Doomworld is dead, long live Doomworld

[TimeOfDeath]

esselfortium said:

Linguica's recent updates and enhancements to the forum have been a step in a good direction.

My only criticism is that some of the enhancements require javascript and images. I have javascript/images/flash disabled to save data, so not only do those enhancements not work for me, they've also made the forum harder to use than before. For example, clicking a thread or a link to a post just goes to the top of the page now. And the "profile" and "homepage" links under people's posts can't be clicked without images turned on.

[Linguica]

The PM notifier is at the top of the index page.

TimeOfDeath said:

My only criticism is that some of the enhancements require javascript and images.

Sorry, this is an untenable position. It's 2015 ffs, images / javascript are mandatory for any sort of normal web experience.

[Buckshot]

esselfortium said:

Linguica's recent updates and enhancements to the forum have been a step in a good direction.

What could use updating more at this point is the front page, which currently has little reason to even exist: it hosts one stream of news that's usually filled up with weekly multiplayer announcements, and then has links to a bunch of pages that haven't been updated in a decade.

There's so much activity going on on the forums and elsewhere in the community that could be highlighted on the front page, making it a more informative landing zone for newcomers, rather than expecting people to dig around for all that stuff.

I like essel's idea. Though my only concern about that sort of approach is it would look all too similar to reddit, with a forum up front. Would still be nice to see some newsfeed snazz there as well.... and *gasp*, maybe a chatbox like assemblergames.com :o

[Xaser]

Drifting a bit onto tangential topic territory, but the idea of tighter integration between the forums and /idgames is intriguing. Is there any plan (or at least talks with the new maintainers*) to streamline the upload process any? I'd like to be able to post significant update releases of mods n' maps without jumping through the FTP hoop each time.

[*well, one of them already IS a DW admin, so it's probably a pretty silly question to be asking. :P ]

Hmm... a new thread on this topic might not be a bad idea, though it'd inevitably result in the usual lot of bikeshedding. :P

[Fonze]

Idk, maybe it's because I don't use forums much, but I have few problems here. I think between the guys who started it and ling's more recent updates it's turned out very well, certainly better than I could do. Its simplicity and basic-ness are points in its favor to me.

The only things I'd like to see updated (not that it matters) are:

Subscribed threads that are left on the main page of my own user profile often get remarked as unread. No biggie, but I'm pumping up the "views" number with my annoyance at having unread, subscribed threads.

Some subscribed threads randomly unsubscribe me from them. Idk why, I thought it was the number of threads you've subscribed to, but after unsubscribing to a few and it still happening Idk what does it.

I suppose the front page could be upgraded and it might even make it more useful. Idk, I never visit the front page unless my finger misses the "user profile" link, lol.

Certain code things are tough for me to figure out. It's not a problem, if anything it helps me retain some small amount of knowledge on something that I do not practice nearly enough. When I first started messaging here, I wished that there were easier ways to put stuff in other than standard text than through typing the code. But now that I'm used to it I don't mind it as much, though my phones autocorrect is ballistic and its one more thing to have to be fixed after every time I type it. There a still a few things I need to learn to do with code on these forums, but I'll cross those bridges when I'm ready to learn em.

Oh, and on my mobile device I often get randomly bumped over to a random app on Google Play, usually 5 seconds after I enter a new page.


And to QuakeGod...
Thanks for the update man! I love learning stuff, especially when it's related to something I like. It's also good to hear that the other sites have been notified.

Thanks again to you and all the people over at TF/AG, as well as the mods here!

[baja blast rd.]

The basic VBulletin 4 formatting shortcuts would be great. As would a way to search inside of threads.

[vadrig4r]

Graf Zahl said:

If 'more modern' means the current state of other websites, my response is a clear 'no, thank you'.

Every time a website gets redesigned to be 'more modern', it loses some functionality. It always ends up in clutter, sacrificing a lean, functional design for bloat and annoyance. The site as it is is perfectly adequate to serve its purpose.

So true. Good usability principles often go out the window for the latest fad.js

[FireFish]

Linguica said:

It's 2015 ffs.

I would have never expected to notice another person besides me on this website whom is living in 2015. How amusing.

Jokes aside ;
You sure seem to have a lot of plans with this age old website and forum. It must be fed by a lot of devotion towards doom.

[mdmenzel]

I don't really see much in the way of disadvantages if you were to stay with vBulletin, especially if you bump the version up a bit. Sure, the search function is a bit limited but otherwise, if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

Linguica said:

There's approximately a million things I would like to do, but right now we need to finish the hosting change stuff.

Approximate order of major stuff I'd like to do:

* [classified]
* Make a mobile theme for the forums, and redo the "normal" theme layout in a proper style sheet from this millennium
* Redo the /idgames database entirely to make it more of a generalized ModDB-type thing, where the atomic unit is a "project" not a "zip file"
* Integrate the /idgames db with the forums (as in: an autogenerated thread for every project and so forth)
* Make it so a forum user can "own" a idgames db project and actually update the listing
* Figure out what the hell to do with the front page / rest of the site
* Figure out a good way to do forum search besides the awful janky vBulletin method, even if that's just a custom google search

Thing I personally DON'T intend to do:

* Tapatalk garbage
* jQuery "hey let's make the site rely on 8 MB of javascript" garbage
* Selling out to The Man (maybe unless it's enough for, like, a nice car or something)
* Nested replies in forums (glares at AndrewB)

[Ed]

Linguica said:

* Figure out what the hell to do with the front page / rest of the site

The occasional in-house article would be a lot more interesting to the community than links to uninformed PC Gamer highlight reels of the top 5 downloaded zdoom mods.

[GreyGhost]

mdmenzel said:

I don't really see much in the way of disadvantages if you were to stay with vBulletin, especially if you bump the version up a bit. Sure, the search function is a bit limited but otherwise, if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

I suspect a newer version of vBulletin may well be unavoidable if mobile support is in the works, it should also be less likely to spit the dummy after PHP updates.

@TimeOfDeath - If you're using Firefox, NoScript is your friend, and editing about :config to block third-party images will make a noticeable difference on these forums.

[Tango]

I remember stumbling onto some Unreal modding site a while ago and one of the main links on the front page was essentially a "what the hell is this place" page, I assume for those unfamiliar with Unreal and/or its modding scene (which was me at the time). iirc the site was still wip at the time so I'm not sure what all that page contained, but since then I've always felt some semi-prominent thing on the DW front page somewhere that guides the less familiar to a place with major info would be nice. the current front page has the "Doom Info" link, so maybe something along the lines of properly expanding that could work

Linguica said:

* jQuery "hey let's make the site rely on 8 MB of javascript" garbage

I've no particular interest in seeing it used here, but my computer's telling me jQuery is 83 kb yo

[printz]

Linguica said:

* Make a mobile theme for the forums, and redo the "normal" theme layout in a proper style sheet from this millennium

I agree about the mobile theme, but what is wrong with the desktop theme? It seems highly functional and timeless to me.

* Redo the /idgames database entirely to make it more of a generalized ModDB-type thing, where the atomic unit is a "project" not a "zip file"
* Integrate the /idgames db with the forums (as in: an autogenerated thread for every project and so forth)
* Make it so a forum user can "own" a idgames db project and actually update the listing

That sounds great, since it may help small projects get better exposure and quicker feedback. My only worry is that their sheer number will make them easy to ignore. On the other hand, it may also help decongest the "Wads and Mods" forum, which has high traffic and what you post today can easily sink to second page day after tomorrow.

[Frisky]

Slow the F**K down! I didn't join this forum in order to hear about it shutting down a week after I joined!

[scifista42]

esselfortium said:

Doomworld isn't going away. It is good to read the thread before you post in it ;)

[gaspe]

Linguica said:

There's approximately a million things I would like to do, but right now we need to finish the hosting change stuff.

Approximate order of major stuff I'd like to do:

* Redo the /idgames database entirely to make it more of a generalized ModDB-type thing, where the atomic unit is a "project" not a "zip file"
* Integrate the /idgames db with the forums (as in: an autogenerated thread for every project and so forth)
* Make it so a forum user can "own" a idgames db project and actually update the listing

This sounds really interesting.

[david_a]

Tango said:

I've no particular interest in seeing it used here, but my computer's telling me jQuery is 83 kb yo

jQuery itself is fairly innocuous (and I would be surprised if Doomworld doesn't use it since dealing with browser quirks manually is a pain). What he's complaining about are "single-page applications" and other questionably bloated sites that involve pushing multiple megabytes of JS client-side (part of which is 20 other JS frameworks included in a vain attempt to mitigate the utter unsuitability of the language for this purpose). Oh and don't forget all the third-party ad code you've had to inject to pay for the bandwidth costs of serving this whale that adds another minute to the load time.
http://cube-drone.com/comics/c/relentless-persistence

[esselfortium]

Ed said:

The occasional in-house article would be a lot more interesting to the community than links to uninformed PC Gamer highlight reels of the top 5 downloaded zdoom mods.

Yes! I'd love to see this. I remember ages ago there was a big special article here after KDiZD's release, chronicling some of the DW staff doing a coop run through it, but I can't think of anything else along those lines from more recent years. Dedicated posts where serial reviewers like kmxexii can wax poetic about cool wads would be nice to see, and articles on mapping techniques or Dooming skills from experienced mappers and players would also be super cool.

I think we definitely have the community activity nowadays to sustain a couple of frontpage article series like those -- players are doing tons of writing about Doom, they're just not doing it on Doomworld.

[Bucket]

How about an official Doomworld Twitch channel? You've got about ten thousand hours of user-made content in the database to make a daily stream from.

[Andrea Rovenski]

doomworld twitch channel would be cool, could have podcasts, speed runs, wad showcases, multiplayer stuff, and all that jazz.

[SyntherAugustus]

Bucket said:

How about an official Doomworld Twitch channel? You've got about ten thousand hours of user-made content in the database to make a daily stream from.

Having some of the streamers from the Doomworld Twitch Thread sharing a channel would be nice.

[Bucket]

We could get out in front of this whole streaming thing before it gets big!

[Psyrus]

Bucket said:

How about an official Doomworld Twitch channel? You've got about ten thousand hours of user-made content in the database to make a daily stream from.

Could be good whenever Twitch finally switches over to HTML5...

[ReFracture]

Yeahhhh... the sooner the better. Flash needs to die.

[neubejiita]

And I never got to see the losers forum ;(. But this website will continue in one form or another. This community is too big to just die away like that. Hopefully we will be up and running somewhere else.

[Jon]

I really like the idea of some longer-form, more in-depth articles for the front page, but that does require people to actually write them, too. I'm writing a few tech articles for my own site, and I would be happy to write them for DW instead if anyone would find them interesting. Perhaps others would too.

neubejiita said:

And I never got to see the losers forum ;(. But this website will continue in one form or another. This community is too big to just die away like that. Hopefully we will be up and running somewhere else.

...did you read any of the thread, at all?

[Quasar]

Enjay said:

I noticed that the unread posts thing had improved: it now does what I described in my post as far as marking posts that I have viewed as read is concerned. Before that it was completely random as far as I was concerned and I had no idea what it was doing. However, like Graf, it can still be pretty random for me and I'm not really sure what "rules" are being applied.

I don't see a PM notifier at the top of the page (perhaps there is only something there when a new PM comes in?) and I got a PM recently that I missed for a while because of no popup.

After a certain amount of time passes, your session is considered dead, and the software uses sessions, not actual post readings, to determine what a new post is. So it "forgets" whether or not you've read something once your session expires.

[Tormentor667]

esselfortium said:

There's so much activity going on on the forums and elsewhere in the community that could be highlighted on the front page, making it a more informative landing zone for newcomers, rather than expecting people to dig around for all that stuff.

Fully agreed!

Beyond, a more "modern design" doesn't mean cluttered at the same breath. Minimalistic yes, but more responsive and up to date with Web 2.0 standards would be cool. As I said I often read the forums with my smartphone and that really isn't designed in terms of usability ;)

[Linguica]

Quasar said:

After a certain amount of time passes, your session is considered dead, and the software uses sessions, not actual post readings, to determine what a new post is. So it "forgets" whether or not you've read something once your session expires.

More specifically, the forum database doesn't actually keep track of what you have read; all it keeps track of is the last time you were on the site. So when you log in, all posts made since the last time you visited are considered "new" because you couldn't have seen them. Then the software makes cookies for each thread you read during your visit to keep track of where you are in them. But after you stop browsing, the session expires after 30 minutes or so and it all goes back to square one.

Making it act more granular than that would take a lot of storage (permanently keeping track of a timestamp of every single thread that every single registered user has ever viewed would add up).

[Linguica]

I'm actually currently taking a look at the newest version of vBulletin to see if it's worth it. monetarily and effortwise, to upgrade. I should probably take a hard look at phpBB or whatever other mature forum software is out there too.