*** Your thoughts on the CowboysZone Upgrade so far? ***

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Reality

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Now that the move to new software and new servers has been completed and I have designed the still-work-in-progress Light theme for the site, what are your thoughts on it so far?


Common Questions

*** NOTE: I will continue to add questions and answers here as they get asked multiple times.

Why did you upgrade now?
We were having issues with a couple of things and the older software and servers were limiting our ability to add new features that we have planned.

Are you done with the new site design?
No, not even close. I keep finding things that need to be updated or improved.

Will there be a dark theme?
Yes, once everything else gets settled, I will work on creating a dark theme for the site.

Will there be a chatroom like the old site had? ... Chatroom Added
Yes, we will be adding a new chatroom system, but it will be a few days before we work on that.

Will member stats be added back below the avatar/username/title area of thread posts?
Yes, hopefully. It will have to be manually implemented so it will depend on what is available and possible.
 
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Reality

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Looks good so far, would you like feedback on design elements or just wait until you're done?
Sure, you can share your thoughts on any of it. Now is the best time in fact while I am working on it.

I cannot promise something will be changed, but I read every comment, suggestion, etc. to see if I can either do it or find an alternative solution.
 

Reality

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The page counter doesn't show when I have my phone vertical. I have to turn it horizontal, which I dislike doing. It wasn't like that before. Is that a permanent thing that can't be changed?
Have you checked it lately? I fixed that yesterday when another member mentioned it.
 

Reality

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The page counter doesn't show when I have my phone vertical. I have to turn it horizontal, which I dislike doing. It wasn't like that before. Is that a permanent thing that can't be changed?

I just checked and the page numbers are showing for me on my phone at the top and bottom of pages.
 

Runwildboys

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Have you checked it lately? I fixed that yesterday when another member mentioned it.
I checked before I posted that. Maybe we're not thinking of the same thing.
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Reality

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I checked before I posted that. Maybe we're not thinking of the same thing.
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It is on both of them .. Click the "1 of 3409" button to go to a specific page or click the NEXT button to go to the next page .. after page 1, a PREV button will then show.
 

Reality

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Glad to know the chatroom will return. Have to figure out what to do without it during the game today.

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I know how many people enjoy it, so it definitely will be added soon :D
 

Zordon

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Sure, you can share your thoughts on any of it. Now is the best time in fact while I am working on it.

I cannot promise something will be changed, but I read every comment, suggestion, etc. to see if I can either do it or find an alternative solution.
On the desktop version, I think the body of the page could use more margin/padding. Seems a little wide. Wider than it was before. Usually when I write copy, I try to minimize the width as much as I can while maintaining readability b/c after a certain amount of characters the typical human brain will lose focus. This can also minimize the excess white space currently on the Fan Zone after the thread titles.

Under our profile photos on the left side of our posts, it would be nice to get some details added like "likes", where a user is from, etc. It will make things more personable IMO.

I believe on this version of Xenoforo, replies/views get rounded up to the nearest 1k. Is there a way to disable that feature and just show normal count?
 

buybuydandavis

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Sure, you can share your thoughts on any of it. Now is the best time in fact while I am working on it.
General design principles.

1) Visual 2-d arrangement is a powerful metaphor that helps to convey information *if* it used as such.

Take the "Alerts". The design is basically a list of sentences. The sentences are uniform in structure, but that gets obscured by the varying length of usernames and thread titles.

Examples
Mr_437 reacted to your post in the thread Tony Pollard needs to be utilized as a receiver more with Like.
Today at 8:45 AM
Pass2Run quoted your post in the thread I love TY Hilton's excitement after a catch!.
Yesterday at 9:58 AM

So much of the sentences are boilerplate that could be replaced by using 2-d or gif to convey the same information in a table much more quickly and clearly.

Table Header
User Gif| User Name| timestamp | Response | Your Post | Thread

Response
- gif for Like/Dislike/Emoticon/
- OR response arrow as Link to response
Your post
- Link to your response with first X characters of it
Thread
- Link to thread with first X characters of it

Tables then will leverage table framework generic functions like sorting, filtering, column selection, etc.
Those table preferences could be saved til next time.
Could have tool tips (for more lengthy displays of Your Post/Thread/Reply) for desktop, though that doesn't carry over to mobile easily.

Some of this could be partially accomplished without going to table format. Strip boilerplate, make fields fixed width, put thread title last.

The single most useful change on Alerts would be to filter emoticon responses from actual comment responses. I use the alerts mainly to respond to quoted responses.
 

Reality

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On the desktop version, I think the body of the page could use more margin/padding. Seems a little wide. Wider than it was before. Usually when I write copy, I try to minimize the width as much as I can while maintaining readability b/c after a certain amount of characters the typical human brain will lose focus. This can also minimize the excess white space currently on the Fan Zone after the thread titles.
Originally I was going to limit the width of the page, but some people like to use their montior width when reading so I made it full width like before. I can see about adding in some spacing for large width screens, but not sure it will be close to what you may be referring to.

Under our profile photos on the left side of our posts, it would be nice to get some details added like "likes", where a user is from, etc. It will make things more personable IMO.
This is something that has been asked and answered that I need to add to the common questions list above. I definitely plan to add some stats to the below the avatar/username/title area in the posts.

This is not standard with the software, but I manually added support for it in the old site and I plan to do the same with this one assuming it's possible.

I believe on this version of Xenoforo, replies/views get rounded up to the nearest 1k. Is there a way to disable that feature and just show normal count?
I would think it's possible, but cannot know for sure until I look at the code.
 
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