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Desert Orchid

Desert Orchid

Senior Jockey
Joined
Aug 2, 2005
Messages
23,773
I'd imagine most forumites come in to see the actual 'general racing topics' section first and foremost.

Would it be an idea to have that as the first category listed on the 'home' page? It might save unnecessary scrolling upon arrival.

Just a thought...
 
As we create the new forum layout, many of the threads in the General Racing Topics will be moved to other sections to ease navigation. But I'm always keeping members habits in mind :D
 
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We have a section on Competitions - but it is turned off now since the last posting was made in 2008 :)

But yes - we have a section and will make this live NP.

In fact, I have finished the forum structure and will begin moving threads into the new forums to start populating them. :)

So far, so good. :thumbsup:
 
Advice, please?

Trying to access the forum on my iphone while out and about in Spain but not allowed in.

Does that mean the forum is not open to casual visitors/viewers?

Is that good for the forum?
 
Hiya Desert Orchard!

Sorry about that! The permissions changed for those logged out of their accounts - which I have fixed. All visitors should be able to "see" the forum. :thumbsup:
 
Hi BB
General Racing Topics must be one of the busiest sections of this forum.
Any chance it could be more prominent on our front page,please?
 
Yes, General Racing Topics is a section that will be prominent, but many of the threads need to be moved to other categories. This is what has taken a while to do - setting up the categories and specific forums. It's a matter of moving these threads - and we will leave that task to be dealt with once we migrate.

It will be a change for everyone - a different feel, buttons in places you are not used to - but we all deal with change as time moves on. This will be a good one. I have done nearly the exact thing at CM in 2017. There were a few disgruntled oldtimers, but we all got used to it pretty fast.

One of the best things is that this will be mobile friendly. We will be entering the 21st century now. :p
 
Bryan I'll have to post this here, keep getting a 'server error' message on CM discussion thread (all day yesterday and still there this morning). In response to your Q '[FONT=&quot]Are you talking about URLs?'[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I'll try and explain my thinking better. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]First off, bear in mind I'm approaching this from a static site perspective. Forums may be treated differently from an algorithm perspective, but logic says the proven historical importance of URL naming, page title, and headings still applies to a forum thread and its ranking potential. Although a lot has changed in the last 6 months in the SEs, I've not seen any evidence or testing that suggests this has changed. With your experience on CM, you may well know differently, of course
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And the logic above may be false when applied to forums.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]So let's see an example: [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Desert Orchid creates a thread '2024 Grand National' [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]The URL gets named as https://www.talkinghorses.co.uk/ forum/showthread.php?24199-2024-Grand-National [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]The page title automatically gets entered as '2024 Grand National' [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]The page description gets auto-entered as the opening post [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]The H1 gets auto-created as '2024 Grand National' [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Subsequent H2s are ... 2024 Grand National, The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Desert Orchid For This Useful Post:, The Following User Says Thank You to Desert Orchid For This Useful Post:, The Following User Says Thank You to Desert Orchid For This Useful Post:, The Following User Says Thank You to barjon For This Useful Post:, vBulletin Message [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]H3s are... Error, The following errors occurred with your submission, Quick Reply[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]************ [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]So, taking them one by one... [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]We can't change how users name threads for obvious reasons. We hopefully overcome this, to a point, with category naming and the resultant URL structure. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Off the top of my head (would need more thought), the ideal (in this case) would be something like talkinghorses.co.uk/ big-races-discussion/grand-national-2024 [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]I suspect the page/thread/URL naming on the new forum will be different in structure (think I checked a CM thread and believe it drops that pointless /showthread.php?threadnumber).[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]********** [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]So we can't do a lot about the thread name. But the Title takes the same form as the original name. My bet is there is a way of rewriting the title in the backend (ie by an admin person) so it's more descriptive, without affecting the original name given by the creator (and that is displayed on the forum). [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]So, the title theoretically could be (re)written as 'Analysis of the Grand National 2024 runners and riders. Betting tips, predictions, and race thoughts' (again, off the top of my head, might need shortening a bit).[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]******** [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The auto-description could be replaced by something like 'Forum discussion around the 2024 Grand National runners and riders. Thoughts, predictions, and betting tips on the race' (obviously search engines, especially Google, 'create' their own descriptions regularly anyway, but no harm - other than the admin overhead - in using a descriptive description in case it's shown).[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]******** [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]The H1 'Grand National 2024' could be replaced with something like 'Grand National 2024 - Forum Discussion & Analysis', though it's probably OK as it is (because, in theory, the SEs should 'know' that TH is a horse racing discussion forum, and not need to be told twice). [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]******** [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Now, on a static site your H2s (and 3s, 4s) would be sensibly structured, examples 'Runners & Riders', 'Betting Odds', 'Who's The Favorite?', 'Individual Horses Analysis', Which horses have run in the race before?', 'Which horses have the best form?, 'Outsiders to watch', 'Weights Analysis' etc etc, etc. You build an authoritative collection of data and thoughts around the race. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Clearly, it doesn't work this way on a forum thread. And I have to assume that algorithms know that and treat forum threads differently. But logic says the H2s, H3s that are currently there are sub-optimal and may even be harming the page. Or, at a minimum, not helping the algorithm to understand precisely what the thread is there for, and hence not being able to optimally read, interpret, store, retrieve and display as an answer to a searcher's query. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]*****[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Of course, all this (if feasible) is a time overhead. But some of it seems practical and potentially beneficial to ranking positions. Maybe the best way forward is to carry out the changes, and then see where stuff lands and what happens to the elements I mentioned above in the new forum software. Then test (if necessary) on one or two threads to see if you can make any additional magic happen.[/FONT]
 
Hiya Chaumi,

I think I gather what you are saying, but the forum software will take care of the URLs properly for SEO purposes. Nothing complicated at all - and really no change to what most members are used to. I have refreshed my memory with some of the threads at CM where people gave their feedback on the exact changes :)

One of the biggest changes is that the Reply to Thread is on the right side - not the left. :p

The important thing is to get this migration done as soon as possible - once that is done we have really get to work. The more I look into the backend here, the more I realise how much of the forum is "out of the box". :eek:

Any old URLs will be redirected to the new ones, and once done I will have my SEO team take a look. :)
 
ep1987 said:
There are far too many boards; I honestly expect that people will just keep on using the general racing topics for anything racing related.
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We brought pretty much everything over that was already in place and in situ. But now Talking Horses is on Xenforo forum software, I expect over the coming weeks, tweaks and changes will be made to the site and forum. The big task was migrating the forum onto new software, that has now been done :)
 
I genuinely appreciate the efforts of everyone to bring the forum into the 21st Century, but I’m sorry - this new format is dreadful. In the spirit of providing constructive feedback, please consider the following:

Move the TH News and Announcements to the bottom of the list somewhere. It has little relevance or importance day-to-day, and presumably next to nil after you have completed the updates.

Find a way of collapsing the sub-forums under ‘Forum Info and New Members’ - it takes up too much space and arguably is given too much prominence. Collapsing sub-forums applies elsewhere too.

General Racing Topics should always be the first forum on display, imo.

Bookies-live? Don’t see the point of it. Shift it to the bottom somewhere - it will barely see any traffic. Better still, get rid of it or combine it with Bookmaker Betting Offers‘.

Please, please collapse all the sub-forums under the Principal Race Meetings forums. It is far too cluttered. Also, it goes without saying the Jumps should always appear before the Flat in any heirarchy.

‘Betting Selections’, ‘Horse Racing Analysis’ and ‘Horse Racing News’ could easily be covered in ‘General Racing’ and only contribute to the massively cluttered feel the changes have introduced.

If there is a way that the User can collapse the current forum headings to hide the sub-forums, then that would ameliorate some of the above issues, but right now - as a predominantly mobile user with limited patience - there is far too much content on the opening pages, and it needs to be drastically trimmed back to make this new site workable.

The move to a more Hibs-oriented colour scheme is of course welcome and most correct.

Please take these comments in the spirit intended. I appreciate you are all trying to do your best here.
 
Grasshopper said:
I genuinely appreciate the efforts of everyone to bring the forum into the 21st Century, but I’m sorry - this new format is dreadful. In the spirit of providing constructive feedback, please consider the following:

Please take these comments in the spirit intended. I appreciate you are all trying to do your best here.
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This is greatly appreciated - As Bryan has said, migrating to the new forum software was the very first step. Please keep the feedback coming as this is your community, not ours!
 
chaumi said:
There will be a lot still to be done, Grasshopper. In the meantime (if you didn't already know) you can just go to the 'new posts' link and then you just see what's been posted recently

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Yes, unless I’m looking for a particular thread I have always used “new posts” as my homepage. Doesn’t seem to correlate with the “what’s new” tab at the moment? The latter seems to have more.
 
I think it's that 'what's new' shows everything, BJ.

But 'new posts' has an option for you to see only unread or everything. And I suspect the default is 'unread'

See this image, in the green bar half way down, click on the x next to 'unread'. It'll then show everything, which will tie in closer with 'what's new' (although maybe what's new shows you pm's as well, and that might be the main difference from 'new posts')

unread.png
 
I think supply and demand will make it clear what sections are useful and what are surplus to requirements.

I think everyone posts to reach the maximum forum audience and it's not so much too many folders as overzealous moderators moving postings from the main folders to fringe folders hardly anyone reads that I find occasionally disappointing at some places.
 
Grasshopper said:
Move the TH News and Announcements to the bottom of the list somewhere. It has little relevance or importance day-to-day, and presumably next to nil after you have completed the updates.

Find a way of collapsing the sub-forums under ‘Forum Info and New Members’ - it takes up too much space and arguably is given too much prominence. Collapsing sub-forums applies elsewhere too.

General Racing Topics should always be the first forum on display, imo.

Bookies-live? Don’t see the point of it. Shift it to the bottom somewhere - it will barely see any traffic. Better still, get rid of it or combine it with Bookmaker Betting Offers‘.

Please, please collapse all the sub-forums under the Principal Race Meetings forums. It is far too cluttered. Also, it goes without saying the Jumps should always appear before the Flat in any heirarchy.

‘Betting Selections’, ‘Horse Racing Analysis’ and ‘Horse Racing News’ could easily be covered in ‘General Racing’ and only contribute to the massively cluttered feel the changes have introduced.

If there is a way that the User can collapse the current forum headings to hide the sub-forums, then that would ameliorate some of the above issues, but right now - as a predominantly mobile user with limited patience - there is far too much content on the opening pages, and it needs to be drastically trimmed back to make this new site workable.

The move to a more Hibs-oriented colour scheme is of course welcome and most correct.

Please take these comments in the spirit intended. I appreciate you are all trying to do your best here.
Click to expand...
Thanks for this input. :cheers: Yes, there still is a lot of work to be done. I am looking at collapsible categories - and yes, will be moving some of these around. I am still working on functionality of the forum now, but will be getting to the structure again shortly. :D

Cheers!

Bryan
 
Already I;m missing the facility - not the only one I'm missing I hear you say - either to go directly to the first unread (by me) post or the most recent one immediately.

Like GH, I'm hugely appreciative of all the work taking place behind the scenes but I feel the place needs to evolve - and fast - from its current set-up.

All the best, guys.
 
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