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New site name?

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 10:06 am
by Gunness
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
I'll be the first to admit that our site's name is pretty dreadful and clumsy. I never had any great aspirations for the site, so the name was sort of slapped-on as an afterthought. We've come a very long way since the humble beginnings.
One one hand, the name is pretty well integrated and spread around the web, and it used to reflect fairly accurately what the site dealt with.
One the other, since we went to CASA 2.0, the name has become somewhat misleading, and again and again I notice that people unfamiliar with the site write it off as being a walkthrough archive only.
I think it's a shame if people skip our site because the name gives off the wrong signals.
The connection between "CASA" and "solutionarchive.com" is not really obvious, either.
And the logo sucks, anyway ;)

I've thought of various way to remedy the situation:
- get a new domain name (CASA.net, CASA-games.com or whatever is available. classicadventuressolutionarchive.com is obviously too long)
- find a better name that will keep the same acronym (Classic Adventures Statistics Archive - awful, but you get the idea)
- make a new logo that makes the reason for the discrepancy between site name and site address obvious.
- come up with a really catchy tagline ("CASA - the house of adventuring" or something along those lines)

Any input?

Re: New site name?

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 3:42 pm
by Mr Creosote
Name ist Schall und Rauch
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust - Eine Tragoedie

13 years ago, we went with the second option on another site I was involved with (finding a new name fitting the established acronym). That went pretty well.

Re: New site name?

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 5:56 pm
by dave
Don't lose the domain name! Seriously solutionarchive.com is a good domain name, and if you let it lapse it would end up with the many IGN-style games site that never go anywhere. Getting a new domain name based on "casa" would probably be difficult as casa is a common word in Spanish.

I still think we need to keep a strong emphasis on solutions, as that's what keeps us distinct from other sites that catalogue IF (e.g. ifdb), and our original focus was solutions, it just grew once we went live with the new site and found out how many old computers had text adventures!

Re: New site name?

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 9:30 pm
by Alastair
Keep CASA and devise a more appropriate name to fit the acronym.

Re: New site name?

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:01 am
by Gunness
Thanks for the input, people.
So, if the domain name works well (it's clean and easy to remember), and we want to find a new backronym, what to do? As "solution archive" is part of the domain name, it might be worth keeping.
Other options:
- Catalogue of Adventures and Solution Archive (way, way too long)
- Cast All your Sorrows Aside!
- This backronym generator had some ... interesting suggestions, such as: Cowslip Atonally Soccer Astonishment. I guess if I generate new ones long enough, something interesting will pop up? :)
Really, I've looked in the thesaurus for a long time, but nothing clever has come up.

At least we need a way to link CASA with solutionarchive.com - can anybody think up a way to do this visually?

Re: New site name?

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 11:06 pm
by Alex
Gunnes wrote:At least we need a way to link CASA with solutionarchive.com - can anybody think up a way to do this visually?
Well just some idea which entered my mind. I'm awful in making graphics so someone else should do it, but maybe we can use the spanish significance of the word Casa being a house. This site being a home to all classic adventure games ever written on all type of platforms. A place where all these games are being archived inside. You could draw a house around the words solution archive or classic adventures. Maybe cavestyle, or a castle or some other theme related to adventures.

Re: New site name?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 3:31 pm
by Mr Creosote
Talking about logo ideas, what about a house, visually cut open to reveal a winding path/twisty little passages inside and probably a guy following such a passage holding a lantern?

As for the URL, there is no need to abandon the current domain name even if you get a new one as the preferred address. Though I would assume it to be difficult to get anything good.

Re: New site name?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 5:46 pm
by Alex
Mr Creosote wrote:Talking about logo ideas, what about a house, visually cut open to reveal a winding path/twisty little passages inside and probably a guy following such a passage holding a lantern?
Seems a good idea to me. Actually that was what I was thinking of, but maybe I didn't describe it that good above :) .

Re: New site name?

Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:36 pm
by iamaran
Community Assisted Solutions Archive
Complete Adventure Systems Archive

This is tricky.

Re: New site name?

Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:41 pm
by Gunness
@Mr. Creosote: sounds like a good suggestion. Now all we need is an artist. I wish I had better graphical skills myself.
@iamaran: tricky indeed. I searched for options for a really long time.

Re: New site name?

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 10:24 pm
by Alastair
Short of going down the route of the EU's contrived acronyms (Secure idenTity acrOss boRders linKed anyone?), these are the best I've come up with:

Classic Adventures and Solutions Archive
Catalogue of Adventures and Solutions Archive

Re: New site name?

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 10:44 pm
by Alastair
Re. logo idea.

If we can't draw it why don't we stitch a few images together to create a logo? For starters, I'm thinking of taking this screenshot from Ooze - Creepy Nites, cropping out the text, and using the dark side of the house as the cutaway. If we can find a suitable screenshot that depicts someone holding a lantern then the images can be combined to make the logo that Mr. Creosote describes.

Re: New site name?

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 2:03 pm
by Gunness
That might be a way of doing it. I have to say up front that I like the current colour sceme.

Re: New site name?

Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 9:32 pm
by Alastair
Gunness wrote:That might be a way of doing it. I have to say up front that I like the current colour sceme.
That's not a problem as it is quite easy to change the picture's palette, as shown below. One question I have is how large (width and height, in pixels) should the logo be?

Re: New site name?

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 12:45 pm
by pippa
Greetings everyone. I've been letting ideas play around in the back of my head for while, and I just had an idea about the new name.

The most important thing is to keep the Classic Adventures part, since the site doesn't do very much modern IF, or 3D RPGs, or other non-classic types of adventuring. So, we are the Classic Adventures Supporters Association. What do you think?