Forum Suggestions

[Netwörkheäd]

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...

[Netwörkheäd]

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.

[Netwörkheäd]

Quick reply now open by default.

[Fred]

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.

[Netwörkheäd]

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.

[Netwörkheäd]

Added in a better functionality for showing new, unread, and recent posts.

[Putney]

Looking great so far!

[Netwörkheäd]

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...

[Netwörkheäd]

Code Select Expand

Cool thing: notice the automatic "select" above the code tags.

I like that. I like that a lot.

[ChestHair]

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

[wintermute000]

+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

[deanwebb]

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?

[Ironman]

How do you guys feel about creating a blog section?

[deanwebb]

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.

[Ironman]

Fair enough. Also something I noticed, when I post a reply and submit it, it then kicks me back out to the Forums list.