Order of forums on Board Index

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JWPlatt
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Re: Order of forums on Board Index

Post by JWPlatt »

Is anybody out there?

Or... Is this thing on? <tap> <tap> <!feedback!>

I hope there are more of you out there than just a couple of people who can chime on, but let's get on with it.

Mac and I have continued this discussion a little out of band, but I'd like to bring it back here. I'd really like to do something with the forum index structure - more than just the little tricks of moderator listings, RSS and such. What it boils down to is either a very short main index page of the major categories and then flat on the subsections, or a lengthy main index, intelligently organized into those same major sections.

The current setup requires too much knowledge of the forum structure. It is uninviting. I'm leaning toward the lengthy main index as a necessary evil. Some of it should be straight-forward such as:

Code: Select all

Main Index
  OpenURU.org (section)
    News & Announcements
    Information
    Admininstration & Management
  Resources & Tools (section)
    Information
    Domain
    Groupware
    Wiki
    Bugtracking
    Blogs
    Forums

  Projects & Proposals... (sections...)
    
  Open Forums (section)
    Questions
    Suggestions
    Open Discussion
Notice I have not outlined "Projects & Proposals." Projects are what OpenURU.org is all about, but they're the hardest thing to organize well. Please offer any opinions and suggestions on any of this.

Mac offered something like this set of major project sections to start off the discussion. I'm not sure where to put some of the current forums, so I'm leaving it generic:

Code: Select all

    Client and Server Projects (section)
      Forums...
    Tools (section)
      Forums...
    Ages (section)
      Forums...
    Other Projects (section)
      Forums...
    Project Proposals (section)
      Forums...
I thought of project sections like this. Like Mac's format, these are proposed as forums contained within sections listed on the main index:

Code: Select all

    Infrastructure (section)
      System Concepts
      Building & Testing
      Hypergrid
    Open Source (section)
      Open Source
      Wireshark
    Creative (section)
      Writer's Club
      David's Journey
    Community (section)
      Discussion & Debate
    Archives (section)
      MOUL
      Eder D'Uru
    Project Proposals
      Forums...
Here's a format with the main index holding a short list of subsections. A short list of subsections should be considered if we feel a lengthy main index really is too much. You would click on these to see the subsections and the forums within them. From the example above, it would look like this:

Code: Select all

  Projects & Proposals (main index section)
    Infrastructure (subsection link)
    Open Source (subsection link)
    Creative (subsection link)
    Community (subsection link)
    Archives (subsection link)
    Project Proposals (subsection link)
I was thinking that we could organize it by pipeline (Story, Design, Modeling & Texturing, Analysis, Wiring, Testing) but then I realized that any one project, especially age projects, could span all of those. So it seems a "horizontal" point of view is better than "vertical." Or am I 90 degrees off on the terms?

Also, things can be adjusted if the reality of what comes out of this doesn't match expectations. ;)

However it ends up, I'd like to match the structure outline on this wiki page:
http://wiki.openuru.org/index.php?title ... _Resources
Perfect speed is being there.
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Nalates
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Re: Order of forums on Board Index

Post by Nalates »

I think it would be an improvement. I do find the present structure hard to work with. I remember being so lost when I first tried to use and post in the forum.

After learning where things are, it's not so bad. For new people coming in, it seems tough.
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JWPlatt
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Re: Order of forums on Board Index

Post by JWPlatt »

Do you have a preference among those presented above? Or a different outline/idea?
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Mac_Fife
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Re: Order of forums on Board Index

Post by Mac_Fife »

What is a real pity, I think, is that phpBB3 doesn't include a native Collapse/Expand feature on the category headings so you can selectively "hide" the contents of each section (someone did propose it for Olympus, but too late for incorporation into the feature list). That would allow for a more compact index page, but still allow significant growth in the number of categories employed. There was a javascript based forum modification to do this, but the authors seem to have run out of steam keeping it updated round about phpBB 3.0.6: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=1369555

As for Projects & Proposals, I felt that "Proposals" is a WiP bin until the idea becomes sufficiently developed to become a "Project" at which point it moves out into one of the other sections.
JWPlatt wrote:Is anybody out there?
You could always use you admin powers to force all user to receive email notifications on this thread :P
Last edited by Mac_Fife on Wed Jan 05, 2011 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Added some afterthoughts
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Dot
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Re: Order of forums on Board Index

Post by Dot »

That looks to be a good reorganisation to me.

For the Hypergrid project, that might be a mixture of Infrastructure and Creative, though. Does that matter? And the OSgrid bit would fall under Open Source!
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Re: Order of forums on Board Index

Post by JWPlatt »

Dot wrote:That looks to be a good reorganisation to me.
Thanks, Dot, but which of of them?

Hypergrid: Well, from my point of view, it's infrastructure because that's what I am focusing on in my (sproadic) efforts there (still working on it!). But I see your point. Content would be under Creative, but there can be any number of "age" or "world" projects within the Creative section which happen to be on Hypergrid, so I think that sorts out. Certainly "Hypergrid" can be part of the project forum title. And then OSgrid as open source would be in Open Source as a development project, certainly. I don't see any problem with that kind of categorizing into the respective sections. If that really does become too fractured (and popular), there can always be a Hypergrid section all its own when the day comes. Am I looking at that correctly?
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Re: Order of forums on Board Index

Post by JWPlatt »

Ok, I've done a little work to reorganize the forums according to some suggestions. If I missed anything or did something horribe, please let me know.

I'm aware there is not a "Project Proposal" forum anywhere. I'm still thinking about that. I want to put it in Open Discusions rather than duplicate it in each major project section.

The Resource Links will remain only as long as there is no site navigation menu. Currently, those links only appear to full members. This is so spambots don't see them.

Please note that these changes still do not address Dot's OP. Please take a look and see if you have any new suggestions about that, now that I've made some changes. But I'm pretty sure that making the main index page twice as long isn't going help her concern about seeing forums with new posts. ;)
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