, such as instead of using a large image tag. You can also use font heading instead of using large image headings.

You can also drop potatoes here and there 

 

I strongly discourage the use of banners, as they are old fashioned, annoying and laggy at times. A viewer with a slow network connection may not be able to load the banners.

 

Spoilers

Spoilers are use to shorten the size of the clan page/article. Now who wants to waste their time scrolling through a loooong clan page just to find the rules, which is at the bottom of the page. Clan wars, announcements, rules, examples should always be written inside a spoiler. 

 

On the other hand, the overuse of spoilers make the page look boring. So, make sure you use spoilers in the right place! 

Use of Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks make the clan page look a lot more organised. If your clan page is divided into 4 separate posts and you want to make it easier for viewers to access them, you can use hyperlinks.

How to use hyperlinks:

 

1. Click the Special BB Code option.

2. Select "Post link" from the drop down menu.

3. Enter the post id in the first box and type the text you want to hyperlink in the second box.

Make sure that everything's in the right place. Here is an example of a decent layout pattern of a clan page:-

 

Logo

Introduction

Members

Rules

How to join

Clan Wars

Clan Pictures

 

---

 

So, this are the basic steps to design a decent clan page/article. I hope this will help you to make your clan page/articles more organised! Please give an upvote if you loved reading it!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                   This is my first article ever

Edited October 4, 2015 by Ambitious

[thunderousrailgunner 1,934]

Cool B)

Potatoes :P

Edited October 3, 2015 by thunderousrailgunner

[freestylefrost 422]

Cool :D

[dilsharox 2,395]

nice

[rsully11 1,115]

That's why I like you always post great content    :wub: 

[TriNitroToIuene 4,765]

+1

[drazeruzumaki 5,021]

nice on supra-kun :o

[Ambitious 2,084]

:D

[BlueDragon_tamki 3,204]

Cool

 

I'll keep this in mind

[marc.jp_44 20,837]

Great for a first article! Nice! I really wanna write for you guys but Darren isn't responding. +1

[Mr.Cashier 1,622]

TWG Rocks :D

[KillerGnat 3,135]

Noob question: how do you make spoilers

[Ambitious 2,084]

Noob question: how do you make spoilers

 

[spoiler] text here [/spoiler]

 

Or you can use spoilers from the Special BBCode drop down list.

[KillerGnat 3,135]

 

Thanks man.

 

[The_Little_Cousin 910]

Noob question: how do you make spoilers

It's not a noob question, their's nub forumers who don't know how to place images in spoilers -_-