Something I've wanted to do for a while now is change the color scheme of the site. Keep in mind, I'm not talking about the layout of the site, that'd be too much work. I'm talking about the colors used throughout the site and the background images.

I've made attempts in the past to modernize the look of the site but I've always had users fight back. I think now is the time to do it though since the site needs to have a more visual appeal to new people. The current theme would always be available as a selectable theme.

As far as the color scheme goes, what are complaints that you or others might have about it? What are you suggestions? I know a common complaint is that the site is sometimes hard on a user's eyes and I'm not sure if it's because it's light on dark or if it's the greens contrasting with the blues. Either way, any feedback would be great.

Here's something I've been working on. Let me know if this is any better or if you have any suggestions to it:
Vizzed 2022 Theme

With that new theme, the background color is actually not part of the background image, allowing me to easily change the color (or perhaps dynamically, similar to what was seen in the 2022 April Fools prank).

If you have any ideas or suggestions, please don't hesitate to suggest them here:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104231

For more information, refer to this thread:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104222

I updated the version of Minecraft that we use on the Vizzed.co server from 1.16.4 to 1.18.1! It's been well over a year since we updated our Minecraft server. It's been equally as long since we last updated most of the plugins.

To join our Minecraft server, join this IP:
Vizzed.co


You can find the Vizzed Minecraft directory here:
https://www.vizzed.com/minecraft/


If you have any questions, or want more details on what plugins were updated, go here:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104180

Vizzed went down over 2 days ago for unplanned reasons. I had contacted Hostgator and they said it would take up to 48 hours for the server to be brought back online. Here's what they had to say:

"It would appear that your server encountered an issue when it was rebooted due to the newest kernel installed being corrupt. I was able to get the server back online by booting into the older kernel installed on the server, then reinstalling the new kernel.

The server is now running and the services all appear to be running with out any issues. This issue you encountered is not a common thing, and just a random failures that can happen rarely."

If you have any questions or feedback, let me know here:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104159

The Winter Tour de Vizzed discussion thread can be found here:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104106


Each day there will be 4 Jerseys you can compete for:
Yellow Jersey: Most words in a day
Blue Jersey: Most posts in a day
Red Jersey: Most CP in a day
Green Jersey: Most CP actions in a day


The Hall of Fame page has been upgraded and can be found here:
https://www.vizzed.com/stats/tdv-hof.php

You can find the current Tour de Vizzed results page here:
https://www.vizzed.com/w/tdv.php

Let's welcome back SonicOlmstead as a returning Admin for the first half of 2022. Along with him is Allysa8th, who will be joining the admin rank for the first time
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104102

I wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas

I'm a little late at posting this (I usually do this on the 23rd).



7 Days of Vizzed Christmas
You'll all be rewarded a nice Christmas gift when you come to the site on Christmas (server time). Additionally, you'll be rewarded a random amount of Viz for each day that you come to Vizzed from the 25th until the end of the year, the '7 Days of Vizzed Christmas'. Be sure to visit the site each day to claim your random Viz gift!



Christmas Games in the Retro Game Room
The Retro Game Room has 40+ Christmas games. You can find them all here:
//www.vizzed.com/playonlinegames/index.php?sort=best&search=Christmas&searchBy=theme



Christmas Video Game Music Stream
I'll be streaming Christmas / Wintery themed video game music 24 hours a day from tonight until Christmas is over. You can find the stream here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videogamemusicradio


Christmas Video Game Music
I put together a big playlist of Christmas themed and Winter themed video game music:
https://www.vizzed.com/videogamemusic/playlist.php?id=4



Retro Christmas Game Montage
A few years ago I put together a video highlighting 12 Christmas games (non hacked):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcbh8UIMMj8



Any questions, comments or feedback? Or do you simply want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas? Do so in this thread:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104093

2021 has been a decent year for Vizzed as far as traffic goes. Vizzed has had a 20% traffic increase in the past year.


And even though my activity dropped in the final months of 2021 on the site (due to me getting an IT job), I managed to fix quite a few bugs and issues throughout the site and even update some features and add a few others. And most importantly, I got through a majority of my Private Messages.

Some of the fixes and updates:
-Completely Revamped the Video Game Music Room
-Resurrecting the Vizzed YouTube Channel
-20 – 50% Site Speed Boost
-Tons of new Features and Stats for Many Pages

Additional fixes and updates included Fixing NES Games, RetroArch HTML5 Emulator Enhancements including New Options, Help Center Updated, SEO Optimization of Site Pages (demonstration of how much it helped here), and so much more.

Vizzed also saw a semi-discontinuation of the RGR Plugin due to Flash being discontinued in all major browsers. I had started a fundraiser to help fund an update of the RGR Plugin that doesn’t support flash; that fundraiser exceeded expectations, showing that there was still a huge amount of supportive members on this site still. This updated version of the RGR Plugin is still pending since it has been difficult to find a qualified developer. Now I said Semi-discontinuation because the games in the Retro Game Room can still be played with the RGR Plugin using these instructions.

Something else that happened in 2021, which was an unexpected surprise, was the resurgence of the Vizzed.co Minecraft Server. Somehow the MC Server saw periods of high activity throughout the year, almost matching the prime days of the MC server. HUGE thanks to the MC Staff for helping take care of the increase MC traffic.

So I’ve been MIA in the past 4 months due to my IT job, as mentioned already. However, I’m slowly getting back more free time as the high demand of my job slowly decreases. I’ve been averaging 50 hours a week at my job, sometimes a little over 60 hours a week, but I’m slowly taking that down to around 45 hours a week.

I’m hoping to make 2022 the year of tournaments, events, competitions, etc. I’ll be streaming again with users and also putting together community based YouTube videos. Maybe we’ll see the return of past events, we’ll definitely see the return of real prizes, and if all goes well, we’ll get plenty of participation.



You can find all of the awards and additional information here
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104082

There's just 4 days left to vote in the annual Vizzed Awards.

You can cast your votes here:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104070

Vizzed Board turns 17 years old on December 6th, so you guys have a little more than 3 weeks to vote for whoever you think deserves any of the awards below. Voting will end on December 5th and the awards will be given out on December 6th. There are 25 awards you can vote on, 20 user awards and 5 thread/post awards.

You can cast your votes here:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104070

The Vizzed.co Minecraft Tournament is now live:
https://www.twitch.tv/davideo7

Refer to this thread for more information:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104062

I'll be hosting a single day Tournament on the Vizzed.co Minecraft server on Tuesday, 11/09/2021, at 5 PM central time. The tournament will be no more than 1 hour long and anyone can join at any point even after it's already started.

It's been nearly 2 years since I've hosted a Minecraft tournament. Hopefully we can get back to doing these monthly.


The Zanderlex Maze
This competition is sponsored by Zanderlex. He is funding the competition and also created the maze which will be used for the competition.





How to Join
All you have to do is log on to the Vizzed Minecraft server, using the IP address Vizzed.co, and you'll be invited to the location of the Maze. I'll be making a separate thread and announcement shortly before the event starts. Even if you join late, you can still join.

Feel free to join in on our voice chat on the Vizzed Official Discord Server in the #minecraft-server channel.


How the Tournament Works
The user to successfully navigate to the end of the Maze, wins!


Prizes
1st Place = US $25 (claim via PayPal or Gift Card)
2nd Place = 30,000 Viz (or 3 Raffle Tickets)
3rd Place = 10,000 Viz (or 1 Raffle Ticket)



How to Spectate
If you can't participate, you can still join those who are spectating it. I will be hosting the event on Twitch here:
http://www.twitch.tv/davideo7/

If you can't make it to the live stream, I'll be uploading an edited version of the event to my YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/davideo7



If you have any questions, go here:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104062

After I updated the SSL certificates of Vizzed.com yesterday, I didn't update it properly on the Vizzed.net (our file server) properly. This has been fixed and the games in the RGR should now work again.

Some of you that logged on to the site today may have been given a security warning in your browser. This happened because the site's SSL Certificate expired. I renewed it and now things should be back to normal. Sorry for the scare.

If you have any questions, let me know in this thread:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=104032

In celebration of zanderlex being on the site for 8 years he's decided to host another posting day where you can even make money! For more information check out this thread! https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=103976

The site went down last night (about 12 hours ago) but I didn't know about it until this morning (few hours ago). I was unable to access anything so I had Hostgator manually reboot it for me. Still not sure why it went down but I'll keep everyone updated if there is an underlying issue, which I don't think is the case.

If you have any questions or feedback, let me know in this thread:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=103970

We're bringing back the Minecraft building competition with help from zanderlex providing prizes!

How it works: Simply get on vizzed.co the Minecraft version 1.16.5 and build anywhere and submit in to the thread below
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=103928
Prizes:
10 people minimum
1st place: $10 gaming gift card of choice, $50 in Steam keys, and 200K Viz
2nd place: $50 in Steam keys and 200K Viz
3rd place: 200K Viz
4th place: 100K Viz
If 50 people enter, 1st place gets $25 gift card instead of $10
As long as you build anything, no matter how small, win 10,000 Viz and a steam key if approved.
and the more people enter the better the prizes so feel free to tell anyone you know!

Start date: Now!
End date: October 1st

The factory I've been working at for the past nearly 5 years recently opened up a couple of IT positions and I got one, and I start this week. I had only ever planned on being at this place for a year since that's how long I thought it'd take for the site to pick back up enough for me to generate a full time income from the site again. That of course never happened and 4+ years later I'm still at the same place. More recently I was doing some job searching and considering just pursuing a career that wasn't Vizzed and not long after this place opened up those 2 IT positions, which is something I was hoping they'd do for as long as I've been there.

The place I work at is in town and I've been working weekend shifts this entire time. This allowed me to focus on Vizzed during the weekend and also allowed me to be at home with my kids while they're home schooled or out of school during summer break (I'll be sending them back to public school most likely though). I've got a lot of anxiety in general and driving into an over populated city, which is where all the jobs are nearby (Twin Cities to be exact), just wasn't something I wanted to do so it's awesome that I'll be able to finally be utilized where I work.

The reason they finally opened up IT positions was because a company bought out the company I work for and so the IT guys from the company that previous owned us left and now the new company needs a new team. It's a Taiwanese company and our place makes circuit boards and this is their first factory in the US. They basically want a fresh start on everything and this gives me the opportunity to bring to life all of the ideas and visions I had for the place (those ideas being shot down in the past due to me not having a title worthy to do such tasks). I'll basically be in charge of everything software related. It's going to offer me a lot of opportunity to not only utilize and keep fresh the skills I have but also allow me to further develop those skills.

Anyways, here's how this affects Vizzed. I'll be working more hours than before and I'll also be working primarily during the week. I haven't had weekends off with my family in almost 5 years so I'm excited to have that with them. Because of this, I'll be doing very little development during the weekend and I'll be doing very little development during the week. They're going to allow me to have a very flexible schedule so I'm going to try and have it so that I have 1 day off during the week with that day being the day I work on Vizzed, which will hopefully be Mondays.

In other words, I'll be spending and investing less time on the site. Earlier in the year I was averaging around 25-30 hours on the site, lately I've been investing on average of 20 hours. Now I'll probably be investing 10 hours into the site so I have to make that time count (some weeks might be more). Thankfully I have an awesome staff so they'll definitely save me a lot of time which will help me focus on things that only I can take care of. If the site ever picks back up again, and enough to generate a full time income, I would for sure quit my job and focus primary on Vizzed again but until that happens, I'll have to just deal with spending 10+ hours on the site a week.

There are 2 positives that come out of this at least.

I'll be obtaining skills potentially beneficial to the site which might give me an opportunity to do things on the site or for the site that I wasn't capable of before (you know, maybe I'll develop the skills to make my own RGR Plugin or to be able to work on the current).

The other positive (kind of 2 actually) is that I'll be making more money at my job and this means I'll have a budget to host competitions again with cash prizes (not as big of a budget as in the past but a budget none the less). I eventually stopped hosting competitions due to the lack of participation and the lack of participation was a combination of less traffic on the site (and therefore less interest) and no longer having the budget for cash prizes. So I'll definitely be hosting competitions more often. Having a budget again also means I can invest money into various scripts for the site and also hire people to work on various things.

If you have any questions for me, let me know in this thread:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=103865

The Summer Tour de Vizzed discussion thread can be found here:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=103794


Each day there will be 4 Jerseys you can compete for:
Yellow Jersey: Most words in a day
Blue Jersey: Most posts in a day
Red Jersey: Most CP in a day
Green Jersey: Most CP actions in a day


The Hall of Fame page has been upgraded and can be found here:
https://www.vizzed.com/stats/tdv-hof.php

You can find the current Tour de Vizzed results page here:
https://www.vizzed.com/w/tdv.php

Let's welcome SonicOlmstead again as the Admin for the second half of 2021. The other 2 Globals decided not to run for Admin position so SonicOlmstead will be doing this alone (again) for the next 6 months.

If you have any questions or feedback for him, let him know in this thread:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=103791