Okay, I am not going to make very many people happy with me after this post, but I have to speak my feelings on this entire avalanche of “We need a new look and feel!!” bit. I applaud you all on trying to improve the forums. I think you all have some wonderful ideas. However, I personally do not like any of the samples shown. I often am in very strong favor of the options that each of you has posted over time here in this very forum. But I must disagree about the new looks I’m seeing displayed in this forum.
I won’t beat around the bush... I like where Scream was already going to the new “Post Options”. Lower left hand corner of the body of the message is just fine. That for the short term is fine. If the width of your display is a concern, use the “Top” view. Don’t take away what our user base has come to know and enjoy. We’ve been using WWWThreads for over a year and a half and in a three-day period of time come a rush of requests to change the flat display. Frankly, I am totally against it.
I am sure that you folks each have your own user base to concern yourselves with and while the current flat layout may not be perfect, it’s what our visitors are
comfortable with and I know our visitors and their mentality. Forcing such a dramatic change would KILL us for weeks if not months before we recovered. I simply would not upgrade the script any longer if one of those designs were used. A couple of people complained because Scream hinted (
only hinted!) that the “top” view might be removed since it was used by so few. I decided to check for myself to see exactly how many of our users use the “side” header vs the “top” header and these stats speak for themselves. There is no further explanation needed, it is a cold hard fact, over 96% of our user base prefer the “side” view.
+---------------+----------+
| U_Post_Format | count(*) |
+---------------+----------+
| side | 53186 |
| top | 230 |
+---------------+----------+
2 rows in set (11.48 sec)
We’re not talking about a few hundred or thousand users but instead over 53,000 users. So please excuse my firm stance on this particular issue. What is being proposed here would have a dramatic impact on our entire user base. If I may, I’d prefer to offer another option. One that could please all of us... well, maybe not Scream. []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]
Change the WWWThreads so that we’re no longer forced to a specific layout. Move to a template based system that allows for us to place the various features anywhere we like. For example, for each section of the page, create a variable name that we can use in our template design. The folks at Gossamer Threads have the right idea. If you look at their scripts, they use a template system that is very flexible.
For example, they use variables you may place in your HTML templates, which gives you an exceptional amount of freedom in designing your pages. Here are
some examples of keywords/variables you could use for WWWThreads (enough to cover my example for the flat view):
[%MainMenu%]
[%NavTree%]
[%NavigationButtons%]
[%PostHeader%]
[%PostTopic%]
[%PostButtons%]
[%PostIcons%]
In this image below is the standard flat view from the current “live” forums that Scream has running. I’ve removed the data display to show you what a “template” using these variables could look like. Notice that once you have such variables to work with, you change the layout and design of your page to anything you want, and every single one of us would have our ideal layout. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]
[]
http://vwdesigns.com/images/variables.jpg[/]
This is the direction I think we should be moving, to provide more flexibility, not take away options that many people have come to know and truly enjoy.
I really think this sort of system would open the door for a lot more diversity from one wwwthreads site to the next and pave the way for some really interesting websites that could then further merge features across the board. In any event, if I have upset you, I apologize up front, but I already know the reaction we’d receive if we switched to any of the layouts displayed in this thread.
Jhariden (aka Strategist)
Stratics Forums
