There may not be much happening on the front page, but you have to admit the forms are alive and well.
Besides, this is where we send new users when they ask their “How do I make Toy Story with Blender?” questions over on blender.org. Yeah, I know that sounds snarky, but it is actually a compliment to the large number of people here willing to provide useful help.
It seems like a community to me.
A big thanks to everyone at elysiun for elysiun. Yes you have to search for the tutorials and some times there seems to be more holes in the links than even my socks and the average age must be about a tenth mine and most anoyingly I can’t demote myself to braindead.
Thanks 4 the site.
Rob.
PS
Maybe a new forum section: rants
I don’t think Joeris suggestion is total rubbish. I know Elysiun is independant and unofficial, so how about making it official and integrate it with Blender.org?
This could be done without loosing data etc.
Advantages:
-Users would be able to find these forums alot easier. Right now you need to be en the know-how to find your way to the obscure adress elysiun.com
-There could be a link from within Blenders Help menu pointing directly here.
-You might not need to register two places to be part of the Blender community. (right now your blender.org login won’t get you anywhere here or vica versa)
-It’s neater. Instead of Blender3d.com/Blender.org/elysiun.com we just have blender.org which integrates everything. There has been talk about merging blender3d.com with blender.org, so why not merge elysiun too while we are at it?
It’s nice to have a central place to acces all tutorials, downloads, forums etc. instead of having things spread out over the web. Remember blender.nl? It was like this, all-in-one. Very neat.
Disadvantages:
?
It relates to elYsiun in an indirect sense.
If you argue for centralization of all Blender forums, why not argue for the centralization of all tutorials, all art sites, etc. There are obvious reasons not to do that with those as there are obvious reasons not to centralize the forums.
As already mentioned, after the .nl forums came to a halt elYsiun became the only place to be, and blender.org was later established as a forum for coders. I think that probably helps keep the coders from being buggered too much because the time-wasting-posters usually don’t code and they’ll come here instead. That leaves the coders a less cluttered forum (except for the occasional newbie who wanders in unknowingly) and helps get Blender developed faster, IMO.
I can’t be sure because I only posted at the .nl forums, but didn’t elYsiun have a forum ever since it was founded? Why get rid of it now?
It seems that people around here are making one fatal assumptions - once the is updated, everything will be good again. I’m sorry if this is harsh, but if the Admins couldn’t be bothered updating the news/tut/whatever pages even once a month before the updated look, I don’t really have much confidence that they’ll do the same after. A new look does not compensate for laziness (apologies again if I’m being harsh)
I can understand where Joeri is coming from, and I don’t think he is trying to be a jerk. Obviously he is no blender noob, nor does he seem to be just trying to cause trouble.
Most of us, as others have said, just go straight to the forums of Elysiun - but if you think about it from the “new-users” perspective, the out-datedness of most of Elysiun would not give a very good first impression. In my opinion, it would be better for Elysiun to just be a forum - than for it to have a bunch of old content and “coming soons”.
It is also a little confusing as to whether Elysiun is or is not the official forums of Blender. I think Blender should have official user support forums. If Elysiun is not them, then there needs to be some. Personally, I think Elysiun is doing the job - but perhaps integration would be good. Couldn’t a sub-domain like forums.blender.org be redirected to the elysiun forums. Of course that might be confusing too.
BURN and DIE.
cmon man, why cant we just have a fun little community?
The whole idea of re-writing elYsiun is that it can be maintained by the users themselves, thus not requiring (a lot) of attention from the admins.
To Joeri:
I agree with you that elYsiun at the moment LOOKS a bit unused, but please remember that a LOT of people use this forum, learn usefull stuff about blender, and have fun chatting to eachother.
Personally I think that is more important than anything.
Roel
ps. I miss the point of your post, you act like you’re trying to convince people to leave elYsiun. We are not nazi’s, people can do what they want. They don’t need you to tell them what is good or bad.
Ahem…Why, thank you for such…informative information.
Why have two sites ? Redundancy and variety. Or we may as well go ahead and put the entire internet on one giant server high in a tower somewhere in the ocean, hosting one huge scrolling webpage.
While it may seem to make sense to have an ‘official’ forums at blender.org, the problem is not a technical one, but an organisational and managerial one. BF already has a lot on its hand maintaining the blender.org/blender3d.org websites. There just aren’t the resources to be able to manage something of this scale as well as everything else.
Another issue is that of responsibility - just look at some of the crap that gets posted in off-topic here, making this the ‘official’ Blender forum would mean that BF could be seen as responsible for some of the things posted here, and certainly some of the garbage in that forum doesn’t give a very good image as an ‘official’ blender support base.
I think an immediate solution to some of Joeri’s problems would be, in the elysiun redesign, to cut away some of the fat that’s hanging on, and reduce this site to (or at least strongly emphasise) it’s core - the forums. They are the site’s greatest resource, and far more lively than any of these other ‘specials’ etc.
I say reduce the site to the forums only (a la xsibase.com, cgtalk.com) and if something else is actually implemented (like a gallery), then add it in then, when it’s actually up and running.
What do you care anyway, Joeri, I thought you were a Maya-head now. 
That is the most common sense answer anyone has said in this thread. Well put broken.
I agree, the “Off Topic” forum should be discontinued in the new design. Only CG related stuff should be posted. All the BS that gets chucked into the “Off Topic” forum is redundant and does not belong here at all.
Again, relating back to the “Blender vs. CG Talk” thread, if we want Blender to be treated as a “Big Boy” application, then we had all better start acting like “Big Boys” and stop the crap that flows from the mouths of a lot of people that hang out here.
Again, this is my opinion and feel free to bash me to Hades and back, but I don’t really care what you all have to say. I have said my peace and that is the end of it.
BgDM
That is the most common sense answer anyone has said in this thread.
Again, relating back to the “Blender vs. CG Talk” thread, if we want Blender to be treated as a “Big Boy” application, then we had all better start acting like “Big Boys” and stop the crap that flows from the mouths of a lot of people that hang out here.[/quote]
I second all that.
Elysiun = forums. That’s the only reason I visit. Really, does anybody even click on the “news” link? I’d just go to blender.org or blender3d.org. “Tutorials”, uhm if I was using 1.8 or something - but they are OLD. The forums make the “Tutorials” section redundant - there is a Tut thread. Even the galleries don’t make sense to me. Have a gallery thread. High quality work gets voted into it and posted by mods.
Mommy wow - I’m a big boy now. Unfortunately it’s hard to insist that everyone act like adults, when a fair portion of Elysiun aren’t adults. But by mods and everyone insisting on somewhat professional behaviour I think we can help curb any mis-directed youthful enthusiasm or anger. We will have all you kids jaded in no time! 
Isn’t CGtalk part of a bigger site called CGnetwork?
They are all part of a cg chain, each connected, yet individual. They represent different sections of computer graphics in general, and cgtalk is just the discussion part of it.
Sorry but why does it have to be?
What advantages would there be that couldn’t be had by providing higher profile links between the two sites?. They would have to good enough to out weight the advantages of having a well established, dedicated community site with its own mods, bandwidth, resources, etc.
Also the threads in this site, which have taken years to accumulate, have become a valuable resource for users because they contain important information not found anywhere else. When the NaN site was shut down, all those threads were lost. If the threads herein would be preserved then why not just keep the site? Why start over again?
I think the best idea is to get this site updated and improve the link profile.
The most important thing is that new comers can find the answers they’er looking for.
Hi.
First I wrote alot of responses, but it became a kiernan sized document.
So,… I can’t answer to you all.
In general I think people agree with me that Elysiun is about it’s forum.
And that without volenteers to write content (blender community members have always been lazy) the site is dead.
After the rants I heard towards me I expect alot of volenteers after the redesign or else they should eat there shoe.
So if Elysiun is only a forum then maybe it should look like that (Cut away fat/ CGtalk like).
These are good ideas for the independant Elysiun.
But this does not solve my problem of programmers telling me to get off “there” blender.org.
I think it’s in the best interrest of blender if there is a user forum on the blender site.
Ofcourse if I ask the (elysuin) users the most will say no.
And if I ask the programmers they will say no.
But I think nuance9 and Monkeyboi tell a clear story on why its a good idea.
I don’t know if blender.org has the resourses to start there own user forum. (Whats the issue here? bandwith? diskspace?)
But I don’t really wonder what will happen to Elysiun if blender will start a user forum by itself.
to theeth:
>You’re gonna be around for Blender Conf this year?
I think so.
to broken:
>What do you care anyway, Joeri, I thought you were a Maya-head now.
Hahaha, I know people think blender is Ton’s baby, but I’m it’s unkle!
SkeLeToR:
>BURN and DIE.
Later, in reverse order. 
to JD-multi:
You discribe the situation very well.
I think it’s a bad situation, let’s change that into a good situation:
Blender.org; For Artistic programmers, Programming artists, everybody involved with blender.
-Joeri
[>] Perhaps the forums on both Blender.org and Elysiun should be slightly re-organised, in order that each presents the topics of the other in its forum frontpage. So, when accessing to blender.org first (which should be the natural move for newcomers to Blender) they could see there are section for Arts and chats, and then discover the Community. On the other side, if a Community member wants to post a technical question, a feature proposal and such, from within Elysiun, he will end on blender.org on the appropriate sections and perhaps discover the ‘coder’s threads’ and, hopefully, try a ride with them and begin to code himself.
As for tutorials, galeries and all, a good start could be blender3d.org, of course, but I’m not sure about that. Will have it to host these, or only to points at? I dunno for sure %|
My final word: I recall you Joeri because I’m lurking around since v1.68 so I know and I remind that your name is associated closely to Blender (which is not the case of some ‘youths’ herein) even if I had very few chated with you (excellent whale or something, am I right, with many python scripts from the golden age on your site?), so I have much respect for you.
But when saying that the Community has always been lazy for writing documentation, I wonder if writing tutorials count or not and if you don’t forget to have some respect for us too 
, because I recall days when The Iceman, B@rt, and many more (and even myself with Blender-Cafe) wrote as much tutorials as we could on many topics (now out-dated, it’s true, but so valuable at the moment). And I think this comment is not very kind for people who actually wrote the two last Blender books, like Stefano recently, but also the old and now classical Tutorial Guides #1 and #2 (Carsten and all.) %|
Anyway, if the greeting has been somewhat rude ( ) I wish you welcome back 
and thank you for the electroshock that should help Elysiun to reform into a better and more satisfactory state (a CGtalk-like new Elysiun would be fine to me).
Ouch! Thanks for sparing us 
As far as I’m concerned, the issue is to cleanly split development issues and community issues (the word issues is used very loosely here). That might sound snobish, but we already have enough problem to get people here to post in the correct section. Don’t get me wrong, user reaction/input on development is very much appreciate, as long as it’s well structure. While already a problem, merging the dev and user community would probably make it worse.
You also have to face the fact that some developers are grumpy and don’t want to deal with n00bs (unless there’s an electrified fence between them, mind you ;)). Thats a minority though.
Martin
theeth:
>You also have to face the fact that some developers are grumpy and don’t want to deal with n00bs (unless there’s an electrified fence between them, mind you ). Thats a minority though.
Frankly I think the dev discussions should move to project.blender.com
and the current blender forum should be users only, preferably the current Elysiun user base that wants seriuos help out other (new) users.
I thought blender was made to be more intuitive.
Dispite many objections things are changing toward a more conventional user interface
Now if I have an Alias|Maya question I go to Alias.com.
If I have a php language question, i go to php.net
I think you get my drift…