Minor upgrade 5/9

[roddy]

9 hours ago, abcdefg said:

things that appear random, capricious, and unnecessary are actually essential because they are linked to less visible safety and security issues

And some of them are actually plain beneficial. I'd imagine when you're doing your food topics you've realised you can upload multiple photos at once, and even drag and drop them. Couldn't do that back in the day. The Fluid view option, which I didn't see a need for and only turned on to see what people thought, is proving useful for some members. The new reaction options might seem daft to you, fair enough. But the helpful button seems popular (35% of last 100 uses) so that should probably stay. 'thanks' and 'good question' get 4% and 6% so should maybe go. But then we have more answers than questions, so...

 

The (increasingly important) mobile version of the site is light-years ahead of what it was not so long ago. Etc, etc. 

 

There is a strong argument to be made for more simplicity in some areas - the editor is to my mind over-complicated. But I doubt you'd want to lose all those options for placing images in your text.

 

As far as the upgrade path goes, they're due an announcement shortly about version 4.3 (we're currently on 4.2.5, the really major upgrade was when we jumped from 3.4 to 4.1 at the start of the year). I'm not sure what 4.3 will involve, I'm fervently hoping for some search improvements and support for embedding of attached audio. It is unlikely to be very disruptive.

 

As explained up above, I'm looking at changing the way the front page works. Topic pages also need to do more to showcase our content - how that happens I don't know yet, but the sidebar is not necessarily dead. If that causes formatting issues for some posts, we'll fix the formatting issues.

 

Everything else I have in mind is more about how we use the site as it exists, rather than changing it at all. 

On 26/10/2017 at 9:01 AM, abcdefg said:

I really have no idea what you are trying to do, but I don't like it one bit.

Oh, I'm trying to start a techno-cult. Apparently ;-)

[roddy]

On 25/10/2017 at 3:53 PM, roddy said:

Hoping to spend some time on this next week - if there's anything you'd like / hate to see on a revamped home page, let me know.

Started a new topic for this as this one's a bit unfocussed. I see nobody's been bothered enough to start that new discussion about reaction icons 

[889]

[Test.]

[abcdefg]

Roddy,

Here's a new "mostly-photos" travel piece -- you can see how it works with the new home page design.

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/55348-a-minor-kunming-park-昙花寺公园/?tab=comments#comment-426579

 

 

[MTH123]

I was wondering about Like, Helpful, Good Question and Thanks and where it went. I get it now. I think it’s perfect for a newbie like me. I think the most important one is Helpful, because that’s what this website is about; and, it’s the best overt indicator of how much people find this website and specific posts to be helpful. I didn’t even think about the controversial heart being used for Like, because I was so busy drinking in all that this website has to offer. 

 

@Lu linked to this thread. I would never have been able to find it. And, I thought I was a pretty resourceful person with direct browsing of threads and with thinking up search terms to bring up other threads. Has any consideration been given to improving the search capabilities or starting a thread that helps people do better searches? It seems that there’s an incredible amount of information on this website that the average user is missing out on.

 

[889]

A Google search on this site is usually better, unless you're doing a search that needs a filter to narrow down the results.

[MTH123]

On 7/26/2022 at 12:25 AM, 889 said:

A Google search on this site is usually better, unless you're doing a search that needs a filter to narrow down the results.

 

Thanks! How do you do it? For example, do you put in something like the following?

 

like helpful good question thanks site:www.chinese-forums.com

 

[889]

Yes, though usually just "chinese-forums" and the search term works.