Forum suggestions

[Petro CNC]

Its time to ask for some suggestions. Please let me know what you think here about the areas of the forums.

Upper navigation bar layout and links
Left navigation bar layout and links
Forum categories-Less/more/combined categories
Files/document sharing categories suggestions layout
Colors
Any external programs that you would like to add a newsfeed from the site.
Anything else that you would like to see?

I will take all suggestions into consideration. Some things are not possible or difficult to implement. I personally like more categories for better organization however from users standpoint they prefer to see posts and some recent posts within the topic to feel like they will be answered. So I often have to weigh in that factor which makes it difficult. At this point I am also considering combining all the CAD/CAM areas because of this. I'd appreciate any thoughts for this.

I would also like to know how you generally navigate the forums both New & frequent users. Anotherwords do you click Recent in Nav bar? Do you go to the main forums and click every item that is new from your last visit etc. I think this area needs some work, just not sure what would be best and implementable.

Future Scheduled implementations
1) I will be adding more color profiles at a later date once I have everything pretty much stable. Some modules do not play well with the forum color profiles.
2) Making it easy for you to add recent feeds to your My.yahoo pages, My.google pages etc. as a module to your favorite news feeds.

Thank you for your all you input, We and everyone here appreciates it.
Community Administrators

[vmachtech]

Hello.

New Here.

A couple of points.
1,when we navigate from the home page , I see 'forums' then another one called 'Forum' - its confusing which is what..... Generally i'd prefer just one titled Forum or Forums and you could find another title for the other....

2, I pick forums and go to that page . I randomly select what interests me .and a rude message tells me " Bo hooo there are no posts here yet !!" ( for the time frame I had selected) Ha HA. ..SO What we need to do here is to add a small bracket like Haas Mills & Lathes (6)

3, Yesterday While trying the download page I was finding that no dowload was happening after repeated attempts.. then I realised that I wasnt't logged in. a Small message maybe ' log in before download '..



I like the general feel of the site. Its bound to improve of course..

Good Luck

Mathen

[vmachtech]

I modify my point no 1. The second 'Forum' is a sub heading under 'Search'

But the Heading and Sub Heading demarkation is not very pronounced , I thought it was 4 different headers , Search, Forum, file download,etc. so you just need to mark out the sub headings more prominently.
MJM

[Petro CNC]

Thanks vmachtech,
Very good points. I had removed the numbers of the posts leading into the forums originally because it looked cleaner. But from a users stand point I agree with you especially since I added new forums which poses a problem and disappointment when a user goes into them and there are no posts. So I re-enabled that to be present in the forum.

Also a good point on the downloads section. I never really noticed that since I am so use to logging in. I will look into making that more pronounced on the page or a message to pop up.

I will also see what I can do to make the search links standout and combine the search results from the different software addon. So this would not be the case in the future.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[vmachtech]

Yes. That sure is more convenient to know where the action is.
thanks

Another thing I noticed in the 'Forums' page.

For example

The first heading is 'cnc machinist help & trouble shooting forums' and there are 9 headings under it ... ok.

Then the next column is 'last post' and under it it shows now 'Any body needs Haas cnc help ?' by Vmachtech.

And I'm thinking "Hey !! I didnt post that !! " ... before I realize that I just replied to it ... but on first look it appears that the post with that title is by Vmachtech....

Vmachtech

[Petro CNC]

Yea I see what you are saying but there is not much that I can do about that the software is made to show the most recent post to a topic.

[mx731]

Is there a way to make the handover prevue stay up longer? It is handy to read the beginning of the post with out clicking on it. It would be nice if I could read faster but at 34 yrs of age I’m still slower than the time aloud.......... Thank you so much for your hard work keeping this place up and running! It is a great tool

[Petro CNC]

I am sure this is easy, but there are no settings for it. I never used it before, but your right. I didn't make it through the whole text either. Will Check into it further and make the change.

Thanks for the help

[mx731]

hey thank you! Again this place is great!!

[BMathis]

I am a frequent user of a few other Forums.

There is a feature on one of them that allows you to view "Reply's to your Posts" - Similar to the subscribed thread feature, but it's a Link that takes you to all the Threads that people have replied to your posts, and only new replies are shown.

It's a handy tool IMO.

[Petro CNC]

Thanks Bmathis, Sounds like a good plugin to have. I do remember seeing it now that you mention it in other forums. I will see if I can find it and install. Thanks for the suggestion!

Thanks

[sinha_nsit]

E-mail notification

When I was new to the forum, I found that I was not getting e-mail notification for the threads I subscribed to. It took time before I realized that I have to select "instant e-mail notification". Even now, sometimes I miss doing this, because I want to "quick reply". This stops further discussion on that topic.
I would suggest to make "instant e-mail notification" the default choice. Presently, the default is "no e-mail notification".