New CAOS Website

[raptor]

I'm sure everyone has noticed the new CAOS front site.  Please start by reading the Welcome message

I openly welcome thoughts and comments here.

Scott

[Shaun Martin]

I'd get rid of the RSS feeds section on the forums now IMO and leave it on the home page like it is.

[Shaun Martin]

Also, it looks like there are alot of images missing from the forums.

[raptor]

I thought the same thing.  We are working on it now.  As well as the smileys

Scott

[William Grim]

I'd enable commenting on blog posts.  Afterall, a consistent user esperience requires proper context.  It will be difficult to comment on announcements or videos when the comments and content are disconnected.

If you want to share data between the forums and the blog, you can pretty easily setup some DB views on the SMF data so you don't have to do a lot in your code and get a consistent data interface no matter the forum backend you use, assuming these views are updated whenever the backend changes.

Other than that, it looks snazzy, but I think the forums should take more precedence since that's the main driver of content in CAOS.

[Shaun Martin]

Also, there's no link back to the home page or any of the other links located on the home page on the forums site.

[Shaun Martin]

But overall it looks very nice.

[raptor]

++ on the links BACK shaun

[Jerry]

Will my avatar come back or should I look for a new one?

[Robert Kennedy]

Shouldn't the home button at the top of this page take the user back to the front page instead of to the front page of the forums?

[Bryan]

Not a fan.  The new home page seems less like a portal than the old style.  I could come, see everything recent (let's face, this forum isn't exactly high traffic) and then go on my way.

[Tangent Orchard]

Initial personal input: Please don't change the Home button. =P I use it to come back to the Recent Posts section of the forums a whole lot.  For linking to the actual home page, why not make a hyperlink out of "Computer Association of SIUE" in the main banner?

I can't honestly say I'll use the home page very much (I really like the feel of forums) but we definitely needed a page to post LotM videos and slides.  Thanks for that!

[Mark Sands]

We have no intention of members actually "using" the front page. It's just a way to better advertise events that are happening at CAOS. Considering the CS lab's homepage is set to caos.cs.siue.edu, that will generate a lot of traffic, and people will have no excuse that they weren't aware of future events.

I do agree that once the users load the front page and read, if any, NEW news or recent event clips/pics, they'll go straight to forums. As will I.

Also, we're aware that there are some crazy server issues like the database being down or avatars not loading. We are working to fix this.

[William Grim]

Actually, if you ask me, you should put the forums back on the front and make a link to the blogs under http://caos.cs.siue.edu/blog.  The content here is much more dynamic, unless you plan on writing your own forum software that looks smoothly integrated into the new home site.  I think most people here come for the discussions anyway.

[William Grim]

If you do decide to keep the existing setup, I think it'd be a good idea to make the "Recent Posts" section more like how we have now, with just a bit more info (and make sure it correctly updates ).  Maybe also have a way of listing the forums like we can now for making a new post, and then it could come directly to this forum software until you've written your own or made the integration seamless.