
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [Killietalk] Last Post



First, I'd like to say that I gratified by the friendlier tone of this conversation in the last couple of days. It may seem paradoxical for me to be discussing the forums here, but I know that some of you haven't tried the forums yet and I am willing to offer any help and advice that I can to assist you. With that, let me make a couple of points in response to some of the comments that have been made.

1. Latest posts - there are two aspects to this. Posts can be sorted in various ways, but the default is latest posts first (i.e. at the top) so if you go to the AKA site and select a partaicular forum you'll see the latest. in that forum. Perhaps even better, on the forum home page (currently also the AKA site's home page) you'll see a drop-down menu headed Main Options. Click on that and one of the options is View New Posts. Choose that and you see a screen with the latest posts. You can also choose to view unread posts. In both cases the new/unread posts appear in a list regardless of which forum they were posted to.

2. Forum topics - at the moment I have set up a limited number of forum topics. We can create an unlimited number of forums but the disadvantage of having too many is fragmenting the posts too much. The main forum, which I expect will be the most used, is General Kllie Discussion. That can be used for any subject to do with killies. I have set up specific forums for Beginner questions and for Foods & Feeding, Disease Issues and Fishroom Issues. These seem to me to be areas where it might be helpful to separate the subject matter out. In addition, I have set up specific forums for Show Results and Collectors' Reports. The last, I hope, might eventually become a good reference for collection codes if we can encourage collectors, internationally, to enter a report on their trips. Finally, on the topic of discussion areas, AKA members can discuss policy issues in the appropriate member only forum.

I am, of course, willing to listen to suggestions on additional forums to add - should we have genus specific forums? I can't imagine one for every genus. However, we could have Soil Spawners or South American Killies, and so on. I think we should play this by ear as we see what kinds of areas users would like to create. At present, for example, I have been asked to create one for Lonely Hearts. As that's sort of a unique area, it might be a good idea.

3. Page layout - One valid concern that I did not recognize is a consequence of the size and resolution of the computer screen being used by the user. I have a large, wide screen, monitor and did not immediately recognize a potential problem with the default theme. That is, if you use a small monitor, the center panel, with the forum information ,could be uncomfortably narrow. Also, if you use a window narrower than about 12", the side panel (containing the diver) will overlap the right menu column (which contains the mini-cal and latest news blocks, etc.). That side area is purely decorative. I liked the flashlight metaphor for killie keepers but I admit the diver isn't quite right for an aquarium theme (unless it's one of those giant Dutch aquariums). That theme is a modification of one that brings to mind the ocean). Anyway, I am working to see if I can eliminate that decorative side area without screwing up the rest of the layout of the site. In the meantime, you can choose a different theme from those shown in the right menu panel. You can use aka-traditional, which closely resembles that of the old AKA site, or "default", which is basically a black on white theme. I am looking at several other themes and intend to add one or two more (possibly replacing default with a more attractive black on white or black on light gray). The latter may be helpful to those that have problems reading white on blue. The point is to offer some alternatives to make viewers on all sorts of systems as comfortable as possible.

4. Notifications - Another question that has been asked concerns directing notifications to particular email addresses. At the moment, you can choose to have notifications sent as PMs (Personal Messages) or email. For PMs you have to go to the AKA site to see them, which I don't think is what most users want. So, in the Notifications panel at the bottom of the page make sure your notification method is email. There is a "Change" link that allows you to change it if it says PM. Now, to answer the question above, email notifications are sent to the email address shown in your profile. You can change that to one at which you wish to receive these notifications by clicking on Manage Profile at the top of the page.

5. "Friendliness" - One thing that frustrates me a little are comments along the lines of "I don't like forums - too unfriendly". Such comments are not very helpful in that they don't give me any hints as to what the user doesn't like. The forums module used on the AKA site has the same functionality as virtually all other forums software. The layout may be a little different but every forums package is somewhat different in appearance. Frankly, to paraphrase PT. Barnum, you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can't please all of the people all of the time. These forums will become more friendly with familiarity. It would please me greatly if you all would give them a fair trial. If you have suggestions to improve them, please tell me. I will at least try to respond to them. Although I cannot modify the underlying software I can make some changes to the layout.

Just to be specific for a moment, the forums module that we are using is the standard for the Content Management System for the AKA site. There are reasons for using it. It is well integrated into the CMS, it uses the CMS's database and, perhaps most importantly, when you are logged into the AKA site you are logged onto the forums (as well as other modules). A separate forums installation would require its own unique login name and password, an unnecessary inconvenience. Remember that with the new AKA site you can use the Remember Me function (on your home computer) when you first log in. After that, you will automatically be logged in when you return to the site (unless you deliberately log out).

To close, I would like to repeat my plea - please give this a try. I think you'll quickly become used to it. If any of you need specific help, please let me know by private email (or PM on the AKA site).

Barry

--
Barry J. Cooper
Sweet Home, OR 97386

Join the AKA at http://www.aka.org/aka/modules/content/index.php?id=9.
Archives are at http://sable.actwin.com/pipermail/killietalk/
Modify your subscription at http://mailman.actwin.com/mailman/listinfo/killietalk
http://fins.actwin.com/killietalk/month.200908/msg00237.html
fins.actwin.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2013-20
12925
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:LNHAUMN6HEEBY46G4VKCILSFRDLDXBJK
<urn:uuid:21ba501b-193b-4b57-a60a-f5aa7f8ff450>
2013-06-19T02:12:56Z
72.5.31.97
sha1:F5D2S5UUO3MLAMJKXWTWHLHQ7QX4H7PA
<urn:uuid:a9e29cac-8b3a-43f3-9082-f26f081c8adf>
http://fins.actwin.com/killietalk/month.200908/msg00237.html
response
<urn:uuid:6790ec9a-9c78-450d-8a2f-2d8746f56e94>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2013-20
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for Spring 2013
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf