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

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

Mouser knows I am just being honest

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

Quote from: Stephen66515 on March 29, 2015, 02:22 PM

Mouser knows I am just being honest

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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/discourse/wp-discourse

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

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.

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!

 

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.