Discussions Revamped!
Posted by Clarence Wooten Sat, 02 Jun 2007 22:11:00 GMT
Understanding that discussions are central to building community, we have finally given the discussion forums the attention that they deserve.
The main forums page
We reworked the display to include a search options in the sidebar as well as a list of the most recent discussion posts including the most recent discussion posts within topics in which you’re participating.
Additionally, when creating new forums, we now enable group managers to upload an icon to further reinforce the purpose of the forum.
Screen grab below:
The topics list page
We’ve improved the topics list page to include information about the starter of the topic; the number of posts to the topic; and the number times the topic was viewed.
For group managers, we enable you to highlight any discussion topic that you feel is important. Highlighting discussions does the following:
- Puts the discussion topic on the group’s summary page for increased visibility; and
- Makes the discussion topic “sticky” so that it remains at the top of the of the topics list for that forum.
Discussion topics can also be locked so that no further posts can be added
The discussion topic page
Last but not least, we are most excited by the changes and enhancements that we’ve made to the individual discussion page. We redesigned its look-and-feel to provide more information including the ability to send private messages to participants; identify group managers from members; subscribe to the topic via email or RSS; and sort by oldest or newest posts. We also continue support HTML within discussion posts for embedding YouTube videos, images, even widgets.
We feel that this is a great start, but we’re not done yet, so expect many more improvements to come.
Create a new Groupsite and see for yourself—It’s free!