New Forum Structure

[damkia]

Out of curiosity, how many international (outside AU/NZ) members do you currently have?

 

Could you use a prefix in the url to determine region ie "au/recflying.com", "us/recflying.com", "uk/recflying.com" to tailor a list of available relevant subforums, and simply leave the "recflying.com" as an all visible? This would then break down the conflicts in trying to include everything, but give some regional "homeliness". Include a linked list of regions in the "recflying.com" home page.

 

You get to have your pie and eat it too...

 

 

[Admin]

Out of curiosity, how many international (outside AU/NZ) members do you currently have?Could you use a prefix in the url to determine region ie "au/recflying.com", "us/recflying.com", "uk/recflying.com" to tailor a list of available relevant subforums, and simply leave the "recflying.com" as an all visible? This would then break down the conflicts in trying to include everything, but give some regional "homeliness". Include a linked list of regions in the "recflying.com" home page.

 

You get to have your pie and eat it too...

Good thought and have considered this in detail however there are many underlying issues like with Google search bots...they can only access what a standard guest sees when coming to the site so the deeper you go into a site's structure, and sub domains, the harder it is getting correct indexing done so your google search rating drops. Plus using sub domains there is also the issue of Google black listing you due to duplicated content...the whole thing is very complex and you still have the issue of having the extras like Airfields, Clubs, Schools etc as they can only be installed on one instance of the forum software so they have to be all inclusive and not segregated into regions.

There is also navigational issues. You could be in au/recfly.com and go to Airstrips which then places you in recfly.com so all links have to be hard coded. Say a user places a link in an au forum to a thread/post in a uk forum. The inbuilt software treats internal links one way and external links another way as in opening up another window...to overcome this would require change to the software source files. The other thing is displaying say the Aircraft category of forums across all sub domains but General Discussion, Accidents etc within their own individual sub domains.

 

I came up with a solution a couple of years ago and built it on my PC that used the inbuilt function of different Styles. With that I coded the forums list to display only certain forums depending on which style was used. Each region had a different style so when you clicked AU on the forum menu all the general forums came up but plus the AU forums that were set to display for that style. The same went for UK etc. The different regions displayed on the main menu just changed the style when you clicked them. It was so much work and contained many issues as highlighted above especially the linking because if you clicked a link to a forum in a different style to the one you were using you got an error and to overcome the Google issue the Forums default display to Guests etc was set to display ALL forums and that was a mile long which would put any potential new user off.

 

There is a way...I just haven't found it yet but what you are saying has merit, but just a lot of complications...a big thanks for the thought.../Ian goes off to explore the idea

 

 

[Admin]

Out of curiosity, how many international (outside AU/NZ) members do you currently have?

Oh, and to answer that question...yesterday I did a query on the database to show all users that hadn't selected Australia in their settings for Country. The disclaimer on this is that not all users have selected a country so they were filtered out. This left a list of 540 users...I once said that I thought the percentage was around 10% so I wasn't far off...it is 7%.

But you have to also know that around 2,500 guests view the site per day and the percentage of those being non Australian is much much higher than the 7% of registered users. This tells me that there are a great deal of International visitors that don't become users and the question therefore is...is it because of the enormous Australian (centric) content of the site and no facility to provide an alternative area so they just read then go?

 

 

[turboplanner]

How do we select Australia? I hadn't heard of this (but may have done it inadvertently)

 

 

[Admin]

How do we select Australia? I hadn't heard of this (but may have done it inadvertently)

It is in your settings and is what, in your case, makes the Australian Flag display in your details that are shown on the left of your posts

 

 

[turboplanner]

Thanks

 

 

[JEM]

Hi all,

 

My vote is to have the accidents/incidents area and the Aust Governing Bodies area as separate individual post areas as they were previously. Both of these areas are/were very important to improve Australian recreational aviation safety and governance. They are IMHO far too important to be mixed in with other issues.

 

Cheers

 

John

 

 

[Admin]

I am currently considering what to do as there are other considerations...I wish these comments came out when I asked not only in this thread but also another one a few weeks ago

 

 

[Admin]

Ok, I have reverted the forums back to the way they were with the exception of the Aircraft section and the Special Interest section. I am so 50/50 on this which is why I continually called for comments. The way the extra user benefits that are coming to the site soon, are set up, depends so much on this decision so your comments are vital in the way the site moves forward.

 

 

[flyerme]

Yay ... happy its back:score 010:.....NORMAL...

 

 

[damkia]

Ok, I have reverted the forums back to the way they were with the exception of the Aircraft section and the Special Interest section. I am so 50/50 on this which is why I continually called for comments. The way the extra user benefits that are coming to the site soon, are set up, depends so much on this decision so your comments are vital in the way the site moves forward.

What are the new user benefit that are coming and exactly what will be the affects/effects be? This would be a good start to get the conversational ball rolling.

 

 

[FlyingVizsla]

My vote is to have the accidents/incidents area and the Aust Governing Bodies area as separate individual post areas as they were previously. Both of these areas are/were very important to improve Australian recreational aviation safety and governance. They are IMHO far too important to be mixed in with other issues.

Cheers

 

John

I agree. The accident/incident threads usually start with some uncertainty eg "Another one?", "The Coast" "Plane missing" and may end up a false alarm or morph into search, injury, fatality, condolences, (then usually speculation & off topic). The titles will get lost in the general discussion forum. I have trouble re-finding some threads I have read because they have so many common words, or I miss-remembered the term. I can usually find them if I go to the forum. I found forumites were pretty good at putting RAA board issues and Accidents into the right forum (or someone is diligent in moving them).

Ian - Sorry I didn't think to raise this one earlier. I guess we all thought the status quo was OK and it would only be tinkering around the edges for the changes. Will be more diligent and thorough next change. I liked most of the changes, particularly for the international members.

 

Sue

 

 

[Admin]

What are the new user benefit that are coming and exactly what will be the affects/effects be? This would be a good start to get the conversational ball rolling.

Unfortunately some of them are strategic and letting them out of the bag now publicly could have impacts on their success...but I can say that one very big benefit to the site users could only happen if the site tailored more to International visitors as well which was the driver of all this. I know it is hard when you don't have the big picture but your comments are taken on-board and considered within the big picture. I can say that it has been discussed with a couple of the moderators though and the areas that are impacted are:

Aircraft Owners (specifically the owners)

 

Clubs and Schools (the Instructors forum is just a small component of that)

 

Reference Material

 

Support for registered site members

 

Aircraft Manufacturers and Distributors

 

Community interaction

 

Resources available (big impact in this area)

 

I have been working on this since Christmas and I had hoped it would set the platform for our future all coming together with our 10th Birthday celebrations next year and it is the specifics of your comments that are taken on board and so greatly appreciated.

 

Damkia, I will start a PC with you

 

 

[rankamateur]

I was just reading in a resurrected post from about four years ago, someone asked if the thread could be sticky on top of the whats new list. Got me wondering if that was a good idea because before we know it the first page would be full of sticky threads for various people so they don't lose them. With the new software is it possible for these people to make a favorite thread list to personally sticky their favorite threads? Maybe a tab in their profile details page?

 

 

[Admin]

I was just reading in a resurrected post from about four years ago, someone asked if the thread could be sticky on top of the whats new list. Got me wondering if that was a good idea because before we know it the first page would be full of sticky threads for various people so they don't lose them. With the new software is it possible for these people to make a favorite thread list to personally sticky their favorite threads? Maybe a tab in their profile details page?

If I have interpreted what you have said correctly then we already have something like that. Every post has a "Post-It Note" link in it. By clicking that you can create a post-it note of the post including any notes that you want to make about the post yourself plus make it public or private. If you then go to your Profile Details page you will see a tab that lists all your post-it notes in there.

Is that the type of thing that you are hinting at

 

 

[rankamateur]

Yes I guess it does

 

I read this in the come and stay thread

 

IAN,I believe this post is extremely useful and for that reason could it be permanently featured at the top of the 'What's new (24 hrs) page so that it does not disapear after 24 hours.

Just a thought.

 

Alan.

and just thought there must be a better way than bogging up the what's new tab

 

 

[damkia]

If I have interpreted what you have said correctly then we already have something like that. Every post has a "Post-It Note" link in it. By clicking that you can create a post-it note of the post including any notes that you want to make about the post yourself plus make it public or private. If you then go to your Profile Details page you will see a tab that lists all your post-it notes in there.Is that the type of thing that you are hinting at

I think he is referring to the "pinned" threads that are usually at the head of every subforum, but when modified do not appear at the head of the What's new/What's new(24hr) list.

 

 

[turboplanner]

Yes, that's it. I mostly use What's new, but if the thread slips from there it's hard to find again.

 

A likes button would be great, because you could then skim through the threads which interested you but may be of no interest to the majority.

 

 

[Admin]

You can also "Watch" threads so if a thread is of interest to you even though you may not have posted in that thread to get a notification when it gets updated with another post, you can watch it and still get a notification by email and it also is displayed in your Alerts function.

 

To "Watch" a thread just simply select "Watch Thread" at the top of any page of posts within that thread. You can also see what threads you are watching by clicking/hovering your username at the top right of the site and in the drop down box on the right column is a link saying "Watched Threads"

 

 

[turboplanner]

The threads which get pushed down out of sight are the ones where no one has posted for a few days

 

 

[Admin]

Perhaps I am not following what you are after...if there are no new posts in a thread and it disappears off the What's New list then I assume you would only want to go back to that thread for reference in which case there is 4 options:

 

1. Use a Post-It Note to go back to a specific post in a thread...if you had thought that you may have wanted to reference it later

 

2. If you have posted in that thread then it is automatically watched and you can find it in your Watched Threads

 

3. If you didn't post in the thread but thought you may want to reference it again then watch the thread and it is displayed in your Watched Threads List

 

4. I have spent extra money to get an "Enhanced" search feature for the site so the search function is very powerful...site wide, forum specific, thread specific and even by user and it has no minimum word length so it takes plain English searches.

 

The thing is how do you know that you may want to go back to a thread/post and reference it at the time you are reading it? If you do, then there are already features that will enable that even down to an individual post, if you don't and you can't tell the future, then it there is no way other than searching for something, a function that we have spent money on to enhance for everyone