A few minor changes to the forum structure ...

TTony

You might notice (well, you will know that I'm telling y'all about it!) ...

Each of the Classifieds section headings is now prefaced with "££".  This is to make it easier to tell whether a post is an ad or not when looking at the Recent Discussions view.

There's a new sub-section in the Guitar Classifieds for "Acoustics" - as requested.  I've also moved the Parts Classifieds to become a sub-section of the Guitars Classifieds.  We'll add another sub-section for "Basses" if there's any demand for that.

Mirroring the above, the Acoustics section in Gear is now a sub-section of Guitars, as is the previously separate Bass section.

There's some more fine-tuning to come in the next week or two.

I've announced this so everyone gets to see it, but will de-announce it in a week or so.  Any problems with any of the above, please post them in this thread.  Any suggestions for more similar tidy-up changes, post them here too.

Bod

Thanks Tony.  Some of the classifieds are prefixed, but others are suffixed.  Is that for a specific reason?

fretmeister

Why are they called "Child"

TTony

fretmeister said:

Why are they called "Child"

It's just a parent / child hierarchical relationship in the forum's structure.

fretmeister

New members might think it means beginner or safe for kids, no bad language etc

skankdelvar

TTony said:

fretmeister said:

Why are they called "Child"

It's just a parent / child hierarchical relationship in the forum's structure.

That sounds faintly unsavoury. 

imalone

TTony said:

We'll add another sub-section for "Basses" if there's any demand for that.

That's crazy talk.

crunchman

Surely the Guitars section should have Electrics as a subsection under it.

bloodandtears

TTony said:

fretmeister said:

Why are they called "Child"

It's just a parent / child hierarchical relationship in the forum's structure.

Use the term "sub"??

fretmeister

bloodandtears said:

TTony said:

fretmeister said:

Why are they called "Child"

It's just a parent / child hierarchical relationship in the forum's structure.

Use the term "sub"??

That would be far better.

But even so, the new layout looks shit.

guitarfishbay

I made the point in the other thread too but tapping child categories on the mobile version is a little bit frustrating now unless you're really accurate.  I usually browse with my thumb, phone in portrait mode, and hitting the smaller child categories is a bit like this -

Drew_TNBD

The child categories SUCK BALLS.

monquixote

Drew_fx said:

The child categories SUCK BALLS.

I am coming around to this point of view.

fretmeister

It's even more annoying that that.

In the old list I could see if my comment was still at the top, and not bother to check the entire section as I'd seen it already.

Now that information is hidden.

It sucks donkey balls.

guitarfishbay

Yeah I browse from the category view and can no longer see if there are new posts in child sections.  Is there any benefit to the child categories that I'm unaware of?  I don't see any improvements at all with the way I use the forum, only negatives.

TTony

guitarfishbay said:

Yeah I browse from the category view and can no longer see if there are new posts in child sections.  Is there any benefit to the child categories that I'm unaware of?  I don't see any improvements at all with the way I use the forum, only negatives.

The (intended) benefit was to split out topics that are relatively small within the major category, so that they don't get swamped.

So, eg1, splitting out Acoustics from the main Guitar section because there are relatively few discussions about Acoustics and the few that are posted are rapidly pushed off the bottom of the first page by the far more numerous discussions about electrics.

Eg2, in the Making & Modding section, there's often a sub-heading that groups together the current M&M challenge threads, rather than requiring the people who are participating to hunt through the longer list of general M&M posts to see the relevant threads.

We could have created new parent level categories but (a) they would be pretty quiet until or unless they because similarly popular (and having visibly quiet sections is something that we're trying to avoid) and (b) it makes the list of categories longer, uses more screen space, which then causes people to have to scroll further to see the categories at the bottom of the list (and that's not popular either).

Actually, argument (b) is flawed because of the way the child categories are currently displayed in the left side-bar list of categories, but we'd like to sort that out!

It's true - now, if you want to see the discussions in the Acoustics category, you have to click on the Acoustics sub-heading, but then that's just the same whether it's included as a sub-section of Guitars or a main section alongside Guitars.  And at least those people who want to post/read about Acoustics can do so without having to search through pages of other posts, as their posts get rapidly relegated down the list of recent posts.

The change was prompted by some requests specifically for us to do that.  Which just goes to prove that we can't please all of the people all of the time.

fretmeister

What you talking about Tone?

Before this abomination "Acoustics" and "Bass" had their own visible sections on the Home page.

They may well have been Sub forums in the hidden code, but they were there on the Home page, just like FX and Amps are now.

I fully appreciate you want to hide Acoustics and Bass as those sections make the rest feel inferior - but c'mon! Give the plebs easy access to their gods!

guitarfishbay

TTony said:

guitarfishbay said:

Yeah I browse from the category view and can no longer see if there are new posts in child sections.  Is there any benefit to the child categories that I'm unaware of?  I don't see any improvements at all with the way I use the forum, only negatives.

The (intended) benefit was to split out topics that are relatively small within the major category, so that they don't get swamped.

So, eg1, splitting out Acoustics from the main Guitar section because there are relatively few discussions about Acoustics and the few that are posted are rapidly pushed off the bottom of the first page by the far more numerous discussions about electrics.

Eg2, in the Making & Modding section, there's often a sub-heading that groups together the current M&M challenge threads, rather than requiring the people who are participating to hunt through the longer list of general M&M posts to see the relevant threads.

We could have created new parent level categories but (a) they would be pretty quiet until or unless they because similarly popular (and having visibly quiet sections is something that we're trying to avoid) and (b) it makes the list of categories longer, uses more screen space, which then causes people to have to scroll further to see the categories at the bottom of the list (and that's not popular either).

Actually, argument (b) is flawed because of the way the child categories are currently displayed in the left side-bar list of categories, but we'd like to sort that out!

It's true - now, if you want to see the discussions in the Acoustics category, you have to click on the Acoustics sub-heading, but then that's just the same whether it's included as a sub-section of Guitars or a main section alongside Guitars.  And at least those people who want to post/read about Acoustics can do so without having to search through pages of other posts, as their posts get rapidly relegated down the list of recent posts.

The change was prompted by some requests specifically for us to do that.  Which just goes to prove that we can't please all of the people all of the time.

Ok thanks for the reply.

I don't really see why they can't be their own parent categories.  I thought they were previously just because of how they appeared - acoustic and bass section have had their own heading for as long as I remember, you could see the last post, you could easily press them with your thumb on mobile (my biggest issue if I'm honest!).

I don't see visibly quiet sections as an issue (some of the playing sections are pretty slow too, and not child categorised) - plus making them smaller isn't going to increase traffic to them either so I guess I fail to see what the real benefit is here.

Appreciate you can't please everyone, but I don't see how any of this helps except for hiding 'slow traffic' type sections from the front page and making for slightly less scrolling.  Scrolling down really isn't much effort, but having to be accurate when using a mobile with your thumb does take effort and is actually annoying.  

I really don't see how a tiny amount of scrolling outweighs ease of use for people browsing on mobile (which is probably a lot of people as a guess).  I flip between desktop, mobile and iPad, currently these new changes are definitely worse on mobile.

Drew_TNBD

It was fine the way it was.

I don't recall there being much outrage about how everything was laid out. I certainly never saw any feature requests to this effect.

randomhandclaps

I'm glad someone cleared up what the 'child' categories were because for ages the only one I spotted was the parodies category and I thought it was someone expressing their disgust.

Sarge

I like the new classifieds' child categories, it seperates the wheat from the chaff, and I browse mostly on my phone, with my thumb, and I have no problem hitting the link at all.