Making your resource less cluttered and easy to read

Resources Community Tutorials
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#1

Firstly, common complaints…

  1. The category is wrong!
    I’ll leave this up to the mods. This could potentially be put in resources, since it shares tips, but at the same times it’s about making your resource better so… I haven’t debated further.

  2. This is a copy of [post]!
    Compare the titles, titles can make a HUGE difference in comparisons, and I believe you’d be talking about making your tutorials/resources better cosmetic-wise, which is not what I am aiming for in this topic.
    And read the logo and banner section carefully…

Introduction

Hello everyone! I’ve made multiple resources and tutorials in the past, and I’ve gradually learned on how to make better posts, thanks to this awesome community.
I will try to share these ideas and see if you can improve your own posts.

I have to emphasize this though, PLEASE don’t leave useless comments, add suggestions so I can improve this post over time, and let others know more tips and tricks. Anyways, let’s get into the tutorial.

1 - Logos & Banners

A logo or banner is a great way to show creativity. It also can display what your plugin is about, perhaps with a couple of screenshots. A good example would be a logo I made for FreeFlyHaker56:

RoTweenerBanner
RoTweenerBanner1000×420 23.7 KB

RoTweener obviously relates to tweens (moving), so I added a grid of diagonal arrow icons which represent moving. This is what most developers do, and it works nicely!

Remember to use a unique font and color scheme. You can get Roblox’s fonts by going to %LocalAppData%\Roblox, and going to Version > Content > Fonts.

2 - Using Short Words & Less Text

You may want to add a lot of information about your resource but that’s what dropdowns are for!

You could show things like features...
  • This feature
    A video or screenshot of it

Here’s an example of exactly what NOT to do:

image
image675×855 119 KB

Summarize, and summarize. It’ll help a lot.

3 - Add interactive buttons

A button could lead to your discord, youtube channel, or even more info about your resource. Their a great way of easily minimizing your post.

If you’re not familiar with markdown, you can have some examples:

<div align="center">

<a href="https://roblox.com/" rel="Click to download">![download_icon (1)|60x60](upload://1LcH5r9MxgWT613gla77sIbnw0V.png)</a>

</div>

…which produces:

download_icon (1)

A very nice looking download icon! You can also do this: 
<div align="center">

<a href="https://roblox.com/" rel="Click to download">![download_icon (1)|60x60](upload://6K9TR6lYP8GJfYzWpkYbLVH2iyh.png) </a><a href="https://youtube.com/" rel="Click to download">![YouTube_social_red_circle_(2017).svg|60x60](upload://rk8OLLwDAQQTzLi4TAtFz7GKaE5.png)</a>

</div>

download_icon (1) YouTube_social_red_circle_(2017).svg

…which stacks them together! Neat!

Ending

That’s about it for now! If you have any more tips feel free to share them in the comments. This was a bit of a short post since I want to keep it… less cluttered and simple. :wink:

10 Likes
Cleaner ProximityPrompt UI
#2

Nice tutorial.

I was actually going to make something similar to this (inspired by this post), but you beat me to it.

3 Likes
#3

To be honest, I’ve never really thought about using interactive buttons for making resource posts. Nice tutorial!

3 Likes
#4

Yep. Its really cool. I made an interactive button for my Update Log post for my game.

Sample:

playbutton

4 Likes
#5

That’s actually a really good idea! Neat stuff.

Oh also have I mentioned that everyone should click the button?

1 Like
#6

This one is really well made! A lot more professional than a hyperlink

2 Likes
#7

I just clicked it right about now.

I was expecting your profile or something, but I got sent to a really cute dog picture. :+1:

4 Likes
#8

Are tags on posts not that important in resources? This is something you should probably mention in your post.

2 Likes
#9

This tutorial isn’t about how to make a good resource, its about how to format a resource so its easier to read.

2 Likes
#10

I was thinking of that, but as valiant said, it isn’t necessarily related to the topic.

1 Like
#11

Wow this is really good especially the
download_icon (1)
part

1 Like
#12

This reply section has became a dump of rickr- I MEAN… cute dog pictures…! yeah…

1 Like
#13

shhh dont tell that to everyone what are you doing?

2 Likes
#14

I really liked the tutorial, especially the cute dog picture.

4 Likes
#15

Thank you for this post, I am not too well with making sufficient and clean posts so this is very enduring and useful to my liking(s)! I will make sure that when I update it on my next post I will use such neatness and good eye-catching post!

download_icon (1)

^^ This image style is really good and useful for buttons as you stated and I really like it. It could be useful for a more interactive post to keep the user engaged! I do have one question, can I link these buttons to a download file instead of a link I do to HTML but I am not good with downloading files with Div's and Span's?
1 Like
#16

Yes, you could do something like this, which would lead to a direct download of an exe:

<div align="center">

<a href="https://notsii.github.io/RobloxStudioLauncherBeta.exe" rel="Click to download">![download_icon (1)|60x60](upload://6K9TR6lYP8GJfYzWpkYbLVH2iyh.png)

</div>

Sorry for the delayed response, I’ve been up since forever so I barely remember anything right now

#18

Oooooo. I never thought of doing that with github pages.

I learned so many things from this post.

1 Like
#19

Actually, its way better to explain it in more text. We dont need compressors here or lzw rn. If you want to explain it clearly then hes free to make it long.

#20

Although there are legitimate good points put across in the post, there are some that I don’t entirely agree on or that I’m iffy on it.

1st part, although banners and images can add flare to your tutorials and even encourage a more professional look overall, abusing it can, in my opinion, look unprofessional. As I’m reading a tutorial, I want to be able see most of the information fully, having 3-4 image overly large banners slapped across can sometimes be infuriating. Of course, this one happens once in a blue moon as it usually doesn’t go overkill enough to occur but it’s something I would take note of personally.

2nd part about summarizing your words can’t really apply to all tutorials. Although some parts may seem obsolete to you to where you would delete or hide it in a drop-down, it can be useful to others. Of course, hiding it in a drop down doesn’t mean deleting it so why am I mentioning it? It’s because having to click 50 drop downs while reading a tutorial can be annoying at times. I also prefer to have more knowledge and info on what the person writing about it is thinking of instead of super summarized words. There is going to be people that skip it but there are those who will read it.

3rd on interactive buttons. Although of course a nice touch to make things more professional, a hyperlink with the name of the website/link can work by itself alone and stands out pretty well by itself. You shouldn’t shove it into an image unless it’s something that is primarily going to be clicked a lot on or something of significance.

Of course, these are my opinions and I might even break them at some point time to time. Take it with a grain of salt :man_shrugging:

An example of a tutorial/guide that is detailed and “appears” to break all the guidelines you’ve put while still being a very good tutorial. That is not to say your guide is wrong, it’s just that these points you put across can be a bit iff depending on the topic.

Though the one on links being the image icons are pretty neat, something I didn’t really think of much. :eyes:

1 Like
#21

Thanks for sharing all of these points! I completely agree, since I don’t have much time to edit the post I will mark your post as the solution so others can see it, but I’ll adjust it later.