FAQs

About Takuchat (7)

Who Are Your Established Authors?

Our established authors are our users we recognize as being a part of the Takuchat name and these users alone have the right to do interviews and other public interactions in the sites name. If a user has contacted you and they claim to represent us without matching the name or e-mail, please do not respond, and please notify us of the occurrence. This applies to unreasonable behavior with your interactions with any of the people below as well.


Will Norman – Phantomlink – [email protected] – Site Owner -Writer- Contact for Takuchat public relations

Isiac DaGraca – DigitalWolf – [email protected] – Site Owner – Writer – Contact for site related issues

Jacob Kellogg- KingKellogg – [email protected] – Site Owner – Writer-Contact for Moderation/User related Issues.

Rajendra – m0re – [email protected] – Site Owner – Writer

Jeremy - King Koopa – [email protected] – Writer – Primary contact for nintendo relations

Erik – dracosummoner – [email protected] – Writer-Website: Projected Realities, movie-review blog

Matt May - Talliakara – [email protected] – Social Media

Guido – Nerubian Assassin – [email protected] – Writer

Daniel – generic-user-name – [email protected] – Writer

Jamie – Prof. Bananas Goldsteinberg – [email protected] – Writer

John Dowty - Hitokiri_Ace – [email protected] – Writer

When was Takuchat Started?

Takuchat was started in June 2012, and launched in July a month later.

Why does Takuchat use Disqus for comments?

Takuchat goes through thousands of comments per day, and involves a ton of conversation. Due to that its hard to keep track of those conversations on wordpress’ default comment system. There are no notifications, it does not dynamically load among other issues.

We agree disqus isn’t perfect but it has proven to be fairly reliable and evolving. We’ve also established a fairly good relationship with their support team. I’m happy to be in contact with them if there is a problem.

Disqus is also widely used on a large number of sites, and likely a number of visitors already have disqus accounts, or can reap the benefits of not having to login elsewhere.

So while we might  make our own comment system in the future, for now Disqus is an acceptable option.

What’s The Story of Takuchat?

The truth is our site stems from the popular gaming site ‘Kotaku’, with our cherished ‘speakup’ area of the site. Where generally people posted random things, sometimes about gaming, sometimes about their day to day lives. It was really cool and really fun. But sadly it didn’t last, things changed and people left Kotaku, speakup was gone, and everyone wanted a new home.

So ‘KingKellog’ made a temp life raft and talked about making our own site. And some people thought it would fail and others thought it was cool and frankly, it was all really fast cause about two weeks later user DigitalWolf had jumped in and made a WordPress site.

And well, long story short, the site was kinda shitty at first, and we were still kinda sore about the kotaku thing.

Yet here we are now, way beyond that, and ready to establish our focus, which is bringing back the magic that was speakup. And creating a site run by user content.

What are the Takuchat Colors?

#849E34 – Accent green

#D4FD5C  - Night Yellow Green

#CA4B5E – Night Red

#6DC2ED – Night Light Blue

#15345C – Accent Dark Blue

Adobe Kuler Link

Grays:

#333333 – BackGround

#222222 – Body

Black & White

Where can I download the Pixel Stars image?

Here’s the collection of images that have been made.

To save them, right click the thumb and select “Save link as…”

View category→

Articles (5)

How do I start a new post?

It’s simple to start a post. You can either click the ‘+ New’ button on the WordPress header located on top of the page OR click the ‘New Post’ link located under your WordPress Gravatar. Do note that you must have a WordPress account and be logged in. The login for WordPress is located on the right-hand side of the page. Oh, and it IS possible to post from the WordPress app in case you get the urge to post while on the go.

Please remember to go over our Article Guidelines.

Why do I need to one account for Disqus and one for Takuchat?

Disqus is separate from Takuchat and therefore requires a separate login.

While there is a way to have just one login for Disqus and Takuchat, its $200 per month. We simply can’t afford that option.

Essentially, the Disqus account is for commenting, and the WordPress account is for making Articles and being more involved with the community with additional features. While making both is preferred some users stick with just the Disqus account.

How should titles be formatted?

Titles should be formatted in one of two ways:

1) If the title is meant to be interpreted as a direct sentence (e.g., “[Opinion] Should retail games lower their costs?”), capitalize the bracketed Takuchat topic and the first letter of the first word in the sentence as normal.

2) If the title is a headline (e.g., “[Breaking News] Activision to Suspend Call of Duty Franchise”), capitalize the first letter of every word except for articles such as a, an, and the, along with similarly unimportant words such as of. If in doubt, use your discretion or ask.


Takuchat articles can often be organized according to any of several major “Takuchat Topics,” these including, but not being limited to, the following:

* [Admin Post] – Reserved for administrators, these posts are for things such as announcing Takuchat policy changes or updates.
* [Featured Posts] – (Wolf, I’m really not sure of the significance of this one, please clarify)
* [Forum] – Also known as a discussion post.
* [How-to Guides] – Instructional tutorials.
* [Humor] – For parody or especially lighthearted articles.
* [Media Drop] – For sharing of one’s favorite art or music, as per our former, informal [Art Drop] and [Music Drop] categories.
* [NSFW] – Probably the most important category to make clear in situations when it’s needed.
* [Podcast] – Self-explanatory.
* [Previews] – Self-explanatory.
* [Project] – (Wolf, I’m really not sure of the significance of this one, please clarify)
* [Reviews] – Self-explanatory.

As such, article titles should be preceded by their category, written in brackets. Examples of this would be, “[Reviews] Game Review: Grand Theft Auto V” or, “[NSFW] Risque League of Legends Official Artwork Revealed,” or the like.

Informal and unofficial bracketed topics are welcome, such as “Building Bridges,” but if you add or suggest a bracketed topic that is not already a part of our lineup, please add an informative section at the bottom of your post that explains the purpose of this topic. If you have any questions about whether a certain topic is appropriate or about how to make it more specific or more interesting, please feel free to ask a site moderator or administrator.

What is a ‘SpeakEasy’ post?

A ‘Forum’ post is kinda like a sub-SpeakOut, and is entirely optional and is created like an article post. It’s a place to discuss specific topics to avoid flooding the main SpeakOut page keeping it diverse and open as possible.

Forum posts are by no means for general discussion, they exist for specific discussion on topics only not broad topics. These include specific games, movies, or groups. A forum article may be made on  the latest ‘Metal Gear’ title, on the other hand a forum article can’t be made on something broad like the ‘Metal Gear Series’.

Forum articles can be made by any user ‘Author’ and up.

What are the requirements for a “Featured Post”?

Featured posts appear on the slider on the homepage and possibly other areas of the site as well; they demonstrate quality articles from our users and for our community. This is to prevent user posts from being quickly buried by other articles.

Authors should not set their post as a “Featured post” on their own or without permission from a moderator, it should be set by an Editor or above. There are multiple reasons for this, things like verifying the quality and standards of the article, ensuring the featured post slider isn’t immediately filled among other reasons. Generally so long as an article is on the front page (especially the first 5 posts) it technically doesn’t  benefit from being on the post slider; so it isn’t necessary for a new post to immediately go to the slider.

You can ask for pre-approval of a featured article from any moderator keeping the former paragraph in mind.

Also meeting or failing the requirements by no means guarantees whether a post will be included in “Featured Posts”, it is at the discretion of site moderators. The following is a guideline for easily establishing that standard.

The “Featured Post” requirements are as follows.

  • Must be an original article, and not entirely news reporting. Original article means the primary source and topic of the content is not from another websites content. This does not mean an article Discussing content from another source isn’t original provided the text discussing the topic represents the majority of the post and isn’t simply a rehash of the source topic. An article written by the user on another site is not automatically ineligable.
  • The Featured Image from the article must exceed or meet 860px width by 300px height, meaning the image must be larger than our largest featured image box. This is due to scaling issues with the plugin, not doing so damages the appearance of the site. Also Higher resolution images simply look better on the home page, and articles than up scaled low res images. This also means the article holds to the standards of other site content providers as well (like for instance Flipboard). Should an image you want to use fall below this standard with no other option, I recommend upscaling the image in an image editing program. Afterall the most important factor here is image size, not necessarily image quality, but do make an effort to make it look nice please.
  • Must exhibit proper spelling, grammar, and formatting we have users here that specialize in this, please ask for help on our SpeakOut forum for help BEFORE POSTING.
  • The user does not already have a featured article, with exception given at the discretion of moderators on a case by case scenario.

Questions about these guidelines can be asked on our Contact Us page or on SpeakOut

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Commenting (3)

Why does Takuchat use Disqus for comments?

Takuchat goes through thousands of comments per day, and involves a ton of conversation. Due to that its hard to keep track of those conversations on wordpress’ default comment system. There are no notifications, it does not dynamically load among other issues.

We agree disqus isn’t perfect but it has proven to be fairly reliable and evolving. We’ve also established a fairly good relationship with their support team. I’m happy to be in contact with them if there is a problem.

Disqus is also widely used on a large number of sites, and likely a number of visitors already have disqus accounts, or can reap the benefits of not having to login elsewhere.

So while we might  make our own comment system in the future, for now Disqus is an acceptable option.

Why do I need to one account for Disqus and one for Takuchat?

Disqus is separate from Takuchat and therefore requires a separate login.

While there is a way to have just one login for Disqus and Takuchat, its $200 per month. We simply can’t afford that option.

Essentially, the Disqus account is for commenting, and the WordPress account is for making Articles and being more involved with the community with additional features. While making both is preferred some users stick with just the Disqus account.

What is a ‘SpeakEasy’ post?

A ‘Forum’ post is kinda like a sub-SpeakOut, and is entirely optional and is created like an article post. It’s a place to discuss specific topics to avoid flooding the main SpeakOut page keeping it diverse and open as possible.

Forum posts are by no means for general discussion, they exist for specific discussion on topics only not broad topics. These include specific games, movies, or groups. A forum article may be made on  the latest ‘Metal Gear’ title, on the other hand a forum article can’t be made on something broad like the ‘Metal Gear Series’.

Forum articles can be made by any user ‘Author’ and up.

View category→

Moderating (1)

What are the requirements for a “Featured Post”?

Featured posts appear on the slider on the homepage and possibly other areas of the site as well; they demonstrate quality articles from our users and for our community. This is to prevent user posts from being quickly buried by other articles.

Authors should not set their post as a “Featured post” on their own or without permission from a moderator, it should be set by an Editor or above. There are multiple reasons for this, things like verifying the quality and standards of the article, ensuring the featured post slider isn’t immediately filled among other reasons. Generally so long as an article is on the front page (especially the first 5 posts) it technically doesn’t  benefit from being on the post slider; so it isn’t necessary for a new post to immediately go to the slider.

You can ask for pre-approval of a featured article from any moderator keeping the former paragraph in mind.

Also meeting or failing the requirements by no means guarantees whether a post will be included in “Featured Posts”, it is at the discretion of site moderators. The following is a guideline for easily establishing that standard.

The “Featured Post” requirements are as follows.

  • Must be an original article, and not entirely news reporting. Original article means the primary source and topic of the content is not from another websites content. This does not mean an article Discussing content from another source isn’t original provided the text discussing the topic represents the majority of the post and isn’t simply a rehash of the source topic. An article written by the user on another site is not automatically ineligable.
  • The Featured Image from the article must exceed or meet 860px width by 300px height, meaning the image must be larger than our largest featured image box. This is due to scaling issues with the plugin, not doing so damages the appearance of the site. Also Higher resolution images simply look better on the home page, and articles than up scaled low res images. This also means the article holds to the standards of other site content providers as well (like for instance Flipboard). Should an image you want to use fall below this standard with no other option, I recommend upscaling the image in an image editing program. Afterall the most important factor here is image size, not necessarily image quality, but do make an effort to make it look nice please.
  • Must exhibit proper spelling, grammar, and formatting we have users here that specialize in this, please ask for help on our SpeakOut forum for help BEFORE POSTING.
  • The user does not already have a featured article, with exception given at the discretion of moderators on a case by case scenario.

Questions about these guidelines can be asked on our Contact Us page or on SpeakOut

View category→

Takuchat Development (9)

How can I get involved in developing Takuchat?

If  you have web design experience or simply want to mess around and make suggestions we’d love to have you involved. But you’ll need a way to work with our theme and such.

Below you’ll find a guide for getting a local wordpress installation set-up on your pc, so you can have the freedom to try plugins, make theme changes among other things either to learn on your own or to submit to us for changes to the site.

 

What exactly makes up Takuchat?

Takuchat is built on WordPress, and a theme called “basic” from Themify. These two in combination with a number of customizations, plugins and other things makes up our site.

What kind of changes can I submit to Takuchat?

Anything really, once submitted to us either on Speakout or through email we’ll review what you’ve done and assess if its a good fit for the site. And we’ll work with you if anything doesn’t quite fit.

The main reason we’re doing this is because our site team is very small and in the end we can’t think up everything or do everything. But those users with the skill who want to contribute matter, and we’ll take any idea within reason very seriously. Especially if you took the time to demonstrate it to us.

Ok, so what do I need to download? How do I get started?

The very first step is following this guide from the wordpress folk themselves. You this guide will show you how to get the full wordpress working right on your desktop, and provides some nice tools for coding and such through the program called WebMatrix (WebPI).

Easy 5 Minute WordPress Installation on Windows

If the page wasn’t loaded already in your web browser go to “localhost:00000/wp-admin/setup-config.php”, the zeroes being specific to whatever WebPI set-up set. You can find this out by loading your site in WebMartix then clicking “Run” to try and load your page through a web browser.

THe alternative is easier!

Easier InstantWP installer for Windows

For mac there’s a self contained installer for you to use, never used this myself but it should work fine.

I’m sure there are a number of options for this but the rest of this guide is not dependant on what you use.

Ok its installed and WordPress is working, what do i do now?

Well all that’s left to do is download the files, first off you need to get the base theme our theme is built off of called “Basic”. You can download the theme for free from Themify here. We choose a Themify theme due to their feature set and constant updates. Its a big part of what makes our site look like it does, and do it easily.

Now this theme needs to be installed by extracting the “Basic” folder to “/wp-content/themes/”, there’s no need to activate the theme though. You’ll find this folder locally on your computer in the directory your site is installed. You’ll find more info on installing themes here and other places.

Now to install our theme,  this involves four steps, downloading the files, installing the theme, loading the back-up, and “uploading” the logo.

So first off the download, here you can download the latest version of the theme from at this link (9/4/2013). just hit the download button at the top right.

Simply drop that folder into the themes area (a.k.a install it) and load up the theme! But its not complete yet, the backup must be loaded.

So with the theme installed select “Takuchat Night” in the menu to the left, then select “Transfer” on the top right of the interface that comes up. Select the big “Import button” and find the Takuchat_Back_up.zip folder. You might need to change “Custom Files” to “All Files” to see it.

Once that’s loaded in the only thing left to do is load in the Takuchat logo!

In that same window you’ll see “Styling” on the top left, click that then in the menu to the left you’ll see “Site Logo”. After selecting that make sure that under “Display” the first section, the “Image” bubble is selected.

Then Select upload and find the “Takuchat_text-logo.png” in the folder you downloaded, it should be under the “Takuchat Images Pack” folder.

 

And now you’re done!

 

Great! Wait why is everything so empty?

Well obviously a site needs content, SO GET TO WORK!

Actually there’s an easier solution…

“Basic” comes with some filler content to load, its very useful stuff although it doesn’t reflect our content standards and uses features we don’t use. That said you can find out how to install that at the link below.

Importing Sample Content Tutorial

 

What needs to be worked on with the Takuchat Website?

Please be aware this is not updated frequently…

You’ll find instructions for getting involved with site design in this FAQ

Performance

  • Improve general page loading speed
  • Resolve potential (and recurring) database errors due to pre-set wordpress resource limits

Site design

  • Create “Day/Light” theme for users to use when prefered, some people apparently view a dark site as a porn site…so yeah.
  • Use CSS to design the “SpeakEasy” sidebar widget to look more sexy and less like simple text on a side bar, this needs a full revamp of its look
  • Change “star” images to have more consistent appearance with more recent images
  • Customize home page “Featured Image” slider
    • Fix so that image is centered rather than oriented from the top
    • Make navigation buttons visible
    • Add takuchat colors
    • Improve responsive design for smaller screen sizes.
  • Improve page design on much smaller screen sizes (mobile)
    • Make featured image extend across page on mobile devices
    • restore admin bar due to improved usability
    • Improve “sponsored elements” on mobile devices to improve visibility
  • Add more site identifying content on the homepage to improve user post visibility and site identity
  • Work on ‘non-intrusive’ sponsored links throughout the site to support paying for our server and other aspects.

Site Content Improvements

  • Complete FAQ page content, we need FAQ’s for;
    • Creating posts, formatting guidelines, adding images and other stylizing functions related to making quality posts
    • Getting registered on Takuchat and Disqus
    • How to gain “Authorship” on Takuchat
    • How to get involved with posting video content on our channel
    • Game Review guidelines for more consistency (following is optional)
    • List of site volunteer jobs open
  • Add “TakuChat Videos” page to display TakuChat associated user videos
  • Improve podcasting integration

That is all for now…

What are some great tools for web development?

Here is a list of free tools I use personally.

Web browser

A web browser is very important because it gives you a peek at the visible code on the site and lets you have fun with it.

Currently our site favors Chrome and Firefox for development, so please choose one or both of those to have around. Both have fantastic development tools for websites.

Look for the “inspect element” option on the right-click menu.

Document/ Code Editor

Notepad++ is an awesome application for editing code, and it provides a good amount of visual information for coding. It should pretty much be the main thing you use.

FTP/filesystem access

FileZilla is excellent for accessing server files, you’ll find various online guides for getting it set-up

Server Access

While the majority of users don’t have server access to Takuchat, Putty is what i use for SSH access; there’s honestly not much to say about that.

Design/ Illustration

Inkscape is suitable for making infinitely scalable designs.

GIMP is a well known and free picture-editing solution.

Have suggestions for tools on this page?

Contact us here!

View category→

Tutorials (4)

How do I start a new post?

It’s simple to start a post. You can either click the ‘+ New’ button on the WordPress header located on top of the page OR click the ‘New Post’ link located under your WordPress Gravatar. Do note that you must have a WordPress account and be logged in. The login for WordPress is located on the right-hand side of the page. Oh, and it IS possible to post from the WordPress app in case you get the urge to post while on the go.

Please remember to go over our Article Guidelines.

How do I add to the event calendar?

On the right-hand side of the page you may notice a small listing of upcoming events or game releases, this is part of our event calendar which displays 4 events which are the closest to occurring. These events are usually game release dates but gaming conferences, game nights and cosplay events are also displayed here among others. These events are colour coded to convey event type easier.

To add an event to the calendar you must first have the necessary permission to edit it, once you have you can click on ‘Event Calendar’ under the ‘Community’ dropdown list on the top of the page, you’ll be taken to a view of the current month. On the top left, just above the calendar, click “Add Event” to open up the Ajax Event Calendar. From here it’s as simple as clicking on the date you want the event to begin, this will open up an ‘Event Form’ which has a few options that will allow you to add more detail to your entry if you want.

You MUST add a title and a description for the event, the rest is optional but we recommend that you put as much detail into your entry as possible. You can select the duration of the event, if it is an all day event then tick the ‘All Day’ box however if it is only for a few hours of the day untick the ‘All Day’ box and you can input the exact duration in hours. You may want to know that the Event Calendar goes by U.S Eastern time.

You also have the option to select if the event repeats and, if so, how many days intervals (30 days max). Next you’ll want to select a category to better define your event and colour code it, at present there are 5 categories to choose from:

  • TakuChat Event: This pertains to site related events which are specific to TakuChat only.
  • New Game Release: Pretty self explanatory.
  • Gaming Conference: E3, GDC and TGS are just some examples of events which should be included in this category.
  • Mystery Event: For the events that don’t quite fit into other categories or things we don’t yet know about (a countdown timer on a developers website for example)
  • Let’s Play!: For the occasions when TakuChat members come together to murder each other online in a variety of games on a variety of platforms.

You can also add a particular venue and a link to any related websites for added detail. Once you’ve done that just click ‘Add’ and you’ve taken your first step in the exciting world of calendar data entry, how rad is that?!

What are the Takuchat Colors?

#849E34 – Accent green

#D4FD5C  - Night Yellow Green

#CA4B5E – Night Red

#6DC2ED – Night Light Blue

#15345C – Accent Dark Blue

Adobe Kuler Link

Grays:

#333333 – BackGround

#222222 – Body

Black & White

Where can I download the Pixel Stars image?

Here’s the collection of images that have been made.

To save them, right click the thumb and select “Save link as…”

View category→
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