Introduction & Crew
Habborator is online since october 30, 2006. Founded by Luuc(az), it's now run by an international crew. Our members are, from Finland, Star-Fighter, from the UK Zatley, cjames and Joe, LEGOLAS-KLARA from Sweden, JOLE from Germany, Flamed from Canada, Thantos from Belgium and from the Netherlands Laurensh1, Emmerrrrrrr and Luucaz. What are these people about ? Here’s some bits, including their registration number here, which shows they have been around before we even had crew:
cjames (UK, most known from Habio.co.uk) is way too busy to do anything, most of the time. He has persistance, else he couldn’t have build what he did before. And plans, together with our LEGOLAS-KLARA. That was our two PHP coders.
Emmerrrrrrr (Netherlands, #8, 7xr) left her first message on Dutch msgboard in 2006, and has been commenting ever since (she has a way with words, and is able to push things forward through persistence), understanding our urge to do things differently. Since a while she’s thinking along with us. And that’s just, sensible girl.
Flamed (Canada, Flamed905 there) is from Canada. We found him underground when we dug our basement and he just grabbed a seat and never left. He’s most known for serving the drinks, but do not underestimate the ideas of our youngest (check: not anymore) crew member :p.
JOLE (Germany, #11) has been lending a hand from start, even if being involved elsewhere for a long while. Initianator of new ideas, strong believer in and maintaining our archive, but posting news, and badge finds a lot too. No need to explain anything to him, he exactly knew what this site was about, what to do, what was needed, you don’t hear him much, he has things going, work to do (Employee of the month anyone ?).
Laurensh1 (Netherlands, #28) is everywhere and knows everything. Research and (the most complete) newsreports are his main things. If we are complete, that’s his work. If we miss stuff, he already alerted us multiple ways (and it will be done, not enough hours in a day). Got our Dutch portal (not there anymore) to be official, even.
LEGOLAS-KLARA (from Sweden, #59) could be considered a full sitemanager or something. It was kinda accidental (nobody but him in control of the site), but he managed and showed to be able to do about anything, nobody noticed others being away as he covered them. Our furniture specialist, also, it seems (details matter, and he got you covered). He’s been missing for a while though..
Star-Fighter (Finland, #6) is our brainss. Analyzes, but foremost admires Sulakes’ creation. When people get wild in their head, he comes up with a common sense, trustful opinion (in crew). When habbo’s complain, he explains (msgboard). You can trust him, like we do, his opinion matters, and he adds some great ideas to the lot. Our most skilled graphics guy too, btw.
Thantos is our latest new guy, from Belgium. Throws his ideas around wildly, added quite some bits to our archive already. Not seen the last of him, at all.. got involved in about anything we worked on last years, and picked up on PHP.
Zatley (UK, #49) was our first man in pilot hotel, and he’s online there a lot. He doesn’t miss much there, though tends to think he doesn’t do enough on Habborator. That’s not seeing his own enthusiasm, eager to add his bits adds to a pleasant ‘work environment’, great guy to be around, and his bits show through all over the place. Great reporter, also on worldwide matters (though we stopped the reporting :p).
Joe (aka LiquefiedFilth) joined us in 2014, expressing his (rightful) annoyance about outdated pages. Already a lot of updating our furniture pages in progress, but he doesn't stop there, plans are everywhere, and he gets more of us involved.
Big thanks go out to former crew members Gal-I-Hagen (from Norway, #4), Jordy (aka katie.pricejorda, #9) from UK, Chiaki91 (#26) from Germany and Inuendo (#19) from Australia. And Magnea (Sweden, #30). Magne really got into it and managed a lot in his time. He’s still around, just not as active as before.
Luucaz (just Luuc in real life, NL, #1) can be pointed to for starting it all. As such, apologies. There’s no end to it really, great fun exploring the tiniest of details. He admits at being to old for Habbo, but like Star, he’s an admirer, and sees the hotel as a great platform to design things for. Foremost, it has to look and feel good. He also admits his Habbo looks are very similar to real life looks…
A “Habborator” ?! Could be a habbo-orator (orator = public speaker), could well be a hab-borator (boring orator)… we tend to the latter. Habborator foremost has lots of things lacking that other sites do have, like rare values, competitions, radio and all that. We do have some original or at least pretty complete articles and overviews. We also tend to collect a lot of stuff useful for other fansites, which we try to make available.
Our mission is to collect all information concerning Habbo Hotel worldwide (as far as Sulake has made and wants it to be known) and present it in a pleasing way. Even if we only briefly keep up with current affairs, we’re not done documenting, there’s always a section or two being under construction.
Habborator started as a one-man Dutch fansite, which had current look of our msgboard as the overall template. The site wasn't much of a success, but after creating the overviews of the Hallways the idea of doing things modular (each section its own look and feel, functioning in itself) stuck (being easier to update/debug, but mostly more challenging/fun to create). While rebuilding Luucaz found himself mostly talking on international fora, so changed language. The small community that evolved eventually led to more crew getting involved over 2007.
Copyright
Not hard to see, all imagery is done by Sulake, and everything else is based on their creation. Logically copyright is all theirs; this website is not owned, nor operated by Sulake, so they’re not to blame for anything displayed here.
As such, it wouldn’t be fair to claim possesssion on anything here, though loads of fansites take their screenshot integrity way too serious. In general, take what you need. We just don’t enjoy you copying full project pages, images other than simple screenshots etc. - things you can see we put a lot of effort in.
Credits
We’re using loads of ideas and foremost scripts by people brighter than us. Most importantly, our msgboard, also the engine behind the newspage, is made by an American friend, Marc ten Bosch, brilliant coder (of an übersimple, powerful tool with just the right amount of options) - he made that for an old site we used to work on and allowed using it here - massive thanks! An attempt to list and thank all other coders who’s work we use here:
Most recent pages use jQuery and jQuery UI, jQuery being a javascript framework, jQuery UI another framework on top of it, providing User Interface elements, like tabs, effects, dialogs, tooltips. On top of those we use lots of jQuery plugins (there’s many available) for specific things. Older pages are gradually updated too. Image gallery (hotelviews) by Jeremy Keith. Lightbox (now also running on jQuery) at dump by Lokesh Dhakar. Need an upload facility for your site ? You could consider File thingie by Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen - a rather complete file manager running in background here (one file only !).
Back to them jQuery plugins, some are so good they are now part of our standard toolbox. Like jScrollPane (scrollbars, by Kelvin Luck), and Colorbox (alike Lightbox, more skinnable, by Jack Moore).
Web standards & Accessibility
We originally aimed for XHTML 1.0 Strict compliance, had to settle with XHTML 1.0 transitional, but now there’s html5 and all is good. Our CSS probably does validate, content and looks are pretty much separated, CSS is used to do the visual part. You probably need a recent browser to see it all errorfree, everything is tested and working latest Firefox, IE, Chrome and Opera, on a Windows PC, that is. You’ll need javascript turned on, else you won’t see much as intended, we’re afraid. Accessibility, not so sure. With no CSS everything should be easily readable, but lots gets shown only by use of javascript. Using a proper framework, jQuery, we do not need to include a lot of meaningless html (mostly), and get to use proper, meaningful html tags mostly, so even without it should (not tested) make sense.
Conclusion, we admit having made a mess. But it’s a nice mess, and we know about standards, so when you look inside, not all is bad.
Contact
Questions, suggestions, please leave those at our small messageboard. Something else on your mind, something to contribute, an alternative is the email button below. Please check our FAQ to see if your question is answered there, though.
Note that questions about how we accomplished things ((x)html(5), css, javascript etc.) are only answered when posted on the msgboard. We’re fully willing to help you, just do not want to do it twice or more ;).