Site Changes and Feedback

    This thread is meant to keep track of all site related changes. This post will be edited as soon as new things develop. Feel free to discuss, give feedback or leave suggestions. But remember, stay on topic people!

    January 2017:

    We're kicking of the new year with some changes to the site which are currently being rolled out. We expect it to be finished early next week. Most of it are minor adjustments to the layout. Instead of feeding you a lot of data, we've removed the time stamps on the Spotlight posts. The same goes for our articles, including the author's name (which of course is still being listed in the article) and the post count of the forums. We also gave the forums new descriptions to better represent what they're all about. The goal of these changes are to free up some space and make the site visually more appealing.

    We made the user profile section in the top right corner bigger. You are apart of this community and we want to put more emphasis on that. Your avatar is larger and we increased the 'Create' button because we want you to participate and be one of us. After all, Mapcore is a community, so join in and make yourself heard.

    Late last year, the software vendor added a 'Leaderboard' tab to the site. It shows you who has the most likes overall, but also on a daily basis. We normally don't highlight things like that, which is one of the reasons why you can only see the total received likes on the profile page of a member. But this isn't in your face and is actually a great tool to find interesting content you might have missed otherwise. If you have the most likes, you win the day. So if you wondered what that was on your profile page, now you know. We did remove the 'Leaderboard' tab, which is a bit overkill. You can now find it in the menu, below the forum tab.

    We said goodbye to the chat. We tried to do this before, but people objected. However, it's barely being used now and it is something that needs to be paid for separately. So there's no reason to be spending money on it. We encourage you to use the forums. If it's really not suited for anything, we still have EOT for that.

    Last but not least, we've added @Radu and @TheOnlyDoubleF to the Staff. They will be a worthy addition to our roster and we can't wait for their help in growing this site. We trust that you will make them feel welcome in their new roles.


    December 2015:

    We've heard you like signatures so we are giving you signatures! Unfortunately all the old ones aren't salvageable so you have to start over. Signatures did get a bit out of hand before, so we've set some restrictions. You are allowed three lines of text or three images at 200x100 (for example LinkedIn buttons and stuff). Users can still disable or hide individual signatures if they wish. This ensures the site will still look good even on mobile.

    We want to put more emphasis on people their profile pages. That's why we are updating the contact details. Outdated options like MSN and ICQ will be removed. Instead you will be able to list your Steam, Origin, Battlenet, LinkedIn and so on. This also mean we will be retiring the 'MapCore Job Census' and 'XBOX Live Gamertags / PSN User IDs' threads. Both are heavily outdated and a drag to maintain. By giving you new options on your contact page you are able to share as much as you want. You can also list your employer and your job title.

    User titles have always been a touchy subject. We do not want to mess with that. However, there have been a few occasions in which a Staff member had to step in but wasn't recognized as such. Now, we all know that this site doesn't need a lot of moderation. But still, to avoid confusion and with an eye on future growth, we've decided to only show Staff titles. Former Staff will get an 'Legacy' title. Rest assured, that's it concerning titles.

    Some people didn't like the decision to remove the "Recent Status Updates" side bar. So to counter that, you can now still use the feature and see everyone's status by clicking on 'More' in the top right corner of the site and then select 'Status Updates'.


    November 2015:

    We want to welcome 4 new members to our Staff. Each of them will bring there expertise to further help build the future of Mapcore. We have a lot of faith in these guys and we hope you do to. So let's hear it for: @will2k, @2d-chris, @Skybex and @Thurnip.

    There will be some minor cosmetic changes as well. We'll be renaming "Latest Articles" to "Articles" and our header will get a very prominent social media tab for our Facebook and Twitter pages. The "Information" tab will be removed and replaced with "About Mapcore".

    We've decided to drop the "Recent Status Updates" side bar to make room for a better overview of our articles. We are working hard on creating a steady flow of quality content so we'll be using this space to put more emphasis on articles in the future.

    Congrats and best wishes to the new staff. Thank you for your contribution to come.

    The update log is a good idea, as well as the changes that have been planned.

    Why not just moving the Status Updates more towards the bottom instead of removing them? I always liked them for having a quick overview of what people do. The few spam attempts were not really a problem in my eyes. Otherwise cool to see some change (although Mapcore is already love <3).

    Quote from El_Exodus

    Why not just moving the Status Updates more towards the bottom instead of removing them? I always liked them for having a quick overview of what people do.

    I kinda agree with Exodus.

    The status update is a nice little feature to quickly keep tabs on what's going on around the site.

    Could be moved to another location to make room for articles or it could be its own subforum if that is possible (like off-topic, you would have a subforum in "General" called "status update" where all updates could be gathered in one place).

    Quote from El_Exodus

    Why not just moving the Status Updates more towards the bottom instead of removing them? I always liked them for having a quick overview of what people do. The few spam attempts were not really a problem in my eyes. Otherwise cool to see some change (although Mapcore is already love <3).

    Quote from will2k

    I kinda agree with Exodus.

    The status update is a nice little feature to quickly keep tabs on what's going on around the site.

    Could be moved to another location to make room for articles or it could be its own subforum if that is possible (like off-topic, you would have a subforum in "General" called "status update" where all updates could be gathered in one place).

    Both of you have valid points, something we considered actually. However, it's not used that often anyway and most things that do get posted barely get replies. So that's why we've decided to drop it entirely. I do want to point out that @Quotingmc made some excellent suggestions regarding our user profile contact information. It's ancient. It still uses fields for AOL, MSN, ICQ, etc. Do you know anybody that still uses that? I don't. I would like to see that changed to stuff like Twitter, Facebook, Steamid, Origin, Battlenet, PSN, Xbox Live, etc. That should give you enough options to find and follow someone so you can see their status :P

    Quote from Vaya

    Would be cool if you could turn user's profiles into a sort of mini portfolio. Promote current project, a couple screenshots etc etc.

    bit like the steam profiles?

    would that sort of distract from the topics we should be creating for discussion which are more publicly accessible?

    Quote from Sprony

    Both of you have valid points, something we considered actually. However, it's not used that often anyway and most things that do get posted barely get replies. So that's why we've decided to drop it entirely. I do want to point out that @Quotingmc made some excellent suggestions regarding our user profile contact information. It's ancient. It still uses fields for AOL, MSN, ICQ, etc. Do you know anybody that still uses that? I don't. I would like to see that changed to stuff like Twitter, Facebook, Steamid, Origin, Battlenet, PSN, Xbox Live, etc. That should give you enough options to find and follow someone so you can see their status

    i have to protest I still have my AOL adress ;) but yeah good idea though :)

    Keep up the good work :)

    Quote from jackophant

    bit like the steam profiles?

    would that sort of distract from the topics we should be creating for discussion which are more publicly accessible?

    Nah I was thinking you could link to your topic on your profile. So if I wanted to know what your were currently working on it would show something like the below:

    https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/topic/17628-csgo-de_stupa/

    (it's meant to show the topic preveiw here but it's not working- other suggestion- get the software working consistently!)

    Thanks for having me on board

    Quote from jackophant

    bit like the steam profiles?

    would that sort of distract from the topics we should be creating for discussion which are more publicly accessible?

    The way I read it, it would do the opposite. You say something in a thread and I click on your profile and am able to see topics you have chosen to spotlight which leads me to your thread.

    I think it needs to be easier to distinguish staff from the userbase. The first problem is that it is almost impossible to find the staff directory. The only way I have found this page is by googling for it. Putting it under the "about mapcore" tab would fix this. I also think an user's privileges should be listed with profile information. That way when a user makes a post there can be no confusion if that user is a moderator or not. While I understand that this isn't in Mapcore's style, there have been big firefights started over confusion if a user was moderator or not.

    Quote from MaanMan

    I think it needs to be easier to distinguish staff from the userbase. The first problem is that it is almost impossible to find the staff directory. The only way I have found this page is by googling for it. Putting it under the "about mapcore" tab would fix this. I also think an user's privileges should be listed with profile information. That way when a user makes a post there can be no confusion if that user is a moderator or not. While I understand that this isn't in Mapcore's style, there have been big firefights started over confusion if a user was moderator or not.

    Yes, this is a touchy subject here but I agree. There needs to be a better distinction. We'll look into that.

    Quote from Vaya

    Nah I was thinking you could link to your topic on your profile. So if I wanted to know what your were currently working on it would show something like the below:

    https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/topic/17628-csgo-de_stupa/

    (it's meant to show the topic preveiw here but it's not working- other suggestion- get the software working consistently!)


    Quote from Skybex

    Thanks for having me on board

    The way I read it, it would do the opposite. You say something in a thread and I click on your profile and am able to see topics you have chosen to spotlight which leads me to your thread.

    This! I think that would be a great addition. It would be a lot quicker and easier than doing a full search on the forums and browse through the user's threads/posts, which I find myself doing from time to time

    /Edit: I'm not sure what the best way would be to select these topics/posts though. Seems logical to have it so every user can select them themself, but the disadvantage about this is it would require people to actually do this ... and also keep it up to date. The second way would be based on views/likes/replies or some combination of them?
    Ideally, the forum would pick 3/4/5/whatever topics based on views/likes/replies, but the user can choose spotlights which would have priority over these. Jumping way ahead here though :D

    Quote from Sprony

    Yes, this is a touchy subject here but I agree. There needs to be a better distinction. We'll look into that.

    You could display the user group below the avatar and give staff groups an extra colour. Blue/Orange/Red whatever. IPB is supporting this.

    All of these changes are utter crap, the only thing we need is the Women appreciation thread back, also there's not enough praise to Hurg atm, we should not lose faith in our savior. Remember, Hurg is love, Hurg is life.

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