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Hello everyone! I wanted to give everyone a place to ask some questions regarding the site and forum, so I can try to address and improve it as we go.
- So far, we had that issue with Cross-Posting supposedly resolved, so please let me know if you continue to have problems. Pictures of the issue would help me report it!
- Tau and Mongo have pointed out that they aren't as big of fans of the "nesting" feature in the Chargers Chat forum. I toggled this chat to be the other option we have, which doesn't allow replies to "nest" under one another. Hearing feedback on how you feel about nesting vs not would be great. I have inquired for a quote from the dev team on what it would take to install a "new post scroller" like the old "z" button we have
- On that subject, the articles have a different comment system that syncs with the forum, but has some different utility. I would recommend giving that a peak as well, you might find those could work great for our "Open Threads" and what not... but it would involved manually refreshing the page and scrolling down, until I can figure out how to sort them by most recent comments first.
- Site was updated this morning with a cleaner look, and should look excellent on phones/tablets. If you have any issues, please let me know
- Ryan and I will be back to podcasting soon
Any other questions, concerns, or observations, fire away!
The new site layout is slick, Kyle. Well done.
I don't really understand what the 'nesting' feature you've referred to above means. But ignoring that, I think the Bolts From The Blue functionality in the comments section has some advantages > Stormcloud for now, including:
- Being able to see every posted comment on one page by scrolling down further instead of toggling across multiple pages
- The comments being organised from newest to oldest
- Clear identification of 'new comments' through different colour-coding
Not sure how difficult it is to incorporate some (or all) of those, but it might improve the Stormcloud user experience.
For a new site though it's pretty darn' impressive, man
Thanks Al!
"Nesting" is when you reply directly to a comment, and it subsets under that comment with an indentation, creating a flow of conversation where you can link who is replying to who as it flows. The benefit is comment organization, the downside is a new comment may nest within that comment and won't populate within the traditional organization of newest->oldest comments, so it's easy to miss them if you aren't already part of the conversation.
Regarding the other features you mention... it's kind of funny, but the forum and article commenting systems, though designed by the same company, have different and unique features.
I've already changed the article commenting to reflect something closer to what he previously had. If you visit the Leatherwood signing article, you'll see that comments are organized top-bottom, newest->oldest. They should highlight new, unread comments as "sunshine yellow." There is also a little chat bubble that should pop up with the "comment count," and provide live updates when new comments are added.
So, much of the functionality in comments we had at our previous site appears to be available when viewing the actual articles. I believe the live updating (comment page refreshes every 30 seconds), will make for excellent open-thread articles... the trick is, if you're looking for these features, you'll need to make sure you're viewing from the article's landing page at not the forum. That means for the time being, I'm not able to provide these features to the forum component, but I've already put an email into the dev team asking for a bid to mock up similar commenting structure and flow here... or at the very least, to be able to reverse the order of comments being displayed from newest to oldest, to have new comments highlighted, and to create a different highlight color for comments that reach a certain "upvote" status.
So far, Jack's post on Herbie in playaction has gathered the most commenting activity for an article, and it hasn't had to move some to a second page. I think the articles will go long-form as you were hoping, though there may be a cut-off where a "load more" button comes into play.
I just gave this a go with my testing burner account, and am really impressed with how it went.
As you can see, new comment is highlighted yellow, and loaded without me having to "refresh."
The little bubble icon also pops up with a preview of how many unread comments you have, and I believe seems to scroll you through to them.
Now, unlike what we're previously used to, the "highlight" disappears your cursor hovers over it... NOT when you "click" it.
I actually think this system might be a huge upgrade for open threads over what we've traditionally had. I understand there may be some frustration over not having this feature on our member-created forum posts, but I'll do my best to provide open threads as much as everyone wants!
I have also requested a bid for backwards compatibility for the cross-posting, so hopefully I'll be able to authorize some posts to transfer over to the websites homepage... but we'll see! I'm also going to ask if there is a way to just make the article commenting system the default for the forum, because it seems like that would be preferrable.
I created a sidebar that might also help address some of these issues moving forward.
If on PC, you'll see this sidebar that gives you account information, a list of who is online, and two different lists of posts, "unread" posts and "recent" posts. Clicking on one of these will take you directly to a comment you haven't seen yet.
On mobile, these sections appear beneath the forums, or you can click "unread posts" underneath the header "StormCloud Forum"
@kylededi Sorry it's taken me a while to respond to these comments mate!
FWIW, I don't have a problem with 'nesting', I enjoy that feature.
I like the new Forum Search and Recent Posts spaces on the right of screen - that's a good addition.
I'm still getting used to the idea of toggling between the home page and forum tab and choosing one or the other to view articles, with much of the same content appearing in both spaces. The forum tab gives you some cool analytics around total comments (who posted last, etc). But when you click the article from the forum tab, the visual presentation of the article isn't nearlyas nice to view as when you click into the same article from the home page.
I think there could be a good argument for Forum to be a space that's exclusively for posts created by members, and Home being exclusively for posts created by Admin (with Home page posts not appearing in the Forum). It keeps the Forum space less congested and gives users a reason to click on the Home tab, which at the moment, is kind of redundant.
Anyway, just spitballin'. Looking forward to seeing what you do with "new comments" being highlighted and other cool features. These are still early days after all, and the site layout will continue to improve each passing day
@alisterlloyd I was definitely rolling this around Al! Some members might not want to stop reading articles from the forum, but what I could do is set them up in different forums, one labeled "community chat" and one labeled "StormCloud Articles" or something. That way, if you like getting your article reading from the HomePage, you can definitely collapse that forum and never use it, and focus your Flrum viewing on our User Posts.
It was essentially turn the forum into a FanPosts section, and a tab that still collects Website Articles on a list.
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