Looks great!
First thoughts:
(I think mostly anyone on JGO who wanted it has already got it by now!)
Cas 
(Twice in my case thanks to HIBs 2&3. :))
More thoughts:
Simon
In terms of additional competitions, I think it would be good to emphasize polish and finished quality as opposed to speed of programming or size limits. Work on the publicity/message that Java can produce the highest-quality product! (As good as Flash or C++ or whatever…)
Towards that end, maybe some sort of Acadamy Awards for the best Showcase entries of the year. Can have a few different categories–best 3D, best fps (I meant first-person shooter, not frames per second), best puzzler, etc., also best interfaces, best graphic design, best sound design, best AI. Other category suggestions?
Can be a two-stage process, i.e., with nominations. Only members with X posts and Y appreciation or some other criteria can participate in the “final stage” vote? Links to these games should be easily findable/discoverable by the general public. Understand, too, that this can be about contributing to Java Games as a whole, first and foremost, not just about the individual glory.
[When I first saw “my” name on this thread, I was pretty shocked. I entertained the notion that it was due to having made several annoying posts on the general area with questions and suggestions, combined with the shock of discovering I was so high on the “Awesome” list (#5 – but things are trending down to something more reasonable now, especially given I neither know anything about programming 3D nor have completed a Java game.) It took a revisit to figure out the clever ruse. I had that “exploding head” feeling that I’ve come to learn means something suspicious is going on.]
Oh nice.
*kappa notices screenshots/tumbnails that don’t respect the aspect ratio!
http://www.gifmix.net/smiley.php?image=puking-smilies/17.gif
[you]
You seem to take ‘don’t hold back’ quite literally 
In a ‘real’ version of the portal, the images will be scaled and cropped to retain their aspect ratio.
[quote=“dishmoth,post:101,topic:37125”]
It will be reasonably fair, and kept that way, by not revealing the algorithm. I love blackbox ratings.
[quote=“Z-Man,post:99,topic:37125”]
My earlier attempt at setting the forum to a fixed width, was not appreciated. Maybe I’ll use that CSS to fix the width of the header on the portal.
[quote=“dishmoth,post:103,topic:37125”]
At the moment it’s just a caption that can be changed easily. It might change during development, on launch, and over time.
[quote=“dishmoth,post:103,topic:37125”]
Easy enough, technically.
[quote=“philfrei,post:104,topic:37125”]
I think that the community votes will determine what we deem most valuable. Any attempt to artificially impose a direction will likely result in less meaningful votes.
[quote=“philfrei,post:104,topic:37125”]
I don’t think this community is large enough to supply enough content to create a distinct set of games for each category.
[quote=“philfrei,post:104,topic:37125”]
That’s the whole reason I’m putting work into this.
Mostly, I think the portal front mockup looks great.
However I agree with others that the top bar shouldn’t be full width. Personally I think this should be applied site wide, but maybe a touch wider then the width you have on the portal mockup.
I think the top bar should also be changed. On the portal the ‘JGO’ logo should be bigger, and more prominent, and on other pages the top bar should be as thin as possible (like on Twitter or Facebook).
However the one big issue I have is the JGO forum theme; I think this should also be revamped as I feel it really holds the site back. Those header and bottom bar sections on each box are too heavy; without scrolling there are 12 of them on the portal, which makes it look too heavy. The light-blue on dark-grey-blue color scheme also isn’t that nice, and having gradients all over the place looks a bit like programmer art. It’s not a bad theme; it is that it isn’t great either.
If you look at the sourcecode (HTML) and scroll down to
<!--
THIS IS WHERE THE PORTAL STARTS
-->
...
<!--
THIS IS WHERE THE PORTAL ENDS
-->
You can see that there is absolutely no style (inline css or html tags/attributes that influence style) in the HTML (unlike the crap SMF surrounds it with). As I’m unlikely to bring the design of the site to a significantly higher level, people can simple write another stylesheet for it, and we can vote on which to use.
Current stylesheet can be found here.
Personally, I think it would be great to have a front page with a menu.
Something clean, non-intimidating even for non-developers, along the lines of:
– MENU BUTTONS: – [PLAY GAME] [GAME DEVELOPMENT] [FORUM] [ABOUT JGO]
[PLAY GAMES]
[GAME DEVELOPMENT]
[FORUM]
[ABOUT JGO]
and maybe a large image of the pac ghost on the front page aswell.
Also Riven in regards to your current portal page. It might be a good idea to show a different showcase depending on the viewer. If its mobile, then mobile. If Desktop…
It does look great. As far as using the features are concerned, I’d probably be sticking mostly to the forum. So I think It really might be a better Idea to keep games, and development seperate. This way even an 8 year old could jump on the site, and have a fun time just going through games.
Im sorry but why I am being referred to so much? Did I do something wrong? ???
I’ve been visiting these forums for a few months now just because I think they’re interesting and have been trying to get into Java game development. I’m not sure if I came off wrong by the 2 posts I’ve made but they were simply just to give a little feedback on other people’s games. I don’t believe they were negative or insulting and I’m sorry if they came off that why because I did not mean it that way.
EDIT: After doing some more reading in this thread, found out it was a placeholder tag. For a minute there, I thought everyone hated me for some reason
An admin can delete this if they want.
lol welcome to JGO and all it’s craziness dr-snipe ;D It’s not totally crazy here. In the short time I’ve been here we’ve had “rock stars” and pranks from Riven like the you tag, but those are really the only things I can think of.
ROFL! Thanks for the laughs and welcome to JGO
I was desperated too in first with the you tag, as [you] felt it
Yeah I fell for it. I thought I was getting some love 
I’ll just go back into the hole I came from.
… and this is exactly why I don’t like the ‘you’ tag.
The you-tag is only active in this thread. If that’s too much, I will completely remove it.
I think it’s okay as long as there’s diffrence between typed name and you-tag (like that underlined thing).
If it’s only in this topic, then I guess it’s not such a problem.
… and this is exactly why I find it genuinely funny - I really start to ask myself, whats wrong with me