posted by webwolfe: I was curious about how you see this mod used by the majority of ubbt owners.. Do you expect most of them will use this as their root level home page?
If so, it should be called Home, not Entrance...
I actually have no idea how most users use this. I just know how I want to use it. LoL but, they can rename the language file entry to what ever they want so it's just a matter of preference, I guess. One of the things that kept me from calling it "Home" was that it wasn't always used as the "main" index page on a site but sometimes as a secondary index within the forum area. But then again it's changeable to what ever the admin wants.
posted by webwolfe: If its used as an entrance, as it says, then how about adding the choice to use the entrance as my start page when logging in..
This has been done before as far as making modifications to .threads to allow for such a thing. It's a more involved hacking job to make it so but it's not that bad. I had ran into a bug with my test site (older version) where I could not view "my home" because it always took me back to the entrance. I can't remember what the problem was but I had to use phpmyadmin to fix it.
posted by webwolfe: I thought a lot about how I could best integrate this mod into my site and I personally would much rather have almost every one of these individual pals available to me for use throughout my site, not just on the entrance page by using includes in my header.tmpl. For instance:
- using the login pal on every page... - using the topthreads pal on the postlist page for forum2 only (by putting the pal in a custom header for instance) - using the pollpal on every page - using the profilepal on every page
I have done used almost every pal in this manor on my 6.0 test site. Now that I'm using templates you can wrap a .threads template call with IIP's and have IIP's information available. I mentioned this somewhere around here already though. It takes like 3 or 4 lines of new code per .threads page to do this.
posted by webwolfe: I would like to recommend that you pretend you have never been to a message board before and then take a good look at ubbthreads.com's home page (iip)
Hitting this page truthfully confused me the first time I saw it.. There is no logical flow to it..Among other things, to use it as my home page I need a big "Welcome to my site! This is what we do... Click here to enter the forums and look around"
I guess I didn't think it was any worse than to walk into a *nuke site. An admin doesn't have to use all of IIP's boxes though. IIP 5.0's index page can be edited to include such a "welcome box". With 6.0's template layout I have placed a great BIG honking welcome box in the middle of the page... LoL of course since it's a template it's removeable or whatnot.
posted by webwolfe: As a first time visitor I have felt almost bombarded with with stats and information and polls and top posters from a whole web site I dont know even the basics about yet..
Again this is a matter of prefference. An admin doesn't have to use every IIP box on their index page.
posted by webwolfe: Clicking on any link on the pages puts everywhere but the Main Index.. Wouldnt the logical flow be from Entrance to Main Index to A Category or forum to a thread? IIP now throws you from Entrance to thread, leaving you to learn to navigate out or click back to return to the Entrance
Should this content have misleading links that all end up going directly to the main index or category list instead of what they actually are refering to? I guess I see no point in providing links to anything if they all go to the main index. Why not just have one big link centered on the page that says "click here" to simplify things?
posted by webwolfe: The link to the Main Index (I think) should be the biggest link on the page.. Newbies need direction, the other members know to look for the itty bitty "Main Index" link at the top of the page and/or they understand what all the stats/info on the index page mean, and they use your mod as it was intended.
This is completely controllable by the site's admin. They can edit the navigational templates and modify it to how want it to look. One could even wrap this link with the "standouttext" class so it's more visible yet controlable by the style sheets.
To sum things up as far as how I view IIP it's pretty simple. About 2 years ago I would have paid someone to write the things I'm creating now for my website then. Of course I couldn't afford to do that so I muddled through. Two years later I still can't afford to pay someone to do the things I'm creating for myself for my website but I am muddling through a little bit better so it's not that bad. I'm glad too that others are using this and providing feedback and helping find the errors and whatnot as it helps greatly. I do listen to suggestions and requests and try to work things in when possible but it's not always easily done. Some of the these more difficult requests require modifying .threads much more than I care to get into with for fear of how much explaining it will take when things don't work. At this point I think 5.0 needs very little modification to be done on .threads to work. Unfortunately the features of 6.0 will require more .threads modifying to work but I guess it should be expected. In the end I just hope this helps those that are at where I was 2 years ago start off not having to muddle as much as I did... LoL
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