IPS doesn't understand the point of categories

[Interferon]

In Downloads and databases, categories as-is are not implemented correctly.  The category allows you to drill down to a more specific set of items, but the parent should allow you to view all sub-items.

For example, selecting "Characters" in the categories for this site lets me view all items at once:
https://www.gamedevmarket.net/category/3d/characters-3d/

But I can also select "Humans" to just select human characters:
https://www.gamedevmarket.net/category/3d/characters-3d/humans-characters-3d/

As it is, IPB subcategories are just a way of hiding an item so it can never be found.  It makes browsing large sets of data almost impossible.  In fact the site above originally used IPB and moved away from it, possibly for this reason.

[Adriano Faria]

It was like that on IP.Board 3. They changed in 4. I think there’s a marketplace plugin that restores it.

[DesignzShop]

1 hour ago, Interferon said:

In Downloads and databases, categories as-is are not implemented correctly.  The category allows you to drill down to a more specific set of items, but the parent should allow you to view all sub-items.

For example, selecting "Characters" in the categories for this site lets me view all items at once:
https://www.gamedevmarket.net/category/3d/characters-3d/

But I can also select "Humans" to just select human characters:
https://www.gamedevmarket.net/category/3d/characters-3d/humans-characters-3d/

As it is, IPB subcategories are just a way of hiding an item so it can never be found.  It makes browsing large sets of data almost impossible.  In fact the site above originally used IPB and moved away from it, probably for this reason.

They do understand, IPB has a great dev team. This particular set up doesn't really work for me personally but may for others. I haven't really seen a lot of issues with how it's done right now.I mentioned this in the beginning... Here's my example

https://www.designzshop.com/site/files/category/25-d-series/

[opentype]

Quote

IPS doesn't understand the point of categories

By the way: all it needs for feedback/feature requests is a convincing use case or argument. Not sure you get what you want by telling an experienced team of professional developers (who do this for like 15 years successfully for a living) they don’t know what there are doing.  

[Interferon]

7 hours ago, opentype said:

By the way: all it needs for feedback/feature requests is a convincing use case or argument. Not sure you get what you want by telling an experienced team of professional developers (who do this for like 15 years successfully for a living) they don’t know what there are doing.  

Professional programmer means you earn money by writing code. It does not mean you are a good designer.

I have clearly stated a use case. The user is likely to navigate to "characters" and then they see the category is empty. "Oh, there is nothing here, I will leave" and just like that you have lost a customer forever. My users are complaining right now about this design.

[Cyrem]

7 hours ago, opentype said:

By the way: all it needs for feedback/feature requests is a convincing use case or argument. Not sure you get what you want by telling an experienced team of professional developers (who do this for like 15 years successfully for a living) they don’t know what there are doing.  

It's mainly because their implementation for file downloads differs from that of most other sites with download categories. Categories in downloads seem to be treated no differently than subforum categories, I don't see the advantage to why they've done it this way other than one solution saves time. I think his examples suffiently point out the flaw in IPS's implementation.

 

This has irked me for some time, but never enough to give feedback on it.

[Interferon]

7 hours ago, DesignzShop said:

They do understand, IPB has a great dev team. This particular set up doesn't really work for me personally but may for others. I haven't really seen a lot of issues with how it's done right now.I mentioned this in the beginning... Here's my example

https://www.designzshop.com/site/files/category/25-d-series/

Exactly. I navigate to "D-Series" and it is empty. This is extremely confusing, I have to know to click on a little tiny link in the right column to see anything.

IPB 4 is very good but this snafu does not match the quality of the rest of the suite. This should be fixed for both Downloads and Databases. These things are not like a forum.

6 minutes ago, Cyrem said:

It's mainly because their implementation for file downloads differs from that of most other sites with download categories. Categories in downloads seem to be treated no differently than subforum categories.

My users and your users do not care about technical details of the implementation. If anything it just makes us look cheap for relying on middleware instead of building it ourselves. For me, recreating the functionality of the entire IPB set of applications is just not possible.

[Cyrem]

11 minutes ago, Interferon said:

My users and your users do not care about this.

 

EDIT: I see your edit now. I'm not sure if you misunderstood me... I was pointing out that IPS seems to have made it work differently to most other software with any apparent good reason. My comment was actually for your suggestion.

[Interferon]

16 hours ago, Cyrem said:

 

EDIT: I see your edit now. I'm not sure if you misunderstood me... I was pointing out that IPS seems to have made it work differently to most other software with any apparent good reason. My comment was actually for your suggestion.

I know you agree with me, but I am going to try to argue with you anyways! 

[Matt]

This topic is spicy.

[Interferon]

This plugin will fix Downloads:

Now we need the same thing for databases.

[kmk]

On 12/17/2017 at 5:31 PM, Interferon said:

This should be fixed for both Downloads and Databases. These things are not like a forum.