Blog Discussions

1

This is a really new concept, so it's going to take a bit to get the head around. Breadcrumbs? Something so that it's immediately clear to the new reader what the discussion area is and how it works, how it connects to/from the blog posts. I think that's the biggest thing - not to make people think too hard in order to use the discussion areas.

Otherwise, yes, the ability for *logged in* users to start a new thread -- while comments continue to be open to both registered and non-registered alike.

Are discussion tags integrated with tags for the posts? Not quite sure how that might or should work, to be most effective... I guess that brings us back to the first point: clear and intuitive navigation that can be grasped at a glance.

2

I'm not a frequenter of forums, but I can think of a couple of things. Some of things we're seeing in the Entrecard forums will be good to pay attention to as they develop that, too. Search-ability, possibility for editing your own posts, showing which threads have new posts since you were last logged in (or your last visit)... Definitely like the idea of having comments available to both registered and non-registered alike.

Just some initial thoughts. I'll think about it some more, too.

3

Jen, there are breadcrumbs at the top... just beneath the "Blog Discussions" header.

The tags are indeed integrated, although if you click the one "discussion" tag on this thread, you'll see that it only selects content from this area. I need to do a bit of work on the search engine anyway as it's not as intuitive as I'd like.

Sweet Mummy, I need to make the search box much more visible. Aside from clicking on a tag, there is a tiny Search link at the bottom of the page. Not much good really.

Editing threads and comments is already available to registered users. For unregistered users, I'm wondering if it would make life much easier just to log you in after you comment? Maybe it's too automated, but it could open up some new possibilities and remove the problem of guests not being able to do much.

Seeing which threads have new replies is something I can work on for registered users.

Please keep the ideas coming... I'll try and get some of these done in the next few versions of Majestic. Thanks for your feedback. :)

4

OK, we now have comments that follow the same style as the opening post - how does that look?

5

I think it's looking good. I didn't see it before you changed the comments to the same style as the original though.

I like the numbering of the comments, but I think I would shade the comments as well.

6

Thanks for the comment, Tom. :) I'm not sure about shading the comments, as I think that would be too much shading. But this is not forced on other sites that wish to use my system - they could use a totally different colour scheme.

7

I don't have any suggestions.. just wanted to say it's very similar to entrecards forum. I like it.. easy to use. Being able to see new comments since last read would be nice.

8

Thanks Judi. :) That particular suggestion will require people to log in, but I already keep track of which items you've read and which you haven't, so it's just a case of displaying it. I'll get it done soon.