Forums Improvements Progress Reports (2012)

We just about to undertake in some major improvements to the MODX Community Forums. This will include major usability issues such as performance, readability, contrast, navigation, notifications and much much more.

We're excited to embark on something so important to everyone in the MODX Community.

If you have any bugs or improvements please review this to see if it's listed or add it: http://tracker.modx.com/projects/discuss-skin/issues [ed. note: smashingred last edited this post 14 years, 3 months ago.]

Thank you for doing this. I haven't bothered to complain because I know you all work hard every day making MODX awesome, but I do have the same complaints as everyone else. I hate to say it, but sadly this is by far the most difficult forum I've ever used.

I'm looking forward to the improvements! I really hope to be able to see more than 1 page of my recent posts someday too. If you could squeeze it in... would you please take a look at threading subscriptions by forum and date please? Pretty please?

I would also like to suggest that the google search be added to the forum permanently in addition to the regular search. Even with perfectly functional forum search results sometimes google still works best, especially with very specific search strings. Having that available (say at the bottom of the page, or as a choice near the forum search) from within the forum would be quite handy.

OK, well as long as I'm suggesting things... how about some inclusion of text in notifications? I like notifications, but they contain no information. It'd be nice to not have to always go to the forum to see the content.

Thank you again for tackling this.

Frogabog,

Most of the things you suggest will be done. Most of them have been on a list of fixes since launching the forums. I am not sure what you mean by "threading subscriptions by forum and date please? Pretty please?" Please give me more detail on exactly what this means.

On Google search, I wouldn't rule it out but Solr, properly configured with the appropriate weighting would actually work faster be pretty good compared to Google. This is not your average database plain text search and it has some pretty sophisticated abilities like faceted results, filtering and contextual search. It might be possible to make it an advanced search option though.

The message body in the emails is coming as well.

If you have further suggestions. Please post them here with as much detail as possible: http://tracker.modx.com/projects/discuss-skin/issues

Thanks for replying Jay.

On the page where subscribed threads are displayed, they appear alphabetically. It would be nice to have them sorted by forum first, and then by date instead of all mashed together alphabetically.

The reason being, when I'm looking for something I posted, or a thread I posted in and subscribed to a week ago or even yesterday, locating it in the alphabetical list can be difficult because every subscribed thread is listed. I find myself scanning through looking for the "last post 1 day 3 hours ago" more than looking at the thread titles.

If I could look at all the threads in a certain forum that I'm subscribed to, or even just the thread itself (no forum sorting), they would be much easier to find. I've been using the subscribe option to keep track of threads I find important. The alphabetical list can be useful, but being able to see yesterday's posts at the top of the list, easy to get to first is better IMO.

My posts from the admin page not being limited to just that one page might help too. I'd like to see every thread I've posted to in this area, from beginning of time till today.

Jay, that's great news. Thanks for creating this thread.

+1 on taking the limit off the list of one's own posts. This bites me constantly. It drives me crazy when I think of a solution to someone's problem or realize that the advice I gave them was wrong and I can't find the thread because I've made more than 10 posts since then.


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PLEASE, PLEASE specify the version of MODX you are using.
MODX info for everyone: http://bobsguides.com/modx.html

I don't know if this is feasible, but wouldn't it be nice if there was some kind of translation engine built into this forum?

I feel like I miss out on a lot of things posted in the international forums, and those members also don't participate as much in the main forums. It's like there's this huge separation between English and other languages. I know there's some valuable content in these forums, when I can get a translation engine to work that is... Translating one by one is tedious and doesn't work for scanning titles. If thread titles at minimum were translated (all ways - a user could chose a base language) I think we'd all benefit.

Frogabog, It's an interesting idea. I am not sure how easy it would be do do that with the forums. I think we might be able to make it easier to do things like use Google Chrome's ability to translate pages not matching your language by changing the html language setting for the boards not in english.

I should note, that likely won't be a high priority but add that as a feature request to the forums project please.

A small issue which is maybe more to do with moderation than functionality is support requests being posted in general discussion. It seems a minor issue but I feel it confuses matters, making it easier to miss things and also blurs the separate forums. I guess in some cases this is done with the hope of getting more replies. This is understandable, especially if the question is quite specific and the relevant area to post it is a particulary quiet part of the forums.

Great to hear the Forum improvements are underway.

bobwal, that's a valid point and one for consideration. Improving the organization of things both through clearer labeling and moderation is open for improvement. We may also look at reducing the number of forums overall. Generally, people's questions go unanswered more often because it's completely unclear what they are asking. Many forum users like myself check new posts. We'll also be adding a filter to see posts with no answers. This will enable people who help on the forums to find and answer these questions. Ideally, no legitimate question or discussion should go unanswered.