Thoughts on Layout, Sections, Etc?

[BLUEVOODU]

Open to ideas... what are your thoughts for layout, sections, topics, etc?

What would you like to see?

At this point... I'm not married to this forum system either.   It's very solid, but I'm also exploring some other options.  I may post links to test forums and cms systems... just for the heck of it so we can try them out.  My only requirement is they are still being updated.

[mastermario]

My thoughts are that this looks like EGA2 haha. I like some of the newer messages boards that have galleries and ways to tag people in posts like @SpartanEvolved.

Check out something like https://www.pioneer2.net/community/ (throwback to our PSO days). It's got a lot of neat features. Looks like it's developed by XenForo.

[BLUEVOODU]

Definitely not EGA2... just same stock Forum.  If you remember... I developed the custom layout... but had to upgrade the forums and lost everything.   I couldn't get past some of the mods and custom coding to upgrade the forums.


I checked out Xenforo... they are cool, but unfortunately is a pay service.  Anything else like it but free?  We can look into those.

SMF is still one of the highest rated forums.... that's why I went with this forum 1st. 

[BLUEVOODU]

MM. I researched a crap ton of forums last night... free ones. I didn't see any with those features.   The @spartan tags of xenforo... do they just notify the user on the forum?

I looked into the galleries as well. There are some for smf. But it depends on the purpose and scope

Thoughts?

[BLUEVOODU]

I confirmed this will be a feature in 2.1  - that is... tagging with the @ and username.

When will 2.1 be released?  Not 100% sure yet.

there is a 2.1 beta 3 version. I will install that in a different folder and database so we can check it out and not mess this one up.

[SpartanEvolved]

Chemical theme... two thumbs down.

[BLUEVOODU]

Lol... OK. I will delete this one and try some others

[SpartanEvolved]

Can't you post up available themes and we could give feedback?

[BLUEVOODU]

Can't you post up available themes and we could give feedback?

they are available at simplemachines.org.  You can check there if you wish. Modifications, Themes... just make sure to look at 2.0.15 themes.  there is a search selection for that.

I cannot show you all the different ones here.

[targetrasp]

I saw the sections for AIM, ICQ, etc. were still there. Do any of these still exist? I'm pretty sure AIM died 15 years ago but was officially put to pasture just before Christmas last year. Skype, Kik, Facebook, I'm sure there's more frequented messenger services available.

personally I'd love to see a resurgence of some old school IM

[BLUEVOODU]

I saw the sections for AIM, ICQ, etc. were still there. Do any of these still exist? I'm pretty sure AIM died 15 years ago but was officially put to pasture just before Christmas last year. Skype, Kik, Facebook, I'm sure there's more frequented messenger services available.

personally I'd love to see a resurgence of some old school IM

Welcome target! Glad to have you back 
Good suggestions!   ICQ is coming back... I saw something on this. If I can find the article, I'll post it. ICQ was always pretty cool.

As for the others... not sure if they still exist but we will change some of the profile fields and add other ones soon. Definitely need to clean some stuff up with those.


Forum wise... the goal this time is to push to keep activity up and not just centered around if I'm here or not... a self surviving community so-to-speak. I know things took a hit when I had to concentrate on other life stuff. I'd like to avoid that this time and make it self serving and surviving.  This board isn't centered around a retail store now... so it's more of a fun side project. Not EGA2 as Mario says lol. 

Categories and boards.. they are all up in the air and able to be molded. If you guys would like to see something for discussion, have a better idea for organization, or feel there should be changes... we will look into it and do changes that make sense. So feel free to post up those ideas as well.

[BLUEVOODU]

So far... any suggestions for categories and or boards?

[BLUEVOODU]

So you guys don't want to see any thing else?  OR prefer to see different categories, boards, or organization?

[retro junkie]

If it is okay to do retro gaming in any of the categories listed, I'm okay. 

[BLUEVOODU]

What do you think?  Should we create retro gaming board?

I could put it in the consoles category.  Do you like the layout so far?  Like I mentioned, everything is moldable right now.

[retro junkie]

Might need a retro place. I was just thinking this morning while playing my Genesis, really no appropriate place. Things like Neo Geo CD, Sega consoles, etc might need a hole somewhere.

[BLUEVOODU]

There you go!  Added to the console and handheld section.

[targetrasp]

There's so much I really liked about EGA so it's difficult not to recommend beloved sections... We really need something additional that's different but as good...

[BLUEVOODU]

Yeah... we definitely need to figure out some different but good.  Im trying to come up with some ideas. That's why I have it open right now and accepting all suggestions. 

If you have ideas that you would like to see, throw them out.

Hopefully we can get some others to chime in on it too

[targetrasp]

CGD game night? Themed game night(s) maybe? Incorporate twitch or youtube somehow? I'm sure it'd be like herding cats but if we had some sort of community outside of the occasional forum posting it'd have to be easier to develop a following.

It'd be awesome to play something like Monopoly Gamer Edition through the forum somehow. It'd be super simple to code the dice rolls and keep up with players banks in something like VB but the property would be tricky and i'd have no idea how to incorporate that in a forum... but heck, people used to play chess via snail mail, surely a next level fun and games section where there was some sort of ongoing game outside of the normal forum fare would be awesome.

Whatever we do i'd like to see us take the forum out of the internet stone age and make it relevant again.

[BLUEVOODU]

CGD Game Night sounds like a good forum to start.

There is a mod for incorporating videos from other sites... I can look into installing that.   Once SMF 2.1 becomes a release Candidate... we will upgrade.  this will give us some of the features MasterMario is looking for... IE calling out members using @mastermario.  It's currently a mod for our version, but hasn't been updated in a year.  I could try to install it to see if it successfully installed.  I'm still looking into a gallery concept - though trying to understand what about the xenforo gallery is appealing - or how to implement something like that here.

Forum Games - we used to do that, it was popular, and it fell off... but definitely would look into it again.  Man... Flash games really fell off the face of the Earth lol.  Those used to be the rage.

We have a Discord and steam group now... it would be cool to start centering some stuff around those - per your idea.  So there's opportunity for both for posting outside.  Definitely will look to expand these offerings.  Discord link is in the PUBG section:
https://www.chickendinnergaming.com/forum/index.php?topic=7.0

Last - Is the forum really stone age / outdated?    See... I get where social media went and how sites are created now.  Lack of focus and most content centered on "right now" in a  top to bottom vertical fashion (in comments for the event).   Where all comments are centered around each event... but not so much a community.  It has become about the "me."     But maybe we need to look at structuring a certain way. 

I know this community will start small and slow.  Purposefully... I haven't done a lot of SEO or publishing - yet.   I've invited several old members.  I see a few came back.    If anyone wants to invite people - I say do it and get more people here.

[BLUEVOODU]

Another thought on these... if you liked something from EGA - or had some topics from EGA you'd like to start here... that's ok.  I'm just saying this is not a new EGA.  This a different idea and direction.

Please keep coming with the thoughts on boards / layouts / sections you would like to see.

[CreepinDeth]

Gaming Deals could have sub categories for PC and Console? Might help the section stay neat and help people know whether the deal is for them or not.

[Kinikko]

Shameless self advertising section?  >.>  <.<   Lol. 

Mainly because I'm trying to get my twitch stuff going and it's verrrrrry slow going and would love for other people to see it.

[BLUEVOODU]

Gaming Deals could have sub categories for PC and Console? Might help the section stay neat and help people know whether the deal is for them or not.

HM... good idea - let me think on that one... what do you think of creating a new category called "The Gaming Market"... and move the gaming deals, pcdeals... and maybe creating a buy, sell, and trade boards on our boards.  The buy/sell/trade portion are thoughts at this time... not sure I want to invite that here yet or not.  There's some ugly stuff that can come from it.  There's a pretty cool upside to it as well.  Thoughts?

• Everyone Else... feel free to chime in on this one as well

Shameless self advertising section?  >.>  <.<   Lol. 

Mainly because I'm trying to get my twitch stuff going and it's verrrrrry slow going and would love for other people to see it.

LOL... So... to show off streaming and other people's channels and what-not?   cool idea... maybe we can figure out a way to integrate something like this for everyone.   Let's try to get ideas rolling on this one.

[Kinikko]

Gaming Deals could have sub categories for PC and Console? Might help the section stay neat and help people know whether the deal is for them or not.

HM... good idea - let me think on that one... what do you think of creating a new category called "The Gaming Market"... and move the gaming deals, pcdeals... and maybe creating a buy, sell, and trade boards on our boards.  The buy/sell/trade portion are thoughts at this time... not sure I want to invite that here yet or not.  There's some ugly stuff that can come from it.  There's a pretty cool upside to it as well.  Thoughts?

• Everyone Else... feel free to chime in on this one as well

Yeah that stuff can get pretty ugly.  Is there a way to like put a post limit on posting in a forum?  Maybe we could do it but like require 30 or 50 posts in order to participate or something idk.

Shameless self advertising section?  >.>  <.<   Lol. 

Mainly because I'm trying to get my twitch stuff going and it's verrrrrry slow going and would love for other people to see it.

LOL... So... to show off streaming and other people's channels and what-not?   cool idea... maybe we can figure out a way to integrate something like this for everyone.   Let's try to get ideas rolling on this one.

Kinda the same idea with this too, cause just a bunch of random people coming in and advertising their crap and leaving sounds messy.

[targetrasp]

right click and select read aloud.. go ahead I'll wait........

isn't that the single most useless cool feature one could imagine?

[CreepinDeth]

Gaming Deals could have sub categories for PC and Console? Might help the section stay neat and help people know whether the deal is for them or not.

HM... good idea - let me think on that one... what do you think of creating a new category called "The Gaming Market"... and move the gaming deals, pcdeals... and maybe creating a buy, sell, and trade boards on our boards.  The buy/sell/trade portion are thoughts at this time... not sure I want to invite that here yet or not.  There's some ugly stuff that can come from it.  There's a pretty cool upside to it as well.  Thoughts?

A buy/sell forum probably wouldn't be something that would be utilized these days. Games are mainly digital now so I don't know if it would be a popular board. Plus, all the other responsibilities that come with it. I would say that one can be skipped.

But you could probably break up the deals section with console, PC and movie/media deals.

[BLUEVOODU]

well... it probably wouldn't be for all Current Gen and future stuff... but it would / could be utilized for Old school Retro games.   But I do agree some ugliness can come with it.  So we can shelve the buy/sell for now and revisit sometime in the future.

So would everyone suggest creating a new category called "The Market" and have 3 boards:
1.) Console / handheld Deals
2.)  PC Hardware and Games Deals
3.)  Movie / Media Deals

Is that what you are thinking?   I'm sort of leaning to merging Movie / Media deals in with Console / handheld ... What media exactly?   Hm... might need to brain storm a bit more on this.  Good suggestions... thinking of how to implement right.

What does everyone else think?

[retro junkie]

Is there a way to put something up so that we could put a like on someones post? I have seen that feature in some forums.