We Need your Opinions :: SitePoint Forum Users

[Michel V]

To put tricky unanswered questions in Read Me topics is a good idea IMHO, it helps when you post a very tricky question and no-one can answer it for days, until your post has sank in the depths of the archives...

A thing that needs improvement: when you leave the Profile section you can only go to "Home"... wouldn't it be better if you were redirected to the page you were on just before you edited your profile ?

[lynlimz]

Originally posted by Shin Ma
To put tricky unanswered questions in Read Me topics is a good idea IMHO, it helps when you post a very tricky question and no-one can answer it for days, until your post has sank in the depths of the archives...

If thats the case, I would suggest another separate name like 'Help' or something which will gain attention. Is it possible?

[Forsteen]

If you want to put your comments in a different language for those who can't under stand english too well then maybe when you are posting your comments you could put a pull down bar that has different languages next to another text box.

When they select one then they are able to put the same information in in their native language. That way when you want to see the post, it is in english originally and somewhere in their post reply there will be a little pic that says that there is the same information in that language.

I understand what TheOriginalH is saying and I support it and I think it could be done. Creating a separate SitePoint in other languages could widen the prospects.

[prowsej]

I'd like to see more of a community develop - for example, you could perhaps run an ICQ activelist for sitepoint members or encourage people to trade their ICQ numbers more.

[fashola]

lynlimz should know that if there is any need for further amendment, the efforts should be directed to the beginners section.

I think, that is where the attention of the first time visitor is retained. If somebody visits for the first time and find necessary/useful things, likely to reduce his webmastering frustrations. Then there will be that opportunity for revisits and consequently become a regular member.

This is an excellent one stop boutique for the nuts and bolts of webmastering and sometimes i feel uneasy when i read some posting. For instance, asking somebody to send his business plan and so on....

[lynlimz]

Originally posted by fashola
lynlimz should know that if there is any need for further amendment, the efforts should be directed to the beginners section.

I think, that is where the attention of the first time visitor is retained. If somebody visits for the first time and find necessary/useful things, likely to reduce his webmastering frustrations. Then there will be that opportunity for revisits and consequently become a regular member.

This is an excellent one stop boutique for the nuts and bolts of webmastering and sometimes i feel uneasy when i read some posting. For instance, asking somebody to send his business plan and so on....

wouldn't that conclude on an overall 'Beginners' forum for all topics?

[Jeremy W.]

Hmm... Why not employ a simple translation system (customizable by the user)? Simple from the user perspective, it would obviously be a pain in the butt, but I believe I may have one available, I'd need to check. The cost would be around 5K off the top of my head and would be java servlet based (java client side sucks, server side is incredibly fast).

Other "improvements" would be the ability to customize what threads and all you view (only new ones) or the ability to "monitor" a forum and get an overall view of it quickly in your email (12 new threads created, new member joined, etc).

I'd also be looking for ways to "get higher" inside the community, information on community leaders, partner sites, etc.

Though, I'm new to this area so all of this COULD already have been ipmlemented I just might not have found it.

[lynlimz]

Originally posted by studiococo
Hmm... Why not employ a simple translation system (customizable by the user)? Simple from the user perspective, it would obviously be a pain in the ****, but I believe I may have one available, I'd need to check. The cost would be around 5K off the top of my head and would be java servlet based (java client side sucks, server side is incredibly fast).

hmm..
the translation looks quite good actually, since it actually requetss for the user to translate it. but would 5k be too much? maybe wayne might wanna keep it to php.

[Jeremy W.]

Why not straight php? PHP can't can't do it, nor can it properly handle a 20MB language db set as easily as Java can. You could still write the page in php, just not the actual translation unit.

[prowsej]

Overall, the design on the page is good. However, I could see small improvements all over that would make it jump out and be even better. I think that if you simply went aroun the site and tightened things up it could really improve and take it from a design that's clearly well done to one that would be an example of good design that all would refer to.

<hr>

On a different note, one concrete suggestion that I'd love to see emplemented would be a spellchecker on the forums. Most of my posts don't include any code, and as such, would be perfect candidates for spellchecking.

I know that there are external services that will provide this feature for free. I'm not sure if this is one of them (possibly)
http://www.searchspell.com/site.html

[Jeremy W.]

We also have a spellchecking java app for about 500$

[Hierophant]

Originally posted by studiococo
Why not straight php? PHP can't can't do it, nor can it properly handle a 20MB language db set as easily as Java can. You could still write the page in php, just not the actual translation unit.

I don't understand where you get that rationalization...

Currently PHP is managing the database for these forums which is about 300 megabytes in total size and includes a word index containing over 180,000 unique words and a searchindex table which cross-references those words with each and every post they appear in. The searchindex is over 3.5 million rows alone.

[Jeremy W.]

Go ahead then, write an app to handle a 20MB data cube, I'm fairly sure it will take you more time than it would DPH to just buy the software.

One of the marks of a growing company is that they start to engage in build vs buy debates. Maybe you guys aren't there yet.

And, no, php cannot properly handle a data cube, neither can asp without added components.

[prowsej]

Originally posted by studiococo
Go ahead then, write an app to handle a 20MB data cube, I'm fairly sure it will take you more time than it would DPH to just buy the software.

One of the marks of a growing company is that they start to engage in build vs buy debates. Maybe you guys aren't there yet.

And, no, php cannot properly handle a data cube, neither can asp without added components.

With everything like this internet crash, would this site have the money to even consider buying the technology needed?

What is a data cube? What is DPH?

[Jeremy W.]

Would this site have the money? Depends where they want to be when this is all over...

DPH: Stands for dollars/hour... Really it's meant to say, would it be cheaper for us to build or to buy the software.

Data Cube: A means of storing data multi-dimensionally often for analysis, but also for what might have previously been called "cross-querying" where information in one table affects the outlay of info in the original. Except now it's all in one "entity".

[prowsej]

Where can I read about a Data Cube? How similar is it to a three-dimensional array in programming?

[TheOriginalH]

To keep Saz et al happy (& me - see general chat thread), could you add a "UK time" to the time options which is simply GMT +1 during the summer and GMT during the winter (never sure of the exact change dates).

Taking it a step further, you could add the time zone a user is in to their "info" panel on the left of each thread. No real practical benefit, it's just nice to know what time it is where someone else is posting, and I don't imagine it would be too much of a nightmare to code.

H

[Jeremy W.]

Not hard, just a bit of a pain as it requires client side writing and such which always sucks, and it would need to be done on every php page that has time input (I haven't counted them, probably 4-5).

But, it would probably be easier just to grab the user time as a request, reprocess output time based on that and just tell the user "the time on this forum is now your local time, to change your local time go to profile" or whatever that way you aren't dealing with client side shyte.

[TheOriginalH]

nooo - no client side scripting required as displayed time/date is (correct me if I'm wrong) simply the server time/date, offset by our specification (GMT, EST etc etc). The first thing would simply be an extra option (ie: UK time), and the second would simply call the same code that displayed the time/date for a particular user anyway.

[DreamDevil]

Maybe you can add a sort of a chat-room, where members can answer questions live.

[lynlimz]

Originally posted by DreamDevil
Maybe you can add a sort of a chat-room, where members can answer questions live.

you mean for this gathering of opinions?

[DreamDevil]

both for general questions like this and for like a debate.

You take one of the more popular qeustions, make it the subject of a weekly chat-room.

[lynlimz]

that would be interesting. the chat room was taken down previously.

thanks for the suggestion.

[sowen]

Unfortunatly I only have one language (and not even one according to my mother ) so I have no idea how good the translation is from English to other languages but World Lingo did a great job for me taking a German site to English.

Go to WorldLingo type in www.sitepointforums.com and you can browse around in your prefered language, all you have to put upwith is a small frame at the top of your browser.

As I said no idea how good the translation is???

[Hierophant]

Temporarily closed.....


If you are talking about posts in the General Chat Forum reply here....

http://www.sitepointforums.com/showt...threadid=25882