Therian Wilderness v2.0

[Haru'Shimo]

Morning/Evening everyone.

As some of you already know, talk about moving Therian Wilderness off of Proboards has been going on for some time. I'm happy to say that those plans are finally underway. As of the first of this year (yesterday), I have started the process of building a new website for TW using Dreamweaver. So to start, let me get a few of the FAQs out of the way:

Q) Great! When will it be up?
A) I can't offer an estimate of when it will be up at present. As well as taking a crash-course in the Dreamweaver program, I'm also looking at learning a couple programming languages to get all the features in place and things working/looking right, so it could move quickly, or it could take me several months to make noticeable headway.

Q) Will accounts be transferred to the new site?
A) Unfortunately not. Proboards accounts are "their property" and are used across all Proboards websites, so we don't have access to them to make any such migration. User accounts will need to be re-made by members on the new site, and we'll likely have a new format for it all anyway that fits the site's subject matter better.

Q) Will existing threads be transferred to the new site?
A) Unfortunately not. Proboards doesn't play nice with other platforms and doesn't like loosing customers, which is part of the reason we're making the move in the first place. We cannot export the forum from Proboards into any format that can be used by anything else, so current threads will have to be manually recreated. The staff and I will be going through the forum and copying the most useful threads for the new site's archive of sorts, but what we can transfer over is limited by Proboards and copyright law.

Q) Will the new site have X feature? And can we do away with X feature as well?
A) Well, determining that is the point of this thread! So without further adieu, lets get to the meat of the matter.

At this point, I'm asking all staff and members to give me some input and feedback on how the new site should be formatted. Any and all suggestions can be made here, discussed and debated. If enough people like an idea/change/modification, I can add it to a list here in the Origional Post, and will know better how to move forward.

- What features on Proboards could be done better on the new site, and how?
- What things would you like to see done away with or done differently?
- What visual changes should be made? What should stay the same?
- What doesn't Proboards have that you'd like me to look into adding to the new site?

---

Current Feature/Change List

General
- Anonymous Moderation System
Moderator actions will be pulled from a list of responses by generically named accounts in response to broken rules and member reported posts, removing personal opinion from moderation action and any perceived hierarchy or undue superiority of staff over members, all staff being anonymous, appearing and participating as normal members, and policed by each other.
- User-defined Theriotype field in their Profile.
Doing away with the various Otherkin/Therian type groupings, members will define their own Theriotype description to be displayed similarly to how group and custom title are shown now. There will be a modest character limit and guidelines set in place for proper use of the field to keep overly extravagant titles from getting out of hand.
- Gender Options, now Optional.
We don't need 42 gender pronoun options like other sites I could mention, but at minimum having the option to choose "Other" or leave the field hidden would be appreciated by many.

Security
- Member Account Approval/Access level
Security measure for the forums will be handled in stages. Some boards/pages will be flagged public and visible to anyone who happens by. New members will have limited access to the forums (Specifically sensitive areas such as member journals) until they've posted their introduction and their account has been flagged "Approved" by a staff member.
- Member Age Requirement
"Birth Month & Year" will be required fields in account creation. Minimum age for the forum is still up for debate, but will be no lower than 13, and members under 18 years of age will be restricted from areas of the forums that are deemed "mature", or otherwise liable to get the forum in trouble should a teenager's parents discover their use of the site and decide to raise hell.
(Note: These ares will be reasonably small, still subject to content rules, and not contain anything pornographic, etc.. At most, we may set up an option to flag a discussion as mature should it be necessary, thus enabling the age restriction for that thread or board.)
- Staff Information Access
All required fields for member registration will be visible to staff, including any that have an option to hide visibility from other members.

Visual Design
- Personal Visual Theme Options
The ability to change the color scheme of the forum to personal preferences.
- Scrolling Navigation Bar
The Nav-Bar set to remain at the top of the screen, similar to how it works here. More options/buttons for easy access, possibly setting the entire set of nav buttons we have here to scroll with/in said navbar.
- Forum Statistics
To include member count, newest members, members logged-in in the past 24 hours. Other possible options might be newest threads, or perhaps most viewed threads. Open to more suggestions/where the information should be displayed.
- "Your Posts" Counter per Thread
Column visible on thread/board lists that shows the number of posts the viewing, logged-in member has made in the thread.

Other
- Forum Games/Activities
Flash applications/games for forum members to do together. Things like Cards Against Humanity, Drawful, or group activities of that nature. To be attempted after the primary needs for the site are met and functional.

[Kasumi Noxumbra]

A couple of things that I could think of for feature additions/changes:

1) Ability to change forum theme from TW skin to a base color skin for those who are on mobile or low end pcs.
2) Adding to the "Birth Month & Year" requirement, to better enforce this, I personally believe we should not allow the year to be hidden from staff view.
3) Try to keep the scroll option for the Nav toolbar at the top of threads and add a "back to top" option to it.
4) Forum Statistics and Information area like ProBoards to show the following on all pages of the forum: Who's Online, Threads and Posts showing up to at least 5 recent threads, Users Online in the Last 24 hours, and Members showing total # of members as well as the Newest 5 members.
5) Indicator showing if you've posted in a thread, so you don't have to go to your profile and searching all posts you've made. - Suggested by Somnia under the Forum Feedback board
6) For members who want to be really social and like to draw stuff, maybe an area where you can draw stuff with other members by either mouse or tablet? I thought something like that might be interesting.

If I come up with anything else I'll be sure to post. n_n

[Haru'Shimo]

Jan 2, 2016 11:28:41 GMT Kasumi Noxumbra said:

A couple of things that I could think of for feature additions/changes:

1) Ability to change forum theme from TW skin to a base color skin for those who are on mobile or low end pcs.
2) Adding to the "Birth Month & Year" requirement, to better enforce this, I personally believe we should not allow the year to be hidden from staff view.
3) Try to keep the scroll option for the Nav toolbar at the top of threads and add a "back to top" option to it.
4) Forum Statistics and Information area like ProBoards to show the following on all pages of the forum: Who's Online, Threads and Posts showing up to at least 5 recent threads, Users Online in the Last 24 hours, and Members showing total # of members as well as the Newest 5 members.
5) Indicator showing if you've posted in a thread, so you don't have to go to your profile and searching all posts you've made. - Suggested by Somnia under the Forum Feedback board
6) For members who want to be really social and like to draw stuff, maybe an area where you can draw stuff with other members by either mouse or tablet? I thought something like that might be interesting.

If I come up with anything else I'll be sure to post. n_n

#1 should be easy enough, and some formats will automatically adjust for screen-resolution and mobile versions.
#2 will be a given, all profile information will be visible by staff, but I'll make note of it above.
For #3, I'll start a document for for layout ideas and come up with some simply mock-ups for good options. Also need to make a "visuals" category above.
#4 that'll be good to keep in mind as well, but I don't know that we'll need the most recent posts if we have a Recent Posts page, like we do here. Options for how/where to display the information will need to be considered as well.
#5 might be done best with a "your posts counter" per thread, as an additional field like the Responces and Views columns.
#6 There's options for me to put flash applications on the website as well, so forum activities/games like this might be possible. If there aren't any open-use or readily available ones that I can make use of, it'll require making them myself, so it'll be something to work on after the forum part is functional.

[G.D.]

Well, about time this thread came up.

First and foremost, before we get carried away with all the new pretty things we can do, we'll have to think about forum navigation. The forum must look nice, but also be easy to navigate. As, there are other individuals who are not as accustom as we are to using the internet. So I vote for a well thought out, simple looking forum lay out that will get the point across but also look like what we hold in our minds for TW.

We should have a resource area and education era dedicated to obscure topics and fact checked periodically (both science and spirituality).

Perhaps journals should be something like a blog on the website. Or, something the user can have as a section of their profile, instead of a section of the forum.

I just woke up, but that's all I have to say for now. I'll bug you again if I can think of anything else .

[Seraphyna]

If you want ideas for easy navigation, Kinmunity is a pretty user friendly forum.

[Tangaroae]

I just want to say some things. I haven't been on here long enough to know this forum well, but if it is to change, I want to offer some feedback, based on the forums I've been around and been on.

First and foremost, I agree with G.D. that it should be kept simple. That's my main argument for this entire post.

~I, for one, hate to have complicated forums where I have to read too much to know how to set up and stuff. ProBoards is an extremely easy, user-friendly forum-builder that I like to use. If this was something on JCINK, then I most likely would've quit after trying to find how to even edit my profile (believe me, that place is too labyrinthine for me).

My point being that I don't want to hunt around for things. I'd rather everything just be there, succinct and clear. I knew exactly where the rules were on this forum because it clearly said "Rules and Navigation," which was an indicator that I should go there first.

This may just be me (though I know there's probably people out there like this too), but I have somewhat of a short attention span when it comes to reading long lines of text. You can probably see that I'm keen on multiple paragraphs, with little lines of text. I'm fine with reading the rules, out of obligation and necessity. Likewise, anything I don't have to read out of obligation or necessity I tend to ignore. So unless things are flashing IMPORTANT or RULES or INTRO or THIS IS INTERESTING AND MAY APPLY TO YOU or something in a different color/font/format/size, I either skim it if it's of interest, or completely skip over it. I can see that there's a lot of good information on this site, with many people with detailed opinions, but truthfully I usually have to skim posts (not out of boredom, but just because I can't read that much at one time). One thing I do appreciate, for example, is Haru'Shimo making the font different (I don't like the default font here, it makes it harder to read somehow) in his posts, and putting things in different color/format. That, to me, is visually helping the reading part a lot.

~Moving onto the aesthetics and visual aspects. I've seen a lot of forums that are super cool and appealing, but the designs are so complicated and in the way of things that I don't even bother to take one more look at it. I've been on Kinmunity for a bit, and even though that is an okay forum on my terms, the drawback is that it's still somewhat tangled. I don't like multiple tabs where I have move back and forth; to me, that's hunting for things again. Even though I'm half-predator, hunting on a forum's not my cup of tea.

All in all, I'd rather for things to be all in one place.

[Karakáxa]

Woohoo! I'm excited!
I remember Re used to talk about a new site, but nothing ever came of it. This is super cool.

I think the only question I really have is whether or not the current site will be kept up as an archive, or if it'll just be deleted as we forge on into the new. If keeping it up would prove bothersome, that's a-ok; I just like digging through ancient threads, if only due to nostalgia.

Other than that, full speed ahead I say.


Tangaroae
Hey mate! I don't know if this would help you or not, but there's a browser extension called Beeline Reader that adds a colour gradient to lines of text, and it's amazing if you've got ADHD or otherwise have difficulty getting through huge, unbroken paragraphs. The changes in colour guide your eyes along each sentence, and (at least in my experience) it helps keeps your attention on what you're reading.

Thought you might like to check it out.

[KitKatPurrpurr]

The most important thing for me (oddly enough) is having the new posts button be easy to find and useful. The main reason I use Therian Guide so much (aside from having been part of the community for so long anyhow) is because of their new posts and daily posts buttons, which make finding threads that have new posts that I haven't checked yet very easy to find. The issue with proboards here is that when I click the recent posts button, it shows any threads with new posts, and they aren't removed from this list (or in the case of TG, the thread title unbolded) so I have to look for the little "new" icon to the left and see if it's gone to know.

So improving that, if possible, would be great.

[Ke 'ano]

Jan 2, 2016 23:54:44 GMT KitKatPurrpurr said:

The most important thing for me (oddly enough) is having the new posts button be easy to find and useful. The main reason I use Therian Guide so much (aside from having been part of the community for so long anyhow) is because of their new posts and daily posts buttons, which make finding threads that have new posts that I haven't checked yet very easy to find. The issue with proboards here is that when I click the recent posts button, it shows any threads with new posts, and they aren't removed from this list (or in the case of TG, the thread title unbolded) so I have to look for the little "new" icon to the left and see if it's gone to know.

So improving that, if possible, would be great.

I actually quite like our site's recent posts format. I think that a better way to address this would be to add in an "unseen posts" function, which update each user on which threads have been updated since their last visit. I don't know if having a recent posts and and unseen posts would feel redundant to everyone, though.

[Seraphyna]

This just popped into my brain...can we please have a "mark all posts read" button?

[Deleted]

Jan 3, 2016 4:36:36 GMT Seraphyna said:

This just popped into my brain...can we please have a "mark all posts read" button?

I second this.

[Kasumi Noxumbra]

Jan 2, 2016 20:28:24 GMT Karakáxa said:

Woohoo! I'm excited!
I remember Re used to talk about a new site, but nothing ever came of it. This is super cool.

I think the only question I really have is whether or not the current site will be kept up as an archive, or if it'll just be deleted as we forge on into the new. If keeping it up would prove bothersome, that's a-ok; I just like digging through ancient threads, if only due to nostalgia.

Other than that, full speed ahead I say.

The ProBoards forum will remain mainly as a link to the new forum. We're going to try to move a lot of stuff here to the new site by hand.

[House of Chimeras]

Very existed to see this occur.

I also hope that the old Therian Wilderness can remain up as an archive as a whole perhaps?

- Z (male, snowy owl)

[Kasumi Noxumbra]

Jan 3, 2016 16:09:17 GMT House of Chimeras said:

Very existed to see this occur.

I also hope that the old Therian Wilderness can remain up as an archive as a whole perhaps?

- Z (male, snowy owl)

Yeah this site will remain, but we'll be trying to move some important threads over to the new forum by hand.

[KitKatPurrpurr]

Jan 3, 2016 4:29:52 GMT Ke 'ano said:

Jan 2, 2016 23:54:44 GMT KitKatPurrpurr said:

The most important thing for me (oddly enough) is having the new posts button be easy to find and useful. The main reason I use Therian Guide so much (aside from having been part of the community for so long anyhow) is because of their new posts and daily posts buttons, which make finding threads that have new posts that I haven't checked yet very easy to find. The issue with proboards here is that when I click the recent posts button, it shows any threads with new posts, and they aren't removed from this list (or in the case of TG, the thread title unbolded) so I have to look for the little "new" icon to the left and see if it's gone to know.

So improving that, if possible, would be great.

I actually quite like our site's recent posts format. I think that a better way to address this would be to add in an "unseen posts" function, which update each user on which threads have been updated since their last visit. I don't know if having a recent posts and and unseen posts would feel redundant to everyone, though.

What we have right now is a lot like TG's "Today's Posts" feature, and the unseen posts is more like the "new posts" feature. At least, the "today's posts" would count for an entire 24 hours on the site's time and refresh each new day (or something), and then "new posts" updates since a previous login (even if that last login was many months ago).

Idk how TG's works entirely so I can't really give specifics on how that works (nor does this site have to be exactly like TG, I was just trying to explain how I think that worked).

[Ke 'ano]

Jan 3, 2016 22:47:33 GMT KitKatPurrpurr said:

Jan 3, 2016 4:29:52 GMT Ke 'ano said:

I actually quite like our site's recent posts format. I think that a better way to address this would be to add in an "unseen posts" function, which update each user on which threads have been updated since their last visit. I don't know if having a recent posts and and unseen posts would feel redundant to everyone, though.

What we have right now is a lot like TG's "Today's Posts" feature, and the unseen posts is more like the "new posts" feature. At least, the "today's posts" would count for an entire 24 hours on the site's time and refresh each new day (or something), and then "new posts" updates since a previous login (even if that last login was many months ago).

Idk how TG's works entirely so I can't really give specifics on how that works (nor does this site have to be exactly like TG, I was just trying to explain how I think that worked).

That makes sense. I'm not much for forums, usually, so this is the only one I'm currently active on. I like the idea of adding a time constraint such as TG's "Today's Posts" while also adding a feature for unread posts. 

[KitKatPurrpurr]

Jan 3, 2016 23:27:17 GMT Ke 'ano said:

Jan 3, 2016 22:47:33 GMT KitKatPurrpurr said:

What we have right now is a lot like TG's "Today's Posts" feature, and the unseen posts is more like the "new posts" feature. At least, the "today's posts" would count for an entire 24 hours on the site's time and refresh each new day (or something), and then "new posts" updates since a previous login (even if that last login was many months ago).

Idk how TG's works entirely so I can't really give specifics on how that works (nor does this site have to be exactly like TG, I was just trying to explain how I think that worked).

That makes sense. I'm not much for forums, usually, so this is the only one I'm currently active on. I like the idea of adding a time constraint such as TG's "Today's Posts" while also adding a feature for unread posts. 

The today's post things help if you accidentally like logged in when you didn't mean to (like if you're checking on mobile and forgot you last had the tab open) and can't check the posts, but want to later.

[Deleted]

Ooh this is exciting. I can't wait to see it when it's finished!

[Telegdrian]

It is probably best to use one of the existing forum software packages available (there are quite a few open source ones) so you aren't compeletely re-inventing the wheel. You might want to ask Shiro over at Kinmunity.com what software he is using, as it seems to have a lot of the features you want. Having tried to run a forum on other software, I know one of the biggest issues is controlling spam postings.

[Deleted]

As an extension to the recent post functionality, I personally would like a filter to limit the results to new posts in threads you've participated in. It would probably be best to have several options for filtering what recent posts you see. This would be especially useful for people who were away for a few days and had posts pile up, or in the event the forums grow. It would allow them to respond first to threads that might be awaiting their input rather than having to filter through.

[Haru'Shimo]

Will update the original post this weekend, sorry for the silence.
Been working with Kasumi at her Mother's place, trying to pick up work her brother-in-law has dropped the ball on.

[Karsimys]

My input for this would probably be to add a button that is sort of a " Username seconds this" sort of thing. It shows up a lot on introductions especially.

[Kasumi Noxumbra]

I thought of this last night, but adding a section on member profile that says "Member Introduction" so anyone can go straight to the introduction of a member's without having to either search for it or go through all the member's recent threads section. An ease of access sort of thing that could sit under the recent posts and threads links.

[Deleted]

I could help you I'm knew but know a lot about computers and websites.

[Kasumi Noxumbra]

@lonewolf14,

As much as we appreciate your offer, as well as many others who have offered up assistance, we've decided to keep it to just a small group of us working on it so we can communicate easily and such throughout the development of the new forum site.

At the moment, the site development has kind of slightly slowed down as all of us that are working on it have had many things going on in our lives, whether it be personal/family matters or just simply work/college, requiring more attention there rather than the development of the new site. Anyways, we'll be sure to let you know if we have need of more people in the future though. n_n