OK, tell me what's needed. Priorities go to improving look and feel of the forum and giving everyone options.
If you have your own theories on forum organization, that's nice to know, but I may not put them into practice. Again, look and feel are priorities.
If you know of an SMF package or addon or customization or whatever that would be cool, post a link to it here and say why we need it.
Stuff *I* want to do...
1. Have a quick reply already open by default
2. Get a theme that cuts back on the whitespace, if needed
3. Dress up the default stuff at the top. Not huge graphics, just tasteful changes.
4. Other stuff...
Themes link: http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/
Find a good one, mention the name and post a link here so we can cuss and discuss about it and decide if we want it available.
Quick reply now open by default.
I'd like to see major topic classifications, such as a distinction between academic work, professional Q&A, and home networking, as well as section for general conversation, announcements, and introductions.
I'd also like to see a section for tutorials/guides. I wrote a few back in the day, and could write up a few more.
Lastly, IMO, you should change your signature. It's a bit unwelcoming and you want to set an example.
I agree strongly on the tutorials/guides section. And, yes, I need to have a nicerer sig. I'll fix that. :)
For topic classifications, there can be a number of ways of doing things... I know some people want to have things sorted by technology, since they want to focus on areas they feel strong in.
Added in a better functionality for showing new, unread, and recent posts.
Looking great so far!
Quote from: Fred on January 03, 2015, 07:39:14 PM
I'd like to see major topic classifications, such as a distinction between academic work, professional Q&A, and home networking, as well as section for general conversation, announcements, and introductions.
I'd also like to see a section for tutorials/guides. I wrote a few back in the day, and could write up a few more.
Made some tweaks to the board layout... let's see how they work. The announcements part is read-only... but I think mods and admins should be able to post there. If not mods, then admins. "Guides" will be read-only except for admins/mods. I see us taking really good posts from the main boards and copying them into the guides section.
Also, googlebot is already indexing the forums. We'll be in the search results rather soon... :)
Cool thing: notice the automatic "select" above the code tags.
I like that. I like that a lot.
Hi guys, I'm excited to be a part of this site from its birth. I wanted to ask if there is a format option that makes the site friendly for mobile devices? I used to access the old place using tapatalk, and seem to use my smartphone for 90% of my forum reading. Thanks!
Chester
+1 for mobile view and/or tapatalk
Suggest a sysadmin/virtualization and a NMS (cacti, solarwinds, netflow, SNMP, Prime etc.) forum though that could be rolled into SDN? (esp. Prime and APIC-EM intersection?)
I know we're a networking forum not a vmware or linux forum but let's face it, a LOT of us interact with these systems daily and/or even roll our own system solutions
Got the Tapatalk set up, check that box.
A sysadmin/VM area does make sense, and I was giving that serious thought. I've got a sysadmin background, so that means I get to do all the projects that touch that area. Let's talk about what that should look like, keeping in mind we'd like as few boards as possible BUT would also like to be able to sort things so that people don't have to browse through what they're not interested in.
I think of a sysadmin board as a separate category with boards for virtualization, system integration, and management tools. The counter to that would be that management tools and integration (even virtualization) could be discussed in the existing forums where the base networking technology is discussed. For example, Tufin, a firewall management tool, could be in the security section and Indeni, a router management tool, could be in the R&S section.
Looking at that argument, I like the idea of separating the tools into their own area, so that they'd have better visibility and so the other boards stay "cleaner". Thoughts?
How do you guys feel about creating a blog section?
Quote from: Ironman on January 04, 2015, 10:26:57 AM
How do you guys feel about creating a blog section?
I never saw really tight integration between blogs and forums in my experience, so I'm not of the mind to have a blog section. What I do see value in is in posting good how-to information in the forums and then after some contributions and edits to the OP, copying that over to the "Guides" section as a sort of hardened wiki. Authors would not be anonymous, and only mods/admins would be able to edit the guides.
Guides would also be good places for comprehensive lessons-learned documents.
Fair enough. Also something I noticed, when I post a reply and submit it, it then kicks me back out to the Forums list.
Quote from: Ironman on January 04, 2015, 10:40:45 AM
Fair enough. Also something I noticed, when I post a reply and submit it, it then kicks me back out to the Forums list.
It's a forum look and layout setting you can modify in your profile. New users will have it on by default. Old users (we already have old users... that escalated quickly...) can make the change in their profiles.
Gotcha, thanks! Yup, were already the old heads around here.
QuoteNetworking-Forums.com <zzzptm@gmail.com> 4:59 PM (5 hours ago) to me
This message may not have been sent by: zzzptm@gmail.com Learn more Report phishing
Gmail doesn't really like your emails.
Well, that's Gmail's problem. I can't help if it rejects the way Tapatalk forges a header when it does a broadcast email.
The logo in the top right is now replaced with Chinese characters for router/switch/firewall. They look pretty cool, especially the ones for router and the last one for firewall.
Added a slew of new smileys. :awesome: :partay: :)) C:-) :glitch: :matrix: :pub: :cheers: :drama: :excited: :not_worthy: :wub:
If you find another that you want, post the image and I'll add it if it's not dangerous, illegal, sick, insane, or obscene.
Gotta say already loving the site, layout, and especially color scheme much more than the old networking-forum (feel kinda bad for saying that, really liked that place)
Quote from: deanwebb on January 04, 2015, 05:31:17 PM
Well, that's Gmail's problem. I can't help if it rejects the way Tapatalk forges a header when it does a broadcast email.
Thats not Tapatalk, the initial Welcome mail does the same thing. You might wanna look into sourcing 'official' emails from the actual domain and not some gmail-address :)
Another possibly stupid question - can we use attachments? I can't seem to find the option.
Quote from: wintermute000 on January 05, 2015, 03:01:10 AM
can we use attachments? I can't seem to find the option.
the WYSIWYG editor looks like it's goofing the attachments menu.
nah I had it off, when I turned it on it magically let me expand the typing zone but didn't affect the lack of option to attach anything
Also a grim finding. I can't find this site via google whatsoever. googled
network forums
networking forums
networking-forums
guess what the old place is still there.
I know you said that SEO is not usable on this - but I'm taking that's just the name of the plugin, not search engine optimisation in general??!!?!
Also think someone with lots of reddit cred should hit that place up on our behalf. I hardly ever go to reddit so not sure if I will get pelted with rotten tomatoes if I do and/or even get noticed by anyone or anything.
Finally, dunno how they feel about this, but is there any way of reaching out to network engineering section of stack exchange for some cross promotion?
If you google "site:networking-forums.com" it seems like google has already crawled a couple of the pages, it could take a while to get higher up in the results
Quote from: wintermute000 on January 05, 2015, 04:51:45 AMAlso think someone with lots of reddit cred should hit that place up on our behalf. I hardly ever go to reddit so not sure if I will get pelted with rotten tomatoes if I do and/or even get noticed by anyone or anything.
Finally, dunno how they feel about this, but is there any way of reaching out to network engineering section of stack exchange for some cross promotion?
I think it'd just get pulled as spam. Ideally we'd have some unique thread/discussion that we could post a link to.
A link at the top of a topic that brings you to the first unread reply
need to go back to the original NF configuration/fomat/views/settings. with improvements that the guy who sold us out wouldn't make..... lol :partay:
OK...
Email thing should be something I can haxxor in the forum code so that it won't use *my* email address when it sends things out.
Attachments are currently turned off. Turning them on is a toggle flip and putting write permissions on the "attachments" directory.
SEO for SMF requires Apache as the host. We don't got that. In time, the stuff rises to the top, especially things like "CISCO TRAINING HERE" and "FREE CISCO TRAINING HERE."
Once we're pretty sure we have things in hand and no new features to add/toggle on, then we move out of beta and start letting folks know where we area and what we're doing.
For the link at the top of a topic... well, I don't have that, but I do have the link in the navigation bar at the top to "all unread posts". Then, the link to the first unread is at the right side of each topic listed.
Quote from: deanwebb on January 05, 2015, 11:59:52 AMFor the link at the top of a topic... well, I don't have that, but I do have the link in the navigation bar at the top to "all unread posts". Then, the link to the first unread is at the right side of each topic listed.
Didn't realize that the "new" icon was actually a link. That does help. I did some searching myself and seems the code for the url is something like
?topic=$topicNumber.new;topicseen#newThat seems to at least get me to the last replied, but not necessarily the first unread message ...
:( :'( :angry: :banana: :lol: :rofl: :problem?: :joy: :XD: :wtf: :choke: :zomgwtfbbq: :badass: :challenge-accepted: :challenge-considered: :challenge-denied: :jackie-chan: :notbad: :steamtroll: :rage: :umad: :yuno:
All new smileys, and I fixed the default ones to be shinier.
dean, can you post up the different user poster levels, and and the post range for each level
seen like:
access port
senior engineer
bit
dark fibre...
etc....
Bit 0
Byte 8
Access Port 32
Core Switch 128
Backbone Router 256
Dark Fibre 512
advipservicesk9 1024
Senior Engineer 2048
Volume Licensing 4096
I saw that yesterday and loled. Great idea.
voice forum - should probably be voice and video , maybe telepresence?
where do I post my Cisco ACE questions? virtual switching questions
and if I eventually get my hands on UCS, where would those questions go?
Quote from: ristau5741 on January 06, 2015, 11:31:51 AM
voice forum - should probably be voice and video , maybe telepresence?
where do I post my Cisco ACE questions? virtual switching questions
and if I eventually get my hands on UCS, where would those questions go?
Good point on the Voice/Video thing. I'd probably call it Unified Communications (pretty standard) or maybe Collaboration.
The other one is tough, IMO. A "Data Center" forum would cover all of that, but it will also probably attract Nexus-related L2/L3 questions, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but might not be ideal. Maybe a "Systems and Virtualization" forum? Seems like it excludes LB to some extent though.
I'm really a "less is more" guys with forums. I think NFv1 had too many and I think NFv2 is borderline. "General Tech" is a nice catchall, but it can do more harm than good also.
Instead of "General Tech", I'll make an "Everything else in the Data Center" board for... well... everything else in the data center, from servers to load balancers, with the caveat that this is a NETWORKING forum so that solutions for stuff outside that area of emphasis might not be found here.
sounds good.
Also, some friends of mine brought it to my attention that we have to verify before sending PMs... this is true if you have less than five posts. This is a security setting, since there are bots that will blast out PMs after zero or one posts. Five makes it awful tough for a bot to do its thing, and is not that hard to do. So suck it in and make five good posts, then PM away like a human is supposed to!
I'm not sure if this is a good idea to other people or not, but a lot of forums dedicated to my other interests (Motorcycles, Jeeps, Electronics, CNC Machining, RC, etc) have a swapmeet/marketplace area to buy and sell items between members. I think it would be great for people to have a place to offload equipment they used for labs/training that will go in the dumpster, and where newbs can get their hands on something cheap that will help finish out their lab, etc. I don't know if it creates some sort of liability for the site, and is the reason why I haven't seen it before on a tech site such as this, but I thought I would throw it out there. It seems to drive a large amount of traffic to those sites. :banana:
C:-) You betcha there would be liability. One sale goes wrong, and I'll be getting a fifty-dollar letter from a lawyer in a cheap suit.
That being said, if I say that Networking-Forums.com and its members make no explicit or implicit guarantee of warranty, quality of equipment, or reliability of seller or buyer, that kinda lets me and everyone here off the hook. So I say that. Buyer and seller beware, if you get ripped off, everyone here has the legal obligation to mock you and say "Told ya so!"
As long as we cover our behinds legally speaking, I don't see an issue with having a separate sub forum. I flog stuff on an Aussie forum all the time that is legendary for PC/computing parts.
Being an Aussie though I doubt it will benefit me much as you 'Muricans merrily trade amongst your geographically convenient selves :angry:
We'd have to be quick off the mark though in case anyone tries to sell something dodgy
I'd like the ability to turn off people's signatures and profile pictures.
Quote from: javentre on January 07, 2015, 05:54:55 AM
I'd like the ability to turn off people's signatures and profile pictures.
- Click Profile > Account Settings
- Hover over Modify Profile and select Look and Layout
- Check Don't show users' avatars.
- Check Don't show users' signatures.
:)
Thanks. I missed that "Modify Profile" had sub-items.
There's a lot to discover in the Modify Profile settings. I encourage everyone to take a little time and read through them.
I enjoy Dilber theme, basic, not distracting: http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/index.php?action=download;lemma=80;id=17045;image
black rain isn't awful, but many forums use white-on-black themes: http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/index.php?action=download;lemma=118;id=611;image
I also enjoy the current theme
Problem with adding new themes: having to hack them to add in the add-ons. Sticking with the default theme means less hacking when there's a code upgrade.
I used "my active topics" about 95% of the time I was on NF. It allows me to quickly see any activity in threads I'm involved in. I would then hit active topics to see what's been going on recently.
I'm not really seeing these or am I just a dumbass.
"All unread posts" should help you out. That's in the top menu strip.
:zomgwtfbbq:
Quote from: burnyd on January 07, 2015, 03:45:08 PM
:zomgwtfbbq:
I ported over your post count.
:matrix:
Quote from: deanwebb on January 04, 2015, 08:57:20 PM
Added a slew of new smileys. :awesome: :partay: :)) C:-) :glitch: :matrix: :pub: :cheers: :drama: :excited: :not_worthy: :wub:
If you find another that you want, post the image and I'll add it if it's not dangerous, illegal, sick, insane, or obscene.
what's the trick to placing images inline? I can attach the image just fine, but there doesn't seem to be a option to place inline..
I just type the thing on the same line as the text. :partay:
.
ahh, preview doesn't preview them....
Hey just thinking, maybe we should start looking around for a URL that distinguishes us from the old place.
a few that come to mind for example (that are free)
tcpiptalk.com
talkingpackets.com
ipforums.net
I'm not saying we need Dean to waste another weekend recoding / rebranding, but that we keep our eyes open and decide on a new (cheap) URL, then put a simple redirect there for the time being.
Heck if its cheap I'll buy the domain myself if Dean doesn't want to foot any more billz.
There's a whole bunch of new TLDs out with which you could get creative
If anyone wants to forward relevant TLDs to this forum, that would be fine with me, so long as you understand that it's your domain that you pay for. :)