Ideas for improving navigation and performance of the current site

[Flako]

This suggstion regards the current site and its hellacious navigation. In this post I will attempt to remedy at least most of the issues.

http://prntscr.com/7xtx9l

This needs to go. The entire thing. Here's what to do with the contents:

You can replace the homepage of the community tab with the homepage of star-made.org.

Put the news on the new, unified main tab between "home" and "forums"

Community tab is broken down and put on the new tab.

I have no idea wtf is up with the registry. I don't know what purpose it shall serve in the future, but its useless right now. Put it to the right of the "forums" tab.

The other three tabs can go on the new tab to the right of the others.

Congratulations. We've already removed an ENTIRE PAGE people have to navigate through to get to what they want, while SIMULTANEOUSLY increasing performance by virtue of having less useless content on the site data, AND we reduced the space that the universal stuff takes up so that more space is reserved for the content that you want to see.


http://prntscr.com/7xtzc3

http://prntscr.com/7xtw3q

http://prntscr.com/7xtwjc

You created a monstrosity when you separated the site into three domains. I have no idea how to fix this other than a complete overhaul of the entire site's framework. It slows down the site a TON, but it really can't be fixed as fast as the glaring design issues can.


http://prntscr.com/7xu0oe

Why would you do this to us? Can you please just ditch this except for the things it is actually for, and allow us to login from any page without navigating away from anything, like literally everything on the internet? Just like the oldsite?


You know, I really liked reading chat while browsing the forums. I think somebody official said they can't implement that back, but damn, that'd be nice.


http://prntscr.com/7xu1mk

http://prntscr.com/7xu1ob

Can we just get rid of these and shrink everything into one list of subforums, preferably much shorter than they are now?


That's it, thanks for reading this suggestion. I hope somebody takes this seriously.

 

[DukeofRealms]

Thank you for taking the time to post your suggestion.

First things first, I'm going to deconstruct and try to order it into an easily understandable format. At the moment, I can't understand what you are suggesting, so please tell me if I'm wrong.

http://prntscr.com/7xtx9l

This needs to go. The entire thing. Here's what to do with the contents:

You can replace the homepage of the community tab with the homepage of star-made.org.

Put the news on the new, unified main tab between "home" and "forums"

Community tab is broken down and put on the new tab.

The other three tabs can go on the new tab to the right of the others.

Congratulations. We've already removed an ENTIRE PAGE people have to navigate through to get to what they want, while SIMULTANEOUSLY increasing performance by virtue of having less useless content on the site data, AND we reduced the space that the universal stuff takes up so that more space is reserved for the content that you want to see.

I'm not entirely sure what you are suggesting here. I would try to make a guess, but that's all it would really be. Please explain what you mean.

I have no idea wtf is up with the registry. I don't know what purpose it shall serve in the future, but its useless right now. Put it to the right of the "forums" tab.

The Citizen's Registry is StarMade's universal account system. We use OAuth2 for authentication, which means any third party site can use the Citizen's Registry to for registration and login. For example, StarMade Dock (this site you are on now) is an official forum run by a third party company. StarMade Dock uses the Citizen's Registry for its account system. The Citizen's Registry is also used by the upcoming launcher for authentication, this will make logging in to the game and linking accounts to steam more streamlined and user friendly.

I also believe that the Citizen's Registry is currently being worked on at the moment, to expand and document its new API. This will give developers and StarMade sites more tools to utilise in the applications and third party sites they develop.

You created a monstrosity when you separated the site into three domains. I have no idea how to fix this other than a complete overhaul of the entire site's framework. It slows down the site a TON, but it really can't be fixed as fast as the glaring design issues can.

Schine owned and operated sites:
star-made.org - StaMade's official website
registry.star-made.org - StarMade's official account system

Third party official sites (not owned nor operated by Schine):
starmadedock.net - StarMade Forums
starmadepedia.net - StarMade Wiki

You know, I really liked reading chat while browsing the forums. I think somebody official said they can't implement that back, but damn, that'd be nice.

We've tested chat systems that support this, we have not found a system we like. Most forums do not support live chat systems, generally because they decrease forum activity and take up extra resources which means more money spent to operate the site. Our decision to stick with simpler means of live chat has been one that has taken place for months.

http://prntscr.com/7xu1mk

http://prntscr.com/7xu1ob

Can we just get rid of these and shrink everything into one list of subforums, preferably much shorter than they are now?

Judging from your suggestions, it sounds like you're wanting us to implement a system that is more in line with social media sites instead of a traditional forum. A forum software such as Discource is the direction that you are suggesting?

 

[Flako]

I'm not entirely sure what you are suggesting here. I would try to make a guess, but that's all it would really be. Please explain what you mean.

You know how the main site has two bars with tabs to navigate the site? My idea is to move everything from the top bar to the bottom bar in order to shrink and streamline navigation.

Like this.

http://prntscr.com/7xuhko

Please let me know if that doesn't help you understand.

The Citizen's Registry is StarMade's universal account system. We use OAuth2 for authentication, which means any third party site can use the Citizen's Registry to for registration and login. For example, StarMade Dock (this site you are on now) is an official forum run by a third party company. StarMade Dock uses the Citizen's Registry for its account system. The Citizen's Registry is also used by the upcoming launcher for authentication, this will make logging in to the game and linking accounts to steam more streamlined and user friendly.

I also believe that the Citizen's Registry is currently being worked on at the moment, to expand and document its new API. This will give developers and StarMade sites more tools to utilise in the applications and third party sites they develop.

The only real issue I have with the registry at the moment is the need to navigate to it in order to log in. Thanks for clearing that up though.

Third party official sites (not owned nor operated by Schine):
starmadedock.net - StarMade Forums

I don't understand why this is so. Ehhhhhh

We've tested chat systems that support this, we have not found a system we like. Most forums do not support live chat systems, generally because they decrease forum activity and take up extra resources which means more money spent to operate the site. Our decision to stick with simpler means of live chat has been one that has taken place for months.

Unfortunate.

Judging from your suggestions, it sounds like you're wanting us to implement a system that is more in line with social media sites instead of a traditional forum. A forum software such as Discource is the direction that you are suggesting?

Not at all, although a reddit would be THE BEST THING EVER. What I meant was getting rid of the unneeded visual stuff and compressing the forum titles into a much shorter list in such a way that you could access all of them without scrolling down.

 

[DukeofRealms]

You know how the main site has two bars with tabs to navigate the site? My idea is to move everything from the top bar to the bottom bar in order to shrink and streamline navigation.

Like this.

http://prntscr.com/7xuhko

Please let me know if that doesn't help you understand.

So, you mean navigation bars? If so, the main site which is http://star-made.org/ only has one navigation bar. The only site which has two navigation bars, is StarMade Dock. If you meant main site as in StarMade Dock, then I would agree that removing the upper navigation bar would improve user friendliness and reduce confusion. This would further signify that the forums and the main site are two different sites and are not to be confused. The plan was to change the site design to something more like the StarMade Wiki: starmadepedia.net. So, basically no main site navigation bar. However, this was stalled and is now left like this. In the future, this may change.

As for moving everything from the top bar to the bottom bar, that is not actually possible as the two sites are very different. They are not the same site, the main site at star-made.org is StarMade's official site, this site you are on now is a third party site with a design to emulate the main site.

Not at all, although a reddit would be THE BEST THING EVER. What I meant was getting rid of the unneeded visual stuff and compressing the forum titles into a much shorter list in such a way that you could access all of them without scrolling down.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starmade/

 

[starhaiden]

a link to the public roadmap needs to be added.

 

[aljo]

We've tested chat systems that support this, we have not found a system we like. Most forums do not support live chat systems, generally because they decrease forum activity and take up extra resources which means more money spent to operate the site. Our decision to stick with simpler means of live chat has been one that has taken place for months.

So... is the current chat impossible to embed? I would think you could just take the chat and put it in a div that just hovers like Facebook's chat in every page. But, I don't know precisely how XenForo and Taigachat work since I haven't put any real time into it. So I'm just guessing here.

 

[DukeofRealms]

So... is the current chat impossible to embed? I would think you could just take the chat and put it in a div that just hovers like Facebook's chat in every page. But, I don't know precisely how XenForo and Taigachat work since I haven't put any real time into it. So I'm just guessing here.

Right, we can already do this. However, there are undesirable effects hindering features. We also want to improve forum activity, adding chat as a popup would be detrimental to this. The forums are easier to moderate than a live chat system, volunteers can only commit so many hours.

Putting chat as a popup would mean we'd have to devote more resources to keep it running and probably increase our site team to support chat moderation. We have tried popup chat systems, our decision was made over many months to cut it back to a simple chatbox system.

 

[aljo]

Right, we can already do this. However, there are undesirable effects hindering features. We also want to improve forum activity, adding chat as a popup would be detrimental to this. The forums are easier to moderate than a live chat system, volunteers can only commit so many hours.

Putting chat as a popup would mean we'd have to devote more resources to keep it running and probably increase our site team to support chat moderation. We have tried popup chat systems, our decision was made over many months to cut it back to a simple chatbox system.

So if I'm understanding correctly, the reason it was decided against is simply that it would make chat so easy to use that people would use chat instead of the forums? I'm just not clear as to why it would require more resources to keep it running, as I'd expect it to use the same number of resources as it would at the primary chatbox. It isn't url dependent, right? As in it doesn't rely on the page you're on, but rather a chat-id or something to know which chat to be "locked to" so to speak?

 

[DukeofRealms]

So if I'm understanding correctly, the reason it was decided against is simply that it would make chat so easy to use that people would use chat instead of the forums? I'm just not clear as to why it would require more resources to keep it running, as I'd expect it to use the same number of resources as it would at the primary chatbox. It isn't url dependent, right? As in it doesn't rely on the page you're on, but rather a chat-id or something to know which chat to be "locked to" so to speak?

No. We've used popup chats in the past, I was merely commenting that it would in fact take more time and dedication if we reverted back to popup. As for hindering features and more resources, we would have to dedicate more time and effort on chat to make it suitable to fit a popup system. Time that could be used elsewhere. Also, it would have a larger impact on the server, more users using chat = larger server load, but that has never been a large factor in our decision making for a popup chat.

The main reason why we don't use popup, is because we haven't yet come across an implementation that we like. Our chat that is currently in development has support for different rooms, so if we were to add popups, we'd have to have support for multiple chat rooms. So far, no chat system has done this in an efficient and acceptable way (apart from the old site chat, which still had its problems).

The second reason (and the least important one) is because this site is a forum, and the forum is the primary method of communication. Normally, forums don't have chat systems, and this is because it defeats the purpose. A forum stores its content, its static. All communication is organised through topics, boards and subforums. Forum owners have debated about this in the past, and it is generally considered that a site chat system on a forum hinders forum activity.

Chat systems from a moderation perspective are harder to manage as well, as messages are sent and received instantly, it's harder to keep track of negative/offensive content. When we ran popup chat systems, we would have considerable increases in complaints and reports on offensive content. To combat this, we needed to have staff dedicate more time to watching chat.

It's not that we won't ever add popup chat back, in fact if we do, it would almost definitely be an opt-in feature. We just don't have the time or resources at this time to spend on getting it out. We're working on other systems and improvements to the site that are more important than a chat system. The majority of our users do not use chat in the first place, even when we had a popup system. So, it's not a no, we're just not doing it at the moment.