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Hey, I'd love to have previous thread and next thread buttons in the forums. I often come to the forum and want to read all the new posts since my last visit, so those buttons would really facilitate navigation.

It wouldn't hurt to have the same thing in the articles area, but that isn't as big a deal to me.

Thanks.

The current forums are unbelievably anti-user friendly. Some features that must be added.
-Ability to go to the first unread post in a thread
-Ability to see which threads have been read and which haven't have new posts.
-A way to subscribe to threads so you can keep track of threads of interest and threads which you have posted.

I'd really like to participate more in the discussion here, but without these features its extremely time consuming to sift through each thread to find the point where the new posts start.

Hey Magical Trevor,

I agree - some of the things you suggest would also be very helpful.

However, I think you already can subscribe to threads. Click the orange box with ripples at the top right of the thread. It says it allows you to subscribe. I don't know what happens next since I haven't used it.

The problem is that technology used to build this site have no super user-friendly forums available as PHP sites do.

Maybe in "next generation" of DC site you can install phpbb or other well-know forum soft and put into its database member credentials you have in your own database. Some sites are using this way how to integrate forum with other parts.

So Rails site + PHP forum and mirrored parts of the DB ...

The problem is that technology used to build this site have no super user-friendly forums available as PHP sites do.

Maybe in "next generation" of DC site you can install phpbb or other well-know forum soft and put into its database member credentials you have in your own database. Some sites are using this way how to integrate forum with other parts.

So Rails site + PHP forum and mirrored parts of the DB ...

Yeah, as you well know forums are pretty tough to get right. I think a better approach than installing a large, often-bloated, relatively difficult to customize platform is to keep making improvements to our system, that way we build the software around the community and not the other way around, but I definitely understand frustrations with the forums we have right now. With our setup it's not just database credentials but a whole bunch of other things (the video section and the articles section are pretty good examples of customizations that aren't the easiest to do automatically in other non-custom built ways). Also, if I lost our quick-reply box I'd tilt so bad. this box so much.

Basically, I agree with you guys that we need to do some work on the forums and our development team is aware of this. You guys are on "version 1.0" of DC right now and a lot of these features will be forthcoming, but no changes will be instant -- development takes time and right now we've got our developers cranking out features on tons of other areas of the site. I'll talk with our team about this though and come up with some high-priority changes that aren't too hard to implement to make the experience a little bit easier to use over the short term, though.

Rob

-A way to subscribe to threads so you can keep track of threads of interest and threads which you have posted.

I have the whole DC forum linked right to my live bookmarks on my browser:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/joetall/RSS-FeedforDC.jpg

I just click the live-bookmark, see what titles I want to read, drag down to it, and right click it open in a new tab. I open up 6 or 7 tabs and read the forum that way. It's totally awesome, imo.

Joe, can you expand on how to do that? I'm basically a complete RSS noob

Joe, can you expand on how to do that? I'm basically a complete RSS noob

First, I think you have to be using Firefox, but not totally sure and if you are using IE, SWITCH TO FF!! HA! But it is super ez, go to the main forum page (if you want to bookmark the WHOLE forum) and on the upper right is that Orange-slice icon, the RSS feed, click it and it should come up as: 'Add Live Bookmark' save it in the 'Bookmark Toolbar Folder'. I think you have to have that toolbar active to have it look like my screen shot (and if you look back you can see all my banking and other sites on my toolbar and of course my Red Sox RSS feed to the Boston newspapers, heh.) Let me know if that works for you.

-A way to subscribe to threads so you can keep track of threads of interest and threads which you have posted.


I have the whole DC forum linked right to my live bookmarks on my browser:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/joetall/RSS-FeedforDC.jpg

I just click the live-bookmark, see what titles I want to read, drag down to it, and right click it open in a new tab. I open up 6 or 7 tabs and read the forum that way. It's totally awesome, imo.

Yes, that is one of the features of the forum I really love. I use InfoRSS which is integrated with the Firefox's status bar. New messages are scrolling there and I can open them in news tabs by just clicking on them.

Rob,

yes, developing own customized forum is the best option and if you have no problem with this more expensive and time consuming solution then it is all cool. Just make sure you will save some money for yourself guys, as you really deserve to get rich for creating best instructional site ever!

Rob,

yes, developing own customized forum is the best option and if you have no problem with this more expensive and time consuming solution then it is all cool. Just make sure you will save some money for yourself guys, as you really deserve to get rich for creating best instructional site ever!

Yeah, it's all about balance. IMO with forum solutions and things like sites like this, either we spend now or we spend later -- you seem pretty well versed in tech stuff so I'm sure you know a lot about the inefficiencies and problems that come up inevitably with large-scale solutions like UBB and phpBB down the road. They are pretty amazing products, though, and the big question that we end up having to ask is "are they the best solution for us?" Right now, it doesn't seem so, but that certainly doesn't mean it will always be the case.

I'm just glad that you guys are around to give us tips and pointers and are willing to grow with us, as it really provides the promise for something bigger and better down the road. From a purely tech standpoint as well I'm actually really glad to be able to work on this platform as it means we can explore a lot of things that otherwise we'd be very limited in -- integration of RSS with the forums, or even moreso the dual-comment/forums style you see us implementing in the videos and articles section (where it's basically a hybrid of something like a youtube-comments system and a more traditional forum).

I've scheduled some sit-down time with our developers to start hashing out ideas for better interfaces as well as more traditional features that you guys are used to. Keep popping in here and giving us ideas so that I can make sure we're as on top of this process as we can possibly be. Thanks again and much for all the ideas.

Rob