Wedge

Will you make it so it won't break on descriptions? A lot of forums today run with descriptions on.

I just noticed that your blog shows the earliest post at top. Might want to do something about that (so people see the newest news first):

http://wedge.org/blog/

Or am I missing something?  :angel:

That I'm perfectly fine with! The admin panel is for a few eyes only. What I care more about is how the average user experiences the site. With that said, I agree that there's room for improvements on both sides of that bar.:yahoo:Now I've personally used SMF so much that I'm probably a bit biased. I'll check with what my forumgoers say and try to forward what they've had the most problems with. Some of these things are probably just things I have opinions on, but I'll try to ground them in reason. Some are small problems some are big.

Let's start from the top:

1. Drop down menus. The problem is not so much that there are drop down menus, it's more that thee content in them can be ambiguous. For example, the first time you register, and you want to change your theme, where do you go? In the beginning you'll probably be looking for something called "settings" or "control panel", maybe you'll scroll down to the bottom of the page to check if there's a dropdown menu for it, as it is on many boards. When you don't find it there you'll look further. Could your settings be under "Profile", maybe? Yes. Yes they could. So you click account settings and what do you see?


You're getting confused. Where can I change my theme? If you are an inquiring mind you might just hover over modify profile long enough to find look and layout.

Thank God. You're there. The same problem develops if you want to change the default setting of " Return to topics after posting by default." or "Messages to display per page:"

This problem is to a big extent fixed when you use the "sidebar menus" instead of dropdown menus whenever possible, but there might be better solutions...

I'll be back with more about this later. Right now: Dinner time. ;)I'd love to hear more. Ideas can be fascinating, even though I personally am a firm believer of good execution > good ideas. :)

One of my biggest disadvantages, I'm so unclear when I write.Eh mostly I was talking about the "look and layout" tab. Many people have trouble even finding that in the default themes... But the other settings too are just "not easy to find" for new people.Too true. The admin panel is a clusterfuck but at least to me that doesn't matter as much as how the users perceive the site. It would be nice with a better ACP for sure though.Oh definitely. There was a TED talk about this someplace. I'll see if I can find it...

Here: Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice

One question may be, is Wedge really trying to appeal to "noobs"?

I say whichever makes your life easier and coding better. Then again I'm only one person. The feeling I got from this project is that you choose what to support based on how much you like it. And I think that's a good thing, because you seem to have a good gut feeling.

5.3 is the standard choice for php5 in Debian stable, and Debian is fairly slow on releases.

So for me anyway, 5.3 seems like the better option, if it gives you a further array of tools to create a better forum :)

EDIT: Checked with Nearlyfreespeech (my favourite web hosting company) and at least they support 5.3. What can I say? Maybe people ought to update their programs. ;)

Okay.

 :ph34r: