//Nathan Posted January 6, 2006 Posted January 6, 2006 Yeah, multiple forums are great for organization, but it's often said that a new board should not have too many forums, so as to appear busier than it is. But if you do that, when the forum takes off, the admin has quite a task on their hands, organizing everything. Why not make all the forums from the get-go, as I did... and then have a view where the member can just see all the topics from all the forums in one place? Kind of like "Today's Active Topics" but not just limited to "Today" - it would go ALL the way back. EITHER... The admin could decide what forums' topics appear in this view. Or multipe views could be set up, so one could view all topics from a third of the board in one view, another third in another view, and so on. So the board could have categories and subcategories. OR... The board would really have an all-topics view, and in the From Forum: column, a [-] next to each name, pointing at it would raise the tooltip: "I no longer want to see topics from this forum in the all-topics view". This would set a cookie, maybe called ALLTOPICSVIEWIGNORE with the forum IDs listed that are on block. Similarly, at the forum list (main index.php screen) there would be a [+] by forums, with the tooltip: "Add topics from this forum to my All Topics View". Because really... when you have a forum, you should set it up for future expansion ahead of time, and then have a way to "collapse" it, if only in a view. ALTERNATELY... Can "Today's Active Topics" be changed to allow topics from ALL dates/times, and then the wording changed from "Today's Active Topics" to "Show All Topics"? AND THEN... Have a New Topic button, with the additional field, either above Topic Title or above Post New Topic/Preview Post, a "Post In:" dropbox with a list of all the topics. This would be great to bookmark, so one could quickly make a post and drop it in any forum, without having to first go to that forum. :)
Jordan2863 Posted January 6, 2006 Posted January 6, 2006 Well..it sounds like a good idea. But I'd only like it if it was optional, and the members could choose, or the admin could choose.
DSC Posted January 7, 2006 Posted January 7, 2006 I think a link to the last "x" posts would be fabulous. Perhaps some options in the ACP or maybe even the UCP allowing the number of last posts to the defined and what forums to pull from.
//Nathan Posted January 8, 2006 Posted January 8, 2006 Well naturally it would only be good on boards that aren't so busy. Like here, most of the topics would be in "Customer to Customer Assistance". If implemented here, most users might remove that from the hypothetical "All Topics View" and make it a little more balanced. Of course it would be optional. I mean, it wouldn't be the default view, it would be a link at the top or the bottom. Or maybe the admin could choose to make it the default view, with a link at the top saying "Organize by Category/Forum".
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