New theme in the works. Preview?

[Opinionated]

Hover your mouse over "Forums"

@Opinionated - the three bars appear responsively - i.e. when your screen is smaller (or if on mobile).

Ahhh.. I just saw that now that Im on the laptop. lol..

I actually like the three bars menu, as everything is right there.. can you do that for the full size screens?

I dont know, maybe its just different and something to get used to. Weird having two ways to access everything on the forum, I never had a different set up from my kindle to the laptop before..

I WOULD like the quick drop down for alerts to be back somehow, is that possible on the full size in this theme? Now it seems I have to go fully to the alerts page to read my alerts.

 

[stols001]

I'm not a good beta tester, honestly I'm not. I don't do well with change. I'm sure I can learn whatever ends up being the new platform, but I'm pretty sure my initial feedback would just be something like, "Gah." Though if it's easier for smartphones, I'm kinda all for it. Despite my desires to the contrary, we are all going to end up with smartphones, or at best, tablets....

Good luck with it.

Anna

 

[tazzle]

Continued impressions now that I'm able to navigate a little better (yay!): I like the more modern, cleaner feeling, and for me, the forums seem a lot more visible now from the main page. I'm not too fond of the bright red "new" tag and the speech bubble icon, as I said, because both of those show up on nearly every forum listing, and sort of "confetti up" the page. Yes, that is a technical term used by us professional opinion-givers. Confetti up.

I agree that the blue is not the greatest for the post titles in the forums (though it looks good to me on the main / front page where we see the latest post under each forum). Also the no-pic member avatars in that bright blue is kinda tough on my eyes.

 

[Oliver]

Thanks Tazzle - I also dislike "confetti'd up" websites (great phrase). I'll tone the alerts down. I'm playing with colors right now, using a nice palate - much softer. Don't worry if you don't like it - it's totally experimental right now.

 

[Oliver]

Thinking it might be fun to autogenerate avatars. Or maybe have a limited set of vape icons (I have a really nice set) as placeholders.

 

[Oliver]

By the way, I'm going to be making a lot of changes. We're coming up to 10 years (!!) this December, and I want to have a big ol' clean up and refresh, looking at everything on ECF. How can we make this place better for everyone who comes here?

 

[stols001]

Some of the subfora are hard to find, the way it is currently.... You kind of have to "know" where everything is, which requires a bit of poking around. Not sure if that's being addressed already, but because some subfora are above the forum that you click on to enter, it was really easy to not notice that at first (for me anyway), I know in the search function you can see all the different forums and subforums, but otherwise it's kind of hard for a newcomer, or maybe just some newcomers, to navigate such a large site and figure out where everything is....

Anna

 

[tazzle]

ooh, seeing some color changes already, much nicer!!

 

[Opinionated]

Some of the subfora are hard to find, the way it is currently.... You kind of have to "know" where everything is, which requires a bit of poking around. Not sure if that's being addressed already, but because some subfora are above the forum that you click on to enter, it was really easy to not notice that at first (for me anyway), I know in the search function you can see all the different forums and subforums, but otherwise it's kind of hard for a newcomer, or maybe just some newcomers, to navigate such a large site and figure out where everything is....

Anna

I think the quick forum navigation list in the new theme addresses making it easier to find the subforums - personally. It's the icon in the upper right corner.

Might have that icon a little clearer though, different color or somehow more pronounced.

 

[Fozzy71]

I like the overall look the 2 minutes I spent on it but I can't use it more than that until this is implemented:

Dark theme

I detest white/light backgrounds on forums I frequent often.

 

[tazzle]

I just noticed the little expand/collapse for info on member IDs by comment posts. That's smooooth and avoids a ton of extra white space on pages. Like.

 

[Oliver]

So - subforums. We need to talk about this.....

And this is part of the wider thing I want to address. Put simply, there are way too many. I want to reduce the number of total forums on ECF dramatically.

Instead of subforums I want to think about how we can more appropriately name existing forums. And how we can use prefixes and tags creatively to organise information within forums.

The balance is, as always, hard to achieve. But ECF's ballooned over the last 10 years and has never had a full-scale "edit". This is a big job, but it has to be done.

 

[Oliver]

I like the overall look the 2 minutes I spent on it but I can't use it more than that until this is implemented:



I detest white/light backgrounds on forums I frequent often.

Don't worry, you'll get your Dark Theme. It won't be done until after the light one, but I won't be removing the existing dark one.

 

[Opinionated]

So - subforums. We need to talk about this.....

And this is part of the wider thing I want to address. Put simply, there are way too many. I want to reduce the number of total forums on ECF dramatically.

Instead of subforums I want to think about how we can more appropriately name existing forums. And how we can use prefixes and tags creatively to organise information within forums.

The balance is, as always, hard to achieve. But ECF's ballooned over the last 10 years and has never had a full-scale "edit". This is a big job, but it has to be done.

Just streamline the names I think. My thought is, why have a different forum for RDA's and RTA's? They have differences but are essentially the same, same problems, issues, and leaning curves. Just have a Rebuildables forum, if it must be separate from atomizers and tanks that are factory made.

That said, we can simply have one forum for all tanks, whether factory made or rebuildables. We know which tanks are rta's, which are rdas, and which take factory made coils when someone comes with a problem and makes a thread. So having one forum for all atomizers and tanks (whether taking a factory coil or not) and have that streamlined.

A newbie isn't going to know what problem they are having... they won't know if it's an issue with their mod, or their tank, or even the difference hardly because many come here not knowing the name of anything.. we have to give tutorials periodically on the abbreviations we use, because people haven't a clue what we are talking about when we say "change your coil"

An experienced vapor knows what their coil is, and they also know if the only forum available for their issue is labeled atomizer's and tanks then that is the forum they need to post in.

So basically what I'm saying is to streamline the names, keep the theme KISS so that newbies are solid... those with experience know what everything means and won't have problems finding the right forum regardless.

Keep the tag thing going.. tags of rta, rba and so on and so forth, for ease of locating specific topics within each forum. Give people the ability to tag search on the forum..

 

[tazzle]

So - subforums. We need to talk about this.....

And this is part of the wider thing I want to address. Put simply, there are way too many. I want to reduce the number of total forums on ECF dramatically.

I totally agree with this ... but making things tidy is not exactly my forte (someone please come organize my flavor concentrates? I will pay you in fine homecrafted custom juice, or plenty of hard alcohol, your choice!), so I will watch answers to this with respect and awe. Meanwhile, I'm using the new theme, and really like how things are going.

But yeah, a few times I've wanted to ask a question about something ... wicks, or coils, or drip tips, or whatever, but sort of decided "eh, never mind" because of the sub forums that I should have drilled down into for the exact topic.

I do think about mouth to lung vs direct to lung posting differences though. I'd like to easily find all the MtL stuff, however it might work ... sections, tags, whatever. I can only offer any advice on MtL and only need advice, news and suggestions on MtL. At the moment almost all that valuable info for me *mostly* happens in threads that become super long, like the tootle puffers, ittybitty mods, and some individual product threads like the Ego One CLR Coil. If I don't keep up every day, I miss a lot, and they are hundreds and hundreds of comments long ... so I always do miss a lot.

 

[Shawn Hoefer]

Gotta say, at present, I'm not a fan

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

 

[Shawn Hoefer]

So - subforums. We need to talk about this.....

And this is part of the wider thing I want to address. Put simply, there are way too many. I want to reduce the number of total forums on ECF dramatically.

Instead of subforums I want to think about how we can more appropriately name existing forums. And how we can use prefixes and tags creatively to organise information within forums.

The balance is, as always, hard to achieve. But ECF's ballooned over the last 10 years and has never had a full-scale "edit". This is a big job, but it has to be done.

I think the subforums are vital. However, they are scattered hither and thither. Yon got left out somewhere... and, they tend to stray a lot, too. That's just the nature of the beast. When I design a site (granted, I've never tackled anything this size), I tend to break it down by topic/product.

Mods
/regulated
//wismec reuleaux
//smok alien
//etc...
/mechanical
//av able
//geekvape mech pro
//etc...
/unregulated

Tanks
/kanger subtank
/etc...

Rebuildables
/rda
//velocity
//hadaly
//etc
/rta

/rdta

/genny

/gta

Social
/tootle puffers
/modwompers
/back porch

Although it would require additional policing, ensuring that posts about "Whomdigitous 5000 kit" ALWAYS end up in the Whomdigitous 5000 thread instead of having a Whomdigitous problems thread, and a Whomdigitous sales thread, and a Whomdigitous... well, you get the picture. The problem with this scheme is that it gets easy to get too granular...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

 

[awsum140]

Why re-invent the wheel, yet again? This one isn't round enough or is one with four corners needed? The change to this format was enough of a headache for everyone, admins and users, so why go through that yet again? Is there something seriously wrong with the current format I am missing?

 

[leftyandsparky]

I like the dark theme. Love it actually.

 

[mikepetro]

Thinking it might be fun to autogenerate avatars. Or maybe have a limited set of vape icons (I have a really nice set) as placeholders.

Ooooooooohhhh I could have fun with that. Good thing Im not at the controls!