Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

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adafruit
 
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Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by adafruit »

We are thrilled to release our new forum updates. Better navigation, a lot of back end improvements, RSS feeds:
http://forums.adafruit.com/generate_fee ... s&global=1

...and flexible areas for us to do contests / promote great projects from Adafruit customers. We've spent a long time trying to make the Adafruit customer forums one of the best places to share information about our kits, electronics, open source hardware and each of journeys in to the world world of engineering.

So now is a good time to reiterate the "rules". They're not really rules, just a handy list of things you can expect when you participate here. Our goal is to support everyone from all skill levels to hang out here and have fun.

Adafruit, its customers and community of electronics enthusiasts want to encourage the kind of discussions that we all want. A positive, helpful tone that maximizes the sharing of information.

Posts and comments in the Adafruit forums should be:
  • Adding information, asking researched questions, sharing cool stuff or
    A well-reasoned critique / criticism

Comments and posts should not be:
  • Spam, attacks on people, projects, or
    Mean spirited, not courteous to others or the Adafruit team
That's it! Same "rules" as our comments on the blog. If you've been a "lurker" - the Adafruit forums are a safe place where you ask your questions and get help with your electronics project, come on down! We'll do our best to make your time here well spent. Please post any comments or suggestions, we're still tweaking some stuff too!

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ahdavidson
 
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Re: reskin

Post by ahdavidson »

Just some minor UI suggestions:
  1. Consider making the link on the "adafruit industries" logo in the upper left of the forum screen go to 'adafruit.com' instead of 'forums.adafruit.com' -- the image implies the home page of the main site, not just the forum portion of the site
  2. Currently the SUPPORT tab in the site navigation header is a broken link, which I imagine is just a temporary migration issue.
  3. I like that you added a CHAT tab to go directly to the forum, but why not call it FORUM instead?
  4. Currently, the CONTACT US tab links to the forum main page instead of contact info. Same issue as #2? ABOUT US link is broken also.
  5. I know it's been mentioned before, but RSS feeds for forum sections and topics would be oh so nice!
Thanks.

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ahdavidson
 
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Re: reskin

Post by ahdavidson »

Oh wait, I see that CHAT is actually a link to the Saturday night interactive fests.

Then I would suggest a FORUM button in the nav bar that goes right to the board index of the forums (forums.adafruit.com). It seems as if that would be one of the most common destinations.

Also, what happened to a modify/edit an existing post entry if you are the author? Wasn't that a feature in the old version?

adafruit
 
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Re: reskin

Post by adafruit »

edit is there now, we're fixing the top nav
there is rss for eveything, look around :)

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ahdavidson
 
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Re: Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by ahdavidson »

there is rss for eveything, look around
Ah, very nice! I didn't see it the first time. Thanks for that feature!

Is there a legend for the status icons to the left of each topic title? I couldn't find it anywhere. Although they are fairly self-evident, I think there are some useful distinctions it would be good to understand.

adafruit
 
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Re: Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by adafruit »

ahdavidson wrote:Is there a legend for the status icons to the left of each topic title? I couldn't find it anywhere. Although they are fairly self-evident, I think there are some useful distinctions it would be good to understand.
on mouse over it will say "new posts" or "no new posts".

cheers,
adafruit

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ahdavidson
 
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Re: Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by ahdavidson »

I know that. What I meant was that there quite a few different forms of the "new/no new" icons:
Image

I seem to recall seeing a help button on prior versions of the forum that had a legend for those icons.

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ahdavidson
 
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Re: Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by ahdavidson »

YaPHPBB?:

What happened to "subscribe to this topic" ?

Scenario is that you find a topic of interest, of which you want to track followup posts, however you come to this discovery. Now what? I used to subscribe to notifications and get emails. Now I will enjoy using RSS feeds to get notified.

I know I can go generate an RSS feed for just that topic, but that's about 6 steps, probably, by the time I add it to my feed reader. It would be nice if there were a single button to either add the feed or add an email notification for just this topic.

Or am I missing a good technique that everyone else in the universe employs to keep ourselves fully occupied reading all this educational and informative colloquy and never having enough time to make stuff?!?

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len17
 
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Re: Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by len17 »

ahdavidson wrote:What happened to "subscribe to this topic" ?
It got moved to the very bottom of the page, below some non-topic-related stuff, where it's hard to notice.

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ahdavidson
 
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Re: Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by ahdavidson »

Oh. Ugh. In the page footer, along with meta stuff?! Non-intuitive UI design, IMHO.

Thanks for the pointer.

adafruit
 
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Re: Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by adafruit »

ahdavidson wrote:Oh. Ugh. In the page footer, along with meta stuff?! Non-intuitive UI design, IMHO. Thanks for the pointer.
ahdavidson, we have updated this - check it out :)

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ahdavidson
 
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Re: Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by ahdavidson »

Very nice, thanks!

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chankster
 
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Re: Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by chankster »

Would be nice if we could upload .brd and .sch files. Also one nitpicky thing, when making a post I think the submit button should go in the middle with the preview button unbolded on the right.

adafruit
 
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Re: Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by adafruit »

there is now a top level navigation item called "forums" on every page on the adafruit site so you're only one click away from being in the forums.

adafruit
 
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Re: Adafruit forum updates, new look & feel and new features

Post by adafruit »

Chankster wrote:Would be nice if we could upload .brd and .sch files.
you can now upload .brd and .sch files :)

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