Forum needs to show Most Recent Posts

[Gary Anderson]

I think I prefer chronological listing because nesting could promote replies that drift off-topic.

 

[Jana Pivkova]

“Weather & Gossip” page

On mobile, it’s a bit of a hassle to look for the most recent/active topics. What I’m hearing is that people want the front page (or -a- page they can bookmark) to contain weather info AND active topics in one, the two most important things for most active members. They want their weather and gossip in one. That way they don’t have to bookmark two or three different pages to get the info they’re looking for.

The mobile page has the recent/active topics all the way at the bottom of the page, and the list of forum topics are listed twice. Also there are two forum “search” bars on the same page, which seems redundant and requires extra scrolling.

I don’t know if we can make these changes without ruining something else, but that’s what the problem for some people seems to be.

 

[David Webb]

I hear you – just haven’t gotten to that yet.

[Jana Pivkova]

No worries, do it at your own pace of course. It’s not super-duper important, just nice to have.

[David Webb]

Based on the above, here’s one possible alternate view that we could use for the main Forums homepage (what you get when you click “Forums” in the main nav).

That’s essentially the “Active Topics” that you get in the sidebar (topic with the most recent reply is at the top, sorted by last topic reply); stickied topics are in yellow at the top.

Also, you’ve likely noticed that the sidebar has been updated as well – main forum listing got moved to the bottom to make the active topics and recent replies quicker to get to – and the extra search bar at the top of the forum listing has been removed.

Shout with thoughts on those.

[Alan Crouse]

Here are some concrete suggestions:

– Turn off the ability to reply to a specific post.  This seems kind of cool, but for the occasional reader it makes finding new posts almost impossible as they can occur anywhere in the string of posts.  Indeed, it is easy to miss new posts if there are some in the middle of the list (indented) and other new posts at the bottom of the list.

– Have the “latest update” reflect the most recent post, not the newest topic.  Right now the forum shows the blue bar to indicate that there is unread content, but the referenced poster name and time is that of the newest topic, not the newest post.

I’ll admit up front I have no idea of whether this new website software would allow these changes, or how difficult and time consuming they might be.  But as a regular reader of multiple, similar forums, these would seem to address much of the difficulty in keeping up with forum content.

Thank you for tackling a generally thankless task. The Crestline forum has always been an important part of our community and is probably even more so in the current situation.

Alan

[David Webb]

Copy that!

Threaded replies (nested replies) can easily be turned on/off. Will test a few things out and turn that off, since that one’s been mentioned more than once (you and Jerome).

Referring back to the alternate view I added here, this one does the following already:

• Topics are sorted by the last reply (so the topic with the most recent reply is at the top, and topics that haven’t had a reply in a while are farther down).
• The “Last Post” column on the right in that list has a link directly to the last reply in that topic. This gives you access to the topic (for those who might be jumping in on a new topic) or directly to the last reply (if you want to go straight to that). This is how all of the other topic lists work as well (if you look in any forum, each topic has a “Last Post” column which takes you directly to the last reply in that topic).
• Topics (and forums) that contain content that you haven’t read yet (as long as you’re logged into the site) will show you the dark blue bar next to them to make them easy to spot.

It sounds like if we switch the main Forum list (what you get when you click on “Forums” in the main nav) to the new one (linked above) and disable threaded replies – does that (mostly) solve everything? We can always make more adjustments, but if doing those 2 things makes everyone’s browsing/posting/bantering process a lot easier, then those are easy to do.

[Alan Crouse]

Trying the alternate view seems much improved.

Again, THANK YOU!

Alan

[David Webb]

Ok – baby steps:

• Main forum view has been updated – clicking on “Forums” anywhere on the site gets you to the main forum view, which now shows Topics sorted by last activity.
• Each topic in the list shows its title (clicking the title takes you to the topic itself), who started it (clicking the author name takes you to their profile), which forum it was posted in (clicking that takes you to the list of topics in that forum), and when the last post (reply) was (clicking that takes you directly to that last reply in the topic).
• On mobile sizes, this topic list is compressed a bit to accommodate the small screen – title (clicking that takes you to the topic itself), last post link is directly underneath (clicking that takes you to the last reply in that topic), and author.
• Paging buttons (previous / next) are at the bottom of the topic listing (if you’re super bored and just want to flip through all of the topics in chronological order of last activity).
• Removed “Active Topics” from the sidebar, as it was redundant with the main listing (that also means less scrolling on mobile sizes if you want to get directly to the recent replies or list of all forums).

There are a few cleanup items to do to turn off the threaded replies – that’s on the way.

[David Webb]

Threaded replies are now off.

[Author]

Posts