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sr_erick
Senior Member
USA
1318 Posts |
 Posted - 17 September 2004 : 13:12:33
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I'm sure I'll be getting around to it soon as I am in the middle of "redoing" my website and well, that is on the list of things to do. I'll see if I can just schedule that to be my next thing to work on.  < |
Erick
Snowmobile Fanatics
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sr_erick
Senior Member
USA
1318 Posts |
Posted - 20 September 2004 : 02:03:08
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| I made a lot of progress on it yesterday. I'll try and get a beta forum set up for people to play with at some point later today. There's still a lot of work to be done. It doesn't seem like that much at first, but once you get going on it you find tons of things you have to deal with.< |
Erick
Snowmobile Fanatics
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Tiggerz
Starting Member
45 Posts |
Posted - 20 September 2004 : 19:22:30
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I was just thinking about this and from the usability side I dont think the idea of sub-forums is a good one.
It seems to me that what is really wanted is a sub-topic rather than a sub-forum. Its kind of like implementing a usenet fork (if anyone is familiar with that).
So category.forum.topic.posts
and category.forum.topic.subtopic.posts
So when the user is viewing the .topic.posts level, they would also see any subtopics that were available as well.
subtopics would be sorted so they display at the top before or after stickies.
Probably only admins should be able to make subtopics.
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sr_erick
Senior Member
USA
1318 Posts |
Posted - 20 September 2004 : 21:03:11
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This isn't a sub topic, it's:
Category, Forum, Topic
OR
Category, Forum, Sub-Forum, Topic
All the other major forum systems out there use them and they are a great idea to split up a subject even more without cluttering your default page with 50000 seperate forums.< |
Erick
Snowmobile Fanatics
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Gargoyle
Junior Member
USA
280 Posts |
Posted - 20 September 2004 : 21:25:37
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I think it's a great idea especially for those of us with sites that could possibly have hundreds of different categories.
I believe sr erick runs a snomobile forum in which case this would be VERY useful to him.
Also WeeWeeSlap runs a coaster forum that could definitly benifit from a MOD like this.
Then you have all of those guys that have their own modded forum forums. Those guys could benifit from this as well!
It is an effort well worth undertaking in my opinion.  < |
Here is a link to my Snitz powered Drag Racing site. |
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Tiggerz
Starting Member
45 Posts |
Posted - 20 September 2004 : 21:46:40
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There is no difference between the two. Try not to place a user concept on an actual concept. If you try and implement sub-forums - then you will add way more overhead for what amounts to conceptual relabing of terms.
The only addition would be that users have to subscribe to sub-forums, but then you can make them subscribe to subtopics - so no difference.
Sounds like people are trying to over-engineer the solution :)
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sr_erick
Senior Member
USA
1318 Posts |
Posted - 20 September 2004 : 22:50:00
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Either I don't understand, or you don't, but I don't see how this is confusing or in any way over-engineering something. This is the only solution I have besides creating yet another Category, which I don't want to because there are already too many on the default page.
The way my particular case is going to work is something like this...
Category: Snowmobiles
--Forum: The Shop
----SubForum: Clutching
------Topic: How to properly clutch a snowmobile
------Topic: What weights do I use?
----Topic: How much horsepower does my snowmobile have?
----Topic: I'm lost..HELP!
You will not see topics from the SubForum inside of the forum, you have to go inside of the SubForum to see any topics from there. I don't know why your saying this is confusing from even a users point of view. Subscriptions would work the same. You can subscribe per topic, or forum, but subscribing per forum would not automatically subscribe you to SubForums.
What would your propose the solution is then...if this isn't it?
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Erick
Snowmobile Fanatics
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miperez
Junior Member
Spain
243 Posts |
Posted - 21 September 2004 : 03:49:30
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IMHO you are talking about the same functionality, the only difference is how you call things. I think that what you call:
----SubForum: Clutching
------Topic: How to properly clutch a snowmobile
------Topic: What weights do I use?
----Topic: How much horsepower does my snowmobile have?
Is what tiggerz would call:
----Topic: Clutching
------Subtopic: How to properly clutch a snowmobile
------Subtopic: What weights do I use?
----Topic: How much horsepower does my snowmobile have?< |
Best Regards
Mikel Perez
"Hell is the place where everything test perfectly, and nothing works"
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miperez
Junior Member
Spain
243 Posts |
Posted - 21 September 2004 : 03:50:51
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| BTW, this will make my life much easier, you can call it "subforum", "subtopic", or "the muppets", I'm really gonna love it no matter how it's called!! < |
Best Regards
Mikel Perez
"Hell is the place where everything test perfectly, and nothing works"
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Edited by - miperez on 21 September 2004 03:52:35 |
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Tiggerz
Starting Member
45 Posts |
Posted - 21 September 2004 : 05:16:53
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yep - it is the same thing put that way. Now if you abstract out current functionality, you should find existing code (or close to it) can be used to implement it :)
I dont use the term subforum because its not the correct (in my opinion) terminology to use.
To me - subforum means to place (for example) an entire copy/implementation of the snitzforums inside another copy of the snitsforums. Complete with all functionality (registrations, users etc).
Where in reality all that is actually required is recursive nesting of topics/posts.< |
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sr_erick
Senior Member
USA
1318 Posts |
Posted - 21 September 2004 : 10:51:47
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In the context in which "forum" is used, it is appropriate to use "subforum". (imo)
People like Jelsoft and Invision use it all the time as well. It seems appropriate to me.< |
Erick
Snowmobile Fanatics
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Edited by - sr_erick on 21 September 2004 12:18:51 |
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-gary
Development Team Member
406 Posts |
Posted - 21 September 2004 : 11:29:20
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| I like the idea, but only for disciplined users. I just recently cut back the number of forums simply because I couldn't get users to read the friggin descriptions for the forums we did have. They'd post whatever wherever they happened to be with no thought to structure or ease of others finding the information. After moving 10% of the posts per day, I gave up. I couldn’t imagine having subforums since the idea of a category/forum system seems to be way over my users heads.< |
KawiForums.com
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-gary
Development Team Member
406 Posts |
Posted - 21 September 2004 : 15:25:00
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| I was just looking at the dev board for phpBB 2.2 and they seem to have gone completely away from the category/forum concept to strictly forum/subforums. Quite confusing when you realize that everything you thought was a category is actually a forum with posts of it's own.< |
KawiForums.com
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Tiggerz
Starting Member
45 Posts |
Posted - 21 September 2004 : 19:04:43
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(not knowing anything about it ) I would wonder why they would have done that (from a usability point of view).
Perhaps it allows them to define one schema and have multiple instances (one for each forum). I'm thinking Object Oriented Database techniques here - didnt think that concept has come over to relational DBs yet.
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sr_erick
Senior Member
USA
1318 Posts |
Posted - 21 September 2004 : 23:15:47
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Here's a link to what I've got thus far.
http://www.snowmobilefanatics.com/sample
You can log in as snitz/snitz to test if you like. There are a majority of things not completed yet...
First I guess is to get the new posts icon working. Small things like that.
As a side note, I don't intend to go hog wild with subforums, I think a person should limit them per forum. Too many places to post isn't good. Your right, it can get confusing, but the key is self control. Go easy on it and people won't have a hard time.< |
Erick
Snowmobile Fanatics
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Edited by - sr_erick on 21 September 2004 23:17:19 |
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Sub-Forums Mod
