Forum Reorganisation - your assistance needed please!

[AdeV]

Good morning/afternoon/evening [delete as applicable to your timezone] folks,

For some time, I've been thinking that the forum boards are a bit chaotic, and don't necessarily align with what people are buying and/or using Lister[oid]s for these days. I suspect there's also quite a disjoint between UK Lister owners (who, predominantly, will be experiencing these engines in canal boats, powering farm equipment, or as show engines), and US owners who (I'm guessing) predominantly want to make electricity. And I apologise to those members outside of the UK/US, who may have other uses I haven't even thought of!

With that in mind, therefore, I'd like to give the board a bit of a shuffle, to try to keep it relevant to as many people as possible - and, of course, to continue to attract new members in. We've been doing pretty well lately and, unlike many online forums, the boards do seem to be getting more messages. I'd like to see that trend continue, but also I'd like to see people able to get more out of the boards, as well as find it easier to put back in.

So..... I'm all ears....

I think I did put a proposal together a while back (which I'll have to dig out again), but I'd rather hear from you guys. If you could choose one topic to have as a board, what would it be? Nothing is off the table; and I would ask that no-one "shoots down" anyone else's thoughts or choices; I'll take any inputs that come & try to feed them into a consistent design, which we can then have a bit of a vote on.

I'll keep this topic stuck to the top of the board for a while - I'd like to say "until the end of June", but given how my life is going these days, it might be a few more months than that!

Also, please do take the time to answer the quick poll that's attached to this post; as that will also help me work out where we go next. Please do be completely honest with the poll, whether you think the layout is dreadful or fantastic, I would really appreciate knowing!

Cheers & Thanks!
Ade. (from a surprisingly sunny UK)

[38ac]

It seems that a gasoline or petrol section would get some use? Other than that I think pertanant subjects are pretty well represented, but maybr not.

Lots of sub forums doesn't guaranty traffic as can be seen over on the sister site. You could add a few and see what happens, surely no harm could come from it?

[AdeV]

Lots of sub forums doesn't guaranty traffic as can be seen over on the sister site. You could add a few and see what happens, surely no harm could come from it?

Agreed - in fact, I'd probably remove more than I add; I think we have too many boards for the size of active membership...

[mikenash]

Hi Ade

Good work, thanks

I like to visit the site every day - and contribute occasionally.  But some of the boards I just never look at?  I suspect others may be the same?

The stats will tell you.  Perhaps you could winnow out 30-40%-ish of the content - those that are little-used?

Folks who like to post in those subject areas might be Ok about using the "everything else" board - possibly you could change the name of that/modify it a bit to be more all-encompassing; and then ditch some of the lesser-used ones

Lots of us are getting older.  There will be younger folk out there with different, but related, interests?

Cheers

[mike90045]

I did not see a poll ?

My interest is generating power off-grid, mostly in winter or in summer when smoke is too thick for solar harvest.

[AdeV]

I did not see a poll ?

My interest is generating power off-grid, mostly in winter or in summer when smoke is too thick for solar harvest.

Hi Mike,

It's at the top, between the headers and the first message... a selection of "radio buttons"

There was much talk, a few years ago, of merging LEF with MicroCogen.info; that might still happen one day - there's considerable overlap between the two subjects - we'll see. For now, IMHO this forum is currently picking up more Lister/Listeroid owners than it is power gen enthusiasts - although clearly we do have both!

[veggie]

 Given the current conditions regarding world energy, the Alternative Fuels section may become a bit busier soon.
So I suggest wee keep it 

[38ac]

Given the current conditions regarding world energy, the Alternative Fuels section may become a bit busier soon.
So I suggest wee keep it 

X2
Tbe 2000 gallon of WMO I have stored in a tank is doing much better than my stocks portfolio

[mihit]

My only real bug bear is the colour scheme.
It's the same all over the damned internet. Fer chrissakes, it's a screen, not a piece of paper, it shouldn't have a light background.
I currently run a browser extension to deal to this, but always prefer that sites do it. So yeah... if you can enable "theming" in the forum software... and pick a dark one or three.

I access the forums by "show unread" so the boards/sub forums don't really matter to me. All seems good.

[AdeV]

My only real bug bear is the colour scheme.
It's the same all over the damned internet. Fer chrissakes, it's a screen, not a piece of paper, it shouldn't have a light background.
I currently run a browser extension to deal to this, but always prefer that sites do it. So yeah... if you can enable "theming" in the forum software... and pick a dark one or three.

I access the forums by "show unread" so the boards/sub forums don't really matter to me. All seems good.

Good call on the theme...

Please, could you do me a favour - have a look here: https://custom.simplemachines.org/index.php?action=themes and see if you can spot a theme you like... if it's compatible with the forum, I'll see if I can get it going.

This is true for everyone: Themes are cheap (free  ) so we should be able to find enough to satisfy everyone!

[dieselspanner]

Hi Ade,

And thanks for keeping it going, as well as finding time for an upgrade, from me too.

There's no particular board I would ditch, even tho' I'm electrically / electronically inept I like to look at the more techie stuff, I actually thought arduino was next to Tuscany at one time, amazing what one can pick up on here.....

I'd say a bigger font, me minces ain't all they used to be, but I've also learned how to sort that out with two fingers on the touch screen of me Chromebook!

keep it up, please.

Cheers
Stef

[dax021]

Hi Ade,

Thanks for all the hard work on the forum. I am quite happy as it is and also access via the "show unread posts".  The one thing I find though, and don't know if it's only me, is that I have to log in twice each time.  The first time gives me an incorrect password message.

[AdeV]

So.... I've added a "dark" theme, twiddled with it a bit to make it work more-or-less OK... I still need to fix the "mobile" (i.e. narrow) view, but feel free to try it out & let me know what you think!

Dax - I'm not sure why you need to login twice.... are you using the "saved password" feature in your browser? If so - maybe it's got two entries & the first one is wrong? Note that if you try to log in on the home page, that has a different address to the main login page, so it's possible it's picking up different passwords per page. I've had that happen to me before (not here, but on another SMF forum).

If you're typing it.... then I'm baffled I'm afraid!

[dax021]

Thanks Ade, it's not a problem.  I have got so used to it, I just click "log in" without typing anything in the boxes the 1st time, then fill them in after the errror message.  Works fine for me.  Could easily be tech ignorance on my side, but doesn't bother me enough to try to solve.

[mihit]

Beauty. That's the ticket.

I'd say a bigger font, me minces ain't all they used to be, but I've also learned how to sort that out with two fingers on the touch screen of me Chromebook!

While looking at the page, hold down the `Ctrl` button on your keyboard and press `+`
That should zoom you in, on most browsers.
(You may need to hold `Shift` as well, depending on your system)
OR
Hold `Ctrl` and use the scroll-wheel on your mouse, if available)