Suggestions for improving ATD thread

A little while back we had a conversation over on the site section board about suggestions to improve the site design and visilbility (the threads are still there for them that hasn't seen them). I had intended to do a bunch of stuff in the past month but life got in the way so all we got was the chatbox moved and a banner with a Christmas decoration. However I've got some time free to have a bash at some changes but before I do, thought I'd ask on the main thread (as we have plenty of new members who may not have seen the previous) if anyone would like to see anything in particular, or has any suggestions.

London Green has kindly mailed me some Search-related stuff, which I'll see to, so I guess it's more aesthetic and functional stuff.

A few things I'm already looking to do:

Add a page with links to other Argyle sites, football sites and potentially non-football related sites of posters if that was deemed appropriate.

Include MPU ads (rectangular ones down the side) for local businesses affected by the administration process, as discussed on site section board.
Add a twitter box for all tweets with the #pafc hashtag
Add a PAFC news feed (possibly via a twitter aggregator bot, or one of the Argyle-blogger twitter feeds)

(The above three would involve shrinking the width of the forum so we'd have to see how that looks.)

Change the colour scheme to be slightly less hospital-waiting-room in tones.

Have some nice buttons for the top menu - Home, Calendar, FAQ etc - instead of those words and icons. I can make the file sizes teeny so that they don't impact on loading times.

One thing we can't do anything about is the mobile version of the site not allowing you to post - that's a forumotion thing and their mobile version is still in beta.

I've created a dummy forum which I will use to mirror this one so people can look at the changes and applaud/grumble as they see fit before making changes over here.

Anyway, let me know if anyone has anything new to offer and I'll see what I can do!

Also, is it too early for a cider?

All sounds good. Never too early for a cider, or too late.

IMHO I can't see the point of the twitter thing. The one over on Pasoti is full of rubbish. Then again I can't see the point of twitter full stop. I don't really want to know that someone is sitting on a train,is having a cup of tea,gone shopping,is really busy, etc. etc etc etc.

Good on you Nick. How does one enter the dummy site. Soz if I'm being thick

Shonbo - it's still very much a work in progress and I haven't done anything for a couple of weeks. I'll post a link up when I've worked through some of the techie bits I don't yet understand fully.

Richard - Twitter. Yes, on the face of it an utterly pointless collection of random utterings. However, you can use it to focus on specific subjects. The Pasoti twitter box just has tweets from a few players, the official club feed, Chris Webb, The Trust and Sparksy (and mebbe a few others but I've not looked over there for a while).

However there are various options for what the twitter box contains. For here, I figured we could have one that includes every tweet that includes the #pafc hashtag (forgive me if I'm being patronising but this is basically a label for tweets talking about Argyle stuff), and could be viewed as a gauge of public opinion on all matters Argyle - from on-pitch matters to Wrathallgate (as no one is calling it) - much as pasoti and ATD are.

A second, different twitter box could be essentially a news feed for Argyle-related stories around the web. There are a few feeds, such as @PilgrimsBlogger, that aggregate stories as they're found, be it from the BBC or the official site or The Herald or wherever. The box could just contain tweets from that one feed. I just thought it might be a handy tool for people logging on here to see what the latest is around the rest of the web without having to go searching for it. Ideally we'd have a proper news aggregator but I've not yet found a free one. NewsNow, for example, would charge 75 quid a month for us to host an Argyle news feed widget.

Jeez, I sound like I work for Twitter!

Nick, all sounds good

Nick wrote:

Shonbo - it's still very much a work in progress and I haven't done anything for a couple of weeks. I'll post a link up when I've worked through some of the techie bits I don't yet understand fully.

Richard - Twitter. Yes, on the face of it an utterly pointless collection of random utterings. However, you can use it to focus on specific subjects. The Pasoti twitter box just has tweets from a few players, the official club feed, Chris Webb, The Trust and Sparksy (and mebbe a few others but I've not looked over there for a while).

However there are various options for what the twitter box contains. For here, I figured we could have one that includes every tweet that includes the #pafc hashtag (forgive me if I'm being patronising but this is basically a label for tweets talking about Argyle stuff), and could be viewed as a gauge of public opinion on all matters Argyle - from on-pitch matters to Wrathallgate (as no one is calling it) - much as pasoti and ATD are.

A second, different twitter box could be essentially a news feed for Argyle-related stories around the web. There are a few feeds, such as @PilgrimsBlogger, that aggregate stories as they're found, be it from the BBC or the official site or The Herald or wherever. The box could just contain tweets from that one feed. I just thought it might be a handy tool for people logging on here to see what the latest is around the rest of the web without having to go searching for it. Ideally we'd have a proper news aggregator but I've not yet found a free one. NewsNow, for example, would charge 75 quid a month for us to host an Argyle news feed widget.

Jeez, I sound like I work for Twitter!

Nick I'll believe you mate,I've got a bad enough job keeping up with all the emails,Pasoti and ATD. If you think it will benefit this site,you carry on. I'll stick to reading amusing posts about which thread I'm making a guest appearance on next.

Having feeds like BBC Sport and the clubsite would be good, save me searching around 5 times a day to see any news. I'm not a twitterer or tweeter or whatever and the twitter feed on PASOTI is a bit lame seeing which player is out shopping or at the cinema, but back a while ago when everyone was frantically hoping for good news on the takeover, it was great to see how many people from various clubs got involved in re-tweeting about our plight. I'm not sure if anyone on here has ever looked at Not 606, there's not that many people on there but it's friendly and whenever there's any Argyle related news it's posted and commented on straight away. Not sure how the site organisers would feel about ATD being advertised on there, but at the end of the day there is room for more than one forum on Argyle and you don't have to leave one forum to be a member of another.

One thing I did want to ask is how to you post a photo on here? I managed to work out how to post a video from youtube but had real problems trying to upload a photo of Fred Elliot for a thread I wanted to start. I think he has a certain resemblance to an old friend of mine, so had to use it as my profile picture.

Sorry for rambling on, Richard. Basically I'm just a massive geek!

This button:

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Then browse for the file you want and click host it once selected:

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Then copy the url in this box:

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Then hit the button to the right of the original one you clicked, paste in the url and hit OK:

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And yer done

Thanks Nick, maybe I'll try posting the photo of Ian, sorry Fred Elliot , with a caption competion tomorrow. Had one too many ciders now and hitting the sack. Night all.

Good one Nick! Maybe there should be a 'Saint' in front of your name, considering all the work you have taken on and the time of year that it is.. More of that later...

Twitter..
Sorry, but I don't understand why you need two boxes - why can't it all go in one?

Casting my personal vote - I find nearly all the 'player' and 'fan' tweets boring. It's as boring as all that 'inside chat' on the farm between 'real friends'. If you are so 'real', why are you wasting time calling each other "Mate" all the time on the internet?

The news feed stuff I think is okay. I can see its worth.

Adding links or a link page I think is a great idea - but lets be reasonably selective. And yes... Certainly include Pasoti.

For your MPU ads (?) Posty has posted a list of business's who lost money through dealings with Argyle:

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Well done Posty.

Chat box -- The last one on our previous site was brilliant. It was used all the time and there were some great moments in there. We only had about 25 posting members and quite often, half of them could be found 'bantering' live! Who could ever forget the 'luring of Cobi' back to Pasoti by Ponty'?

If we could ever replicate that chatbox - with the type of posters we have on here now - it would change this site dramatically!

Maybe the mods (GOB seemed to know the most) could explain the differences in a technical way.
I am sure if they pointed you to a website that had a chatbox like our old one, you could work it all out and why it was so much better than the version we have now.

And of course... Our own "Forza" forum, so the trust one isn't lonely.

Layout - I like the 'hospital' colours.

But most of all. Since it tis the season..

How about a nice Christmas greeting at the top of the page!

'Peace and good Newell to all men'!

I don't understand the problem for mobile's, mine works fine?

I agree with Ricks regarding the chatbox, it worked well on the last site but hasn't really taken off on here. I'm not sure how to address that though and I didn't like it at the top of the Home Page all that much, how it can be made more attractive to use is a problem.

Frequent changes help, so an annual spring clean would be a good thing.

Apart from that, the site is evolving brilliantly, do it all Nick and well done, you are doing a bloody good job mate!

Also, well done to Nick, Pirate, Tring, Greenskin, Pete and Frank, you have the balance of modding spot on fellas!

Written in VERY SMALL text, how about a link for our two Demn minnows and rivals sites?

Agree with others on the Twitter issue. If we are going to put a feed in, think we need to keep it PAFC news related. A feed which covers key topics and not ramblings from 15 year old superfans would be more useful to me personally and I suspect to many on here (not that I'm implying you are all boring types of course )

Not sure what state our incoming links are like either but do these need addressing too? I suspect Pasoti will have links coming in from all matter of places so a bit of snooping may be in order come the new year

And as ever Nick, i'm happy to help out if needed