Improvements to the site - layout, design etc.

[brenden]

I'd never tag pi. He is scary. Have you seen him irl? He'll cut a motherfucker.

[Kanon]

I've also found the notes page a bit hard to navigate, I think the main problem I have with it is that it overcomplicates a lot of things.
If I had to redesign the notes side It'd look like this (sorry for bad wire framing)



Wire Frame Perspective:

- Note Search appears first and is 'fixed' to left hand column. The user is greeted with instructions in the middle tab about how to search, the rules regarding notes, and optional link to submissions page.
- So when I click Methods a jquery accordian appears giving the four topics of Methods. I think click Functions and the middle tab that had info on notes should jquery load/ajax load into a list of Mathematical Methods - Functions notes. There's some stuff missing here, but it's mainly the wire framing I'm trying to get a cross.
- Let's say I want to pick Exponential Functions by Eniwabe, i click the heading (which will obvs be a hyperlink) in which either a new page opens up, a lightbox type of deal, or it ajax/jquery loads into the third box. Upto you
- One thing that I found difficult was seperating the crappy notes from the good ones, using PHP GD you should be able to generate an image of a page (pref the middle page) to give users an insight of the type of content the notes provide without having to download.
- not a fixed height for the container, can expand downwards but the Notes Search will be fixed

Notes Perspective:
- Instead of categorizing by units 1/2 and 3/4 (which is better, but there aren't enough notes for each section to justify it having its own category) instead consider categorising by topics. This is no-way near perfect and for subjects like English, breaking it down to Context, Language Analysis and Text Response and then encouraging users to place the title of their text within the notes name would be nice. A subject like Methods where most notes are a combination of more than one topics are going to be a bit messy, but you could just as easily add another topic "Others" (trying to think of a good name for this)
- Keeping a count of the number of notes made ready for each subject would be nice, but is not essential.
- Within the Preview panel/lightbox you could include comments/ratings, but imo, ratings tend to be destructive to the community and not really accurate. Comments are good though for relevancy.
- There's a lot of trust on users properly using the submission feature into the right category and all of that jazz, it might be essential that mods for that subject need to double check every other note upload to make sure its all proper

Web Design Perspective
- so i do web designs stuff on the side a a hobby and a job but by no means does this mean that all my opinions are fact
- using jquery tends to be a large part of modern web design, minimising pages that need to be loaded aswell as fancy effects are pretty much crucial to keeping users attention
- maybe even consider re-vamping the entire site, as far as i can tell (based off your source code) you're not running any content managing systems like wordpress or joomla, so maybe having a look into responsive design like bootstrap might help? There are some beautiful examples if you just google bootstrap themes. It shouldn't be too hard to integrate.
- A big thing atm is responsive design, so design that is responsive to the users device. ATM the current page isn't responsive and is much more static coded than anything, so if you were to open ATARNotes on a phone it would look the same as it does on a desktop just really squished.  If you open http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com.au/ and start to slowly resize your screen to a much smaller size you'll see what it looks like on a mobile.
- + maybe rename forum to community? Not a whole lot of people have experienced massive forum names and all that
- VBulletin maybeee?

If you guys ever need any help, I'm always happy to help Sorry for bad english aswell haha, graduate VCE nekminnit no england skills

[ninwa]

These ideas are awesome! Keep them coming!

Re: tagging - I think it's a great idea, but I also appreciate concerns that it may be abused. What do you think of an opt-out system - you can indicate in your profile if you do not wish to be tagged?

[Lasercookie]

These ideas are awesome! Keep them coming!

Re: tagging - I think it's a great idea, but I also appreciate concerns that it may be abused. What do you think of an opt-out system - you can indicate in your profile if you do not wish to be tagged?

Yeah opt-out (from being tagged in specific boards too, that'd probably be more work but :3) would solve the issue of users being spammed. The tags not being publicly viewable (i.e. each person gets the notification personally, rather than it being apart of the post) I also think would solve the issue of ruining the atmosphere that absolutely anyone can feel free to post. I think that takes care of the two reasons why I thought the tag system was a bad idea.

If we're throwing in more suggestions, the stuff that charmanderp said about the new replies page being a bit unwieldy - being able to sort posts in there by board etc. would be handy. Also the ability to remove a thread from appearing in the new replies page.

[pi]

Opt-out would be excellent

[ninwa]

- maybe even consider re-vamping the entire site, as far as i can tell (based off your source code) you're not running any content managing systems like wordpress or joomla, so maybe having a look into responsive design like bootstrap might help? There are some beautiful examples if you just google bootstrap themes. It shouldn't be too hard to integrate.

We're definitely considering revamping the whole thing because to be perfectly honest, the forum looks hideous ha.

Thanks for the offer of help! Might just take you up on it later

[charmanderp]

If we're throwing in more suggestions, the stuff that charmanderp said about the new replies page being a bit unwieldy - being able to sort posts in there by board etc. would be handy. Also the ability to remove a thread from appearing in the new replies page.

And if not tagging, maybe a specific section for threads where you've been quoted? Or it could link you to the very first post after your last reply? Just things I've seen on other forums which are very handy.

[silverpixeli]

With the tagging thing, is it possible to have it so that only people on your buddy list can tag you? We already have a 'buddy' thing, though I'm not 100% sure how it works/what it does, but this way you can choose who can tag you

- mods can all add each other if they haven't already and that way they can tag mods in posts where their help would be beneficial
- random users can't tag mods unless the mods add them as a buddy, no spam tagging mods for help
- users like me can tag my friends because all the people from my school buddy up, that means I can tag my mates in a post about a question we both come up with at school or a problem we run into while revising together, or something similar

just an idea, AN is really the only forum I use so it's not like I've seen this work somewhere else or anything, just read the discussion above and yeah

possible flaw is that it's similar to having a friends list, and people might feel excluded if nobody buddies them or whatever, idk if AN needs that, I think it's good right now that everyone has the same level of connection to every other account

EDIT: I like the idea of tags not being publicly viewable, too

[grannysmith]

I'd never tag pi. He is scary. Have you seen him irl? He'll cut a motherfucker.

HAHAHA. And no, I've seen him and he's cool.

[grannysmith]

It seems as if many things on AN is "hidden".

[charmanderp]

HAHAHA. And no, I've seen him and he's cool.

Ok, @pi's second account.

Great development on the tagging idea guys and girls! So many things that I hadn't even thought of!

[datfatcat]

I honestly think there are too many boards on the forum front page.  Scrolling down to find the boards that you want to go to can be time consuming.  Maybe users can have the option to recorder the boards (or even hide them themselves without admin's involvement?).

Like if I don't want to buy or sell books, I can have the option to hide the board or put it to the bottom of the page.

[ninwa]

you can already do that!

[abeybaby]

i know we've discussed it before, but i really liked having +/- votes on all boards. maybe we can bring them back, but only votes on non-opinion boards count towards respect? because atm, the only way to agree or disagree with someone's sentiment/argument is to have a whole other post, and its pretty unnecessary imo.

[JellyDonut]

Need more banners telling me I won something.

I love winning