New Forums

Hey everyone,

Just a quick update regarding the forums.

They have been visually overhauled and I plan to launch the new look later today.

If you know me you know that I like bulleted lists, so here it goes:

• The forums will be changing from fixed width to fluid width. What that means is that the forums will now scale the entire horizontal length of your monitor. There will be no background.
• When using the fixed width style we would occasionally change the background of the site. To either something related to PS2 or Battlefield or War Thunder, whichever. What this did was cause the site to look very one-game-centric for new visitors. This will be going away.
• We will now use a large image slider, which mirrors images from our new website to convey large graphics on the new forums.
• The sidebar, which we all know and love, will be getting a MASSIVE change. It's moving to the LEFT side of the page /jammin
• Avatars will be reduced in size (though I'm still tinkering with the final size) and circle'ized. It's a slick look.
• Forum ribbons, badges, post counts and all that will remain.
• The shoutbox is going away. I've yet to come up with a replacement for it but the gist of it is that no matter where we host this site, the host hates the shoutbox. It is very resource intensive and they're tired of it. So I've disabled it.
• I'm working on a new solution similar to a Facebook chat system.
• The forum list view aka the main page of the forum will now use horizontal space for forums and sub forums. All the forums will no longer be stacked on top of one another.
• That is not so much a space saving effort as it is an aesthetic effort.
• Conversations can now be edited in mass, which should make keeping your inboxes clean much easier, hint hint
• We will have a very special 404 page that the design team is working on to render when someone hits a bad link.
• The forum will have a new menu system that incorporates menu headers and drop downs for important forum sections. This will be a major time saver.
• Quoting someone will display that persons avatar again.
• For those who don't know typing @username will tag someone in that post which will trigger an alert kick off for them. Example: "@Booneman42." = Booneman42

Next steps / road map:

• 1 week - Ditch Xenporta homepage portal. I intend to have us use our new site for posting news and information in a blogging sort of fashion.
• 2 weeks - In order to do that I have to bridge the site (which uses Wordpress) to our forums (Xenforo). This will take a couple weeks.
• What that will do is allow users to login to the website or the forums with a single ID.
• News posted on the Wordpress site will automatically created a mirror'ed thread on the forum where comments will reside.
• The comments on the Wordpress news post and the Xenforo thread will be synchronized.
• 3 weeks - Enhanced division pages with more detailed information and values.

That's all for now!

 

Awesome, can't wait to see it!

 

And I forgot to mention, this will be sort of like getting a new piece of furniture in the house. Or changing the color of the paint in your bedroom. Takes times to adjust to the difference.

 

awww that's it?

You do so much work on the website Ghost and we (me) really appreciate it.

 

It's my pleasure!

You guys are all here operating under NNG so it's the least I could do

 

change.....One of the hardest things in life. I miss the old way but I will learn to love the new.
I feel this new way is harder to nav but maybe I feel that way because I have to learn my way around again.

Edit: After spending 30 seconds looking at the new layout, I like it and I feel it is neither more easy or harder to nav then the last layout. But I don't think it looks as pleasing. I miss the artful past backgrounds.

Edit #2: Where is the alert button? I really liked the alert button and the drop down tab to see the latest post on one subject.

 

Upper right side

 

Found it! behind the search bar!

 

Oh, on mobile. Yeah, its a bit weird

 

What is your monitor's resolution?