Rearranging the forums?

Armadillo of Doom

Armadillo of Doom

Group Founder, Lover of Pie
aa
Oct 25, 2007
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Though it pains me to admit it, Site News just doesn't have the same necessity that it once did. Pretty much anything worthy of the front page these days goes in Featured or TF2 News. There is also the issue of having the entire Mapping section at the very bottom. So I'd like to get the opinion of the community here. Would you like to see the forums change position? And if so, what order do you want to see everything put in? Also, are there any forum boards you would like to see added, removed, or merged?

Immortal-D; working to improve the community once per year during non-school hours, just enough to keep his position as admin :p
 
The Political Gamer

The Political Gamer

aa
Apr 19, 2009
4,460
1,722
I would fuse TF2 News, Site News, and Featured into just "News". Then I think the main forums should be setup like:
  • Showcase
  • TF2 General Mapping Discussion
  • Announcements
  • General Discussion
  • Misc

Can't really think of anything else atm but if I do I will be sure to post it later.
 
Ravidge

Ravidge

Grand Vizier
aa
May 14, 2008
1,544
2,818
I don't know really.. lately (past months) I've used the view "Today's post" feature everytime I visit/refresh the forum.

Though I guess that the content section of the forum should be featured higher up. So that admins and new people who come here to browse maps find it easily. That is after all what this site/community is about.
 
grazr

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
Well, wasn't Gadget kinda working on this. I made some site change suggestions that were well recieved by the forum regulars, how ever many weeks/months ago this was, but it all kinda got brushed under the carpet because "something" was in the works.
 
Armadillo of Doom

Armadillo of Doom

Group Founder, Lover of Pie
aa
Oct 25, 2007
949
1,228
Good stuff TPG :) And grazr, I'm definitely interested in this Gadget of which you speak. Understand that the staff is comprised of all-volunteer lazy young men, lol. Odds are we talked about something and then just forgot. However, this particular issue has finally cycled to the top of my 'to-do' list. So any suggestions are much appreciated.
 
grazr

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=10713

I posted this thread a small while ago because the search feature kinda bugs me and i feel is totally under used. Especially by newer members, as at the time we had a lot of repetitive threads. Partly as a result of how it has been implemented. Then Gadget pops out of nowhere showing me a new skin that mostly resolves this and tackles a number of other points of interest for the forum too.

He showed me the skin but unfortunately he linked it over steam so it's not logged as far as i know so i don't have the url at hand :/ but i'm sure you have access to all of that sub-site/temp-site/hidden stuff anyway.
 
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lana

lana

Currently On: ?????
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Sep 28, 2009
3,075
2,778
I agree with TPG, except that announcements should be at the top of the forums and Front Desk should be moved to General Discussion.
 
Gadget

Gadget

aa
Mar 10, 2008
531
527
The forums sure need a rearrangement. Here's what I've been working out:

Announcements & News

- Featured News
- Team Fortress 2 News
- Site Announcements
- Front Desk
- Events

Discussion

- Mapping
- Tutorials
- Contests
- Team Fortress 2 Talk
- Off Topic
- Servers & Hosting
- Introduce Yourself
- VIP Lounge

Work In Progress // or "Showcase"

- Maps
- Models
- Textures
- Request Area

Miscellanous

- Archives
Click to expand...

I'd change the main navigation as well:

News | Forums | Events | Maps & Downloads | Blogs | Gameservers | Tutorials
Click to expand...

The remaining links from the main navigation (as it is right now) will be included in the header and a sidebar panel on the page.


Also those three of the news sections could be combined into one:

- Featured News
- Team Fortress 2 News
- Site Announcements

...this would require some changes to the forums' modules and the database. I'm thinking of giving each post a flag called "news_category" that's either "NULL", "featured", "tf2news" or "sitenews".


Another change that's definately needed: Posts in the showcase forums should have a thumbnail image in the threadlist. This would either be a default image (or none) or the first screenshot a user has uploaded. For example, look at the downloads section, it's much better browsable than the maps forum only because of the use of thumbnails.

That's not all of the changes that I'm planning to do but sure some of the most important ones. What are your thoughts on this?

Edit: Separated Mapping & Tutorials and changed the order of the discussion forums a little bit.
 
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