Alright lads and ladettes.
Hope everyone is keeping well and enjoying this quieter part of the year.
Our forums are in need of a bit of reorganisation and its not going to be a quick or easy process. But as is with everything, I would like to hear peoples opinions on how the forums should be structured.
I can't find a site map right now of the existing forums, but there are too many topics in my opinion. The forums should be a an easy place to post topics and reply to whats happening. All in all, I would like to make the forums a more inviting place to start threads and discussions on a number of topics. A lot of our members do or don't participate except through TS, but we should be interacting through our forums too IMHO.
It must be simple and it can grow from there but at the moment, there are too many dormant threads and forums I think.
Please post your thoughts and ideas on the ideal structure of the forums.
An example, and my proposal:
General Topics
-General
-Selling/Buying
-Server Queries
-Jokes
-Applications
-Media
Private [grrr] only
-General
-Serious Talks
-Applicant discussion
-Battlefield Confidential
Games General
-Battlefield
-Other FPS
-Other MMO
-Other RTS
-Other
Lets get the talk going with the goal of archiving all older stuff early 2014.
...much lovin...
Forum Re-organisation
I totally agree, Lee has put in a tremendous amount of work and I really don't want him to think that we don't appreciate it but with Forums we need a Less is more approach.
It would be better to have "cleaner" pages but with Navigation to all the other pages than to try cram it altogether. I think you proposed structure is good. I say implement it and then we go from there.
I think we also need to relook the front page, currently it is scrolling through pictures of game reviews that are very old, an article I posted about squad rush and a CNN widget.
We need some one/people to maintain it, we can't leave it all to Lee
It would be better to have "cleaner" pages but with Navigation to all the other pages than to try cram it altogether. I think you proposed structure is good. I say implement it and then we go from there.
I think we also need to relook the front page, currently it is scrolling through pictures of game reviews that are very old, an article I posted about squad rush and a CNN widget.
We need some one/people to maintain it, we can't leave it all to Lee
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Skouperd
- Senior Member
- Posts: 982
- Joined: Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:57 pm
- Location: Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
- Contact:
I see the management and the structure of a forum as no different than the management and structuring of a file server which is accessible by a lot of people. Given my nature, for some reason or another, I've been tasked to "clean out" and create policies for directory structures for the rest of the company / departments to follow in all three my previous jobs. (ranging now on close to 15 years). I adopt the same principals with my home file server (it is a 30TB server with a crap load of files on it) and I like it and it appears as if the people that uses it also appreciate the logic behind it.
My philosophy is simple, you never want to have more than 10 subdirectories in any directory, as soon as you have more than 10, group it some how. Working with forums, you never want to have more than about 5-10 subdirectories (or sub forums) in a single forum either. You can "control" what is going on to some extend, but as soon as you go down too far the line then you need people that has a vested interest in that directory / folder take charge of that directory. For instance, looking at a directory structure, at some stage your administrator needs to "walk away" and let the people dealing in that directory work their own issues out. For instance, I could say, consulting projects need to go in the following directory: s:\companies\grrrr\projects\yyyymm_project_name, but as an administrator, how the people want to structure their files or their directories below that, is totally up to them. Likewise with forums, you need to have "ownership" of certain forums by people that are passionate about that specific forum.
any event, following the above approach, this is my proposed forum structure:
then as we notice some "subforums" becomes more than say 10 or so, we group it. An example, assume the "other games" has more than 10 sub forums one can move some of the stuff from teh sub forum "other games" a level higher and make it "1.2 Racing games", "1.3 RPG games" and then just move "other games" to "1.4 Other games". Get the picture?
Any event, my 2 cents on the topic, use it don't use it.
My philosophy is simple, you never want to have more than 10 subdirectories in any directory, as soon as you have more than 10, group it some how. Working with forums, you never want to have more than about 5-10 subdirectories (or sub forums) in a single forum either. You can "control" what is going on to some extend, but as soon as you go down too far the line then you need people that has a vested interest in that directory / folder take charge of that directory. For instance, looking at a directory structure, at some stage your administrator needs to "walk away" and let the people dealing in that directory work their own issues out. For instance, I could say, consulting projects need to go in the following directory: s:\companies\grrrr\projects\yyyymm_project_name, but as an administrator, how the people want to structure their files or their directories below that, is totally up to them. Likewise with forums, you need to have "ownership" of certain forums by people that are passionate about that specific forum.
any event, following the above approach, this is my proposed forum structure:
then as we notice some "subforums" becomes more than say 10 or so, we group it. An example, assume the "other games" has more than 10 sub forums one can move some of the stuff from teh sub forum "other games" a level higher and make it "1.2 Racing games", "1.3 RPG games" and then just move "other games" to "1.4 Other games". Get the picture?
Any event, my 2 cents on the topic, use it don't use it.
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Paul wrote:I totally agree, Lee has put in a tremendous amount of work and I really don't want him to think that we don't appreciate it but with Forums we need a Less is more approach.
Damn... was going to say that we need a total site overhaul to see what response I'd get, but you shut the door on that idea.
Simple steps... keep it clean (less is more) and it must have easy navigation (bread crumbs? no weird topic names)
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SlipperyDuck
- Posts: 11493
- Joined: Sat Jun 22, 1974 12:00 am
I agree - less is more. I'd love someone to skill up to move things around and get it going, I'm all for slicker better faster and I won't always have time to do it all. So, anyone with a basic understanding apply to become a webmaster and take the bull by the horns!
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I've only been wrong once, and that's when I thought I was wrong.
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