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Homepage Layout

Feedback at the bottom still screws me up, and some of the other rearrangements, buuuut I think any of us could get used to it in time. I do like that the Pokemon areas themselves stand out more at the top, though!
 
whoever fixed the forum display is bae #1
 
So, has been a while since I've seen the layout, so I'm speaking from an oldy perspective.

Skin: Chromatic 2.0 (Nick 4eva)

Pokémon: Main Series Games
Merging the Pokemon Video Games into individual sub boards and having Sun & Moon as the main one is very nicely done. The icons of the legendaries is a nice touch too, so I like that and nice to whoever though of it.

Fan Games
If you're looking to condense different boards, then maybe you should look at this. Seems like some of these could be sub-boarded like you've done on other areas of the main board. However, in my time, I never really followed this section much.

Community Square
So, this is the one that's strange to me. Feedback & Support has been punted down to the bottom of the page. I feel this is a little strange. Maybe because I'm so use to seeing it at the top, but it does give off better vibes having the Feedback & Support section at the top, showing quickly to people where they can go if they have any issues. However, if that were to be done, just having the Feedback & Support at the top would look odd on its own, so that's a strange one. I see what you're all doing putting the main video games up at the top, as that's about 60% reason why people are here (guessing).

Off-Topic
Off-Topic is a mess, imo. There are far too many different boards in here. I understand the word and implication 'Off-Topic', but having Video Games and Entertainment and Media as sub-topics is strange. Unless traffic has changed since I've been gone, VG brought in consistent high numbers of traffic and E&M, while it wasn't the biggest swinger, it pairs well with VG. VG should be it's own main topic. It's, arguably, the second most popular topic on this forum after the main games, again unless things have changed.

Considering how you've organised the sub-topics, why isn't Forum Games in there? Surely that's the definition of Off-Topic? It, technically, provides nothing positive for the forum, just a spam centre with a bit of fun. Also, the layout of all of the boards doesn't make sense. You have 3 boards, then the big Off-Topic sub boards, then one after? Off-Topic should be above all of them or below all of them.

Also, for Pokemon Trivia and The Underground, I think Pokemon Trivia could be make it's own sub board under Off-Topic, as it's very active, but The Underground should be looked at axing. Speaking to the old admins, if you think back to my reign in VG, The LP Board was more activate than The Underground, yet it got merged. Outside of the 'Hangout' sticky (because regardless of the board, those types of threads are always going to get posts), actual topical posts, there are only 5 threads that have had activity in 2017. Speaks for itself, imo.

I'd recommend breaking off the media based boards off into a new board called Media Square to keep it inline with your existing theme.

If I were to re-organise, this is how it'd look.

Media Square
> Video Games
> Entertainment & Media
> Anime & Manga (Could be a sub-board to E&M)
> Science & Technology

Community Square
Off-Topic
> Feedback & Support
> The Bulletin Board
> Meet & Greet
> Off-Topic
>> A New Leaf
>> Forum Games
>> Lifestyle & Health
>> The Round Table
>> Pokemon Trivia

Maybe I'm just bias, but I think it works better, at least on paper. I think throwing everything that doesn't seem to fit into Off-Topic is lazy and that was the first thing I thought when I signed in today after seeing it previously.

I appreciate that you want to condense the amount of boards on the forum because, I admit, it was farrrrr toooooo longggggg in the past. It's going in the right step, but I think a bit more tweaking and some more condensing; I'm looking mainly at Fan Games.

Well, that's my thoughts on it as an old member. Realise it might be tl;dr, but could be useful for the 'elders'.​
 
Appreciate the feedback from everyone, but addressing Fabio directly (hi bud!): the Undeeground is purposefully that way. There is a set number of games that happen at a time so there will never be fifty active threads in there. It's set up to allow what it has. You'd be more apt to looking at post count for the area and each thread (game) over dates.
 
@will: You're right that you must not have paid much attention to fan games in the past because I feel there is zero room for condensing things there. I've worked very hard to move that forum on from its past of being a single forum and it is now a whole category on PC. It is extremely active and is one of the main reasons people join PC, along with the actual games of course. Our whole team has smashed our heads together for a long time to discuss the best way to condense things etc. (because we have done that already) and we feel it is currently in the best position and shape it can possibly be in.

If you have any suggestions beyond condensing for the sake of condensing then I'd be glad to hear them and take them on board. But, as things stand, as a daily user and friend of a lot of daily users I see no real necessity for change.

Also a wonderful thing about it being an entire category is that you can just minimise it completely if you think it is too long and/or don't want to see it.
 
hashtag said:
@will: You're right that you must not have paid much attention to fan games in the past because I feel there is zero room for condensing things there. I've worked very hard to move that forum on from its past of being a single forum and it is now a whole category on PC. It is extremely active and is one of the main reasons people join PC, along with the actual games of course. Our whole team has smashed our heads together for a long time to discuss the best way to condense things etc. (because we have done that already) and we feel it is currently in the best position and shape it can possibly be in.

If you have any suggestions beyond condensing for the sake of condensing then I'd be glad to hear them and take them on board. But, as things stand, as a daily user and friend of a lot of daily users I see no real necessity for change.

Also a wonderful thing about it being an entire category is that you can just minimise it completely if you think it is too long and/or don't want to see it.
Click to expand...

"If you have any suggestions beyond condensing for the sake of condensing then..." I feel that's what has happened to 'Off-Topic'. It was more me addressing a board to be looked it, if it hadn't already.
It's good the board has such a dedicated Moderator as yourself who's looked at how the traffic flows through! :)

Alas, the feedback is no dig at any type of boards or its Moderators, it's just that, feedback.​
 
Captain Fabio said:
"If you have any suggestions beyond condensing for the sake of condensing then..." I feel that's what has happened to 'Off-Topic'. It was more me addressing a board to be looked it, if it hadn't already.
It's good the board has such a dedicated Moderator as yourself who's looked at how the traffic flows through! :)

Alas, the feedback is no dig at any type of boards or its Moderators, it's just that, feedback.​
Click to expand...
Sure! I can't speak on behalf of the reasoning for Off-topic but I'm 100% that there is more reasoning beyond what we see.
 
As a frequenter of the Fan Games section, I actually love how it's organized now. It's so much clearer what goes where and there aren't 3 different beginners help sections anymore, which is really nice. Maybe finding resources will be easier now (lmfao)
 
Bebop said:
Part of this revamp involved a rather fundamental shift in thinking of subforums. In the past we used activity as a measure to say something "deserves" to be a "main board" and treated everything as individual communities. Our approach with the subforuming of half of PC was to try to think of these things as logical containers of a topic, and to focus on making it easy to navigate to those topics.

PC in the past was flat and shallow. We tried to make it narrower, but with a lot more depth. I understand it's a hard shift for people who were accustomed to "main boards" being active/prestigious/etc. and seeing subforums as less important topics, but we really want to get away from that mindset and try something new. So we moved all of the non-Pokemon "discussions" into a place called Off Topic, and under that header things are further refined in topic scope. Video Games are an Off-Topic discussion, so is Anime, and other media like movies and music. There's no reason why those things can't be bustling and busy while also being logically categorized under Off Topic.

Also, you're using an outdated theme so you still see "The Bulletin Board" in the Community Square. That isn't intended. On maintained themes that forum doesn't show up, and Off Topic is actually the very bottom of the forum.
Click to expand...

;-;
Why must you always forget about my favourite themes and not support them. Lol. I switched to 'Forever Standing' and I see what you mean about the arrangement. So, that's fair enough.

There is 'technically' no reason why they can't be bustling and busy, but I think it takes them out of the spotlight a little and decreases 'random' traffic, imo. However, I am just going off guesswork and no actual empirical data. So, I could be talking a lot of crap. inb4youalwaysdo.

Either way, they were just my initial thoughts. They may change after I've used the boards for a while now, as I would like to stay as active as it's possible in my life. Either way, cheers all for responding. Good chat!​
 
This horizontal generation forums display with vertical everything else and then horizontal again at the bottom for offtopic is inconsistent. Then when you open offtopic the subforums are all displayed in a vertical list again. Pick one style and go with it; don't do what you've done.

And a more generalised comment: I hope you never start requiring (java)scripting to display the pages.

Bebop said:
Also, you're using an outdated theme so you still see "The Bulletin Board" in the Community Square. That isn't intended. On maintained themes that forum doesn't show up, and Off Topic is actually the very bottom of the forum.
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Is there a list of maintained themes? Is it obvious to 'any old user' that not all themes are supported anymore? I don't actually care for an answer though, it's just something for you to consider.
 
I'm not sure if this is quite the thread to put this(it's been a while since I've been here in general), but every link/title/etc has red text that is the exact same shade as the red bubble behind it so the only way to read what the thread is is by hovering over the link. Even then, it's hard to read due to how dark of a red it all is. Is this a problem others are having as well?
[PokeCommunity.com] Homepage Layout
 
Wiicked said:
All of this would be fine if you could fully justify the "need for this change".

Majority of staff =/= majority of community.
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Basically the idea behind this change as it was presented to us by the admins was that PC needs to attract and keep new members, as overall activity and membership has been verrrrrry slowly declining over the years, and the forum now has to compete with social media and chatrooms. They felt that this re-organization of the forum index may help the forum seem less overwhelming and less difficult to navigate for new users, especially those unfamiliar with forums, and that it would increase the chances of said new users sticking around long term/being highly active, boosting those two things and hopefully keeping the site alive and healthy.

Now whether or not that index re-organization can/will really accomplish that, or if this was even executed well, is up for debate. That's why we have feedback threads like this and a whole section specifically for help and feedback.

Unless you were getting at something else and I'm just misunderstanding you.
 
Achromatic said:
Personally I've actually found myself checking sections like Video Games way less than I usually would. I used to browse this section quite a few fair bit (albeit not the most active poster) and now I just sorta forget it exists which is sad, and I can only imagine this would be more the case for a new user that isn't already used to these forums. Just some reflection a bit on.
Click to expand...

I actually visit it more now, but what you said is true for me with other sections.
 
Backing up what Johnny, Ben, and Cutiefly have said, I can attest to the fact that I've stopped visiting several sections that I used to simply because I miss them on the forum index. When I was more active here, I used to pop into Pokemon Trivia on my travels through the forum. These days, with it tossed under a section along with Other Trivia (which I don't go into), I miss the threads in PT because I can barely see if PT has gotten new posts. The tiny icon might be a different color, but it's hard to see when I'm quickly scrolling through the index.

It also took me quite some time to figure out where the Pokemon Trading Card Game forum went to, and I very legitimately thought that the Daily forum was removed from the index (at least for non-Daily staff members to see).

Also, because I feel it should be honestly said, it feels rather unfair for A New Leaf to be shoved into the massive Off-Topic section when it's so new that it doesn't have set regulars. It seems as if ever since A New Leaf joined the rest of the other sections in Off-Topic that it very quickly lost posts and people checking it out. Which is rather sad to see for a new section that didn't really have much of an opportunity to shine on its own.

They felt that this re-organization of the forum index may help the forum seem less overwhelming and less difficult to navigate for new users, especially those unfamiliar with forums
Click to expand...
Tossing it out there, but every other forum that I've visited/been a member on (and that's quite a lot) have all had the forum feedback section on top of the index (if they have one). That section is rather important, and it seems backwards to have it at the bottom. If I was a new member coming from another forum, I wouldn't know to look for the feedback forum at the bottom if everywhere else I've been has theirs at the top.
 
With regards to the feedback forum's location, I think it's fine. Being realistic, the number of posts in that section compared to the number of new members who join and start posting is infinitesimally small. Even when it was at the top of the forum, it was only utilised by a tiny proportion of members. I've also gotta point out that I can't name a single high-profile website (aside from forums) which has its feedback location in immediate view as soon as you log in. It's always tucked away somewhere because, for 99% of the users 99% of the time, help and feedback is an afterthought compared to the main body of the website - in our case, this is Pokémon discussion, which is now (suitably) at the top of the index. Imagine if, say, Discord made you scroll past a feedback channel before being able to talk to anyone. What if Facebook had "Feedback" constantly sat at the top of everyone's timeline? It's distracting and detracts from the point of the website, and this principal is no different here. As a fallback, there's even a "Help" tab with the forum link in the bar at the top of most styles.

Also, I'd like to credit new members with some intelligence. Surely it's pretty obvious that, if what you're looking for isn't right in front of your face but there's more stuff that you've not yet seen, you keep scrolling until you see whatever it is that you're looking for. No matter how new you are to forums as a concept, scrolling to look for things is common sense on pretty much every page on the internet. I'd also like to point out that I've never once seen someone post in the help and feedback section asking where the off-topic sections are, despite them being historically tucked away at the bottom of PC, because people are more than capable of finding them themselves. I really don't think that feedback not being the first thing you see is the issue that it's being made out to be.
 
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I have to agree 100% with everyone saying they've stopped visiting things so often since theyre hard to see. Even now after being used to this layout, I still forget to look in sections I used to check in with every day. Even UG where I am actively involved with games, and New Leaf, which I'm hella on board w and trying to remember about constantly. New Leaf especially is hurting here, you guys. It never really had a chance to be featured and get really going, like Asty said. :(
 
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