Forum reorganisation

There's been talk of reorganising the forum so I thought I'd put a separate thread here.

I don't want to sub-divide forums such as splitting 'Your Creations' in to 'Work in progress' vs. 'Completed creations', because I don't see any point until the forum is literally bursting at the seams, and none are just yet. But this might make things a little simpler and more straightforward. Here's the new organisation I propose:

Construct forums

Help & Support using Construct (previously Help / Tech Support, moved to top)

Construct Discussion

Remove 'Feature Requests' - move all posts in to Construct Discussion which will contain combined feature requests, announcements, plans, polls, etc)

Your Tutorials & Example files

Remove 'Uploads' - despite the description, bug report files should actually be put on the tracker, so the real purpose of this is examples/guides/nice effects/tech demos etc that people find interesting - this can all go in 'Your Tutorials & Example files', propose all posts be moved there as well

Completed Addons (currently subforum to Uploads, make top level forum)

---- Work in progress addons (subforum)

General

Your Creations (OK as it is IMO)

Open Topic

Developers

Construct Engineering

I think this will make things less confusing. Sound like a good plan?

I'm pretty much in 100% agreement with those propositions.

Completed Addons (currently subforum to Uploads, make top level forum)

---- Work in progress addons (subforum)

Yay, completed addons are ever so important!

When I was trying to find something I had seen before, I would always forget if it was in the uploads or my creations forums. I like the new look helps with clarification, looks good.

Sounds good. Is the 'Your Tutorials & Example files' section going to allow uploads? I think that would be a good idea.

Personally, I think uploads should be a sub forum of 'Tutorials', called 'Example CAP Uploads' or something like that.

There are so many threads on the Uploads board, proper tutorials would soon be swamped by a multitude of small demos, examples, support requests, etc. I really like the fact that only proper tutorials tend to end up on the Tutorials board.

And while you're at it, why not rename 'Tutorials' to 'Learning Construct' - that way it makes more sense to have a mixture of tutorials, tech demo, examples, etc.

My proposal for the forum layout:

Construct forums

Help & Support using Construct

Construct Discussion

Learning Construct

• Example CAP Uploads

Addons

• In Development

General

Your Creations

Open Topic

Developers

Construct Engineering

I'm not a big fan of subforums. I think they hide their contents too well, I'd guess top level forums get a lot more viewage.

What about a forum that looks like this one?:

http://blenderartists.org/forum/

It's subdivided on topics, and also shows the name of the latest active thread as some kind of preview of that topic, I find it quite useful. Just saying.

This is a phpbb3 forum - it's been enough of a headache in the past I'm not really keen to change it

What are you going to do when C2 is released?

Not that there will be a great difference in how things are done, but I would imagine there could be some confusion, especially in the tutorials section.

Don't know, no need to worry about that till the time.

I like the new plan so far.

But I'm not sure about the subforums being a hindrance by being hidden deep in the tree of forums? I think subforums actually helps in more organization and it doesn't hide stuff or make the forum searching less intuitive or something.

Also, many forums out there, some I frequen to, uses subforums, which Ithink is better than having all kinds of threads in one large forum.

However this issue may be more subjective in nature so it depends on how users feel comfortable and not confused by using the forum. A poll maybe?

Just a question, does Addons forum include the plugins? (I surely hope so.)

I agree, subforums are practically invisible. There should only be one level.

I also dislike subforums, in general. They have their place in certain circumstances, but should be used sparingly, I think.

I think that Ashley's proposed organization sounds fine. The "Your Tutorials & Example files" might get a bit cluttered, but I don't think it would be too bad. It would tend to make a logical grouping for many of the posts in those forums.

If there is someone willing to manage a sticky containing the list of mentionable tutorials, examples, plugins, creations and whatsnot (in appropriate forums), that'd be quite practical.

Oh, and don't look at me.

The sagamedev site's forum's are very nice.Go to http://www.sagamedev.co.za

I think they use the same phpbb as scirra's forums.