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#Post#: 1603--------------------------------------------------
Site Updates - Introducing Portal
By: Griff Grof Date: July 4, 2012, 2:46 pm
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Have you noticed? ;D
After five months of being admin on this new CacheWalker site, I
thought it was about time we had a spring clean. As always your
voices are louder than ours at Admin Towers, so if there is
anything you don't like, or things we could make better, please
don't be shy to say :) We're the users of the forum after all,
but I, along with Altra, think that these updates will prove to
be popular ???
You've probably noticed the main one. As soon as you logged on
:D. But I'm going to be running you through every single update
that has been made to hopefully improve user experience. Of
course, there are very very little updates, which you may or may
not ever notice - I won't bother to go into those, you can
discover them for yourselves :) So, here are the updates:
Introducing Portal. A faster way to be in the know of everything
going on.
As soon as you logged on, you'll have noticed that you don't
arrive in the board index. Instead you arrive in a (currently)
pretty basic Portal - the whole point of this, is for you to be
in the know of everything that's been going on - no matter how
long you've not been online. Of course, it's very easy to get
lost in it all at first, with all the different widgets, so I'll
go ahead and explain it all. Here's the portal:
http://i1262.photobucket.com/albums/ii605/GriffGrof/Portal.png
On the top left you will find your User Control Panel. A quick
way to see what's new with you, and below you can see who else
is online.
The centre is dominated by a "Recent Posts" box - no longer will
you have to scroll down looking for the darker ammo box - all
the recent posts are there, waiting for you to be read (You can
of course go back to the index and do it the old way, will come
back to that)
Finally, on the top right, you will find the "Current Polls" -
now you can vote in the Weekly poll, right from the portal - no
need to enter the thread and do it manually. One click as soon
as you arrive, and your vote is cast :)
On the bottom left, you will find a search bar, a recent events
and news box, and the Monthly Featured Geocache (see thread in
Members only) Now you can search the entire site from the moment
you arrive, and see what's going on with the wider Geocaching
community. The Monthly Geocache is good to see which cache you
should put on your #1 "To Do" list :D
On the bottom right, you will see a contact form. Fill in this
form to e mail the admins, with whatever you like - suggestions,
feedback, complaints about the forums - guests can use this just
to gain more general information on what the forums are about.
This should prove to be a handy feature for some, but of course
not all.
Lastly, in the bottom centre of the Portal you will find the
Shoutbox...
Shoutbox. Geocaching discussion. Instantly.
Now you don't need to post a whole thread asking how someones
day caching was. Just shout in the shoutbox. Just like a live
shout feature, when several members are online why not shout
"Hi" and start a live chat? No need to refresh the portal, the
shoutbox updates itself every second ;D This feature should
prove popular with most, and you have to be a member, logged in,
with granted permission to use it - so you can be sure shouts
(aka chat) will be appropriate - we're also working on building
in a filter.
http://i1262.photobucket.com/albums/ii605/GriffGrof/Shoutbox.png<br
/>
As I write this I notice something - ignore the "Edit" and
"Puzzle" buttons right to the title - only I can see those :D
Back to the shoutbox... You can include all BBCode that you can
see when posting replies like this, and select whichever smiley
you want to use in your shout... And, as you can see above,
using the shoutbox is as easy as it seems - the shouts at the
top are the newest. I think that the shoutbox is a great
advancement on the site, but why not just post how you feel even
if no one is there like "Evening" or "Had a great day caching"
so others can reply when they go back onto the portal? It will
be interesting to see how we all use the Shoutbox in the days to
come.
Obviously, if we all decide we like the Portal and want to keep
it, others may want to use the forums in the traditional way.
The Portal really is a Portal, an entrance to the site - just
click the "forum" tab under the logo or follow the link in the
"Welcome" box at the top :)
Karma. Thank you. And thanks again.
http://cachewalker.createaforum.com/Themes/default/images/admin/feature_k.png
Like a post you see? Learnt something useful? Not happy with how
a post came across? Disagree with something said? You will
notice on all threads under our user information two new buttons
have appeared - "Thanks" and "Smite". It's as simple as it
sounds really... say thanks to a user for a post, and their
Karma goes up... Smite a user and their Karma goes down. This
should be a good way to reward the many, if not all members, who
post useful things, start interesting threads etc....
It's a warning!!
This update will apply to all users, but only the Moderators
(walktall and tarmacjohn) along with the Admins (myself and
Tech-Support Altra) can use it. Thankfully we haven't gotten to
the point, yet, where people are posting inappropriate and
irrelevant posts, so we can simply issue warnings (Unless they
are spammers, where accounts will be deleted as soon as they are
discovered) This was one such minor update, but thought it would
be worth mentioning just to let everyone know.
So, that's all that really needs a mention. The rest is pretty
much a silent update..... We hope you will give the new
features a chance, but please don't be shy to reply on this
thread with your own opinion, or with any questions you may have
regarding the updates, or ways we can make the Portal, and the
rest of the new features, better :)
GG
#Post#: 1609--------------------------------------------------
Re: Site Updates - Introducing Portal
By: walktall Date: July 4, 2012, 4:23 pm
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I quickly found the forum button to get back to normal :o
It's new, what do you expect ??? :P
I might get use to it :-*
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