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I have just made a change to the forum on desktop to display the sidebar on the right. This is just the first step in a few changes that I will be rolling out
Thanks
Alex
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All
I have just made a change to the forum on desktop to display the sidebar on the right. This is just the first step in a few changes that I will be rolling out
Thanks
Alex
Not convinced i like it..... It will grow on me though :)
Me neither but lets see how it goes
Can you make it so it doesn't appear when you look at a particular thread? .... but just on the forum home page and the active topics etc? or is is a case of the sidebar is either on or off? (I know what I mean lol, just can't explain myself well)
I think my brain as just going "woooooah thats different" at the minute, it will get used to it
Yes I can control it on most pages
Maybe a button that minimizes it and allows the page to be seen full screen?
I know some of the members stay out of the Health Anxiety forum because they find it makes their anxiety worse. I'm wondering if seeing the thread topics for the Health Anxiety forum in the sidebar will be a problem for them? They might appreciate a way to opt out of seeing the sidebar.
I like it! It's kind of like reading your email; you see what's up next.
I can't use to reply on threads anymore from my mobile , unless I convert to desktop which a lot of members might not be able to do. All posts are now squashed up on the lefthand side too unless you stretch the page.
Just thought you'd like to know. I'm a stickler for not changing something that already works and I know we lost a lot of longstanding members when the forum was updated not that long ago. I worry for OCD sufferers and people in panic when they come on for help and find it difficult to access.
Sorry, just my view.
Testing reply on thread from mobile
Just wondering, is the new sidebar supposed to display the most recent posts in the entire forum?
If it is, I have noticed that after I put a post in the Female Forum this evening, it doesn't appear on the sidebar. The only time it appears is when I go into a thread, any thread on any forum, but I have to click into a thread for it to appear on the sidebar. Have noticed it with a few other posts as well
It doesn’t look great in Safari for IPhone especially on desktop version. No idea how it looks on a tablet but anything that restricts a forum core isn’t great.
Yes I do Alex, definitely not working on my phone but then I don't have an iPhone, just a a basic Huawei mobile. I know Pulisa doesn't have a fancy phone either, so no doubt she will have problems. Pulisa if you are reading, you can convert to desktop at the top right hand corner where it shows 3 dots. Click and scroll to desktop. Obviously info for other users that can't access the forum. x
Perhaps a silly question but is there a reason people are using the desktop on mobile devices? The desktop is not designed for mobiles and will be considerably slower
Thanks
Alex
P.S May not reply until tomorrow now as have some work to do :-(
Glad its not just me seeing it - i came onto the forum and assumed i broke it cause there was a new thing :blush:
I don't use desktop normally, only for chat, but I am using for the forum now because otherwise I wouldn't be able to post anything or reply.
That’s a good question well phones are mostly over 6” these days compared to the days when they were 3.5 inch with the iPhone 3G. 6” is small tablet size so desktop is better. One forum I use I have to switch between 2 mobile versions of the site to reach the desktop.
Also I never use a PC these days so I always view websites on Pc format anyway.
Looks nice on my laptop. But looking at it using a mobile in full forum mode it messes it up.
Correct if I am wrong, but I would have thought being accessible is more important :shrug:
I always us the desktop version on my mobile - I just prefer the layout of it, find it easy to navigate.
I haven't had any issues with it being slower either.
Not so sure how I feel about the new layout on my mobile as the new feature takes up nearly half the screen - that's just my opinion though :)
Whenever I'm doing UX design I always ask "What problem does x feature solve?". Generally most people can find the new threads, or forums of interest. It may have improvements for SEO though. Maybe the "Most Popular Threads". That's be interesting. Or nothing at all. It does kind of crap up the available space for typing etc.
Responsive design can solve this problem. That way the forum will look great on any device or screen size. I often shrink my browser screens when I have other apps open.
With responsive design you'd develop a vBulletin theme from scratch. You develop the theme so that it's default design is mobile. Make sure the content is in the right place. Use heatmaps to improve this over time. But, your CSS is mobile first.
Then, you make the browser window wider. When content starts to look out of place, you modify the element/s with a media query. And you repeat until you've got it looking great on desktop. And like magic the website works on all browsers and devices. This also has the added bonus that you're working from a "content first" approach too, where by the design is built around the content instead of fitting content into a design. If that makes sense?
I do this ALOT. If you would like some help in making over NMP I would love to offer my services :) I ensure my designs meet Government accessibility guidelines too.
You're not thick :p Most people don't know what SEO is, and have little reason to need to. It's an area within the online marketing industry.
Search Engine Optimization. The idea is to have content from this forum rank higher in Google than other forums/websites. This means when people search for x,y,z NMP should be infront of all the other competition.
To aid with this you can ensure that links to certain pages appear on every page on the site - like the sidebar NMP introduced. I don't think admin's intent was to improve SEO, but if they changed it to display most popular threads then Google would boost the search position for those threads on NMP for related queries.
So when somebody searches "Help having a panic attack" (pretend that's a popular thread here that is on the sidebar) ... Google is more likely to show NMP first when somebody types "help im having a panic attack".
Having popular threads in the sidebar, that appears on every page, will cause google to think they're important pages. Thus, Google gives you more "link juice", or favoritism, for those pages.
If that makes sense. The idea is to drive more traffic a website. That's a basic brief overview of it.
Thank you Alex, you are appreciated for all the work you put in, I just wanted to be honest. x
I have allowed it to be collapsed until I can hide it on desktop
@whispersshadow - Its not as simple as building a responsive design. The issue with vb and responsive is the number of templates and updates. The old forum had a totally custom theme and it was a complete nightmare everytime anything changed or we wanted to add a plugin. The best option is to switch it all to a forum that supports responsive design but thats a massive job :-(
I built the mobile theme to support mobile devices but it seems people are still using the desktop theme on their mobiles, thats not a problem and it will be easy to remove the sidebar on mobile when I get some spare time.
Thanks
Alex
i confused now Alex i can still see it
i on a laptop though idk if that makes a difference ........
use these buttons to collapse it whisper
https://scontent.flhr3-2.fna.fbcdn.n...b9&oe=5EE849DE
Actually I like that as an option. I can expand my screen so the main frame doesn't get squidged up and always pull the new view over for a quick look. To be honest I never use any of the new threads filters but expanding this for a quick look is a really fast way.
Just a heads-up, Alex; I actually can't reply to forum posts on my phone since the changes - the grey text box comes up but not the white area to type into.
Just a test post
It works for me now! Couldn't post at all on this thread last night but just wanted to thank Carnation for thinking of me and my brick phone! I always use my laptop for NMP though..Brick phones are great to make calls and text though:D