Loving the new forums!

[Peelyon 416]

Cheers Icy Veins!

Really like these new forums, looking forward to using them a lot. Myself and my guild have been using your website for a while now, and I always direct people here if they need some decent information.

Lets hope the forums can add some decent player knowledge and opinions.

Keep up the good work!

[Damien 1,514]

Thank you, it means a lot to us!

We are going to start a few threads today and maybe organize some sort of context to get everything started :)

In any case, it is probably going to take a few weeks before we get a decent amount of posting.

[HardBeatZ 39]

Would love to see a "what's new" or "new threads" button. Have a few other suggestions when I have time to correlate concise thoughts.

[Damien 1,514]

Would love to see a "what's new" or "new threads" button. Have a few other suggestions when I have time to correlate concise thoughts.

For a "what's new" feature, we are going to replace the "Patch 4.3 Coverage" box on the index page with a "What's New on the Forums" box. Did you have something like this in mind? We just wanted to wait a few days so that the stickies we created would not appear there.

I will work on adding the New Thread or New Topic button tomorrow. This is a good idea, thank you for suggesting it

Do not hesitate to make other suggestions, we always listen very carefully to what is being said to us.

[HardBeatZ 39]

My work revolves around social media its impact on society and how people use it. So I spend a good portion of my day in various forums.

As for the what's new on the home index is great, I also think its important to have a what's new button directly on this sub page. For myself personally I spend little time on your home page instead I have bookmarks to your site sub sections I find useful (e.g your forums).

Additional thoughts.

1. The "mark community read" button is to prominent when compared to the bread crumbs. The bread crumbs will be used far more often than that button. Secondly I work on a tablet most of the time and find it too easy to hit in comparison to going back to the forum main page.

2. "Help" naturally feels like it should be on the right hand side, maybe under sign out. In fact you can move sign out under the user drop down if it feels cluttered over there.

3. Google search is nice to start with, but if the site grows like we all hope it will having a true forum search built in with indexing and advance search tools is nice.

4. People love "pat on the backs" implementing a kudos system drives that reward for making valuable posts.

5. A tag cloud can be beneficial. Properly implemented tagging could lead to pulling relevant information together. Seeing a most used or commonly used tags could help support that.

[HardBeatZ 39]

Oh one other thing that is a slight nuisance. When using the quick reply at the bottom of a forum thread it will still mark the thread as unread.

[HardBeatZ 39]

It seems unnatural that the member list is on the "mark community read" button. Doesn't seem like a fitting location.

[Damien 1,514]

It is always very beneficial to us when we can get some insight from a professional. We are very confident in our abilities to write guides, but not so much in our web design/layout abilities.

Where would you see the "What's new" box on this page? before the thread's content?

1. and 2. can be easily done and I will work on them tomorrow.

You are right about 3., the idea was to start with Google Search so that we could disable the built-in search feature for the forums. We do not know what the load will be like for the server that is hosting the forums, so we disabled a few features for now to see how the server load scales with the increasing number of visits on the forums. Once we have a better idea of what to expect, we will enable the search feature.

4. That is probably going to make you smile, but we just assumed that no one would care about this I will re-enable it tomorrow.

5. IPB comes with a tagging feature that we intend to use extensively to mark threads. I need to check if there's anything close to a cloud tag. I guess it could go well next to a "What's new" box.

For the last two items that you mentioned, I will look up the "quick reply" problem tomorrow. Regarding the member list issue, I'm afraid I did not quite understand it. On my screen, the only two items that show up in the top left corner are "Mark Community Read" and "Help". Is there anything else displaying for you?

Thank you very much for this detailed list. If there is anything else that you would like to share, it won't fall on deaf ears

[MadMonk 154]

When you click on the "mark community read" button, you get 4 options and members is one of them, that's the odd thing here.

[HardBeatZ 39]

For the last two items that you mentioned, I will look up the "quick reply" problem tomorrow. Regarding the member list issue, I'm afraid I did not quite understand it. On my screen, the only two items that show up in the top left corner are "Mark Community Read" and "Help". Is there anything else displaying for you?

Thank you very much for this detailed list. If there is anything else that you would like to share, it won't fall on deaf ears

I haven't been able to effectively reproduce the quick reply issue, I'm going to write that up as an anomaly until I can dig into it further and get a clear path of reproducing it.

MadMonk was able to better explain what I was talking about for the second issue and you can see how it doesn't belong. Instead of placing it there have the bottom where the total users are already mentioned hyper linked to the the all members section.

Another thing ( I hope I'm not starting to sound to picky and like a complainer). I feel like the top section should be rewritten slightly, you should never promote negativity by using words such as "unfortunately" instead focus on the positive aspect of it.

For instance

Before:

"..... Unfortunately, we can only do so much and in the end, user contributions will constitute the core content of this place. Therefore, we greatly encourage you to register, post, start threads, ask questions, share your ideas, reply to other members' questions, etc."

After:

".... Fortunately for us this allows the sites members to communicate with each other and it's staff and help contribute the content that going to used throughout the website...."

That was really quick rough and really dirty, but I think you can at least get the idea.

Also, the toggle in that same section has the popup text not looking correctly, looks like the code wasn't completely finished.

[HardBeatZ 39]

Its probably a Google API restriction/limitation, but it always frustrates me that gtalk is not a contact method option since its my primary means of communication.

[Damien 1,514]

Not only that but IPB, the forum software we are using only provides us with logins through Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live. We chose to enable only Facebook, as it has always been our primary means of communicating with our reader base.

I started implementing your suggestions. I changed the board index message, fixed the popup text, and re-added the reputation system. It will work like in WoW: neutral until 20 likes, friendly until 60 likes, honored until 140 likes, revered until 280 likes. The values are different, but the scale is the same as in WoW.

While doing this, I also fixed a few templates that were not displaying properly. Now I am going to fix the top links and do something about the Mark Community Read link.

[HardBeatZ 39]

I'm not sure what IPB forums allow and don't allow, admittedly I have very little exposure to their software, the company I currently work for uses Lithium software so I'm more familiar with them however, the thought is still the same. Does IPB allow quick nav side bars? Side nav bars resolve two issues

1. Wasted screen real estate.

a. While you don't want a lot of blank space on a page, a cluttered page will cause an end user to get lost. This can be a fine line to walk.

2. The "where do I put this" question

things I would see effectively falling under the quick nav bar

a. User profile

b. Help

c. What's new

d. Friends list (make the quick nav feel personal)

e. Top liked posts

f. Top liked authors

Edited May 23, 2012 by HardBeatZ

[Damien 1,514]

Do you have an example of such a side bar? Just so I see how it is usually laid out. Truth to be told, I am good at hacking stuff and make a software like IPB do exactly what I want. But I don't have much vision when it comes to deciding where things should be put and how they should look like.

Therefore, I sticked with IPB's default way of doing things for a lot of templates :P Now, it is time to get started with customising.

Also, regarding the "Mark Community Read" links. I read on their official forums that they consider that the Member List can be marked as "read". I'm not sure how much practical use this has.

[Peelyon 416]

Just my 2 pennies worth :

I think it will be great if the forums evolve over time, all that I know is that the forums I use the most are those that look clean and simple. Too much clutter and it just detracts from the posts themselves.

I must admit, I really liked the ability to just use my Facebook to sign up, in the process of getting my guildies to do the same (as most are following you as Facebook as you mentioned above anyway). The ability to do such a quick sign-up is a definite plus for alot of people I reckon.

[HardBeatZ 39]

Do you have an example of such a side bar? Just so I see how it is usually laid out. Truth to be told, I am good at hacking stuff and make a software like IPB do exactly what I want. But I don't have much vision when it comes to deciding where things should be put and how they should look like.

Therefore, I sticked with IPB's default way of doing things for a lot of templates Now, it is time to get started with customising.

Also, regarding the "Mark Community Read" links. I read on their official forums that they consider that the Member List can be marked as "read". I'm not sure how much practical use this has.

I can provide you some sites that utilize the dual pane approach, however I'm not a fan of any of their complete layouts, but fully understand personal preference.

http://en.community.dell.com

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg

https://discussions.....com/index.jspa

http://forums.hpwebos.com

Edited May 23, 2012 by HardBeatZ

[Damien 1,514]

@Peelyon, we hope that the forums will grow over time. This probably means that some sections will be expanded, especially those related to class guides.

@HardBeatZ, I am still debating with Vlad to see how we are going to do this side bar. Thank you for the links :)

[Peelyon 416]

Just read your news update about the forums. All sounds really good. Just hope your competitions arent based on numbers of posts or you're going to get a load of random mess!!

I think the reputation is a great idea as well. Gives a chance for non moderators to show that they contribute, and shows anyone new to the forums that a persons opinion is generally a good one!

[Damien 1,514]

The reason why we did not give more information about the contest is because we still have to decide on a proper way to do it.

As you pointed out, if the contest revolves only on the number of posts, it is going to get messy :P

[MadMonk 154]

As you pointed out, if the contest revolves only on the number of posts, it is going to get messy

Not at all, I'd delete everyone who has more posts than me, so i'd win

[Damien 1,514]

Did I really grant you that much power?! :P

[MadMonk 154]

maybe

[Peelyon 416]

Haha - dont contests like these always have small print suggesting that employees and associated parties are ineligible???

[MadMonk 154]

Haha - dont contests like these always have small print suggesting that employees and associated parties are ineligible???

Normally they do, I hope that here on Icy-Veins they won't, I would love to participate.

[Damien 1,514]

Only Vlad and I will be excluded from it :P