New Forum structure

alexandra · 2006-03-03 09:56:20

w00t, new forum structure is sooo much better than the one before. well done, mary!
Like it a lot. Lots of great improvements. Thanks for the work :)

andreas · 2006-03-03 11:46:49

Well, done Mary, thanks.

I have one suggestion concerning the forum descriptions and another one for the resource links.

The resource links are removed from the forum header. […] 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.

That’s a good thing, I’d say. Only, IMHO the links to external resources should be more clearly marked as such, perhaps a different link colour. Am I right assuming that they have to appear as “forums” to be included in the dropdown? If that’s not the case, perhaps they could be taken out of the forum table and styled as a list? In the same position, mind you, after the announcements but just not in the form of sub-forums.

The forum descriptions are a bit too prominent to my eye and are not “separated” enough from the forum titles. Perhaps the descriptions could be in a lighter shade of dark gray? Just to make the clickable forum titles stand out more.

Apart from these minor tweaks, this update is definitely a big improvement.

Neko · 2006-03-03 12:58:58

Is it possible to add buttons to the categories in order to collapse/expand them (and remember the selection via a cookie)? So I don’t have to scroll that much and can choose what to show/hide.

I mean: for first timers all those links are very much welcome, but for me (and usually long-time TXPers) it’s like raping the mouse scroll wheel everytime. :)

Last edited by Neko (2006-03-03 13:00:42)

kemie · 2006-03-03 14:20:38

Wow! looking great :D

i’m with andreas. the look of the external links makes me expect (if i don’t read carefully) that i will be taken to a sub-forum.

Elenita · 2006-03-03 15:17:36

Thanks for all the hard work, Mary.

Can I make a quick feature request, please? A link to the forum’s RSS feeds (or putting that info in the header so that they can be autodetected) would be helpful. At least for us geeks (just me?) who use their feed readers to check on site updates.

placenamehere · 2006-03-03 15:37:02

Are you all still in the middle of making the changes, or is this what its gonna be? Will there be a way we can kill all the external link crap? or move it so its not preventing me from seeing the actual forums without scrolling?.. or change the column widths to prevent the bad wrapping in the lat post column?

Don’t want to complain too much if you’re still got you’re hands in things

alexandra · 2006-03-03 16:17:03

@placenamehere
to me it is not link crap. I am very happy links are now so present. After posting a hundred times and more those links to newbies i am just tired to do so.
Maybe font-size can be reduced and as Andreas suggests, marked as links? I am happy with the solution. Regarding scrolling: what shall i say? I love having the german forum section on the very top ;)

Last edited by alexandra (2006-03-03 16:19:42)

placenamehere · 2006-03-03 17:26:41

ok.. part of my problem seems to be with the oxygen theme for the boards which i was screwing the the tables and column sizes a bunch adding a lot of needless height to each table sell.. flipping to the txpish skin seemed to fix what looked to be buggy to me.

but beyond that I still have a problem with having to scroll a full screen past the external links to get to any active forum at all.. .every single time i visit

(and I guess our .sigs need an update too)

els · 2006-03-03 17:43:34

placenamehere wrote:

ok.. part of my problem seems to be with the oxygen theme for the boards which i was screwing the the tables and column sizes a bunch adding a lot of needless height to each table sell.. flipping to the txpish skin seemed to fix what looked to be buggy to me.

Thanks for mentioning this. Though I did have the txpish theme and switching to oxygen and then back did the trick for me ;)

but beyond that I still have a problem with having to scroll a full screen past the external links to get to any active forum at all.. .every single time i visit

You don’t have to scroll, there are links to each forum (top, right).

hcgtv · 2006-03-03 18:09:42

Looks good, light and airy, like a Spring Day ;)

What determines when a thread get’s moved to the Dead Letter Office?

colak · 2006-03-03 18:12:46

Neko wrote:

Is it possible to add buttons to the categories in order to collapse/expand them (and remember the selection via a cookie)? So I don’t have to scroll that much and can choose what to show/hide.

I second this one. Knowing of course that it is much simpler to say than to do

NyteOwl · 2006-03-04 01:24:43

I wrote my comment in <a href=“http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?pid=102308#p102308”>this thread</a> but perhaps here would be a better place.

I think the reorganization is very good with one possible exception: the large block of external links that appear at first glance as sub-fora. Just a personal opinion, but perhaps placing them in a smaller format in a block between the main header and the forums themselves (where the current Announcement is posted) in a block clearly labled as external links? This was written before I read the suggestion to be able to “collapse” a section. I realize they were moved so they would be more obvious but there is obvious and then there is OBVIOUS :)

I especially like the new preview on the quick post – wished for that for a while! :) Though I like BB code. ;p

Still having paragraph trouble using this theme (sulphur). While it starts the next paragraph on a new line it doesn’t insert any space between paragraphs. The same thing happens with every theme except TXPish, which inserts a blank line between paragraphs.

Last edited by NyteOwl (2006-03-04 01:34:52)

Mary · 2006-03-04 01:50:59

I could’ve sworn I had posted this earlier this afternoon… Oh wait, Firefox crashed, so I must’ve still been posting, and then forgot. Ah well…

Those asking about expand/collapse categories: if you had read my post (it’s been linked above, posted shortly before this thread was started) you’d have seen that (among other things) I had already considered that, but had difficulty getting it to work. At the time, I felt it more important to roll out the working changes, rather than potentially hold things up because I really didn’t know how long it would take me to resolve the problem. It’s since not an issue – I’ve got it working.

Scrolling wasn’t a real issue before, because of the category anchor links, but I think we can all agree it’s even less of an issue now with the expand/collapse working.

I noted in my post that signatures would need to be updated, if they used BBCode. BBCode has not been available on this forum for a very long time, a decision not made by me. All I’ve done is made this more obvious to the casual observer.

I agree about making the external links less like the forum links, that was the intent all along, but I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I’ve tweaked this a bit, how does that work now?

Regarding forum feed auto-detection, that’s already in place, and has been for several months, actually. They are on the index and thread list pages, but not individual topic pages; putting them there may lead people to believe it is a single topic feed, but PunBB doesn’t have that ability built-in. I would consider adding this functionality if I can see that it is wanted, would be used by more than a couple people.

With regard to having to switch forum styles: that would be because of your browser having cached certain files. A forced refresh or clearing your browser cache would have the same effect. You may want to do this again if you can’t see the changes I’ve mentioned in this post.

The Dead Letter Office forum has always been there, but there hasn’t been any real set procedure as to when threads get moved there. Last month I moved threads there which had not been replied to (that is, the date of the very latest post to the thread) in 5 months, and which did not consist (as far as I could ascertain) of info still relevant. Many of the threads I moved then were for the various release candidates for the first stable version of Textpattern, and we had available to us the stable version for a while. Moving those outdated threads did a lot to stem the tide of successive threads over confusion of how Textpattern works (section placeholders, and so on).

From time to time I’ll do this sort of thing, the idea being to keep the latest, accurate info available. Having quite old general discussions around can be neat to go back through, but it’s not exactly vital for them to appear in the very back pages of a thread list where they’ll rarely get viewed anyway. I’m aware I’m not infallible, so if a threads gets moved there which you feel shouldn’t be, feel free to discuss it with me.

At some future point, I imagine very old threads may need to be otherwise archived, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I make no secrets about what I do with regard to managing the forum, so you’d know before I did that.

Any other comments? :)

Mary · 2006-03-04 02:46:28

Edit: ah, problem fixed.

Last edited by Mary (2006-03-04 04:43:51)

NyteOwl · 2006-03-04 02:48:28

Great job Mary, well done! Collapse is great!

My only remaining “issue” is the paragraph one. Clearing the browser cache does not solve the problem.

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#1 2006-03-03 09:56:20

New Forum structure

#2 2006-03-03 11:46:49

Re: New Forum structure

#3 2006-03-03 12:58:58

Re: New Forum structure

#4 2006-03-03 14:20:38

Re: New Forum structure

#5 2006-03-03 15:17:36

Re: New Forum structure

#6 2006-03-03 15:37:02

Re: New Forum structure

#7 2006-03-03 16:17:03

Re: New Forum structure

#8 2006-03-03 17:26:41

Re: New Forum structure

#9 2006-03-03 17:43:34

Re: New Forum structure

#10 2006-03-03 18:09:42

Re: New Forum structure

#11 2006-03-03 18:12:46

Re: New Forum structure

#12 2006-03-04 01:24:43

Re: New Forum structure

#13 2006-03-04 01:50:59

Re: New Forum structure

#14 2006-03-04 02:46:28

Re: New Forum structure

#15 2006-03-04 02:48:28

Re: New Forum structure

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