My random thoughts.
Originally Posted by
Baloki ^ As for integration ideas, this is some I have off the top of my head:
* Allow forum polls to be posted to the front site, and registered members can vote via there.
I'm a bit sceptical as to how many people would actually register just so they can vote on polls on the frontsite. This would make no difference to forum-users, though. One bonus of this might be that it makes frontsite browsers more aware of the forums, though.
* Fan Art Gallery thumbnails appear on each sections "intro page".
I've been pushing for the FanArt Gallery to go live on the frontsite before and I think it is one of the biggest needs of the frontsite at the moment. I think the integration between frontsite and FanArt should be relatively simple as it is, although I could be wrong. But yeah, we actually bought this software purely for the reason of integrating it into the frontsite. It just never really happened because we were waiting for more people to get into it. We need to more actively encourage people to submit content into the FanArt gallery so that it will appear on the frontsite... even works that are years old will still be great.
* The ability to post a new thread about a particular game from any particular front site page via a link.
I can see that this would be useful. Maybe you could even have a sort of 'tracker' where it shows all your threads in that forum.
* Most popular threads on a subject as well as most recent are displayed.
I don't really see the point in this one. These threads would likely never change and it would encourage bumping of old threads. In fact, most of the threads would be closed, anyway.
* Peoples usernames, avatars and new PM amounts showed on every page if logged in.
This isn't so much a reason to integrate as much as it is just something we could do if we were already integrated. I don't see any massive advantage with this. Of course, if everything else was done then it couldn't hurt. It would logically replace the login area, much like it does on the forums, I assume.
* Forum announcements appear on front page news and front page news appears in forum announcements.
News announcements should never appear in the forum announcements area because there can be so many of them and we (more often than not) prefer forum announcements to stay visible for some time, whereas the site staff won't want to delay news by a week to fit in with that. I can see the advantage of forum announcements tying into the frontsite, though, as it wouldn't be a common disruption. We'd have to be careful with our wording in forum announcements in the future if we did this, though.
* More RSS features, maybe a last updated system which shows the latest pages updated, latest forum posts, etc.
Latest forum posts as RSS would require an extremely constant updating and nobody would want that on RSS. Maybe latest threads in a single forum could be done via RSS. I've always pushed for forum announcements to be done via RSS at vBulletin, maybe in vB3.7.0 they'll have done this. Maybe not.
* Chat stats be shown in a page that looks like the EoFF style.
This should be doable, although personally I think an even better thing would be complete integration of chat into the forums/site, so that the one login is used for all things. I know this is doable on some level, but I don't know if it would go down extremely well with everybody and would require a much tighter level of moderation in the chatroom.
* (Mullets idea
Front page style matches forum style (a lot simpler then it sounds to impliment).
This would be okay, I suppose. I don't see how forum integration to the frontsite would be effective without it, actually.
* A link on the menu to the feedback forum, also maybe a page showing feedback given for the front site and how it has been achived.
achived? archived? acheived? I'm not sure. I don't think there would be any huge benefit out of this though, as I think that most of the stuff in the feedback forum is relatively irrelevant to those that browse the site. However, with that said, I think that the site volunteers forum wouldn't do too badly if directly connected to the frontsite.
* We get round to replacing the guestbook.
Eh. It would just become some kind of spamhouse for the EoFF regulars, I'm somewhat certain of this.
* The java chat page gets put on a front page styled page rather then a forum styled page.
I'm sure that's doable without any integration. I'm not sure why this is in here as it's nothing to do with the forums, but rather just down to the fact that the site staff never recoded the chat page.
* Alther the menu so it's easy to navigate.
Again, nothing to do with the forums. I think this is something that can be done at any time by the site staff if they are willing and have the time.
* Include links on the forum to relivant front page sections.
This could be good.
04-25-2008, 10:46 AM
