Forums harder to browse
One thing about the new forums is that it's harder to do what I used to do with the old ones - pop by daily, see what's under discussion and click through to topics I find interesting or might want to contribute to.
In the new forums you only get a word or two of the title of the most recent discussion from each forum, and the pages open rather slowly when clicking through to investigate each forum. All in all it takes a lot longer and feels a lot less fun.
Not sure of the best resolution - perhaps at the bottom of the page we could have a full list of the topics most recently posted to on any forum, like in the old forums? Don't know about the speed issue - maybe just a feature of this setup?
Good points well made, and one of the eternal design questions - how to structure and present forums when at the micro level, people want to see just their topics, while at the macro level, they need to see a bird's eye view.
These new forums have improvements on the old ones which require a bit of behaviour change (cognitive dissonance, anyone?) as we can now follow topics, threads, forums and people with email alerts, meaning that you no longer have to come to the site every day, it'll come to you. Woohoo. But it means subscribing to threads (you'll see the subscriptions option just above the 'save' button on all threads). Give it a whirl - it's fun :)
Your points on making the latest topics visible are spot on too.
I've added a block to the right hand side of the forums page showing the latest threads by activity. I've only included the latest 5 as it's a trial. How's that?
Speed - yup - we're aware of it and our webhost are kindly upgrading us to some faster hardware (not newer, I hasten to add). We are waiting for this, but they have been under a lot of pressure as they also host The Oil Drum which has kicked off big time since the oil leak in The US, so we're being as patient as we can :)
That's excellent, Ed, thanks, and yeah, have been using the subscribe function, which is great :)
The new "Active forum topics" box is brilliant - just what was needed - and five feels about right to me too, with current levels of traffic. But I wonder whether it's possible for the "more" link at the bottom of the box to go to a page on which a lot more than just the most recent five are displayed? That way those of us who want to pop in and contribute to the most recent topics could find them all in one place
looking into it...
Well, after a day with Jim the developer, we are proud to reveal the latest forum activity page.
This is also linked off the 'more' link at the bottom of the forum activity block...
you likeee?
woop woop! Thank you kindly my good man - absolutely ideal :D
good good. please keep the comments coming - i'm learning drupal, there's loads we can do, but there's no point doing things if they are not in the direction of *the users* :)
Ah, just realised it would be useful if our new page also displayed info like the number of posts in a topic and the last poster, so that you can tell whether the conversation has moved on at all since your last visit without clicking through. Unless you have a really good memory, the time of last update is handy but not sufficient.
Thanks
Hi Ed,
I've been thinking about why the new forums still feel a bit 'clunky' and hard work to use. I think one big thing is the login process. When you weren't logged in on the old forums there was always a box at the top of the screen, and if you logged in there, it automatically reloaded the page you were looking at so that you were logged in and ready to go. Also, with Firefox (or numerous other browsers/addons) my details were remembered, so logging in was just a matter of hitting one button, then straight on to typing my message and hitting "send".
On the new forums I have to go to a separate page to login, which then takes me to another page upon login, then I have to find my way back to wherever I was and remember to reload the page before posting (otherwise it gets confused and refuses to post), before waiting for an obligatory "preview" to load and then finally hitting "Save" to post it. It's not surprising that many people are not logging in and posting as "anonymous", and in fact I've done that accidentally a few times myself.
I imagine you're usually logged in anyway, so maybe haven't come across all this too much. So ideally I think we would have a login/password box there all the time as on the old forums, and/or maybe one that appears in the form for posting a comment if we are not logged in, to remind us of the option of logging in?
Cheers,
Shaun
fair comment mate. Yup; I'm logged in almost always (too much probably!), so can miss things like this - and appreciate the input as ever. It is possible to get your browser to store your login to sites (which I do for the myriad of sites out there) for easy login. And the system should take you back to the original page from which you logged in... I'll look into it.
We have also added a function over the summer to enable people to leave their email and name instead of a full login - I haven't checked it yet, but that will help make the site's boundaries more porous.
Also - have you found the 'my content' tab in your user profile yet? Log in, click on your name, find the tab with my content - and you will see a full list of your content - sortable by title, date, etc. It's HOT! :)
Hi Shaun,
try it now. See what happens. You should go to login page, then come back here after you've logged in. Woohoo!
It's really valid feedback, so we went around the houses for a bit to sort it out.
Following discussions, we found a module called 'fancy login', which makes this really nice and easy, so we installed it, but it argued with our 'login toboggan' module which handles most of the login stuff (all sorts of validation etc. etc.), which lead to quite some mayhem with logins all over the site (big oops). So we un-installed fancy login, are mopping up the resultant login mess, and have raised issues with the two modules in drupal central.
It's such a good suggestion, and useful thing to do, and could be so easy for other sites, that I've offered a bounty to make the two login modules work together for other sites with similar issues.
So the process for now works, but if/when the module work is done in the drupal community, we'll have a really sweet login process that swooshes up, takes your login, swooshes away, and hey presto job done.
Hope you like it :)
Hmm, well certainly seems to be massively faster. The one drawback is that I no longer appear to be able to log in at all!
I click login at the top of the page, which takes me to the login page. I put in my details and when I get them right(!) it smoothly returns me to the page I was on, but I'm still not logged in.
Sorry to have led to such a palaver btw! Thanks for putting in all the effort, but the verdict just now would have to be close but no cigar! :) Hopefully just a minor tweak needed though.
Shaun
ps On the old site (http://transitiontowns.org/forum/) it was even smoother than that. The login box (for inputting name/password) was on the page all the time, so there was no need to go anywhere and come back. It was just click "login" and get writing. I still find the obligatory "preview" stage on all posts frustrating too, especially as the preview appears in strange formatting (lines across the page between each para) that doesn't reflect the final post.
pps Ooh, a bounty on (an idea from) my head! Cool!!
Login bugs now sorted. Combination of the drupal update, introduction of different login modules lead to some mayhem. All related issues (including the pesky 'request new password' bug) now sorted.
1. Preview issue added to our tickets list for hopeful future developments
2. The login process we now have answers your requests in function but isn't as sexy as it will be in form eventually. It was easier on the old site as the old site wasn't handling multiple needs for multiple users with multiple rights etc.
The bounty is out for you to have a sexier login process. More will come. Patience young jedi. (unless you want trolls filling the site with nonsense?)
:-)
Great, thanks Ed. Just to confirm, login working fine for me now :)
I was also looking for recent activity - and have now realised it's in green text on the right 'Forum Activity'. I think the reason I missed this is because I find that green text very 'unnoticeable' I have no problem reading it (I don't think I'm colour blind or anthing) but the contrast is so low that I just didn't notice it. I would vote for changing all text in that colour throughout the website to a darker one, more contrast - improve accessibility, 'equality and diversity'. Sorry to make work...
Neil
Hi Neil,
no need to be sorry mate - we need and appreciate the feedback! We've tweaked the link colours in blocks (the latest forum activity... is a block) to make them more coherent and useful and generally got good response from users about them.
Hmm. The links are really clear on my computer, so it's hard to assess immediately, but I'll bring it up when talking design with the designer. We've just finished our 'phase 2' development push, so there may not be any immediate changes. But I'll keep aware of it and keep asking everyone...
I've just been in Totnes agreeing a 4 month strategic plan with Ben and a site use survey is going to happen in the next few months, in which design will feature...