CodeWalrus

CodeWalrus Website => Site Discussion => Site News & Announcements => Topic started by: Dream of Omnimaga on December 24, 2015, 09:05:43 AM

Title: Major CW sub-forum changes underway
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on December 24, 2015, 09:05:43 AM
After some discussions (https://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=919.0) and with 2016 arriving, we have decided to apply some changes to the structure of the CodeWalrus forum categories and sections. It is not complete yet and most topics haven't been moved yet, but here are the highlights:

-CodeWalrus Website: Site updates now split from feedback

-Featured Projects: No changes

-Development and Multimedia:
1) Development is now a separate category from Multimedia
2) There are now two calculator sub-forums (tutorials section have merged back) and they are now child boards of Calculators
3) Non-calc section split into Phones/Tablets, PC/Mac and Consoles
4) Gaming and Media talk (movies/TV) are now part of Multimedia
5) The gaming, music and movies/TV sections will eventually have two or three child boards each.

-Other
1) Miscellaneous discussion has now been split into two categories, the newer one being located between featured projects and development.
2) The first one now includes Safe-haven (100 posts required) and off-topic talk, along with two brand-new sub-forums: General help/Troubleshooting (for anything that doesn't fit in any of the other categories) and Tech/Science/IT.
3) The one at the bottom of the board index features junk posts (forum games or other spammy stuff, along with the deleted topics graveyard). This section is invisible to guests.

Those changes were done according to our userbase interests outside programming, while sticking to geek culture. CodeWalrus was often wrongly perceived as a calculator-only forum, even though it is more than that. With the future of calculators in doubt and the aforementioned misconceptions in mind, we felt that we had to adapt and give more visibility to our sections that lacked it.

We hope that you like the changes and if you have any concerns, feel free to share them in the forum structure overhaul discussion topic at https://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=919.0 . If there is enough demand, we might provide a way to allow members to switch back to the old layout (although with less information and via cookies) (http://img.codewalr.us/montrealwalrus.gif)
Title: Re: Major CW sub-forum changes underway
Post by: aetios on December 30, 2015, 12:14:09 PM
Hey, that's awesome to hear! This can't turn out bad, I'm excited to see what we'll end up with.
Title: Re: Major CW sub-forum changes underway
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on December 31, 2015, 07:25:40 AM
So far, we have tired to follow your forum structure idea post, although some stuff is different. For example, the general calc discussion section has not been terminated since there is still too much demand for it, we tried to put more emphasis on development so instead of putting all platforms into 1 sub-forum we made them visible directly on the front page (for now, at least) and site feedback is one section of sub-forums because we felt that development/multimedia/discussion was more important that site-specific politics and maintenance discussion. But this is not final, since, after all, we're still only just over a year old. :P


EDIT: It looks like calculator help that is not related to programming might actually get moved eventually, because while there are many calc news topics, there are only 12 help topics.

What I have done is that I moved the said topics to general help, but I cloned them back into their original sub-forum. I also appended [calcs] tags in every topic title. The rest remained where it is for the time being.
Title: Re: Major CW sub-forum changes underway
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on January 04, 2016, 06:30:42 AM
I have done most of the topic moving now. I don't know if they are perfectly categorized, but basially the non-programming and non-hardware modding/building help such as "how to run Winzode" has been moved to general help and support, while general technology discussion was moved in the tech, science sub-forum. Hardware, console, phone/tablet and Pc/Mac sub-forums are now exclusively reserved for programming, hacking and modding, as the category title says.

For the general help section, try to use tags whenever possible.
Title: Re: Major CW sub-forum changes underway
Post by: novenary on January 04, 2016, 03:35:54 PM
By the way I don't know if you have fixed it yet, but article categories should be changed to reflect the forum changes as well. :)
Title: Re: Major CW sub-forum changes underway
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on January 04, 2016, 05:57:33 PM
Yeah that needs to be fixed. I might just get rid of calc game features and use the gaming/dev icon, and keep the other calc category for stuff like Ndless.
Title: Re: Major CW sub-forum changes underway
Post by: novenary on January 04, 2016, 08:16:50 PM
Yeah I think that's a good idea.
Title: Re: Major CW sub-forum changes underway
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on January 07, 2016, 06:42:25 AM
The Featured calculator category has now merged with non-calc gaming, becoming Notable Games and Software Releases. The icon used is now the non-calc gaming one.