My Forum Suggestions

Hi,

I have always notice, since the beginning of time and on the multiple forums I participated in that some people are not always familiar with how forums work since they never used one.

I would like to see some progress on helping new and clueless members learn the forums or make the forums easier to navigate.

For one. Remove the "New Profile Posts" feature at the bottom of the forums home page. Reasons? It is not really needed and alot if unfamiliar forum users often confuse that little area with a chat box. I often see people posting a new profile post thinking it is a Facebook like feature or chat box and then they never get the answers they needed in the first place.

Another suggestion? Maybe have a very detailed welcome PM to newly registered users from the "Gamez Network Staff" that provides links to rules to forums and how the forums work and (not to advertise my guide) link my Forum FAQ guide to teach new forum users how to use a forum. The PM should not be too long to the point where the user will not want to read it and it should not be short to show laziness. Maybe have it as a required 30 second page that the user must read before moving on to complete registration. Hopefully this suggestion can help eliminate confusion of many different things such as section knowledge.

I gave Lautaro and Illusions an Excel sheet of how the forums could be amended to make the forums easier to navigate. Wondering what is the progress on that since I was told that it was going to be implemented after the last forum update. My Forum adjustments were meant to help reduce members from constantly posting in the wrong sections and always asking where a thread is even though it is right under the thread they posted by giving section more specific and detailed names or descriptions and to reorganize the subsections to make them easier to find.

Kyle

 

Thanks for the feedback, although I feel like we had this chat already over on Skype.

I do not think there are too many people posting a problem on their profile page, and not getting an answer since most staff check for profile posts daily. I personally think this feature should stay since I do see some advantages for security purposes with it.

Notices already get ignored a lot, we have users that haven't even read the rules and the chances are the 30 seconds of "must have" spent time would get ignored anyway. I am thinking of ways we can implement to do this with the facilities available to us however at the moment, we are focusing on more important things.

I have looked at the spreadsheet as I've told you and I'm sure we can work something out once we can get together with Lautaro and decide what happens with the sections. Changing the design in my opinion is best however we have to find an ideal and reasonable layout for everyone to use.

I hope you have a very nice day

 

I'd roll back to the vBulletin forum we had.

 

Only if it's the same width or better yet - fullscreen.

 

VBULLETIN was outdated and was extremely limited to customizing and was a big pain when it came to administration features and was extremely unstable and had big security problems.

You notice that once in a while, the old forums had database errors and was hacked multiple times?

Pretty much. Switching to xenforo was like buying a new car. Your old car was great to the user and the user loved it but the mechanic was always having problems with it because it was old and always breaking and it was costing you money. So you get a new car that looks more modern and has more features and better 5 star crash rating.

Grant it, sometimes old cars are great like the 1969 Mustang or a 2001 RX7 but others like new and luxurious like a 2015 Cadillac XTS.

VBULLETIN = Mazda
Xenforo = Cadillac

Btw. Full screen? F11

Also. One of my forums. I have a feature where when a user is about to create a new thread, a reminder above of the thread creator gives a notification telling them to make sure they are posting in the correct section and to use the search feature and they click a button saying they acknowledge and read that notice and after clicking the button, the "Submit Thread" button unlocks for 20 seconds before they have to push that acknowledge button again.



Just another suggestion as it does work.

 

Talking about the area marked with red. Old skin was 1/3 the width of my screen

 

I don't think this is the first thing which should been taken care of. As I have suggested you several times and responsible CEOs, you have to start updating the important threads like Server/Forum rules. It's useless if you send a "welcome" PM with the FAQ to a new user which contains outdated links with outdated information. This will confuse the new users even more. Before starting to think about new things which might improve the comfort of a user, you have to fix the things which got left out the last months or even years. You know that you can't start running if you haven't learned yet how to walk proper. So started to update the "important" threads if you want to continue planning how to make the forum a better place for new users. Then the responsible person can take care of the organization of the sections and similar suggestions.

 

Ahh Yea I see. I think Lautaro told me about how he setup the forums that the border will be different depending on the size of your computer. I'm not sure.

I have that border as well. My screen is about 1900x1380? I don't remember, I have to check when I get back home Saturday. But ultimately, the smaller your screen resolution, the closer you will get to a full screen site.

My idea was more towards the line of making the forums easier to read and easier to get used to not the individual posts. This thread is more towards the forum administration, not the game administration. So it is for Lautaro and Illusions.

For your suggestion, I don't disagree but that is for Carl, Alente and Puddles but it will be in more on the lines of GamezAion suggestions in helping players only know and find the game content on the forums. Mine is for Gamez Network forums which is all sections on the forums.

 

Should just have it dynamically scale up to the monitor size so that it's fullscreen on any type of resolution

 

It's a good suggestion. Not hard to change that.