Forums and Subforums

[szsori]

I like the new site and the work you guys are putting into everything. Thanks for that. One complaint, though... the new forum/subforum titles are a mess. I always make a point to post in the most appropriate forum and that's now quite a bit harder. I can just imagine you're going to get a lot of posts in the wrong places now.

I don't know if VBForums (I think that's what you're using, right?) has the ability to do multiple levels of sub-forums, but here's what I would suggest. Instead of making a forum for each flavor of XBMC ("XBMC for Linux - Developers Only Forum", "XBMC for Gameboy - Developers Only Forum", etc), how about making "Developers Only Forum" with subforums for each platform? This way people could post in the general "Developers Only Forum" if they need to, or they can post in the specific platform's forum. Same for the End-Users forums.

Another thing that is unrelated to the recent changes, is the Skin Development forum. Perhaps there should be a "Skins" forum under the End-User area where skin creators can post their mockups and releases. That would free up the "Skin Development" forum for questions from the skin creators to the XBMC devs.

Anyway, just trying to help a bit, since it seems a little confusing now (and I'm normally not easily confused... ask anyone except my wife).

edit: 300 posts! Hurray! :/

[smcnally75]

I was actually just thinking this same thing. I've been kind of lost lately here.

[jmarshall]

Sounds like a good idea to me. Gamester17??

[Gamester17]

Could maybe be a good idea if implemnted for all forums so that eveyone will learn the layout, but we had it like that before with the Vortex Development furum as a subforum for the standard development forum and because of that no one knew it was there, ....so we will have to think about it

[agathorn]

I agree this is a good idea if done globally.

I would also be happy to see skins broken up a bit into sub forums for release, users, and developers.

[jmarshall]

Gamester17: Shall we perhaps post a suggested layout so that people can comment?

[d4rk]

The parent forum could be more descriptive if necessary so people still find what they're looking for. Example XBMC for Developers (Xbox/Linux/OSX/Win32)

[jmarshall]

Agreed. I think that if done globally on the forum it will aid in people finding where they should post what.

Heavy forum users probably won't be affected - I just use getdaily or getnew for instance

Cheers,
Jonathan

[SandmanCL]

Based on current view count, the Skin Development forum is constantly among the top three forums where people like to hang out.

This makes sense, since the xbmc core is getting more and more stable, and for most people and their needs it is almost feature complete. And hence there are more visible activity in skin development.

With that in mind, it would make sense to me if we had two Skin sections: one in the User Area and one in the Creator's corner. The User Area section would probably get a lot of traffic form the start, since it would now be visible in the browser without having to scroll down on the page. More traffic would generate more ideas and possibly bring out the creativity in more people.

Many of the current skin threads could be moved to the user area, where people could submit skin feature requests, discuss current skins, etc. The current skin thread would instead be more technical discussions about the skinning engine and where the skinners can talk about how to achieve certain things in their skins.

[Jezz_X]

I really don't see the point users will still just read both anyway because they like to know whats going on in development as well and really questions on how to do stuff greatly outway the actual skin / user comments anyway

But Its not really up to me