Spring Clean

[alan-d]

Some Signatures are getting rather big and annoying. Sponsor signatures are the exception in moderation as they do have to advertise themselves.

 

The About Us page is out of date as is this page The history of EduGeek.net

 

The direct support is a bit of a waste of time at the moment EduGeek.net - Direct Support are there no other links?

 

Is the user map used any more? EduGeek.net Forums - Googlemap ME

 

The calendar only shows Birthdays, nothing like conferences or BETT shows! Is there any other point to it? EduGeek.net Forums - Calendar

 

Just a few to be getting on with

[Andrew_C]

not too sure whats wrong with my sig chap , as a company representative its important for our sig to show contact details and a description of what we do, also if there are any particular offers.

Sure, I understand that, but when your sig is 8 lines long, and some of your posts are only one, it really breaks up the flow when reading. USENET guidelines were for sigs to be 4 lines max.

 

Simon Collins - Business Development Manager Could be your email link

Tel: 0845 249 1779 Mob: 07835 877044 One line

Computer Products Ltd - IT Hardware/Software/Consumables/Ruckus/Extricom/Meru Clicky link to CPLD

See What Edugeekers Say About CPLTD Clicky link; fourth line!

 

Not picking on just you, there are several others... Vikpaw!

[Haptic]

Sure, I understand that, but when your sig is 8 lines long, and some of your posts are only one, it really breaks up the flow when reading. USENET guidelines were for sigs to be 4 lines max.

 

Simon Collins - Business Development Manager Could be your email link

Tel: 0845 249 1779 Mob: 07835 877044 One line

Computer Products Ltd - IT Hardware/Software/Consumables/Ruckus/Extricom/Meru Clicky link to CPLD

See What Edugeekers Say About CPLTD Clicky link; fourth line!

 

Not picking on just you, there are several others... Vikpaw!

 

point take i will adjust now fella:cool:

[enjay]

I wouldn't want to see the Behind the Red Door or General Chat forums axed, or moved to Facebook since I can't access Facebook from school. They do sometimes get out-of-hand, but equally, we need a place to ask non-technical question, e.g. job descriptions, pupil:teacher ratios, advice on disciplinary actions (to pick a few I've seen just today!). Okay, so there are also people asking for advice on what car to buy, but these can be easily screened and ignored if you're not interested / don't wish to post.

 

As for signatures, I don't mind ones like Simon's, as I understand that suppliers and sponsors need to give clear contact details. What annoys me more are the ones with pretty pictures, a "witty" quote, the spec of their home PC or their current score in some game or other. That said, what takes up even more screen space is all the gubbins on the left - the profile pic, join date, location, flags (why?!) and so on. Most of that info is useful, but could be smaller.

[ZeroHour]

Well firstly on design/pimpage of the site:

vb4 is out and I am in the process right now of rewriting all the templates for it. Its a major task as the table based design is gone from vb4 and is replaced by css. Things that are delaying it are things such as addons that we use all the time (we dont want to lose features) and a few other bits that are still in beta which we need.

Since a rework is happening to the templates anyway we are also looking at several design tweaks to come with this. I had planned the changes earlier but vbulletin took quite a while to get vb4 out the door. They had originally planned April last year!

 

As for the rules we are working on a fresh set of guidlines for all regarding sigs etc as yeh some get a little bannas.

The main menubar items will be reworked in the new version of the site also btw as I have too have thought we need to rework that as well.

The iPhone template has needed updating but it too will hopefully be better under vb4 but the new template system is rather complex so far.

 

As for the number of forums/jobs section, I want to rework the tabs quite a bit to make it all a little clearer where things are as I do know people who have struggled to figure out where things are. I have also thought about renaming some forums but thats major work in a lot of ways with SEO.

 

Basically I have wanted to tweak and improve things for a bit but vbulletin kept of saying vb4 will be out asap so all the template/addon work I was doing would be pretty worthless but I do have a test setup now for vb4 and the work has begun as they say.

Watch this space as they say as we will try and post about upcoming things when we can confirm they will all work.

[vikpaw]

I can see your point and part of me agrees. However, part of the edugeek community spirit is that we have got know each other outside the technical questions and it would be a shame to lose that because a few of of our many thousands can't behave themselves.

 

The behaviour problems are a symptom of the size of the community now and is demonstrated by Dos_Box having to go full time to manage it. I can see a time when we have employed Mods. The voluntary ones do a fantastic job, but they have home families and jobs to cope with too.

 

I agree, but my thoughts change depending on mood, and how much modding needs doing affects that.

 

Sure, I understand that, but when your sig is 8 lines long, and some of your posts are only one, it really breaks up the flow when reading. USENET guidelines were for sigs to be 4 lines max.

 

...

 

Not picking on just you, there are several others... Vikpaw!

 

point taken [whoops sorry - couldn't help myself, my finger slipped!]

Edited January 26, 2010 by vikpaw

[SimpleSi]

Having read the replies and thinking about it a bit more I'd like to suggest that the front page (EduGeek.net) is set up as a "normal" website with a nice Web 2.0/3.0 welcoming look to it (as opposed to the inside of a server room that it looks like now ).

 

That way, all the geekiness goodies being promised can be put in as and when they arrive but we could get a quick win in the way our house looks to visitors

 

Also, if someone else (cough sysman ) was asked to do the front page - it could take a bit of load from ZeroHour.

 

regards

 

Simon

 

PS if would be nice if it looked OK on something less than a 2048x50000 resolution monitor as well

[alan-d]

I was just about to post something on those lines myself

[ZeroHour]

Yeh a much nicer new frontpage is planned. VB 4 has a new CMS part which will handle it all and we hope to have much more news etc on it.

I will probably be looking for some extra testers close to the migration of the site to vb 4 so watch for the appeal post in the coming months.