Tropical Fish Forum

Think Fish Website => What's going on at Thinkfish => Topic started by: Extreme_One on January 30, 2016, 10:08:04 AM

Title: Is it just me?
Post by: Extreme_One on January 30, 2016, 10:08:04 AM
I can no longer see the panel, at the bottom of the forum, showing the last few posts.

I know there's a pane on the right of the homepage, but it's not as convenient as the one directly on the forum.

There also a link, which opens a new page showing a list of posts and content, but again I miss the at-a-glance nature of the old panel.


It might be something that other users found annoying, or didn't even notice it, perhaps it's only me that misses it....?
Title: Re: Is it just me?
Post by: fcmf on January 30, 2016, 10:23:42 AM
You're right in that it's no longer there. However, I find the panel on the RHS of the homepage *much* better than it was previously but also much better than the panel at the bottom of the forum with the last few posts, because it keeps the most recent topics visible whereas the 'old' way could have lost recent/current topics if there were a lot of postings on the one topic. Now, you just need to skim down the topics on the RHS and it's easy to spot if the thread has been updated on a particular topic since you last looked, rather than wondering if anything has been missed altogether due to a lot of contributions on one particular topic.

If this is at all possible, maybe it would be a good solution to have both the RHS panel the way it now is plus the listings at the bottom in the old way, which might appeal to everyone?
Title: Re: Is it just me?
Post by: Robert on January 30, 2016, 10:49:16 AM
Hey all.

No, it isn't just you Simon - I wanted to encourage a little more exploration of the topics  as a lot of the time, the latest posts feature wasn't as useful as I'd like it to be in that it often showed a flood of posts from the same board rather than individual topics from each different board. You can see the most recent posts here (http://www.thinkfish.co.uk/forums/recent/) and it's in the info block at the bottom

Quote
20683 Posts in 2033 Topics by 674 Members. Latest Member: hoopie
Latest Post: "Re: Is it just me?" ( Today at 10:23:42 AM )
View the most recent posts on the forum.

The SMF software isn't as flexible as it could be in some regards; take the aspects that FCMF refers to on the right hand side of the main site. I had to mess about with an SSI and output the last post from the various topics to surface posts from other parts of the site.

Whilst site traffic is generally up, the forums have been quiet of late (possibly because many of the answers people need already exist in a forum or an article).  A consequence of this is that 'latest posts' tend to be pretty much centered around one topic  one or two people jumping on a thread. When the forums were busier, the latest posts were a whole lot more diverse as more people posted from different topics.

I've allocated some budget to Google PPC and Facebook to try and raise forum awareness. I've also made a few changes to how content is indexed by way of 'prettier URls' note the structure of this url  http://www.thinkfish.co.uk/forums/general-non-fishkeeping-chat/  more keyword rich than the old versions.

So in short, I'm working hard to improve things but accept that some changes may not be to everyones liking. I have taken what you said into consideration and will try and add a better output of those soon.

Meantime, if you go to the home page or any other internal page outside of the forum then you'll see the latest posts from all boards.

http://www.thinkfish.co.uk/

Hope that helps.

Rob
Title: Re: Is it just me?
Post by: Robert on January 30, 2016, 01:15:24 PM
Ok - recent topics as per the RHS on main domain now in play (see bottom below info center on the home page of the main forums)

Can't put them to the RHS as the template is too far different and would mean a major refit, but a better happy medium I hope. :)