EXAMPLE: Sticky Thread - Hack Categories

[theflow]

Edited 9-1-01: This concept is now abandoned.

Thank you to all who read my ideas re how we might collaboratively build a topical listing of most frequently requested hacks. There is not enough support to pull this off, but clearly there has been interest established in having vB provide an alt-method to access information other than Search and Chron Browsing of thread lists.

As time permits I will still contribute my efforts toward building a user-friendly FAQ at vB. Here is the Table of Contents. When you run across good stuff, take a minute to post the URLs, and we can steadily make progress.

[eva2000]

interesting concept

[ToraTora!]

it would save a ton of posts/threads asking for something that has already been posted at least a dozen times. (ie, people who do not use the search button) The mods could start a deletion campaign of threads that are resembled elsewhere, and point the poster to this area.

I like your idea flow, and its obvious you put some time behind this. My compliments.

[JoshFink]

I've been reading about you trying to get this implemented and I think it's a great idea. If there isn't a FAQ system, this is the next best thing. This is actually how I categorize threads of interest on my home computer..

I agree that I think it should be locked and that only Mods can post to it. It keeps the clutter out and makes for a nice reference point.

Only suggestion I have and I don't know if it's possible, is to make the links scroll down the page instead of opening up a new window..

Other than that, I like it.

Josh

[theflow]

Originally posted by JoshFink
Only suggestion I have and I don't know if it's possible, is to make the links scroll down the page instead of opening up a new window..

Other than that, I like it.

Josh

Thanks Tora, thanks Josh. I agree re the linking. I don't know how to do those kind of anchor links (I'm not a coder) but I followed the instructions given to me by tubedogg about 5 weeks ago re linking to a specific post within a thread. Maybe there is another way? anyone?

[Admin]

You cannot set anchor links if you don't have to ability to post HTML, but if you're interested, this is the code:

<a name="post1">

Then you can use #post1 in your link to go there.

By the way, vBulletin does the same thing. If you'll take a look, it adds a link to every post - so you can link directly to it.

[Admin]

It wasn't a suggestion, I was just telling you how to use this kind of links.
What tubedogg said is correct (I mean, did you have any doubts?).
You cannot do what I said unless you can post HTML (which you can't here).
But I said that vBulletin already does that for you, it sets the anchor on the postbit template (<a name="post$post[postid]"></a>), and that gives you the ability to link to that particular post.
By the way, you can also link to the post like this - http://www.forums.com/showthread.php...d=XXX#postYYY.

But anyway, I like the idea. The only thing is to keep up with hacks that are released.

[samtha25]

In section 7, where you filled in some examples, you included requests. I think it would be very difficult to try to keep the catalog up to date with requests. There are some small hacks, though, that aren't formally released in the Released forum. I think those may generate a lot of the repeat questions. It would be useful to have those cataloged but a lot of work. All in all, this would probably be a lot of work for the moderators, who are pretty darn busy already. Perhaps others could volunteer to maintain it somehow.

[Admin]

I went thru 14 pages of the How Do I forum, gathered about 20 of tips that I found and added them to my sig. (and I will be adding more today)
Hopefully, people will see it before posting questions that were already answered.

Thanks for the idea flow!

[Wayne Luke]

It is even more confusing to me now that there is an example.

It looks like you want to provide an index to every thread containing anything to do with modifying vBulletin in any forum.

Hacks are not template changes. Hacks are not questions on how to use a feature. Hacks are PHP code changes, nothing more and nothing less. If it can be done from the control panel it is not a hack.

That said, there are two many categories. It should be limited to:

Forum Hacks
Thread Hacks
User Hacks
Administration/Moderator Hacks
Calendar Hacks
Other.

Too many choices are difficult on the user. This is a well known usability issue in Web Design. Also what is with the changing colors? This again is non-standard and makes me wonder why people do it. It doesn't do anything to make the readability easier.

I still think there is too much maintenance involved. With the number of new threads in this area a day there is going to be hours put in every day maintaining the thread, for something that basically recreates the forum display capability of vbulletin as it is.

I personally have never had a problem with the search facility here. It is how I find any thread worth while. I can narrow the search if I need to, search for wildcards, find posts by particular users and it only takes ten seconds it not only searches the titles but the actual text of each individual post. It will give me a brief snippet of each post if I want so I don't have to click on blind threads.

With the sticky thread concept:
I have to load that thread,
make an assumption on what kind of hack it is I am looking for and hope I get the right overlapping category
Click on a post and load a new window (which can't be changed unless you change the vbulletin code)
Start looking at threads that have titles but no other details. Each opening in a new window...

Then still for the only way it would work is to force people to read it, which obviously doesn't happen all the time or people would be posting in the appropriate forums to begin with.

I have the same problem with people adding hundreds of links to their signatures in a tiny font. I don't want to read all that. It runs together. Makes me just skip over their entire signature whether they have valuable information or not. Give me a link to your site and I'll check it out. Give me links to all sorts of different hacks and threads you are proud of and I ignore it.