What to do with tabbed header area? (1 Viewer)

Jon

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Currently, the tabs at the top of this site are not exactly functional. They lead to an old part of the site that is pretty much defunct. But I am not sure what to do.

If I remove the tabs, the site will look a bit different and they are quite key to the look and feel of the forum.

Curious as to what others think about what I should do regarding that area of the site.
 

The_Doc_Man

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When I looked, the "Contacts" tab didn't work quite right for me. Some of the code showed up in the top of the window but then the browser put up the rest of the image OK. Maybe only one or two lines of code showed up as black-on-white text.

Maybe change the order of tabs so that the Forums section is the Default page? I understand your concern about preserving the look and feel but when I was faced with that problem on my apps that had tabbed pages, my boss told me to let utility by my guide. So I did that by tracking tab usage.

If you have a way built in or can BUILD a way to do so, track how many people actually use those tabs. My opinion is that if you could track usage and if you then determine from your statistics that nobody has used the other tabs in at least six months, it's time to say goodbye to them. Minimize the amount of code to be maintained for a service that nobody uses.

Just one guy's thoughts.
 

Jon

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Thanks for the suggestions, @The_Doc_Man. I like them. Yes, the Contact page has been down for ages. The other parts of the site do not add any value.

If you visit the home page, I created some sections, some videos but not really sure what people want over and above the forum.
 

Minty

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Maybe use them for direct links to parts of the forum, like the Sample database and Code Samples forum sections without the date filtering ?

If you click on them at the moment from the forum links, they are filtered to the last week's posts only - and in sections like that there are frequently no new posts, which may make people repeat questions unnecessarily ?
 

Jon

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@Minty, when I view those forum sections they are not filtered to the last week's posts for me. Perhaps you could try editing the filter at the bottom and see if it sticks.

Perhaps I should put links to the Sample database and Code samples section within the Wordpress section of the site.
 

Minty

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The filter setting there doesn't stick, however the default for my account was set to one week, which I have now changed.

Maybe that setting is default ?
 

Jon

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To be honest, I do not know the default setting. Perhaps someone else could chip in with what they see there.
 

isladogs

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Default settings: I just use Site Default & this appears not to filter the areas Minty mentioned at all

As for the underused tabbed area, both AWF & AccessForums.Net use the same vBulletin software.
I suggest looking at the other site and 'stealing' the best features they have that aren't on AWF

So for example, I would move the following to the tabbed area to make them more prominent:
- Search Forums
- Mark Threads Solved
- FAQ
- How To Post A Question

The Activity Stream feature is also quite useful

NOTE:
If the other site asked, I would suggest they do the same in reverse as AWF has several excellent features missing 'over there' e.g. Whose On / Top Posters etc
 

Jon

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Thanks for the suggestions Colin. They are actually using a newer version of vBulletin, which has different features. I decided against the upgrade for a multitude of reasons.
 

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