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Expand the recent topics list (Read 257 times)

xor


    The site has gotten busier recently.  I hope it stays busier.  Lots of us navigate by way of the recent topics list on the right side... but with higher traffic, I'm missing stuff that falls off the bottom.  Could we perhaps make that list 10 (making that number up, btw) deeper?

     

    dragon hugs and eric kisses

     

    bhearn


      Another option would be to make Recent Topics act like a kind of aggregate forum, so when you clicked on it you'd see multiple pages of recent topics pulled from the main forums.

       

      Often I lose things when they fall off Recent Topics, and I forget (or never noticed) which forum they were in. Out of sight, out of mind.

       

      MTA one downside of just making the list longer is impacting the mobile site, which shows Recent Topics at the top. You'd have to scroll down farther to find My Group Forums.

      npaden


        On my iPhone the recent topics is at the top instead of on the right.  Really not a big deal, it would just take a little more to scroll down through them if I wanted to get to a specific forum.

        Age: 50 Weight: 224 Height: 6'3" (Goal weight 195)

        Current PR's:  Mara 3:14:36* (2017); HM 1:36:13 (2017); 10K 43:59 (2014); 5K 21:12 (2016)

        xor


          Oh, that's a very interesting thing.  Because I use the recent topics list, I almost never really notice what area of the forum the thing was posted in.  This didn't matter when the site wasn't as active, but it might matter a lot more now.

           

          bhearn


            Well it also matters if you use the user groups. Those posts are never in Recent Topics. Of course, you can always bookmark those groups specifically.

              On my iPhone, my user groups show up below all the regular forums. Scrolling down a little more wouldn't be a big deal.
              eric :)


                Stadjak suggested that we expand the recent topics list such that it becomes its own page and a custom view for each user.  I think this is a better solution since expanding the recent topics list will make the page longer and then there'll be empty space below the forums.  The new page will aggregate all topics from the public forums and the groups that you belong to.  It should make browsing easier, although it might cause embarrassments for users replying to the topics.

                 

                I haven't figured out an efficient query yet.  I remember having to hack a query that involved joining the group contents because the clean way of doing it was too slow.

                xor


                  Ok.  FWIW, the way the page is built (computer user experience, not mobile), the left side embeds one's groups between the main forums and the suggestion/tech support type forums.  If one is a member of a few groups, there's enough open real estate on the right side to add more topics to the recent list.  I'm a member of 10ish groups and there's quite a bit of space before it would run off the bottom of the page.  But I totally get that this is just me and not everyone is a member of x groups.

                   

                  The new page sounds very interesting.