RMweb - what next?

[Andy Y]

Having spent a bit of time of late (due to a change of employer ) sorting out some of my long-standing niggles with bits of the site and implementing some developments I wanted to make my thoughts are moving onwards about what happens next.

 

I have accepted that Showcase wasn't the right sort of development however much I'm still in love with the idea of a condensed, quality, share authorship site and I'm looking to bring that concept closer back to the main site. There are forthcoming changes in the software itself with an upgrade to 3.2 from Invision - this has just been unveiled today for their own site - http://community.invisionpower.com/

 

Anyway I'd like to open up a topic for your input as to what you would like to see or what RMweb could be in the near or distant future. Some ideas may be great; others not so but it's an opportunity for a bit of unshackled thinking where you can have an opportunity to shape the future.

 

The topic isn't for grumbling about something you don't feel is right at the moment but you can suggest ways to improve what's here at present.

 

Interested to hear any thoughts.

[coachmann]

In Groups, I had to experiment with resizing of pictures in order to fit within the columns. For those interested, they are a maximum of 600 pixels across instead of the usual recommended 800 across in use on the rest of RMweb.

[Mucky Duck]

Hi Andy,

Maybe I have missed comments or complaints but in what way do you feel that Showcase wasn't the right sort of development? My only observation on this is that it doesn't seem to be expanding much… but I thought it was mainly down to you to invite Showcase authors and assumed you've had enough on your plate with other recent developments.

[S.A.C Martin]

I think there's two ways RMweb itself could go - what needs to happen is some form of streamlining the whole process. The blogs/threads divide is one which isn't going to go away, making the tools easier for both sides to produce good, readable work is I think, essential.

 

For the most part, the software we already have IS being exploited to its limits, but by far fewer people.

 

In short, there has to be a consolidation somewhere of how we display our work, in what format, and how we make it easily accessible by all to encourage further reading.

 

Then there's the other argument in which everyone should upgrade to the showcase style of writing on their work, and eliminating the work threads and blogs altogether.

 

I personally prefer the blog standard, but with two external blogs, a Youtube channel, and a dedicated website to look after, the limitations of RMweb's current software have restricted my postings somewhat by comparison. It's much more difficult to put together a blog entry for RMweb's software than it is for my external blogs, simply due to the way you have to create an index for your blog entries here, but on external blogs this happens automatically.

 

None of the above is a criticism of the current system in any way, simply that user friendliness, and a clean design to encourage reading and discussion must come above perceived gimmicks.

[Kenton]

It is NOT a grumble .. but with all the recent changes Blogs, Galleries, Showcase, Marketplace, Groups a period of allowing things to settle and sort themselves out, giving you a bit of a rest and us, might be what is wanted next.

 

I understand your desire not to stand still, and that is something that RMWeb could never have been accused of. However changes are disruptive to the readership/members and perhaps that never quite gets appreciated.

 

OK, some of us (well me foremost) do seem to keep complaining of constant change, some of it having implementation issues.

 

If there were anything top of my list, it would be for improvements in the area of the blogs. Technically they just do not seem to work well but in principle I am in favour. The Groups are so new that we haven't even really had time to get past the concept.

 

The Showcase, well don't throw this one overboard just yet. I still can't grasp what is happening - perhaps because I am a member and not an outsider.

 

One area I would like to see move forward is the inclusion of video - most of the linked videos that appear from time to time take you off site to view them - this bouncing around all over the net is disjointed and disorganised.

 

Also a small plea from someone who's mind takes a while to grasp such "blue sky" "off the wall" thinking can we have some notice of changes in advance? I know that occasions of yore when we would try to log on to find the server had gone bust are in the past but the effect of a change in software can have just the same impact.

[Redkiterail]

Andy Y:

Can we have photo of the week or month back as it was a good way to see content not normally notice.

With showcase and wall could the two be combined in terms of content and concept sort of a vision on gallery.

Making kit built, scratch built and the modified rtr be under the workbench content area and perhaps a indexing system for the front post and if the software and scripting can stretch to it a gallery of work in progress shots.

Could the front page calendar be swapped for a list of upcoming events or have a ticker tape style event feed with click-able data and if the calendar and exhibition/events can work with each other so that the calendar is updated as the topic is updated.

Are you planing on having tags in terms of groups and main body of the forum so that for example a layout post by a member of the railways of Scotland group gets place in the layout area and a link added into the group or vice versa depending on user settings.

[Allegheny1600]

Cor Blimey, Guv!

I find it hard to imagine where else this particular forum could go! Being interested in all sorts of forign prototypes, I do have a look at other countries and languages websites and forums and without being biased, I do find RMweb to be the most interesting,lively, and least inwardly focused of them all.

With the various items like Showcase, Groups, Blogs, Marketplace and the Amazon tie-up I think things are pretty welll developed right now but, hey! I am willing to see what else you could pull out of the hat!

Just one small thing, not a niggle (at all!) - would it be possible to be able to give new posts in a topic a sub-heading, please?

I am thinking of writiing a 'History of German railways' topic in the German railways group and would like to have everything under one topic but divided up into the various "pre-group" comapnies, as sub-headings!

It may not be possible or may be too much work and would not have to be compulsary, just wondering is all!

Cheers,

John E.

[Mucky Duck]

It is NOT a grumble .. but with all the recent changes Blogs, Galleries, Showcase, Marketplace, Groups a period of allowing things to settle and sort themselves out, giving you a bit of a rest and us, might be what is wanted next…

 

If there were anything top of my list, it would be for improvements in the area of the blogs. Technically they just do not seem to work well but in principle I am in favour. The Groups are so new that we haven't even really had time to get past the concept.

Agree with both points above. I've been toying with the idea of blogs, then we were hit with all the new changes, so I left it for the time being. There are so many ways to write about/display material I need time to investigate the best route.

 

Andy Y:

Can we have photo of the week or month back as it was a good way to see content not normally notice.

I would love to see a more attractive home page with big images (or a slideshow) showing the pinnacle of railway modelling.

[Ian J.]

I think the kind of things I would like to see are related to the IPB board software rather than being modelling specific things:

 

One thing I would ask is for the 'Active Content' (AC) and 'View New Content' (VNC) search systems to be fully aware of all that is going on on the forum. I rely heavily on VNC to know what content has been posted since I last logged in and currently the new Groups material doesn't show up in it. I think this is probably due to the IPB software though, and may not be something you are able to fix yourself.

 

I wouldn't mind having a user 'dashboard' be the first thing I see on logging in, where important notices and updates to threads and other articles I've marked as vitally important could be summarised.

[Oldddudders]

I would love to see a more attractive home page with big images (or a slideshow) showing the pinnacle of railway modelling.

I'm not much of an ideas man - but you clearly are! A motor racing site I patronise recently did a revamp, and now they have just that, a big, in-yer-mush newsworthy pic on their homepage. Let the first thing a new visitor sees be a powerful image of top-notch modelling, and RMWeb will blow his or her socks off!

[(The) Youth]

Easy, Shut the site down so we can all get some modelling done

 

Simon

[Andy Y]

There's more questions than answers so far

 

I'll try and keep up with them.

 

 

Hi Andy,

Maybe I have missed comments or complaints but in what way do you feel that Showcase wasn't the right sort of development?

 

 

I've taken a bit of a passive stance to observe; it isn't a criticism of the contributors but there isn't the traffic volume to justify the efforts that a contributor may make. A Showcase post involves quite a bit of work with a less familiar and less flexible interface.

 

One area I would like to see move forward is the inclusion of video - most of the linked videos that appear from time to time take you off site to view them

 

The capability is there for a poster to embed videos, I've recently increased the viewing size and added the capability to view in full screen without being taken out of RMweb.

 

 

 

If there were anything top of my list, it would be for improvements in the area of the blogs. Technically they just do not seem to work well but in principle I am in favour.

 

I'm still looking at whether there is any capability to get Comments to feed back into VNC.

 

 

Andy Y:

1. Can we have photo of the week or month back as it was a good way to see content not normally notice.

2. With showcase and wall could the two be combined in terms of content and concept sort of a vision on gallery.

3. Making kit built, scratch built and the modified rtr be under the workbench content area and perhaps a indexing system for the front post and if the software and scripting can stretch to it a gallery of work in progress shots.

4. Could the front page calendar be swapped for a list of upcoming events or have a ticker tape style event feed with click-able data and if the calendar and exhibition/events can work with each other so that the calendar is updated as the topic is updated.

5. Are you planing on having tags in terms of groups and main body of the forum so that for example a layout post by a member of the railways of Scotland group gets place in the layout area and a link added into the group or vice versa depending on user settings.

 

1 - Possible but I'm working on a dynamic sidebar block which will use Featured Content.

2 - two different sets of software which don't really mix I'm afraid but that ties in with Mucky Duck's later post.

3 - Some consolidation in that area may be worth considering.

4 - I did install a sidebar block some time ago which did just that but I had to withdraw it as it slowed the page down too much. It merits further investigation.

5 - tags will be a feature of 3.2; I don't know how useful and usable they will be in practice until a toe can be dipped in it.

 

 

Just one small thing, not a niggle (at all!) - would it be possible to be able to give new posts in a topic a sub-heading, please?

 

That's a possible and I shall look into it but given the way topics meander it may be better to consider a topic for each sub-section.

 

 

I would love to see a more attractive home page with big images (or a slideshow) showing the pinnacle of railway modelling.

 

Possible and worthy of investigation too. It needs to have dynamic content and also some points Ian raises below.

 

 

 

1. One thing I would ask is for the 'Active Content' (AC) and 'View New Content' (VNC) search systems to be fully aware of all that is going on on the forum. I rely heavily on VNC to know what content has been posted since I last logged in and currently the new Groups material doesn't show up in it. I think this is probably due to the IPB software though, and may not be something you are able to fix yourself.

 

2. I wouldn't mind having a user 'dashboard' be the first thing I see on logging in, where important notices and updates to threads and other articles I've marked as vitally important could be summarised.

 

1 - The developer of the Groups App is working on this at the moment.

2 - It may be possible, I shall think on that one.

 

 

 

[trisonic]

Here's my 4 ha'pence.

 

With the recent introduction of Groups (which I like, obviously, particularly for the relatively large following of USA & Canadian Railroads - they really needed their own niche) my advice is to give a period of two or a few months to settle down. Use this time to make the infrastructure slicker, tackle delays in loading pages etc. The roots stuff.

 

By that time we will have a better handle on how Groups are doing and what can be done to smarten them up. Then take a look at anything new.

 

Best, Pete.

[trisonic]

It just took two minutes and 25 seconds for my reply above to fully load...........way too long, Andy.

 

Best, Pete.

[Kenton]

The capability is there for a poster to embed videos, I've recently increased the viewing size and added the capability to view in full screen without being taken out of RMweb.

unfortunately this doesn't seem to work for all videos. some display ok and seem to run on RMWeb (like they are being fed directly) orthers (and I don't mean a simple url) just show a frame and with an arrow on it, when clicked seem to jump to some other site which then attempts to do all manner of things to my browser - possibly with advertising. (which is why it gets all blocked. jumping to youtube I simply don't like.

Is it just that some videos are loaded up to the RMWeb server (just the same as with images)?

 

I'm still looking at whether there is any capability to get Comments to feed back into VNC.

That is a specific - however I was being more general. The blogs still seem to be difficult to actually put things on the page - though getting them to interact like topics might improve participation. It seems to be a whole new world different than the "old fashioned" topics.

[Andy Y]

Is it just that some videos are loaded up to the RMWeb server (just the same as with images)?

 

The only ones that have ever been directly uploaded are some of mine a while back.

 

Youtube seem to have changed their link formats, the default is a shorter one which doesn't display properly between the [media] tags; the long format works fine so it could be this that's causing the problem.

 

BTW I've just been playing with tags on 3.2 and the input is really simple; however their search function is disabled at the moment so I can't see how well it pulls results.

 

 

 

[-missy-]

Hello.

 

OK, heres my thought....

 

How about developing the showcase more into a magazine format, distribute each 'issue' to subscribers in (perhaps) a PDF format and maybe even get it printed and sell it at shows etc? The printing costs could be partly funded by advertisers.

 

There is an amazing wealth of knowledge and talent here on RMWeb so it would distribute that to a wider audience as well as reinforcing the RMWeb brand.

 

Missy

[SNCF stephen]

I have notied that a topic area that is now a group (the Tram and Tramway Modelling section) does not seem to be getting as much traffic as it used to. So perhaps if you were doing featured content then you could feature these groups. Perhaps each group could get a small paragraph description and an image to depict them.

 

I love the blogs. In fact this is my only blog on the internet. I would like any improvements to make them better. Better image control would be nice so that when other people upload huge files they do not go all large on the blog summaries (could be my browser at fault there though), also the ability to upload more than one image at a time.

 

I think that the blogs are often overlooked by people who could use them to great effect. If more people were to migrate over to a better blog system then it could work quite well. Is there any way to customise the blogs so they appear more like a standard layout/workbehcn post?

 

Also I do not get as much feedback from a blog as I did when I had a standard layout topic. I know I am getting people to read it but people are not making comments. Although I suspect that a lot of this is to do with my content because it is a niche interest.

 

So there are my thoughts. Good luck with any developments you eventually implement.

[coachmann]

Let the first thing a new visitor sees be a powerful image of top-notch modelling, and RMWeb will blow his or her socks off!

Been saying this from the outset and it was poo'd on.

[burgundy]

Andy

Firstly, congratulations on the way that the Web is continuing to develop and grow.

I suggest that a good evolutionary development would be to create better links between the threads on the Forums (fora?) and the Groups. In effect, the Group idea has created a different axis to which threads may be relevant - more of a matrix structure than the linear threads that we have been used to. At the moment, it seems that Group owners are having to create those links manually - which must be time consuming, if not tedious. There ought to be a way to index threads against one (or more) Groups, as well as the forum in which they are generated. If a group name were to be listed in the subtitle of the thread, would the software that is currently generating the "Similar Topics" pick this up and attribute it accurately? This would put the responsibility for cross referencing on the original author and leave the Group owner free to monitor the process.

Best wishes

Eric

[S.A.C Martin]

Just a thought - one which occurred to me after posting my initial response to this thread - is it possible for the blog software to be tweaked to give us a proper blog-style index, whereby posts are listed by year/month/day?

 

E.G:

 

 

This would make it easier to keep up with each blog, and also sort them in a chronological order.

[Dave777]

Leave Groups alone for now, let's see how they develop.

 

Front page - personally I doubt if I would use it, I've seen this on other sites (and done them myself as a 'welcome page' for forums) but the problem is that most people bookmark the actual forum and go straight past it. There is also another problem - upkeep. In order to make a frontpage relevant and useful it needs stuff adding to it on a regular basis because otherwise people will notice it's effectively redundant... and thus will just bookmark the forum and skip straight past it...

 

Showcase - I think the idea was okay, but, and I'm going to be brutally honest, I think the content has been poor. A review of a 2 year old book and lots of reviews of European rolling stock which was a niche RMWeb interest anyway? Perhaps I misunderstood, I was expecting a modelling showcase, and it's just not turned out that way. There was talk of it being a 'magazine' format, I know that might not have been your words (I seem to recall the original thread sort of wandering into using that phrase), but it really needs some better content control if it's going in that direction. Perhaps it needs an actual 'editor' or editing team...?

 

Blogs - desperately need bringing more 'into' the site. What I don't like is that the somewhat frivolous 'recent status updates' bit has a bigger box that the 'Recent Blog Entries' section! Surely that should be the other way round? I can live with the blog software, it's not brilliant but it's functional and works, but I feel like my blog is 'behind' the forum, it's just 'out there' somewhere on the site. I've tried a couple of experiments with recent entries and I've noticed that if you don't get it into the 'Recent blog entries' block there is a noticeable drop off in views. We need to somehow make them more part of the site and, being honest again, that's been a problem since they were introduced and we've never really found a solution. I don't mind admitting that I'm on the verge of jacking mine in.

 

 

Here's a possible idea that brings some of these things together - instead of a front page, have a forum called something like 'This Week's Selected Content'. You go into it and there are links to existing blogs and threads and galleries, but with a description next to each (and a suitable picture). Something like...

 

John Smith shows us the latest developments on NewTown North.

 

Phil Wilkinson considers the future of RTR diesel releases in his blog.

 

How to make pavements - Andrew Hughes's thread details his excellent method for making pavements with Plasticard sheets.

 

How far North did Deltics operate? A prototype discussion throws up some new information on this much loved class.

 

2mm operating signals - Sharon Housebrick's blog entry shows that it IS possible!

 

 

So it's part showcase, part magazine, part 'best content', but it's within the forum and not out there on a front page somewhere.

 

 

I will add this simple comment though - RMWeb is excellent taken as a whole.

[-missy-]

 

2mm operating signals - Sharon Housebrick's blog entry shows that it IS possible!

 

 

Fantastic!

 

M.

[eastwestdivide]

Just a thought - one which occurred to me after posting my initial response to this thread - is it possible for the blog software to be tweaked to give us a proper blog-style index, whereby posts are listed by year/month/day?

...

This would make it easier to keep up with each blog, and also sort them in a chronological order.

Thumbs up to an auto index, but I find that the typical blog-style chronological index isn't always the most user-friendly way to see what someone's been doing.

There's not usually a way to open up all the little disclosure triangles (by year and then subcategorised by month) all in one go, and a list of dates isn't always that helpful - even the blog owner won't necessarily remember which article was written when. A simple list of titles would, I think, work better if the dates aren't important in themselves.

[Andy Y]

 

 

John Smith shows us the latest developments on NewTown North.

 

Phil Wilkinson considers the future of RTR diesel releases in his blog.

 

How to make pavements - Andrew Hughes's thread details his excellent method for making pavements with Plasticard sheets.

 

How far North did Deltics operate? A prototype discussion throws up some new information on this much loved class.

 

2mm operating signals - Sharon Housebrick's blog entry shows that it IS possible!

 

 

So it's part showcase, part magazine, part 'best content', but it's within the forum and not out there on a front page somewhere.

 

 

You may just have, somewhat inadvertently, found yourself as a candidate for a new 'team' that will be brought together for 'Featured Content' - I'll give this as an example - http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/page/index.html/_/featured-content/urban-and-suburban-r14