Idle Chatter | A General Discussion Community

[Gemma]

Hi @Gemma, The overall theme is successful, but I do have a few suggestions for improvement. The current three-column layout—with both left and right sidebars—makes the forum feel a bit cluttered. It might be more elegant and visually spacious if the left-hand forum menu were hidden by default and revealed as a dropdown when hovering over the logo. This approach could free up more space for the main forum content and create a cleaner, more modern user experience.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll take it on board.

Once XF3 is released, I'll probably be starting my design again from scratch anyway, so it will be an opportunity to revisit areas that don't work particularly well - having so many navigation links and tabs is one of the most frustrating things that I've yet to find a "perfect" solution for.

 

[Gemma]

One month out from our 5th Birthday, we've updated to Idle Chatter v5

We've reworked the forums index categories and layout, tweaked some colours, and whatnot. And for a bit of fun we've looked back at our first few days in existence compared with now



I've removed a whole lot of addons from the site since the last update, we no longer use Threadmarkers, Content Ratings, Tag Essentials, or [tl] Post Reply - I became disillusioned and fed up with the amount of errors these addons were causing, so they've gone.

I've made a few layout adjustments too...

After helping someone with their What's New/Latest Activity layout, I decided I liked the idea and implemented something similar into my own site - I also added some other little tweaks



I've updated parts of the thread view/post layout - adding new online/offline indications, revamping the quotes bbcode, and fixing small issues with the post action buttons (not sure if that's what you call them - edit, report, delete etc)



I've "improved" the Movie, TV, Game, and Music Thread Starter addons thread view layout and also tweaked the movie/tv show cast, recommended, and similar layouts



There have been some improvements made to the Article System (@Bob Article Management System), Book Club (@Bob Item Management System), the member tooltip, and member profiles layout



Two new sections have been added to member profiles for the Quiz addon - quizzes created and quizzes completed



Our "quick topics" section has an updated layout



Some of our AI Bots are now using OpenRouter models



We've added a member notepad to the account area so members can leave notes for future reference



There are tons of our small improvements that I've probably forgotten about but, as always, thanks for looking

 

[Lee]

As always Gemma, looks great.

I always look forward to seeing what changes you make. I especially like your adaptions to the movie database addons, etc.

 

[Gemma]

As always Gemma, looks great.

Thank you Lee

I always look forward to seeing what changes you make. I especially like your adaptions to the movie database addons, etc.

I did tinker with making them flip so they displayed some related info when you hovered over the movie, TV show, video game etc, but it got a bit too messy. It is always fun to experiment though.

I'm happy with how everything looks now, so I don't think there will be many more changes until I reset with XF 3.0 although I'm hoping to add a few addons, some AI-related things and some user safety features (blur images, content toxicity etc).

 

[Gemma]

One small update, as we continue to debate content discovery and simplifying things, I've added some basic tabs to my latest activity feeds for some of @Bob addons (AMS, IMS, Showcase, and UBS) - still not an ideal solution but it is better than nothing, imo

Using @Painbaker Forum Content List Tabs addon for this.

Edit: I'm now also using this layout as my forum landing page and What's New/New Content page.

 

[Gemma]

Another small update to our activity feed



We've added buttons so users can quickly create various content types from the forum index or What's New page. You can also make a profile post from within the tab.

Slowly, we are getting there... (I think lol)

 

[ArtG]

I'm also removed the Feeds addon by Audentio/Themehouse and will just use the built-in What's New pages to highlight new content - I'm sure XF2.3 will have some new way of engaging with new content.

Hi Gemma,

May I ask why you felt the Feeds add-on wasn't better than the What's New stock feature?

 

[Gemma]

May I ask why you felt the Feeds add-on wasn't better than the What's New stock feature?

It didn't really do what I wanted, don't get me wrong, it is an excellent addon, but because I have so many different content/thread types, there were compatibility issues, and then I didn't really like their interpretation of the card view (especially if posts had images/attachments). Another issue was that the addon was never officially released, so not much in the way of support or future development.

I decided the addon by @Painbaker and the team at OzzModz was a better option for me, and integrated that add-on in place of the stock feed.

 

[Gemma]

After helping someone with their What's New/Latest Activity layout, I decided I liked the idea and implemented something similar into my own site - I also added some other little tweaks

This is a small update related to the What's New/Latest Activity Feed. We commissioned some work to provide feed filters, something that I had wanted within the feeds for a long time. Very, very pleased with the outcome and, more importantly, so are my members!

Activity Feed



Activity Feed Filter Menu



Activity Feed Fitler Results (filtering some of Bob's addons)



News Feed Filtering



We also added the AI Content Moderation, but there's nothing to show about that in this showcase thread, however I can say that it works excellently.

We've got one, maybe two more addons to work on and hopefully have live before our 5th Birthday.

As always, thanks for looking

 

[ArtG]

Thanks for the update, @Gemma.

In your mind, what are you trying to achieve with your What's New feed for your members? Is it single activity feed of everything that happened on the site since the last visit?

 

[Gemma]

In your mind, what are you trying to achieve with your What's New feed for your members? Is it single activity feed of everything that happened on the site since the last visit?

We are basically using the latest activity feed, as IMO, it is the best way to show new content, with the filters, it makes it easier for our members to find the content they want to view. We (admins) can set it to display content created in the last X hours/days/weeks/months/years or created between certain dates. We can also control what content types are shown in the feed.

I also have tabs for some of our most popular content and forum types - articles, blogs, showcase etc - with set criteria for each one.

It's all about making it easier for members to find content - the filtering system definitely helps with that. And the feeds update in real-time.

 

[ArtG]

Content Badges is the first of the two new add-ons to go live. I'm quite sure my members will have fun with this one.

If we get a similar activity boost as we did with Competition Threads I'll be happy.

I'm also removed the Feeds addon by Audentio/Themehouse and will just use the built-in What's New pages to highlight new content - I'm sure XF2.3 will have some new way of engaging with new content.

I know it's an old post but... did you create the icons or did you find them on an icon website? If so, do you mind sharing a link to the site?

And, did the Content Badges have the expected effect with your members?

Thanks!

 

[Gemma]

I know it's an old post but... did you create the icons or did you find them on an icon website? If so, do you mind sharing a link to the site?

And, did the Content Badges have the expected effect with your members?

Thanks!

Two websites I usually use for icons,

Icon Archive - 800,000+ free icons & stickers, PNG, SVG Downloads

Discover 800,000+ free icons. Browse icons by category, artist, popularity, date. PNG, SVG, ICO files. Share your favorites via Twitter or WhatsApp.

www.iconarchive.com

Free Icons and Stickers - Millions of images to download

Download Free Icons and Stickers for your projects. Images made by and for designers in PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD and CSS formats

www.flaticon.com

Yes, I think it works well with certain usegroups. Any gamification can only be a good thing, in my opinion, for encouraging user engagement.

 

[ArtG]

@Gemma you've been extremely generous of your time in answering my questions. I am trying to educate myself to do some of the things you've been doing. I am not a coder so starting from a beginners point of view.

I see that you are comfortable using CSS and do make template edits especially in reworking Xenforo widgets and their outputs. How would you recommend I get familiar with both of these items? Take a CSS beginner course / learn the Xenforo developer manual, etc?

 

[ProxyZiny]

Two websites I usually use for icons,

Icon Archive - 800,000+ free icons & stickers, PNG, SVG Downloads

Discover 800,000+ free icons. Browse icons by category, artist, popularity, date. PNG, SVG, ICO files. Share your favorites via Twitter or WhatsApp.

www.iconarchive.com

Free Icons and Stickers - Millions of images to download

Download Free Icons and Stickers for your projects. Images made by and for designers in PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD and CSS formats

www.flaticon.com

Yes, I think it works well with certain usegroups. Any gamification can only be a good thing, in my opinion, for encouraging user engagement.

Thanks for sharing this! It’s going to be super helpful!

 

[Gemma]

I see that you are comfortable using CSS and do make template edits especially in reworking Xenforo widgets and their outputs. How would you recommend I get familiar with both of these items? Take a CSS beginner course / learn the Xenforo developer manual, etc?

Probably not much use but everything I do is basically the result of spending time (sometimes hours) playing around with the browser developer tools, looking at snippets of code and adjusting until I get a result. Sometimes I can get an idea to work right away, other times it takes ages. I've given up many times too.