Discussion Forum Re-design and other site changes

sermonindex Dec 9, 2011

Dear Saints,

We have been making some sight upgrades primarily for SEO purposes to help rank better in search engines by God's grace. Also there were many functions in the forums that I wanted to remove for a long time such as the ability to move between threaded and flat view. By defaul almost everyone uses the FLAT view which is the normal way to view the forums. This will also help the search engines just have "one" copy of each forum page instead of two.

There are cookie crumbs at the top of every page to let you know where exactly you are in the site ie:

Discussion Forum : SermonIndex Announcements : Post Page

We still need to work through some things and "fix" the quote button but we are thankful to God for much progress and wisdom given to accomplish this work so far.

Also the site seems to be running faster and loading faster with some of these changes which will allow many more users at once to use the website for God's glory.

S

sonsigns Dec 9, 2011

Hi Greg, thanks for the heads up on the site changes.
can you still instant message other members on the site? or did you remove that function?

M

mguldner Dec 9, 2011

That was removed, it takes a lot to run the site as is, also I believe when it was removed Greg and the moderators felt it would promote Godly reconciliation rather than hard and heated private messages between members behind the scenes of some of the heated discussions. It is a missed feature for me but looking at the whole picture it was a wise move and has been a blessing in the end.

sermonindex Dec 9, 2011

I understand why they removed that, and that was probably a good thing. I personally miss it because I found just the opposite to be true for me. Sometimes when I had a disagreement with someone we would go to private IM and talk about it there to avoid a public display, and a lot more often than not there was reconciliation reached that way.

I know thats how Neil and I became close brothers... we were able to go private and hash things out. People can still do that with their own email, but to do that you have to put your email out there for the world to see, and that can be problematic as well.

But if that was a rare exception to the norm, then I totally understand why they chose to remove that feature.

Krispy

L

Lysa Dec 9, 2011

It doesn’t bother me either that they removed messaging. When ‘W’ was on here, he would post and then copy the exact same thing into a message to me! That was aggravating having someone think you didn’t read the very thread that you were posting in but my comfort was found in the delete button.

Another thing to think about, I had approx 500 or so messages under my name, some people had twice that so multiply that by how many people... all those messages alone took up a LOT of hard drive space, never mind the space for sermons!

Greg, just one thing, I wish we had the ‘preview’ button back (without all font features), just to be able to review before I post it and catch any changes but that could be just me!

God bless you for all the hard work you do on this site,
Lisa

S

staff Dec 10, 2011

Hi,
I am a bit lost here,how do you get to the newest thread.?Is this the newest reply to this thread or the oldest?thanks staff

sermonindex Dec 10, 2011

I am a bit lost here,how do you get to the newest thread.?Is this the newest reply to this thread or the oldest?thanks staff

Brother, It would be the last post in the thread or on the last page. This way anyone who is referencing to the thread will read it in the proper order. So we feel this is another reason this is a good reason for the forums to be in this order with its posts.

L

learjet Dec 11, 2011

One thing that would be more helpful would be the ability to sort the sermons by "most popular" and get an onsite search feature working.

Additionally, there is much better forum software out there that is free (Simple Machines(SMF Forum) or PHPBB) or paid (ie: Vbulletin) which provide a much better user experience. Pretty much ALL of the free software options have a bridge for Drupal, OR bridges from this forum software to that forum software, so that's not an issue.

As of now there is no way to share threads or sermons via social networks other than copying and pasting a link, in my opinion this would get you more traffic than SEO (I do web development and SEO for a living).

Again, IF YOU NEED HELP I WILL HELP YOU FOR FREE, I work exclusively with content management systems (Joomla, Expression Engine, Wordpress, PHP Nuke, and a little Drupal (Expression Engine is similar to Drupal)). Email me at ej - at -totalinfotech.com or email me your phone number so that I can talk to you on the phone.

Much love!