Posting Improvements

[SiphonicSugar]

As many have already noticed, posts on community websites are posting. This is not a horrible thing because IRC activity and downloads numbers are raising. People simply want an easier and faster way to communicate their ideas, however; this leads to the decline of posting. IRC is great, but users can't really share projects and other bigger things on IRC.

Enough talk of that, everyone should hopefully understand that.

I'm proposing that we lessen the complexity of posting. A large majority of people do not want to load a new web page just to start typing, then loading another web page to see your post added to the rest. So, a simple solution to this is having an add comment/post thing like Facebook has.

How do we do this?
This new feature would sit under the last post. We would need to condense the emojis and make it so you can quickly drag and drop any file that you need to upload. In fact, I think the whole reply box area needs to be smaller.
For things like bold, italics, and underlining, there should be a quick keyboard shortcut.
Also, things like hyperlinks and superscripts should only be accessed by right clicking.
There should be a button for you to click that sends you to the last major update for projects too. For example: Say you want to read the release notes for the latest version of Sorcery of Uvutu, it may be hard to find it because of the many posts that have come after the release post. This button will move you to the part of the page that has the release notes. The project manager would have to set the latest release post as the main post.
The Facebook like button at the bottom of each post should not be there.
The default amount of posts per page should be increased.

Final notes
I know that this doesn't seem like much of a fix, but I will also add more ideas.
Please feel free to add ideas or criticize.

[DJ Omnimaga]

I have been contemplating getting the quick reply box removed just below the last post or whichever post you want to reply to before, although I don't know if such plugin exists. A floating quick reply at the bottom of the page (making sure it's not too big on mobile) could work too. The only downside is that people new to forums might be tempted to reply before reading the rest of the topic.

Instant posting (eg no page reload when using quick reply) is something we considered too, but for some reasons, when we last tried the plugin that does that, it didn't work at all. This was when we used HHVM, though, so maybe I could try again.

Should the last post of the previous page show up at the top of the next page like on yAronet?

Should the first post of the topic show up at the top of every page like on Planète-Casio?

I don't see how the FB like buttons are a problem, since they only appear below the first post. This is to share topics you like on social media and bring more traffic.

As for increasing the total amount of posts per page, what do other people think?

As for the button that leads to the latest release, nowadays some people put that in the first topic post with a reply to bump the topic. Implementing such button might be very complicated and confuse users since not everyone would use it the same way. Maybe having the first post of topic on top of every page would help?


Should we install that notification plugin that Omni has (ENotify)? Notifications are coming with SMF 2.1 but for now maybe that could do if it's not overly buggy.

[123outerme]

I have been contemplating getting the quick reply box removed just below the last post or whichever post you want to reply to before, although I don't know if such plugin exists. A floating quick reply at the bottom of the page (making sure it's not too big on mobile) could work too. The only downside is that people new to forums might be tempted to reply before reading the rest of the topic.

Instant posting (eg no page reload when using quick reply) is something we considered too, but for some reasons, when we last tried the plugin that does that, it didn't work at all. This was when we used HHVM, though, so maybe I could try again.

Should the first post of the topic show up at the top of every page like on Planète-Casio?

I like the floating quick reply idea, it would make scrolling through to check what you/other people have said while writing a reply much easier.

Instant posting, like what Reddit has, would be pretty cool too! It mostly just saves time on slow networks, but I can't say I haven't used data to check up on the site

I also like the idea of the first post at the top of every page, although maybe the first post's text box should be a different (darker?) color to signify it is the first post.

[SiphonicSugar]

As for the button that leads to the latest release, nowadays some people put that in the first topic post with a reply to bump the topic. Implementing such button might be very complicated and confuse users since not everyone would use it the same way. Maybe having the first post of topic on top of every page would help?

The problem is, at least 50% of the projects I've been on, the manager doesn't edit the first post.

Maybe we could have the main post for release notes at the top at all times, no matter what page you are on.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Yeah it depends of the user really. We can always encourage users to put the release notes in the first post too. That said I think they'll notice the first post is there and might be tempted to edit it. I just hope it doesn't deter people from bumping their topics when they have progress, because I saw this happen before and this would actually hurt activity if it does. Also yes it should be a different color shade.


EDIT: Ok so I added the AJAX quick reply and it seems to work now. For the rest I'll see. I saw a mod that changes where quick reply is, but it looks weird.

[p2]

I dont see any changes?
you should probably make a post about the changes DJ so everyone notices and knows how to use it

[DJ Omnimaga]

When you reply to topic with quick reply, notice how clicking post now shows "Loading" at the top of the screen on desktop and the page doesn't refresh. Unless you have javascript disabled or are using IE6 lol.

We need to fix the AJAX loading bar on mobile, though, because the navigation overlaps on it D: (*Pokes a @Streetwalrus *)

[Streetwalrus]

Markdown sounds like what you want. It would be possible to implement it for newer posts without touching old posts, but it will have to replace bbcode. A good way around this would be to add a check box and make Markdown the new default.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Actually that's not really relevant to my suggestion/idea Streetwalrus, unless you're replying to someone else's post in particular

[Streetwalrus]

I was replying to the OP.
But yeah, I'll take a look at that.