Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

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Toast

Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

Post by Toast » 21 May 2009, 11:32

Well me and crise had a discussion on improvement of this place and we want our users input developer and user so go over the site and give your input and leave your comments in this thread since your thoughts matter too ;)

Toast

Re: Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

Post by Toast » 21 May 2009, 11:38

[09-05-21][13:17:53] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> how to make a community site?
[09-05-21][13:18:07] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> gee, isn't that what everyone is asking these days?
[09-05-21][13:18:21] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> anyway, I have a few ideas what is wrong whith adcportal today
[09-05-21][13:18:33] <Toast> okey
[09-05-21][13:19:03] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> when you first visit adcportal
[09-05-21][13:19:10] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> it is very hard to figure out what it is
[09-05-21][13:19:33] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> the forums are very inaccessible
[09-05-21][13:19:44] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> (must be a registered user to access some of them)
[09-05-21][13:19:54] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> this is not explained anywhere
[09-05-21][13:20:13] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> the forum and front page has some kind of link between them
[09-05-21][13:20:22] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> but it is hard to figure out exactly how
[09-05-21][13:20:33] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> the wiki is just a disjoint place on the same site
[09-05-21][13:20:50] <Toast> Keep it comming this is good
[09-05-21][13:20:55] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> it is hard to figure out who the others on the forum are
[09-05-21][13:21:05] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> why are they there, etc
[09-05-21][13:21:19] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> the forum is too organized -- too many categories
[09-05-21][13:21:35] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> hard to actually find out where to post or find posts
[09-05-21][13:22:12] <Dj_Offset@ldcpp> well, thats my initial reactions.

Pietry
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Re: Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

Post by Pietry » 21 May 2009, 11:47

I'm kinda organized guy so I like the organization and categories. I don;t want adcportal to be a big general purpose forum where everyone can post bunches of stuff, that would be very hard to moderate, very hard to search through and would be very inestethical and unprofessional . However, he's right about the front page. I guess the main page should do more than just present the site news. Something like the wiki is perhaps. A big banner or a statical part of the main page that is there all the time would be a good idea. Something that would present adcportal,what it is, what it does, what is the purpose of the site.
Just someone

Crise
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Re: Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

Post by Crise » 21 May 2009, 12:07

Ok, I guess I should say few things here too...

For starters I do not want ADCPortal to become a portal in the traditional (or stereotypical) sense. This means that I do not want to add trinkets such as clocks, calendars, lists of online users, birthdays etc. to the main site.

Why? Because such things eat away the sites personality at an alarming rate. Besides they don't really have any use either.

I am aware that the site itself does not really have any content besides the news and links of which the later severely under uses the system it has been created with tbh. To put it shortly the backend for the main site could do much more than what it does at the moment.

Regarding the organization on the forums I very much agree with offset here. While I do understand that the organization makes it easier to moderate (in a way), it also can relatively easily confuse new user coming to the site or at least make them feel as if they are being restricted too much.

Pietry about introduction kind of thing for main page, I'll show you something interesting. See here and here and then have a look at this and this.

You are free to do anything you want with those two sections, just get writing... I suppose when Toast wrote the existing ones he wasn't in very productive mood.

en_dator
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Re: Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

Post by en_dator » 22 May 2009, 10:26

The system you built Crise is quite powerful (if somewhat different from what one might be used to) it gives the possibility to change many things without going trough code or admin panels. It is great 8-)

imho the forum has an ok arrangement, its three levels deep which i think is max what it should be, the only part that differs is the dev section which got me a little confused in the beginning with its different kinds of subforums.

I guess whats missing (as usual) is ideas, and time/energy to realise them. Toast and Pietry and all you others has done a great job here with adc portal.

Question : on the front page there are four tabs on top right, could they be avaliable on all pages?

Crise
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Re: Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

Post by Crise » 22 May 2009, 11:56

en_dator wrote:The system you built Crise is quite powerful (if somewhat different from what one might be used to) it gives the possibility to change many things without going trough code or admin panels. It is great 8-)
The main reason why it is different in that way is because I am a lazy person and thus creating separate database or own admin panel etc. for the system was not an option. I just thought of a creative way to use what I already had.

I also tend to dislike traditional mods for phpbb since they usually make upgrade process troublesome, so there is yet another reason for this approach. Yet I first and foremost wanted to keep other people away from the code, however, without restricting their freedom in regards to site content or look. The system as it is now accomplishes this quite well.

The only real downside from ADCPortal point of view is maybe that I want to keep the system generic so that it could be used for any site with any content, in other words I am not too fond of adding content specific features. Why? Because there is still the possibility that I decide to release this as a phpbb mod (even though it does not really change the phpbb core) someday, since I plain don't like any of the existing portal/cms (mod) solutions out there phpbb3.
en_dator wrote: Question : on the front page there are four tabs on top right, could they be avaliable on all pages?
I suppose it is possible but I doubt it would blend/fit well with the forums style.

poy
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Re: Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

Post by poy » 23 May 2009, 13:02

regarding the header buttons, i've always found them too small, i would prefer if they were on the bottom of the banner instead of above it; something like those on <http://www.eqdkp-plus.com/news.php>. because they are the most important links so they should be easier to see.

and i believe a main page could have more than just site news, for example a description of ADC, latest forum messages, latest Wiki pages. there is a trend currently that is to only show news titles and the few first words of the news content, and when one clicks on it the clicked news dynamically expands. this way there is room on the main page for more than just news.

otherwise i like current forum categories, if only there were more people to fill them in...

Crise
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Joined: 10 Nov 2007, 21:34

Re: Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

Post by Crise » 23 May 2009, 14:07

poy wrote:regarding the header buttons, i've always found them too small, i would prefer if they were on the bottom of the banner instead of above it; something like those on <http://www.eqdkp-plus.com/news.php>. because they are the most important links so they should be easier to see.
You are right on that one, I'll take a look but I dunno what I'll come up with since I have something all web designers know and love called Internet Explorer to consider (though IE8 is considerable improvement, but IE7 is still mainstream, and some even use IE6 still... but I cba with that piece of shit, adcportal looks absolutely horrible on it).
poy wrote:and i believe a main page could have more than just site news, for example a description of ADC, latest forum messages, latest Wiki pages. there is a trend currently that is to only show news titles and the few first words of the news content, and when one clicks on it the clicked news dynamically expands. this way there is room on the main page for more than just news.

otherwise i like current forum categories, if only there were more people to fill them in...
Hmm, the "boxed" layout has it's limitations, but I'll think about these. Though completely new look is not an option (unless someone else is willing to do it) because of the reasons mentioned above. Though I'll say this now, I'd rather not mix the mainpage with MediaWiki if at all possible (because the main page is so "phpbb" that throwing in MediaWiki to the soup most likely would equal to one big mess).

Pietry
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Re: Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

Post by Pietry » 23 May 2009, 18:50

I agree with poy about the main page, we could have something about latest posts, something generic about adc and adcportal and also latest news in perhaps some tighter format but not mandatory.
Just someone

en_dator
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Re: Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

Post by en_dator » 24 May 2009, 10:06

today, everything that is written here http://adcportal.sourceforge.net/forums ... hp?f=2&t=3, will be ontop of the news posts on the front page,
so just write it there and it will show.
isnt that the designated place for that generic information?

about the news posts i kind of agree, if it were possible to only show a limited number of chars on the portal and then link to the original post in the forum would make it more compact.



(lol, its easy to come up with ideas when one doesnt have to implement them :D )

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