Waldo, the forum is really hard to navigate in the re-design
Hey Waldo,
While I love a lot of the features of the new design, I gotta say the forum is now really difficult to use. The older forum design actually is much easier to read, easier to search, easier to see threads within forums, easier to see the latest replies, etc. All of those things I just listed are very hard to see in the new format.
One thing that's really bizarre is that while posts are listed with the newest post at the top of the list, older posts at the bottom, when one is reading replies to a post, the replies appear with the oldest reply at the top of the list, and the newest reply at the bottom.
Assuming that you want to maximize interactivity by encouraging members to participate in the forum, I suggest you consider making the forum look more like the tradtional forums people are used to (i.e., the design you had).
Jane
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Well I think...
It's strange as far as the comments order go-- in a forum I guess it's more normal for new messages to appear at the bottom, but in blogs and such people seem to expect new posts to appear at the top.
That said, let me try fixing that and see if it looks any better.
As far as general navigation goes, I was previously using PhpBB and have switched to drupal, which has its own forum system. I agree that BBEdit is a bit more rich and has a nicer layout, but Drupal's forum should be much improved in the new 6.0 version, so I'm inclined to stick it out a little longer. The underlying technical improvements to Drupal over PhpNuke+PhpBB are too good to pass up.
Right now you're looking at a raw converted system. Give me a chance and I'll be updating and adding new features (take a look at www.drupal.org to see what's possible)...
In other words, please bare with the changes for the short term. I think in the long run this will be a way better system. Right now there's just some growing pains...
W
Okay Jane.. I just tried something...
I've fooled around with the comments default settings.. new comments now appear at the bottom. I've also made some other changes regarding comments including turning on the control panel for comments..
Users can change their comment settings using the comment control panel that (now) appears on every page w/comments. You can set your preferences which should be maintained across the entire site.
I also removed the requirement to preview your comment every time (since you can change it, assuming you're not anonymous)
Thanks & let me know what you think.
W
More...
As you can see, you're not alone in thinking the Drupal default forum is a bit lacking. As someone on there said-- it does pretty much everything, but doesn't look like a forum most people are used to...
There are some workaround themes, but rather than dive into those, I'm gonna wait to see how 6.0 which is finalizing now works itself out...
W
Changes are always challenging
Hey Waldo,
Sorry for my delayed response, I was out of the country. On top of that, new forum posts don't appear in my RSS reader like the featured stories on your main page do, so I never know when someone posts something new in the forum. I have to admit, I hardly ever visit actual websites anymore, I keep track of over 50 websites, forums and blogs using my RSS reader, it's so much faster and easier that way.
I understand it takes time to work out all the differences when one does a major overhaul of functionality and design like you're doing. Keep up the good work, and thanks for being so responsive to your readers.
J
Of course...
Jane--
I'll definitely be updating the look of the forum pretty soon. I can also make an RSS feed for the forum if you think it's something you'll use, so please let me know...
W
I'd definitely use it!
Feed me.
Thanks,
J
Here it is...
Give this a shot:
http://www.filmmaker.com/forums/rss
That should feed you all new forum posts. It won't feed actual comments for new forum posts because, well, I'm not sure how well RSS handles comments. If you want comments in RSS, there is a way to do it, but I've never seen comments before on a blog/forum RSS so I'm not sure how well it would work.
If this works out, I'll post something on the front page so others know about it.
W
Update: The feed is now ordered by the most recent comment, followed by the most recent post. So if a new comment is posted to the list, I *THINK* it will pop to the top of the RSS feed. Please give it a try and let me know if it works correctly.
Subcribed and testing
Trying it out....brb to see if it updates properly...
J
Hey Jane...
Take a look at the new style of the forum. A lot easier to read, I think.. you?
W
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