I have put a "share with facebook" type thing on the pages (temporarily?)..

[cranioscopical]

how's the new version -- small static buttons on bottom of forum page (sidebar of site pages).

-mouser (March 28, 2015, 08:54 PM)

I hadn't noticed them—which is fine by me. Does everyone reach the bottom of forum pages?

[Renegade]

^ Looks like it's gone now.

[cranioscopical]

Mouser knows I am just being honest

-Stephen66515 (March 29, 2015, 09:22 AM)

I wonder if others do? Could there be a more appropriate way to express things?

[app103]

What is the purpose of sharing on other social media is my thought?  Is there a viable reason?  Or is it just because everyone is doing it?  If there's not a reason for it- and it's just to follow trends, then why do it?

-wraith808 (March 29, 2015, 08:10 AM)

I don't think we need social sharing buttons (at least not of this type), but we do need more social sharing to promote DC and grow.

We have a Facebook page that has very little reach.
We have a Twitter and G+ that is the same.

What we need is for DC members that use those services to follow, like, circle, etc.

But it's not enough to just do one click and be done, because that is ineffective for spreading DC and does not increase our reach. It's not social sharing.

What we need is retweets and liking/sharing posts, on an ongoing basis. If you are a DC member on these services, you are the best candidate to help spread DC to your friends and followers, there. That is social sharing and that is what we need.

I created the Twitter account and did a lot of work on the Facebook page to make it look good, for the purpose of introducing new people to our site and community...not for current members to keep up with DC, as most of you may have believed. Stephen and I can't do this all by ourselves. We need you to help by sharing with your friends, too.

So, all you current DC members that Liked our Faceook page, followed us on Twitter, circled us on G+, your job is only partly done. There is still more for you to do, and it doesn't involve adding buttons to this site, unless they are buttons that lead people to our pages on these services. And those would be best added to the highest traffic pages...the ones with the software that brings them here, or possibly at the top of the page, like this:



BUT...if there is going to be any new site design or upgrading the forum, it would probably be best done at that time, to fit into the new site design, provided that will take place in the near future.

And that is what I believe should be our first serious social sharing step.

[wraith808]

Mouser knows I am just being honest

-Stephen66515 (March 29, 2015, 09:22 AM)

I wonder if others do? Could there be a more appropriate way to express things?

-cranioscopical (March 29, 2015, 11:02 AM)

^ This.  Because being honest is never a good excuse for trolling and baiting.

[KynloStephen66515]

I certainly didn't want to come across as trolling or baiting (Although I don't see how I did?  )

Reading back on what I wrote, I can see I may have been a little more blunt than I would normally be...however, this is kind of going off-topic now so, I shall hold my hands up and admit I could have probably worded it a lot better than I did (Those who know me know I have been guilty of wording things rather badly several times in the past!!). 

 

[mouser]

Stephen and I talk and joke on the donationcoder irc chat group all the time and he is always encouraging me to improve the site and he is always a very positive, enthusiastic, energetic voice.  So if anyone took his post as anything but some fun ribbing -- know that it was received with good cheer.  And stephen, don't stop trying to get me to improve the place. 

App your design looks pretty good -- and your suggestion about putting it off until we do some other changes is a good one -- especially since I think the move to a cms is in order and that would be a good time to do it.  Right now i'm comfortable with where they are.

Those who are pointing out that the buttons should be converted to purely local js, you are right.  Currently they all use the canonical scripts from facebook, twitter, google+, reddit.  I will try to change them all to be simple local images where the js is purely local and just opens up a window when clicked to access the remote site.  That will be the lightest weight solution with no ability of facebook/tritter/gcrap to do any tracking stuff.

[JavaJones]

Like many other things, I think Discourse handles this very elegantly. Rather than making you scroll all the way to the bottom or popping up an obtrusive sidebar/bottom-bar, or other thing, it just assumes that linking is something you might want to do for *any* post (original post or a reply to it) and gives you button to do that on every post. It's a variation of the fairly familiar and widely used "chain link" icon which brings up a little box with the URL to that specific post, small buttons to click to share with Twitter, FB, G+, and Email. I assume it's all self-hosted since it's integrated right in.

Here's a screenshot. The red box shows the share options that pop-up, the green box at bottom shows the link you click to get the pop-up (to the left is a Like button, to the right is Bookmark), the blue box above shows how these buttons (including Reply) are faded out until/unless you mouse over the post, in other words the focus is on *reading* rather than interacting/replying, unless you want to. Quite nice IMO.

I have put a "share with facebook" type thing on the pages (temporarily?)..

- Oshyan

[mouser]

these buttons (including Reply) are faded out until/unless you mouse over the post, in other words the focus is on *reading* rather than interacting/replying, unless you want to.

nice.

[JavaJones]

Indeed! Discourse really is pretty well thought out. It's not perfect, but it's a lot more well designed and thoughtful than any other system I've seen yet. Others like Burning Board or IPB are basically like souped-up versions of SMF. They have more features, maybe some slicker elements and design, some nice touches like Lightboxes for images say, and some other Javascript fancery. But it's still a pretty traditional approach to forum discussion (for better or worse). Meanwhile systems with built-in forum-like features like Drupal have the advantage of complete integration, but at the expense of features and bloat, and also with a different but still fairly traditional approach, without such thoughtful changes as Discourse exemplifies. Finally, systems with integrated plugins such as Joomla's Kunena or WordPress BBoard are sort of the middleground between those other options, with decent but not ideal integration to their parent systems, generally fairly basic feature sets, and minimal-to-no unique features or ideas, a fairly standard approach aside from the integration.

If DC were anything but a forum-and-discussion-focused site I might recommend some other forum system with tighter integration to a CMS, but since CMS-type content is actually fairly minimal here (and would, IMO, be better handled in a Wiki-like fashion anyway), I feel like Discourse is a really strong option and a good fit...

For the software stuff, depending how serious you get about it, you could either use one of the nicer available Wiki systems (with some plugins or custom coding, as needed), or something like Redmine. Redmine, as you know, has a built-in Wiki system, file hosting, bug tracking, and even version control access. It may be overkill, which is why I'd probably suggest a more straightforward Wiki myself (which really should serve all needs as far as I can see), but Redmine is worth considering if in the DC migration you want to aim higher and give devs more and better tools to manage and maintain their software.

As you can probably guess, I'm anxious to see your post(s) about where you see the future of DC and hopefully including some thoughts on these kinds of specific systems and recommendations. If not Discourse, why not? If not a Wiki, why not?

- Oshyan

[app103]

App your design looks pretty good -- and your suggestion about putting it off until we do some other changes is a good one -- especially since I think the move to a cms is in order and that would be a good time to do it.  Right now i'm comfortable with where they are.

-mouser (March 29, 2015, 02:50 PM)

What you have on the site is a different type of social buttons than what I am proposing. The kind you have on the site right now are the kind that help people share the page they are on, on social networks.

The kind I am proposing, as a first step, are the kind that link to our pages on social networks, which encourages people to follow what we do more, bringing them back to the site again & again. It allows them to subscribe to us, since most people do not use RSS readers and do their subscribing by following sites on social networks. They can be added now, and it would be trivial work to do it...it's just an image that links to a page, no scripts needed.

If we are going to use the type we currently have at the bottom of the page, they would be best added to the most visited content on the main site, first, so people can spread the word about the software. And they need to be closer to that content to actually work. Way at the bottom of the page or at the bottom of the sidebar doesn't cut it. They should be at the upper right of the actual content of the page, in the same area, so visitors see them.

And since there is currently no room on most of those pages, without a slight redesign, and if there is plans on moving the main site to a CMS adding them now would be a waste of work, that was why I said to wait.

And JavaJones' comment about Discourse is something to think about, too.

If you are going to move the main site to a CMS, Discourse can be integrated into Wordpress. It's how SitePoint is currently publishing their articles on their main Wordpress based site, where every article automatically becomes a forum post, too, and integrating the replies on Discourse back as Wordpress comments to the articles on the main site.

You have a need for something like that with the various sections of the main site, and this would make things much easier in the long run, and make the forum content much more visible than the current DC blog, which doesn't integrate the discussion on the pages with the articles, which means visitors that land on those pages miss a lot of the action, here.

This is the original wp-discourse plugin: https://github.com/d...scourse/wp-discourse

And SitePoint's fork of it, with some extra added features & fixes: https://github.com/s...tepoint/wp-discourse

You might need to do your own fork to add options for different behaviors for specific categories, like software pages, so that when someone wants to comment on an app, perhaps with a bug report or other issue, they get sent to the section for that app (if it has one), rather than the carbon copy of the app's content page on the forum.

[mouser]

Ok fair enough --
but do note that the buttons currently do show on every page on the site (including non-forum pages); they are at bottom of sidebar on other pages.  The Like button does link to the main donationcoder facebook page that you and stephen have wonderfully created for us.

[TaoPhoenix]

And since there is currently no room on most of those pages, without a slight redesign, and if there is plans on moving the main site to a CMS adding them now would be a waste of work, that was why I said to wait.

-app103 (March 29, 2015, 07:06 PM)

I'll add something to this small snippet, from a slightly different perspective.

Apparently some "purist" developers make the same judgement choice that has in another domain, caused me to lose several chess games: "Why bother to make that first small move with a pawn or a piece, when you're just going to move it again? It's a waste of ___". Chess tempi, work, etc.

But the right answer can be more often than we think, "because the double-step accomplishes something small and definite *right now* like developing a certain piece, or actually locking in concrete improvements to the site, rather than waiting on the unclear future for imagined savings of time or tempi in the future, which may not ever happen at all!"

So I'll try a really bold approach:
Leave the bottom buttons there. Because to me there are *two sets* of content on DC forum pages!

That "thread aggregator" is one of the most powerful features of the opening forum page for me! First thing I do is *scroll down* to see what the threads are! Then I right-click a few of them to get ready for some reading.

And *then* I scroll to the top, to check PM messages and the fundraiser and prepare to open a chat tab. So just do App's idea and put a *second set of buttons* at the top! I'll leave it for y'all later to fine tune which function buttons go where.

Meanwhile, jump over the hurdle of "potential super efficiency later" and ... just put in App's suggestion ... right now! Because we've amiably pondered site redesigns for years! So ... the move to a CMS is not going to happen "soon enough"! So ... just put in the sharing code. Right now. Develop that knight to d7 ... right now. Birds in hand vs more in the bush etc. The really fancy metaphor is the biz/finance one of the present value vs discounted future value. Put in our *own* tracker of what we gain from the sharing buttons! One new member *right now* is more important than the "future value of labor saved ... whenever"!

As for if "people ever get to the bottom of a page", that's back to that other edgy argument of our userbase ... I trust our core market ... is smart enough ... wait for it ... to scroll *all the way to the bottom of a page without getting exhausted and distracted by

oh look! a new episode of Castle! Bye!

 

[KynloStephen66515]

Ok fair enough --
but do note that the buttons currently do show on every page on the site (including non-forum pages); they are at bottom of sidebar on other pages.  The Like button does link to the main donationcoder facebook page that you and stephen have wonderfully created for us.

-mouser (March 29, 2015, 07:46 PM)

Hey, all I did was set it up...App is the one who made it look AWESOME!  I barely actually contributed anything to the design aspect of the Facebook Page, I simply post stuff on it xD

[mouser]

That "thread aggregator" is one of the most powerful features of the opening forum page for me! First thing I do is *scroll down* to see what the threads are! Then I right-click a few of them to get ready for some reading.

You might also enjoy the list of recent topics and recent posts, both linked from the top of the forum pages.

[TaoPhoenix]

That "thread aggregator" is one of the most powerful features of the opening forum page for me! First thing I do is *scroll down* to see what the threads are! Then I right-click a few of them to get ready for some reading.

You might also enjoy the list of recent topics and recent posts, both linked from the top of the forum pages.

-mouser (March 29, 2015, 08:06 PM)

I've looked at those, but with a slight tinge of today's obsession with TV tropes, the aggregator has a huge "innovative value" (Implementation trademarked by Mouser, most rights reserved!)

What it does is make sure that *ten threads* are merged, and it can never be less than 10. (Except maybe one day if there's a setting per member. What about more?)

So the stunning innovation vs the "older tech" recent posts is that, that view produces the following:
(Some humor below!)

---------------------------------------------

Why Mouser Rules
Hooray for the Fundraiser
How to improve DC - What about a CMS?
Sharing Buttons - where, how big, and what do they do?
Linguistic analysis of emotional markers of Stephen's last five posts over 400 words long
Honesty is what you are thinking, Balanced tone is what you should be thinking
Why Mouser Rules
Hooray for the Fundraiser
How to improve DC - What about a CMS?
Sharing Buttons - where, how big, and what do they do?
Why Mouser Rules
Hooray for the Fundraiser
How to improve DC - What about a CMS?
Sharing Buttons - where, how big, and what do they do?
Why Mouser Rules
Hooray for the Fundraiser
How to improve DC - What about a CMS?
Sharing Buttons - where, how big, and what do they do?
Why Mouser Rules
Hooray for the Fundraiser
How to improve DC - What about a CMS?
Sharing Buttons - where, how big, and what do they do?
Why Mouser Rules
Hooray for the Fundraiser
How to improve DC - What about a CMS?
Sharing Buttons - where, how big, and what do they do?
Why Mouser Rules
Hooray for the Fundraiser
How to improve DC - What about a CMS?
Sharing Buttons - where, how big, and what do they do?
Why Mouser Rules
Hooray for the Fundraiser
How to improve DC - What about a CMS?
Sharing Buttons - where, how big, and what do they do?
Why Mouser Rules
Hooray for the Fundraiser
How to improve DC - What about a CMS?
Sharing Buttons - where, how big, and what do they do?
--------------------------------------------------------

Whew! Oh look! That's only six threads!

There's more that weren't talked about for three whole days!

: )

So, how hard is it to get a modular x setting per member to expand that section?