Forum Streamline - YOUR input required

[leehack]

New posts for me, always shows me all the posts i have not read since my last visit. When i select that after a weeks holiday, i get to see a week of new posts, it's not date specific for me. The only one that is date specific for me is the todays posts. If you couple 'new posts' with reading the forum reversed (new posts at the top), you are always taken to threads you have not read with the latest posts shown on top - this is particularly good for a long thread as you don't need to navigate to the last page to see the last posts, a 5 page thread for me opens up on page 1, but has the latest posts on it, page 5 is the first page.

[Paul Bulpit]

Ah, think I see now - I don't 'log in' unless I want to say something, and then the 'login' window comes up when you click 'Reply'.

Normally I just browse and 'New Posts' is not an option.

[leehack]

You can hide your status so people cannot see you are online if you want to, i always auto login as i visit the site, in fact i have the 'new posts' url as my home page url, so if i click on 'home', i get auto logged in and see all new posts just from one click.

[Chunkford]

it's down to Actinic whether they want to take the forum down the more 'commercial' route though

You only have to look at other places and see how successfully developers can make a product.

Personally I'm not sure about the Actinic Market Place as such. I think it can encourage spam posting and I think it may open the forums up to commercial postings which could be difficult to manage. I do however like the idea of being able to see a list of what addons are available and brief details with a link but not sure if it warrants a special group of forums.

I understand the uncertainty that this may cause, but I really don't think it will be that much of a problem.
E.g. (and I'm thinking off the top of my head) Service posts that are started can be moderated before being realised, addon posts can only be started by developers and requests can be left as normal.

[leehack]

You only have to look at other places and see how successfully developers can make a product.

I agree and think it's a really good idea, I'd not have one area of concern about it personally, its the modern way. Even if you had to resort to authorising each thread, we have to do this with new posters anyway. Setup rules and delete anything not following said rules. If the worst happens, remove the forums, nothing is so permanent to cause panic. Change has never worried me though tbh, I know it does some people (and rightly so in many cases), I find it more exciting than worrying if I'm honest.

I think the one grey area might be with the designers who pay subscriptions and get added to the actinic site as part of that, they might be unhappy with people not paying but benefitting from requests for work or advertising their addons etc. All depends how much work that brings in for them I guess. Addon exposure on the forums, has to be good imo, I really hope its at least strongly considered.

[leehack]

Thinking about it, if the grey area did materialise, perhaps listing addons could be limited to developers with subscriptions only or people particularly authorised to post in there, just a thought. There isn't many of them anyway, I've only used plugins from 2 people in 6 years. Mole End, Drillpine, Codepath, Teclan seem the main companies, there are then companies like myself, Jonty, Duncan, Malcolm etc who have a few offerings of our own.

I'd then class Duncan as the don on hierarchicals and all types of import and linking, Norman and Mike seem the pearly kings, Norman and Sharkey on Javascript, Norman on php, Sharkey on AJAX etc. It's taken me years to learn all that's on offer, I'd see this forum as a reference for all newcomers so they didn't need the experience I have had to get in order to know how to get something done out of their comfort zones.

Worth pointing out that people already place requests for work and contact is made offline, so managing that in a set place in a set format should be very simple, in fact that could be the only postable forum, the rest being locked, can't see how that would appeal to a spammer any more than any other forum.

[leehack]

I'd particularly like to hear Norman's views if he was willing to share, many of us class him as the backbone to the community and he always seems to talk sense.

[cbarling]

I don't have a problem with the concept of a market place.

I would suggest that if we add a forum we try to think about eliminating one too. It's very easy to add new areas and then find that they don't get any posts. Then it's even harder for people to find the correct place to post which makes it worse.

Chris

[Steve G Griggs]

I agree with Chris's last post, also I like the developers section, how about restricting posts on it to developers who are approved by a moderator, and any contact is made direct to the developer by email? Just have it as a place for approved developers to promote their products and get feedback on ideas? Maybe to evaluate ideas you could just allow a "thanks" to be posted as a vote for a good idea?

[leehack]

A fair point Chris, i feel separating forums out is important to a certain degree, but do it too far and like you say you have empty ones doing very little and it's just overall more confusing to find what you want. So if we work on the idea that the market place will go ahead (realise this is not set in stone at this stage), perhaps a slim down to something like so would work. We currently have 20 forums, the below setup is 19 forums:

What's everyone think of that as a way forward?

Actinic Ecommerce Software
-- Actinic V10
-- Actinic V9/V8
-- Actinic V7 & Earlier

Setting Up Actinic
-- Layout Adjustments & Changes
-- Shipping, Postage, Delivery, Tax & Handling Fees
-- Payment Services, PSP Setup (Actinic Payments, HSBC, Paypal etc.)
-- Upload, Server, Email, Network Settings & Connection Problems
-- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) & Site Reviews

Discussion Areas
-- Actinic News
-- Any Other Business
-- Wish List
-- Bug Reports

Other Actinic Products
-- Actinic EPOS
-- Actinic Express
-- Multi-User & Synchronisation Server

Actinic Market Place
-- Services
-- Addons
-- Requests

Knowledge Base

[Steve G Griggs]

That looks good Lee I assume that the V10, V9 etc would cover all the aspects such as general function and layout problems/advice?
Or would the layout be under the general setup?
I'm all for keeping things simple.

[leehack]

It's the first one i've looked at and thought, you know what i think that would work, be good to hear what others think though, both myself and more importantly Actinic are really interested to hear from the every day users on this.

I think what will happen in reality Steve is that the version specific forums will get all sorts of posts in them, moderators can then move them into a more appropriate forum if they feel it is more appropriate. A query on shipping or payment services for example would be an instant move, a fair amount of this occurs anyway without you knowing tbh, just happens silently in the background, much like spam removal.

Moderators stepping in is something obviously wanted to keep to a minimum, but we have to be realistic too, there's a lot of people and a lot of information, just like a library, a librarian will need to keep the shelves tidy on a regular basis.

[Steve G Griggs]

I agree with your comments Lee.
It's a shame more of the regular users arent giving more input/feedback.Regarding:

moderators can then move them into a more appropriate forum if they feel it is more appropriate. A query on shipping or payment services for example would be an instant move, a fair amount of this occurs anyway without you knowing tbh, just happens silently in the background, much like spam removal.

I see some of this happening, and yes thats what I feel moderators are for, keeping things under control, and organized.
I feel that if the moderators are doing their jobs (and I think you all do a good job) then it should be hard to tell that anythings been changed without looking for changes.
I really like the marketplace idea, but yes it needs to be controlled to prevent "death by spam" (Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, spam egg and chips, spam, spam...bloody Vikings ) and that was the only obvious & easy way I could see forward.

[leehack]

I agree with that Lee. It's a shame more of the regular users arent giving any input/feedback

Agreed, but nothing we can do about that i'm afraid, all we can do is provide the opportunity for people to have a real say in things that will make a difference and hope they take the chance. As long as noone can complain that sweeping changes were made and they were not considered, I guess we've achieved what we wanted. People generally prefer moaning about things instead of helping to change them, that's my experience in general anyway.

Feedback we have had has been invaluable though, so big thanks to all who have contributed so far, already we can see a considerable change in direction.

[Steve G Griggs]

As long as they remember when the changes arrive "If you haven't voted your'e not entitle to moan about the changes" (some chance).