Major change for forum categories / areas

[Snake Man]

With the new phpbb3 upgrade, we are finally capable to configure PMC Tactical forums to suit our needs.

Basically our forums expand into four different categories now, they are Armed Assault (ArmA), Armed Assault 2 (ArmA 2), Falcon 4 and Operation Flashpoint (OFP). Then we of course have the one basic PMC Tactical area which in fact you are reading right now.

Its mostly the case that Falcon 4 users aren't interested in ArmA discussion and ArmA users aren't interested in Falcon 4 discussions, so we should keep the forum as clean as possible that people only see what they want to see. This can be done by separating the main index page into categories by the game titles.

I'm planning on making these main categories to the forum so only these are visible when you first enter our forums:

PMC Tactical
Armed Assault (ArmA)
Armed Assault 2 (ArmA 2)
Falcon 4
Operation Flashpoint (OFP)

When user comes to the forum, this above list is only thing he sees. Now the user clicks the name of the game they want to read forum posts about. Then the areas in my plan would go as following:

PMC Tactical
- PMC Tactical News

Armed Assault (ArmA)
- ArmA Editing
- ArmA General (this was previous "ArmA News" area)
-- ArmA Missions (this was previous the PMC Campaigns area) (category)
--- PMC First Fight
-- ArmA Modifications (category)
--- Vietnam: The Experience (ArmA)

Armed Assault 2 (ArmA 2)
- ArmA 2 Editing
- ArmA 2 General (this was previous "ArmA 2 News" area)
-- ArmA 2 Missions (category)
--- PMC something
-- ArmA 2 Modifications (category)
--- Vietnam: The Experience (ArmA 2)

Falcon 4
- Falcon 4 General
-- Falcon 4 Editing (category)
--- Campaign
--- Terrain
--- Theater Tools
-- Falcon 4 PMC Theaters (category)
--- Afghanistan
--- Europe
--- Georgia
--- Iran
--- Kurile
--- Nevada
--- Operation Desert Storm
--- Taiwan
--- Vietnam
-- Falcon 4 Other Theaters (category)
--- Balkans
--- Falklands
--- Iceland
--- Israel
--- Korea
--- Panama

Operation Flashpoint (OFP)
- OFP General
-- OFP Editing (category)
--- WrpTool
-- OFP Missions (category)
--- PMC Baltic Command
--- PMC Dynamic CE
--- PMC Fury
--- PMC Hero's Path
--- PMC Joint Justice
--- PMC Ranger Path
-- OFP Modifications (category)
--- Vietnam: The Experience (OFP)

The above category and forum area list is the proposal I have at the moment, it can and most likely will change before I'm satisfied with it.

The good in this configuration would be that if you are only interested in lets say Falcon 4, you only click the "Falcon 4" category and that's all you need, there will be no ArmA/OFP topics shown in the forum then for you.

Of course, if you use view new topics or view active topics, those still would list all the category's so you cannot hide from them completely. Also search by default searches all categories and areas in the forum, unless you specifically only choose where you want it to search.

Anyways.

If anyone has any feedback or suggestions I'm interested to hear, this is sort of major change in the forums and definitely I want to know if someone has something to say about it. Who knows maybe I'm missing completely something obvious and I'm about to make a big mistake, so please let me know how this new configuration looks.

I'm planning on making this change once I'm completely comfortable with the categories and forum area names... this would most likely take few days I guess.

Just to make it clear; absolutely no posts will be deleted, everything is safe when this configuration change takes place, not to worry.

[Snake Man]

7 people have viewed this topic, haha

Anyways.

I'm giving a one day warning... if anything doesn't come up in my personal life (so I get busy) or this proposed list wont somehow change... I'll try to get the changes done next Sunday Dec 14th. This means that the forum will be closed, I'm not sure how phpbb3 runs so its better to close the forum when I make the changes as there is a lot of shuffling around areas and categories.

So... if next Sunday you login here and forum is closed for maintenance, don't panic, its just me changing the forum configuration.

[Snake Man]

Sunday is getting closer to its end, I'm not prepared to do the forum configuration change now. I'll get back on this topic when the time comes...

[Snake Man]

Initial work has been done, forums are reconfigured!

I'm scared that I made some mistakes, but so far my own tests are showing no problems. I'll be monitoring and hanging around the forums actively tonight and tomorrow to weed out any problems. Also I'll be tweaking all cosmetic things and so on.

If anyone feels strongly about some forum area name selections, or anything else,feel free to post message to this topic. I'm willing to hear all feedback about the new setup.

For example, is it OK to have all the sub forums visible on the index page, or is it too much clutter? In one way I like it as now ALL forum areas are accessible from index page, they just take minimum amount of space on the screen.

[ccc]

f4 theater forum Georgia and Kurile , now both need "permission to view".

[Snake Man]

Ouch, OK now permissions are fixed. Thanks for letting me know.

[ccc]

georgia and kurile, the two forum keep showing red icon " have new post " label.

[Snake Man]

Well is there new posts?

What happens when mark all posts as read?

[ccc]

thanx, i try mark all read , and it turns blue.

[Snake Man]

Now that the new areas have been in use for more than a week, how does everyone feel about them?

I'm at least very happy, its very cool to log into the index page as you can see ALL the areas in ONE page (previously you saw all the areas in long page that you had to scroll down like crazy) and you can even click into the specific area/subforum directly where you see new posts (red icon) to be. I really like this setup now.