How's about we change the info center into something useful for the user? I don't have any good idea's for it really, but it occurred to me that most of the info in the info center is pretty useless when I look at it. At least it is for me I guess. Couldn't we make it more of a social area for the user to see more things they are interested in? Recent topics of the user? Buddies? Notifications? etc etc.
I trim it down anyway. I've never thought it really made sense the way it was, so I just have the basics there (basic stats, link to full, link to memberlist, who's online, etc).
I must say I like that idea ... the info center tailored to the current user ...
I'm not sure what information we have available at that point that we could add (avoiding any extra db calls) but its sure worth a look at a revamp.
I like this idea. But I do not like it being at the bottom of the board index and also only on the board index. Perhaps on the left or the right side of the forum. But definitely not on the top. The information on this info center should be changeable with every actions taken. Different info in board index, message index, display, profile etc.
I was thinking of showing login / user avatar in it too (instead of at the top which can be made smaller and simpler if really needed). And when they are in other user profile page, that user avatar will be displayed instead i.e. with their details in it. The content of profile page can then be used to something better. Like Breeze idea or SimpleWall or something?
Just a thought I think of sharing.
Do it. :)
Hmmm... I do not think I would like it on the side. Things get too crowded for many sites that want things on the sides. Would be fine if people want to make a theme do that though. It's likely going to add some significant amount of queries or resources to pull all the additional info for every page too.
Yup. That idea could be bloat too. And it can be done via theme or mod.
But why want to add so many info inside it at the first place while knowing queries / resources will increase?
Well the queries shouldn't increase if you keep in on the index page. You'll just be replacing the current info center bloat with the social center bloat. :D Adding it to every page would mean even more bloat. lol Of course, caching could limit the resource usage.
But can't we try to limit ourselves in the available queries of the relevant page instead of calling the unnecesary one? I can see the menu is already calling somethings like pm notification. In the quicklogin we already have avatar and all the others. Eg. In display/post page, we just need to call relevant queries that relates to display/post page. The same things goes to other pages. IMO that won't be increasing any, if done carefully. It will also give a chance for modders to add up something there if they want it. Really, if managed carefully, how heavy/bloated will that be?
It might be nice if there were an option to tie the who's online list in the info centre into something else permission-wise so that people who don't want to show that to others don't have to hack code manually.
Yup. It shouldn't be accessible at all if the site wants it hidden.
It always seems to be a privacy thing more than anything else, and a lot of people get all twisted up over 'but that's buggy, it says to enable the online list, I unticked it and it's still there' <insert glare angry face meme>
Agreed. I had a branch with work on the who stuff... somewhere, but I didn't do this. The flexibility added by this would be a good bit for Elk to have.
AFAIR the infocenter is already quite "addon-nice" (i.e. is possible to add or remove things without having to touch the code, just using hooks and alike).
One of my doubts since we started (but that may be more for 1.1 or 2.0) is the "main page" altogether. I'm not so sure the list of boards is the most important thing to show there, at least not for registered users...
I'm not sure either about what to show exactly, maybe some unread replies, or mentions/alerts or the "latest events" (a sum of everything), in other words make the main page for the registered users more like a big "info center" with the things a user is likely to do first when he comes to the site. Ideally configurable too... O:-)
Sounds a little portal-ish.
I tend to agree that having the "main" page be something that is more what a user is going to do makes sense. How often do they read the board descriptions after all :P ... but getting to their stuff and reading updates, and a preview of them .. hummm so much to do !
And if you think I almost never use unread replies and unread posts and always browse the boards starting from the board index and going down the children according to my current interest, you understand how twisted my mind is... xD
This is exactly what I was thinking with the info center. Even though you are proposing to do it elsewhere, my vision was to make more important and useful info available to the user. I like the ideas you guys are talking about.