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#13 2006-03-02 00:52:49
- brian.zerangue
- Member
- Registered: 2005-02-15
- Posts: 62
Re: Welcome a new and old Forum-Administrator...
Mary -
We’re so glad you’re back!
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Re: Welcome a new and old Forum-Administrator...
Heh welcome back Mary.
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Re: Welcome a new and old Forum-Administrator...
Welcome back, Mary. You were missed and your return is all the more welcome!
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#16 2006-03-03 08:50:14
- Mary
- Sock Enthusiast
- Registered: 2004-06-27
- Posts: 6,236
Re: Welcome a new and old Forum-Administrator...
Thanks for the welcome back folks, ‘tis appreciated.
One of my first jobs – now that I’ve been “re-activated” ;) – was to upgrade the forum. Rather than start a new topic about it, I’ll just briefly go over the changes here.
It is change, so there will need to be a time of adjustment, and also refinement of the changes. The idea is to make it foremost a better intro for new users trying to find info and help, but still highly usable for the older community members.
Much thanks to Sencer and Alex (zem) whom have been helping me tweak and perfect the changes.
The upgrade includes:
- The same old forum software and look we’re familiar with.
- Upgrade to the latest version of the forum software to make it more secure and patch various bugs.
- The re-organization of the existing forums into proper categories (Textpattern, Help, Community and International Users) and adjustment of the order they appear in. The purpose is to first make it easy to find help, and then still easy to get at the other various forums.
The order of the categories is not as fixed, as we’ll see how we go along what would be best for most people. I’ve played with them in various orders, but I’m not sure which is best. Feedback would be welcome, once everyone can see what we’ll have to work with. What you think personally is important, but try and put yourself in another user’s shoes too. - Changes to some (but not many) of the english forum names. Partly to illuminate the forum’s purpose, and in a couple cases to change that forum’s direction/focus.
- Forum descriptions are back, but only helpful ones (otherwise that particular forum doesn’t get one).
- More visual separation of sticky posts.
- New “Languages Known” profile field. Both languages known and the real name profile fields now appear in post user info, on the left-hand side.
- Dropdown menus. Now at the top of all pages, at the bottom of all forums/threads (as before) and at the bottom of the index page.
- On the index page there are a couple anchor links near the top and bottom of the page, so you can quickly jump to the forum category you’re interested in. Categories can also be expanded and collapsed, with a cookie set to remember your choice. At the moment, I’ve got the cookie date set to expire in 30 days.
- Link to TXP Mag along with the other Txp resource links.
- The resource links have been separated from the other forum header links. They were constantly overlooked and misunderstood. They have been converted to forum redirect links, which means that each link will appear in both dropdowns available throughout the entire forum, and also have prominence on the front page, including a description. Again, where they’ll sit on the page is debatable, since I’m not quite sure the best order for forum categories to be listed in. For those among us familiar with the resource links, they will still appear at the top of all forum pages for additional easy access.
- Textile for posts as always, and newly for signatures (BBCode for signatures is gone now, so update yours if you need to).
- Quick Textile help (post/reply, quick reply, signature). This is not very good at the moment, but it works. If someone can design/outline something better, please share. The idea here is for quick Textile help, not unlike (though not identical to) what can be found in the Txp admin write tab.
- Preview for quick reply.
- Textile post quoting. It’s not really “smart” at the moment, but it gives you something to start from.
- The announcements forum has become read-only. Again, as before, the reason for this is to keep the announcments forum easy to manage and moderate. All too often people would post bug reports and problems within an announcement thread. This doesn’t mean to completely stifle discussion. As the description for this forum states, if you’d like to make a comment or start a discussion on any Textpattern-related news, there is a forum just for that purpose.
I hope I’ve covered the essentials. Next up is bringing in some other old-but-new faces as moderators, to help keep the forums helpful, friendly, and efficient. As stated here, if you’re interested in being involved, please let me know.
Last edited by Mary (2006-03-06 21:27:01)
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