New Beta Forums

[luacs1998 270]

These new forums will not be used until we get them in line with the design I want for them.

Right now they look atrocious and are a PITA to navigate.

If anyone is familiar with discourse and ruby, please contact me and we can start working on a new layout for the site.

Until then, we're staying here.

 

 

 

 

---

We've recently opened a new community forum that may be replacing this one, and would like you guys to provide feedback on it, especially in regards to speed, usability, and more.

 

 

Here's the link: http://discuss.minecraftforge.net/

 

 

You'll need to create a new account, though it links with a few services if you want, more will be added later.

[luacs1998 270]

Reports received on IRC: People are having trouble creating accounts: https://meta.discourse.org/t/problem-creating-new-account/11896

 

OvermindDL1, I've already sent you a tweet, just posting here again for the record.

[Squawkers13 1]

Yess, Discourse!

 

Load time was slow though...

[jakobaindreas_11 0]

It's better that this forum will stay because it's much good that the new one

[superninjaman45 1]

I don't know if this is the correct place to ask questions but I can't create an account on the new forums

So will threads from the old forums be merged with the new, or will they stay separate? I am under the impression they will stay separate due to the Forum Archives link (which, by the way, is broken).

?

[BottleFact 1]

Looks nice, and looks like the sponge forums.

 

Note: If you don't know what sponge is, LMGTFY [lmgtfy]www.spongepowered.org[/lmgtfy]

[Eathuis 1]

I personally like SMF and the look of this forum.

[shadowfacts 100]

Yay! We can use Markdown instead of BBCode for formatting! 

[Belpois 22]

Looks cool!

[Ehnonimus 0]

I made an account to comment and offer critique on the beta forum design. To be straight to the point, the beta design as it stand is pretty terrible from a usability point-of-view. The main issue is the hierarchy of information and the non-intuitive buttons/hyperlinks. My eyes are drawn all over the page and it's hard to tell which information is "more important" than others. A few key examples are as follows:

• The red text used for hyperlinks and the "latest posts" listing on the main page stands out way too much. It draws your eye away from other more important info such as titles, and clashes with the standard, black, non-hyperlinked text. Compare this with the original forum and it's blue hyperlinks with underlines. You'll notice the colour blends well when embedded along black standard text but still appears distinct and is clearly clickable.
  
• The removal of column divider lines causes difficulty distinguishing between columns and muddles the design of the front page. Ironically, I suspect this design choice was intended to create a more "minimal" effect but has the unfortunate side effect of causing the overall design to be more convoluted. In an information-dense design such as a forum, keeping some level of column differentiation is critical to allow a viewer to quickly distinguish between the different sets of information. You can see how this was applied horizontally for each topic row. Divider lines are used to great effect in the current forum and are used in many other forums for good reason. They work.
  
• The titles and many other hyperlink text, aside from a mouse pointer change on roll-over, have no indication that they're clickable links. The current forum uses underlines, colour, and rollover changes to indicate that text is clickable vs. greyscale standard text. Removing or changing this visual system has serious practical consequences that will likely be a great source of frustration for your visitors.
  

 

All in all, I can see how the designer has tried to make the beta forum design sleek and more minimal looking, but it unfortunately failed as a design for lack of some key usability concepts. I would strongly reconsider this design since there's no point making a webpage sleek, sexy, and minimal if it's a pain-in-the-ass to use. If I had the time, I'd offer further assistance, but as of now all I can offer is my critique and suggestions. Sorry if this sounded harsh or like I didn't appreciate the work put into the new design. I genuinely hope this helps because if I didn't care I wouldn't have commented.

 

p.s. I use "minimal" in the loosest sense. It was best word I could think of to accurately describe what I thought the designer was trying to achieve.

 

[Minecraft İndir 0]

Very good:)

[LexManos 1602]

These new forums will not be used until we get them in line with the design I want for them.

Right now they look atrocious and are a PITA to navigate.

If anyone is familiar with discourse and ruby, please contact me and we can start working on a new layout for the site.

Until then, we're staying here.

[MiKeY 0]

These new forums will not be used until we get them in line with the design I want for them.

Right now they look atrocious and are a PITA to navigate.

If anyone is familiar with discourse and ruby, please contact me and we can start working on a new layout for the site.

Until then, we're staying here.

 

Hi, I know this is a really old post now but from what I can tell you are still working on this. I just wanted to put it out there that I know the inner workings of discourse and I ruffly know Ruby although PHP, CSS, Sass, html5 are more my sort of thing. I am a website designer and developer and I would love to help out. If you would like to talk more then you can contact me on here or my skype: mike12074 or pretty much every other means of contact but a PM would be best for me to share those with you.

[LexManos 1602]

I need a skinned discourse that looks and navigates like a forum.

Simple concept, make it look/feel like the current site.

[MiKeY 0]

I need a skinned discourse that looks and navigates like a forum.

Simple concept, make it look/feel like the current site.

 

Yeah, I can do that Would you like to talk more about it? If you would then feel free to contact me. It sounds like a fun little project to work on and help out with.