New Sidebar Blocks - Help you get around the forum quicker

[Dan]

I'm still working on making the User Interface helpful for newbies and regulars. Each will see different content. I'll customise this more so that trainees see threads from mentors, USA members see fellow USA members threads etc. I keep chipping away at this because its tedious coding work and easy to cock up if I'm not in the right frame of mind and rush it.

So I've done a bit of this with the sidebar blocks. If you visit the forum homepage here: ElectriciansForums.net - https://www.electriciansforums.net/forums/ - (on a desktop/laptop, or iPad in landscape view) you will see the sidebar to the side of the main area (this is below the main area on smaller screens).

There are now tabs to scroll across for those 'blocks'. So there's a "Electricians Work" section, with new listings, top listings, new jobs posted to the forum etc. Then there's a "Threads-related block" showing the new threads, new posts, new member threads, top posts (by views) and top threads (by likes) so you can get to the best and newest content quickly. And then there is a 'reported posts' and 'forum updates' one too.

There is also a block for the members online, forum stats, who's visited and all that kinda stuff. Can keep those together too then.

There will be additional blocks for people of certain member types added soon. I just need to do this on the other forums first and check response of search engines etc. Because although we see the blocks as tabbed, and only view one at a time, it's actually a massive list of all the threads in one big line, so I've just added links to 1000 threads in one go there by adding those. And we don't usually add that many links too suddenly, so Google might think we're up to something dodgy. So I'll monitor those before I add more.
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Let's see if I can remember all the staff lol

@Sintra @darkwood @GMES @Leesparkykent @westward10 @SparkyChick @Lou

I seem to miss one person off each time. Although it's a different one every time so I'm not picking on anybody as such lol (Sorry Lee! - I missed you off this time lol)

 

[Lister1987]

Would it be possible to make the default behaviour when the sidebar is open to open the "What's New" section, as opposed to the "Forums" section? Or allow users to choose between the 2?

First thing do when I come here is look at latest posts (I use a bookmark), but it would be nice if "What's New" was the default section viewable when you open the sidebar.

Thoughts?

 

[Dan]

Would it be possible to make the default behaviour when the sidebar is open to open the "What's New" section, as opposed to the "Forums" section? Or allow users to choose between the 2?

First thing do when I come here is look at latest posts (I use a bookmark), but it would be nice if "What's New" was the default section viewable when you open the sidebar.

Thoughts?

It is yeah. But I can't set it up per-usergroup. And I tend to find although regulars use it all the time, new members don't.

I have tried to make the actual homepage show you basically 'Whats New'. So if you click the forum logo on any page, you'll go to the homepage (not the forum homepage) which has 'blocks' on it. And I can configure those blocks. So there are the new threads and posts showing on there right now, but I can add a block at the top if you thought there was content that'd be handy for you.

You might find that it's handy for only you in the end though and it starts to annoy members from other types of groups or members who are here for other reasons.

I'm working on an "Unanswered Threads" block which is handy for me personally, and will help new members out, but then regulars may find that annoying because the moment they reply to one, they lose it out of that block. So it's helpful for the person asking the question, but not for the person answering.

So it's always a case of finding a middle ground.

So I was trying to make the Whats New page show different stuff than the actual Homepage, so we cater for the two massively different types of members we have.

If you think of a type of block you want, let me know, and I'll add it and I can check stats then and see if it was used more than whats there already.