help help help please

STEVE BURNS

Club Member
There has now been a Xenforo test core web site been made that has at the moment had a lot of the bare basic stuff transferred over including almost all of the forum posts and threads in the separate categories that the posts where in on this site

What I need some serious input into what existing categories should be amalgamated together maybe with sub categories to streamline the initial viewing of the form and make it a lot easier to find the relevant previous information you want to read
Please take a little bit of your time to assist your club to attempt to make the forum an easy and friendly place to visit
 

zNathan

Well-Known Forum User
I think the 'Tuning & Upgrades' sub-category within the 'Technical' category should be gotten rid of or worked on.

There are a lot of threads that would be classed as tuning & upgrades that are in the Engine, Suspension etc. sub-categories.

I think this could be done by either:

Moving the threads from the Tuning sub-category into the relevant sub-categories above as there are already threads that could be classed as 'Tuning/Upgrades' within the other Technical sub-categories.

Or, you could move all the threads that would be classed as Tuning/Upgrades i.e. non-standard for the model in question into the Tuning/Upgrades sub-category. If somebody was then trying to search for standard specifications on their car, the Engine etc... sub-categories would be more reliable for that.




I also think on the 'Forum' drop-down, 'New Posts' & 'Today's Posts' could be turned into one - I'd just get rid of 'today's posts'
 

jonbills

Membership Secretary
Site Administrator
Imho, categories are pointless. Does anyone actually only read certain categories? Does anyone search for things by category?
What do they do for us?
Put it all in one single category.
 

SeanDezart

Well-Known Forum User
And then people don't places things in the correct categories anyway....

You're a weel webel Jon.
 

yellowz

Club Member
My company is moving over to a system very similar to the one jonbills describes. All the content just goes into one place. Everyone gets to eyeball all content. If it is a modern website the search tools should be really powerful and allow searches to pick up almost anything, by user and/or keyword/s.
It has been a hard concept for a lot of us to accept ' wot no folders or categories', but it is settling in. People can add tags to content but that is user choice and not mandatory.
There is still a private component to it but we would not need that as none of our content is 'commercially classified'.
 

Jake RAH

Well-Known Forum User
As far as the forum section goes I think having a well placed powerful site forum search engine along with filtered (top to bottom/ most popular to least) & tagged posts could work well. Windows showing (clickable/selectable) most commonly used tags, words or terms and also a window showing most common search terms. Posting pics or video needs to work properly.
As far as the overall site goes move the F1 items and calendar out the way and make some space for pics and tags for the latest things of interest be that posts, events, a freshly rebuilt car, new members, latest items for sale & whatever. We could still control who(members/non members) gets to see the details of these 'tags'. Add some kind of voice chat such as Teamspeak, Ventrilo, Discord. Sort out all those dead links. Add the old club mags to the site, yeah I know someone will have to scan them all, but it's only got to be done once ;)
 

STEVE BURNS

Club Member
Thank you to jonbils and yellowz for their return pms, JakeRAH for his post after phone call and Znathan for his excellent imput (am going to attempt a test dummy amalgamation of categories Unless someone else would also like to attempt this)
Thank you guys you are stars
 

bluejon

Club Member
IMy view on this categories subject is that they are of use but in a simpler construct than the current one. Currently if I want to post a specific thread on say 240z brake callipers it could go in three different places. Flip side, if I'm looking for something concerning brakes I need to look in three places at least. Try the search functionality and i find it tends to always give you the same 'project' threads first, which, while featuring something on brake callipers, aren't what I'm looking for.

In theory amalgamating all categories can work IF you have first rate search functionality AND people use it (correctly). On the latter point I know this doesn't always happen so threads begin to duplicate. Uncertainty about where to post certain things exacerbates this.

The midway solution remains to have some categorisation structure, simpler then the current one and with the most useful tech guides etc. stickied at the top. There's a role for site admins/moderators to oil the wheels of things being in the right place.

One difficulty this site has is supporting multiple Z models and finding a way to handle model-specific and non-specific threads
 

STEVE BURNS

Club Member
With regards to the specific model section part of the forum what I am trying to mock up at the moment is a page with several boxes on it split into 2 boxes across the page and say 3 lines of boxes to a page and each box relates to a range of models i.e
LINE ONE... S30:240Z,260Z,280Z .............S130:280ZX
LINE TWO... Z31:300ZX............................Z32:300ZX
LINE THREE.Z33:350Z..............................Z34:370Z
Each box would amalgamate the existing specific model category together with the Engine;transmission, brake,interior etc etc sections from the Technical Section for each relevant model
by using the box system for each model it would do away with what seems like a hell of a lot of lines of sections to scroll though
What I would also like to try is in each box to also try to do a drop down menu in each one instead of having each section on show to see what would look and work better
Will try and laterpost up a rough image (and I do mean rough as not the best at doing this) of both ideas to see what comments people have
 

STEVE BURNS

Club Member
VERY ROUGH BASIC IDEA that needs resizing etc the general would be what it says that is the threads from the existing 240Z260Z category and the items in blue are the extractions of the relevant sections from the Tech section that apply to each group of models
attachment.php
 

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jonbills

Membership Secretary
Site Administrator
So the stuff in black would replace all the blue categories? Big improvement imo.
 

STEVE BURNS

Club Member
Whist a few have shown an interest maybe others could have a look at the list of items below of items that either need fixing,updating or renewing and if you can think of anything else it would be a great help

Forum>Mark Forums Read = Your submission could not be processed because a security token was invalid.
Z Community>Gallery> + need to change it so a photo does not need approval before it is shown on site
Z Community>Chat = ZClub.net>FAQ smilie list
Z Community>Contacts = Us to update
Z Community>Advertising = We need access to alter wording
Members Only >Articles>post new article = when loading a new article = Your submission could not be processed because a security token was missing.
Members Only >Articles = need access to redesign layout as needs categories to make the page look tidy and not a mass of orange lines
Members Only>Reviews = The requested document was not found on this server.
Members Only>Links>View site = Invalid Redirect URL (http://www.300zx.co.uk) on ever link
Members Only>Members Details> edit your details = tries to link to http://zclub.net/members/add.php but nothing shows
Members Only>Members Details>add a Z Car = tries to link http://zclub.net/members/add.php but nothing shows
Members Benefits needs total rethink
Classifieds needs a rethink
Join the club WORKS OK BUT the whole membership thing needs needs to be a lot more automated
One car all the Zs needs rewording
Calendar needs a rethink as IMHO it to large would much prefer it to be the same size as the latest photo and the area it is in swapped for the latest photo and the latest classifieds as it is a bit pointless as nobody bothers to upload any events to it
Flip books so we can get mags on line
Moderators system with flags
 
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