Home > Forum > Pipi User Support Forum > Suggestions for improving the forums

Mike Peters

Mike is the founder and National President of NZERN, inventor of PIPI4, and President of the Addington Bush Society. Lives in Christchurch after a lifetime working as a welder.

Hi Gérald

Excellent ideas.

Give me a couple of days and I'll set up a couple of alternative web page layouts for the forum that include your suggestions.

I'll post a message here when its ready to test.

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I agree - the forum descriptions could be improved.

Someone else suggested that it be possible to include code on a page without it being evaluated. Some forums have a yellow box in the message for code. Not sure how its done.

Mike

Gérald Barreau

Fully interested in gis technology and environmental causes, volunteer at the NZERN in 2006 both inside to install webmapping solutions and outside for restoration project. Currently in France, with Master's degree in GIS Working for G2C Informatics (development and use of gis tools for water management)but still strongly hart linked with NZ and NZERN and ready to help more !!!

About the biographical detail, i think i would reduce the police so that it doesn't size so much. It must be smaller than the text of the message
and some colors would be cool as well I mean background for the bio details and the place with the date to make it clearer and nicer

I would also use arial police for all the forum which is more comfortable than times

I think sometimes it's quite practical to link a document or some code to a message to be well understood. WHat do you think about that ?

Gerald

Gérald Barreau

Fully interested in gis technology and environmental causes, volunteer at the NZERN in 2006 both inside to install webmapping solutions and outside for restoration project. Currently in France, with Master's degree in GIS Working for G2C Informatics (development and use of gis tools for water management)but still strongly hart linked with NZ and NZERN and ready to help more !!!

Hi Mike and Hi all the team !!!!

I can now take more time to observe all the good job you do.
I wanted to say about the forum your second choice is quite better with for each topics, the posts number, the last one with the author and date....
It's more practical to know about the news and so make a selection.The number the post has been seen is quite interesting as well i think ...

Some little things could also be done for the subject for instance to make it clearer with bold police, or something like that but the principle is really good.

Perhaps i would add a short description of the subjets of discussion for each forum at http://www.bush.org.nz/forum/index.html with some a bit more classification in the themes. For instance
general forum :
- event(conference, meeting, news,...)
- tool box (documents, articles, result which could be useful for the community but also some small applications or tutorials, advises...)

software: computer stuff :
- data
- gis...

open space
- free discussion about multiple subjet linked to environment, restoration

I don't know how it can be done but i just compare to http://georezo.net/forum/index.php which is quite famous and efficient.

Gerald

Mike Peters

Mike is the founder and National President of NZERN, inventor of PIPI4, and President of the Addington Bush Society. Lives in Christchurch after a lifetime working as a welder.

Some more suggestions for improving the forums.

1. Have a reply link on the bottom of the emailed forum message. It would ask for a username/pasword and take a member straight to the original message and the reply form.

2. Its hard for a logged in member to know when a forum has something new, without going to each forum one by one.

A solution might be to change the Forums & Lists page
http://www.help.bush.org.nz/eng/standard/page/Personal_Forums.html

so it gives more information like this one
http://www.bush.org.nz/forum/index.html

The added information being:
- last post subject
- who made it
- when
- total number of topics and posts.

3. Enable a member to subscribe to a forum subject. Could be useful when asking a question, and wanting to know when there is a reply, without being swamped by unwanted email.

Mike

Dave Evans

Dave is secretary of ERIS and spends each Monday doing computer systems maintenance for this trust. He is also a member of the Travis Wetland Trust and has a restoration project incorporating a scientific study of kahikatea regeneration there.

I'm working on some improvements to the help at the moment.

It would be nice if when you are looking at the postings in a subject the last phrase in the bar near the top of the screen, e.g.

Dave Evans > Forums & Lists > Pipi User Support Forum

was a link back to all the subjects on this forum. "Forums & Lists" is a nice link to all the forums, but "Pipi User Support Forum" is not a link to the list of subjects in this forum.

This isn't especially important if it is not trivial.

Mike Peters

Mike is the founder and National President of NZERN, inventor of PIPI4, and President of the Addington Bush Society. Lives in Christchurch after a lifetime working as a welder.

Here is the draft of the FAQ's for Forums & Lists.
Is this adequate?
Mike

To use the forums

Login at
http://www.bush.org.nz/support/login.html

If you have forgotton your password click on "Forgot password" and enter your email address (user name).

Click on the name of the forum (you may need to first go to Forums & Lists).

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To read or contribute to a subject.
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Select the subject from the list of subjects by clicking "Edit".

Click on "Reply" which will take you to a simple reply form. Type or copy and paste your message and press the "Post Reply" button.

And your message will be added.

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To start a new subject.
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Press the "New Subject" button.

Enter the subject in the Subject box.

Type or copy and paste your message in the Message box and press the "Submit" button.

And your new subject and message will be added.

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Subscribing and unsubscribing to Forums & Lists
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Go to "Forums & Lists".

Click on "Settings".

You can choose to subscribe to a new forum or list by ticking the little box to the left of the name and pressing the "Update" button.

If you are already subscribed to a forum or list, you can change your subscription by selecting from the "Subscription Option" drop down list and pressing the "Update" button.

Those options are:
Daily Digest - sends you a daily email message at 6am if something is added to this forum or list
Email Message - sends you a copy of any message by email as soon as it is added to the forum or list
Unsubscribe - removes you from this forum or list. You will not be able to view the forum or its contents when you log in
Vacation - you are still subscribed, but no email will be sent
Web only - No Email - You have to login to see the forum, it will not send you and kind of email message

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To get help with using Forums & Lists
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To suggest improvements to the forums and raise problems of a technical nature please login and use the Pipi User Support Forum. The forum can also be read at
http://www.bush.org.nz/forum/index.html

The Pipi User Support Forum is staffed by the ERIS team who can answer your question about using the forums, fix technical faults and act on improvement suggestions.

Dave Evans

Dave is secretary of ERIS and spends each Monday doing computer systems maintenance for this trust. He is also a member of the Travis Wetland Trust and has a restoration project incorporating a scientific study of kahikatea regeneration there.

I prefer fonts like Arial (sans-serif?). I think it would be better if the the fonts were the same for bio and posting. I'm not sure about the size, but I have no trouble reading the size the postings currently are. Others might I suppose. The ratios are fine.

Mike Peters

Mike is the founder and National President of NZERN, inventor of PIPI4, and President of the Addington Bush Society. Lives in Christchurch after a lifetime working as a welder.

If it was helpful, the forum message text font type and size could also be changed so that its the same as the bio details.

Should the relative widths of the two areas be changed so the bio becomes wider? They are set to 20% and 80%.

What doe people think?

I'd love to read other suggestions posted on this forum on how the forums could be improved, before making the changes.

Mike

Dave Evans

Dave is secretary of ERIS and spends each Monday doing computer systems maintenance for this trust. He is also a member of the Travis Wetland Trust and has a restoration project incorporating a scientific study of kahikatea regeneration there.

A point I thought of today, but didn't get around to mentioning is the font size for the biographical details next to each posting. Could it be reduced so that it is of a similar size to the text in the posting? I think that would look better. Just my opinion. Sometimes the bio details consume more column inches than the posting itself.