How do you like the new Website with Forum?

rjd22

Hey All,

I will be working on new features for the main site bug I also want to know how you like the new forum and website. If you have any suggestions or opinions I would love to hear them.

rjd22

I've added a new functionality to the main site. The option to write and see reviews. So you can write reviews for your favorite movies and anime. To give and example to where you can write reviews take a look at .Hack//SIGN:

https://nezu.io/anime/42/hacksign/reviews

You can write a review by clicking the write a review button:
https://nezu.io/review/write?topic=anime&topic_id=42

Rina

I am more into design, we have our great web developer : )

Well yes, the down side for discourse is that it is not in php, but I've seen that due to being simple and the infinite scroll, member's discussions will stay more active than if you have to switch page by page. And since it works with mobile and ipad, many love using it.

It is a new type of forum and usually people like to try new things yet that are not complicated or having a learning curve like Vbulletin

But then again, if you don't like Discourse, why not try VB 4.x ? I use it and it is great, check my forum to see. I am still waiting for Vb 5.x to become better but that is like a year or 2 later with the issues it currently have.

Vb is in php, it has many features and in general many members are familiar with it, i can help you customize it better when i can and recommend some nice plugins.

I think your priority should be to bring activity back to the site then focus on the homepage development but you need supporters and a community, it would start up small and expend better. Also VB has somewhat decent SEO features and you need to have good seo features to rank better on search engines.

rjd22

@Rina I'm thinking about listening to your advice and moving to Discourse. Now I need to figure out a way to run it on a old CentOS server. Sadly the support for docker is a few versions later.

Maybe I need to reinstall a new server and migrate to that one. Ofcourse another option would be moving the good parts of discourse to Vanilla but that would require quite some work.

Rina

@rjd22 i think that is a very good move : ) well i will wait until you migrate the forum to discourse.

If you need some help, or an advise, you can always pm me.

What is the meaning of Nezu btw ? does it have any relation to anime or manga ?

rjd22

@Rina Nezu has actually no meaning at all. I just wanted a pronounceable short name on a dot io and this is what had my liking :p

So there is no meaning it's just a name 😉

Rina

@rjd22 Ah well :d i am opening a new project and i though about the name, can't reveal it yet but it is very unique name.

If i were you, i would register a very unique domain name related to anime. Having a very relevant domain name is a good seo 1st step. You need a name that members will love to say constantly with terms users will search it on google.

I was actually going to register this domain but i came up with something more unique that resemble my idea more : ) but you can take it, it is not taken yet. It will have a buzz and will get some nice traffic when you launch it because of its relevant name.

So try:

myanimebook or myanimespace / i would go with the myanimespace more.

Few other names:
animedrive

rjd22

Thank you @Rina but this website will also do movies and series so an anime only name won't fit the content. But those are some great names for an anime only website.

GhostHeLL

I still need to get used to this kind o layout. I've rarely spent much time on blog type sites so I cant really comment on the feel of the layout. but I suppose its something to get used to.

Though transitioning to this style from a forum,.. like i said, something to learn to navigate through.

Basically converging everything from the forum made this site a bit like a rolled out dough. Everything is stringed together without any much needed spacing in between types of threads.

The lack of common BBCode is also quite the dilemma but like i said, this is something different so can't complain much.

[spoiler] test [/spoiler]
[hide] test 2 [/hide]
[hidden] anyhow, I apologize for the delay in response. I did check out the site when it went online, unfortunately that was the time/day when I quit using the web. plus was facing computer related issues, as well as dealing with personal home oriented problems. [/hidden]

rjd22

Hey @GhostHeLL welcome back, how are you doing? I'm sad that you're not doing so well. I hope you will sort out your personal problems.

We will be moving to a different cleaner forum called discourse later on. This will make discussing topics a lot easier.

What I'm working mostly on right now is the main site to make it a notible movie and anime resource.

GhostHeLL

Thanks, always a pleasure to be back here (even if its in short batches ;;D)
My family issues and others have lessened but still a bit volatile. Still better than before. Anyhow good enough for me to post here 🙂

@RJD22
Yeah I have no issues with the front page for this and the old site. it is just the forum section... which currently doesn't resemble a forum. Discourse could possibly be a better alternate choice. we will see how it'll go.....

Okay so I did some surfing. I found the categories tab here (which unfortunately I missed on my first run through of this site, though did notice it instantly when browsing Discourse). Anyhow, with the category option available here as well, One of my navigation issue is cleared.
apparently
In regards to Navigation(Via Categories), there wasn't much of a difference between Discourse and Vanilla,

Over here, we still retained all the Forums and sub-forum titles from FTP-Anime, Only other issue is that they all appear to be shown in a single file.

If by some admin control, there can be some aesthetics changes to that:
such as:
Bold or underline the main category-thread titles, to differentiate between the forums and its sub-forums... that would be a great help.

As currently, like I stated, everything is stringed together without gaps, they have all been rolled out, forums and their sub-forums. (it is something like a repetition)

Another aspect that I noticed was the HIDE option.

Now I am not sure if that is available to non moderator user accounts and to what effect it brings out the changes to the site (user side only or total forum based)

If you could look into that and test out if you could hide the child\sub-forums of any of the parent-forums from the complete category list. Then that would solve the problem of congestion of threads.

Example:
If you open the category (one of the forums of FTP-Anime)
https://nezu.io/forum/categories/the-creative-corner

You will notice that it contains some threads, but above them are its sub-forums
Such as:
https://nezu.io/forum/categories/contests

navigating to the Contests sub-forum will reveal its own threads.

The main issue here is that this site (Vanilla architecture if I am not mistaken) treats both The-Creative-Corner and Contests as separate categories without any distinction in the ALL-Categories list. (And from the looks of it, It will be the same in a Discourse architecture website\blog\forum... whatever this is called)

So. Test out that hide feature and see if you could hide the sub-forums from the all-categories list. If they do get hidden server side (meaning for all users\guests) then check if they are still visible AND accessible from their parent forums.

If all goes well then we this should give somewhat of a clean-concise look\feel to the whole forum.

BUT there is another issue. Even if this method to clean the categories list does work. Could the Admin (for I as a mod did not see any option of creating categories) create future sub-categories\forums for a new main forum\category and then repeat the earlier step of hiding the sub from the all-category list, thus only showing the new main category.

If that all is possible in Vanilla and Discourse then the other issue left would be pricing plans for both hosting sites. Because right now,
For Vanilla:
$ 199 /month ~~~ $ 599 /month (Advanced ~ Corporate)
This to me seems quite a high price to pay. Especially if the only option of getting back something in return would be via donations.

Did not find the pricing plan for Discourse but the discussions I read stated that Vanilla is expensive (now that from February it was no longer a free service,. from what I understood)

Next: I do not have any complaints about the page scrolling as there seems to be an option of jumping to the last page in both hosts (though did not find a say \Load specific amount of pages\ option)

Lastly. the most important aspect of a website to me. Graphics\addons, skins and overhaul Theme support. I saw Vanilla has this but what about discourse. Will the final site have user changeable themes or server side themes or none at all.

Lots of fancy stuff here:
http://vanillaforums.org/addon/browse/themes

showing the changes that can be made:
http://vanillaforums.org/addon/greenglass-theme
http://vanillaforums.org/addon/deepspace-theme

Okay this is weird.. I was positive I saw somewhere here on this site(near the bottom of a page), a Vanilla logo.. but can not seem to find it anymore.
Anyways even if this site\forum is not based on vanilla.. we all were discussing moving to Vanilla or Discourse so my points remain valid either ways 😛

rjd22

@GhostHeLL : We use the open source version of vanilla right now. It integrates really well with the main site that is why I'm using it. I might clean up the design a bit to make it more usable.

GhostHeLL

Ah yeah looking at sample and other people sites who made them from ground up. I did notice the differences in the category formats, when comparing them to ours.

I do get the feeling that creating those Sub-Forums would not be possible as a native option. (though, an exceedingly inadvisable option/route would have had been: Updating/creating required sections in FTP-Anime(if that is even possible now that it has been linked. Though hypothetically it may still be possible... maybe) and then Re-polling/linking the main forum and the Nezu forum together. Which (again hypothetically speaking if this is possible) would then update any or all, new data that it may find from the edited FTP-Anime database.

Any ways it all seems like a big hassle if not a wild goose chase. Just do what seems/looks best to you and we all will move on from there 🙂

rjd22

@[deleted] Just asking but what do you think about Discourse? Would it be better than vanilla? I'm thinking of switching to that one.

The only downside would be that you would loose the subforums. But I think that the category system is more clear than the forum -> subforum system.

You can try it here:
http://try.discourse.org/

GhostHeLL

@rjd22
First off: Apologies for the late response. Just got my Laptop back from repairs (though its recommended to get a new one as the current fix could still go boom anytime)

I did look into Discourse last time. I did it again and it does seem like I noticed a couple of changes from back then and learned to navigate it a bit more friendlier too.

Like I said, couple of post back "Discourse could possibly be a better alternate choice..."

I still think that if a move is to made; Discourse could be the one, to take over Vanilla.

It is true that it will have a completely different set up as compared to PHP-Boards and likes, Forum -> Sub-Forums set up. AND because of THAT, it will be completely neccesessary to redo ALL the.. well basically doing everything from scratch would be advisable.

Though I do not know what will happen with all the FTP-Anime Data.
But if you are able to merge it all into Discourse, then I hope you will be able to Edit and move the titles about.

Because if it will be anything like Vanilla-Nezu, then we will still have a messy look/feel to the site.

From what I can imagine the site to look in a discourse fashion.. The titles/categories-with-it-threads would have to be in department-wise.
IE: we can not have a video category with people creating threads of gaming or funny clips inside it.
BUT/Instead: We will have to make a Gaming Category-->> which will have people creating threads of various Video Game only related videos/discussions
AND another category; say, Laughter for an example:-->> Inside of which people should be creating threads of laughable "general" videos, completely unrelated to games or movies.
Movies: it will have its own Category with its own threads/topics on video clips/bloopers/trailers/etc..

BUT Because there will be no Sub-Category feature. The Game / Movies / Laughter / etc. Categories will be expected to have multiple topics of varying nature.
I.E. An Anime Category will be expected to have topics, consisting of Anime-Videos, Anime-Series-Discussion, etc. all-in-one-place.

Manga will have its own category and a series should not be mixed with its Anime Or even its Game counterpart category/topics.

Just like that, if there is to be a Music Category; then it too shall have topics inside on Music Videos, Music discussion (with different Artists having their own single topics).

Also if we will not be allowing the new site to be a download resource, but a discussion-only type; then that will cut out on a lot of messiness(multitude of topics in a category).

Especially if we don't make multitude of Categories for the varied download categories present in the world.

The main reason of it all being because of no Sub-Category tree style architecture; because without that, the category list would start to become over populated and could potentially make a client feel claustrophobic or cringe at the sight.

Anyways. Shift/merge/export/etc. to Discourse and from there we could possibly shift/rename or create/delete categories as it will see fit to do so.
$10/month.. does sound reasonable, though with only 1Core/1GB limit. I do not know the web-based-technical issues if any that may arise from that setup. Versus their $20/month(2GB/DualCore-server)

If you believe that 1GB will make do with what you have plans for then do it. It can always be increased as per the site's requirements in the future.

So End-Note:~ You got the Green Light approval from my end 🙂
Oh and just saying I really love the auto-Save-Draft feature and I really do hope that it is present in Discourse... because it just saved me from throwing my bloody laptop on the ground and stomping on it..... (my system/browser just crashed because of it's multiple issues >__>)

rjd22

I've added yet another functionality to the main website. You can now add recommendations to anime's. This way you can tell other users what they might like when they liked this anime. To see how this works you can view in in action on this page:
https://nezu.io/anime/2915/hackgu-trilogy

When you click the recommend button you end up at the page where you can make your recommendation:
https://nezu.io/recommend/anime/2915

Rina

I received your email but can't remember my old username, so i made a new one : ) I became aware of this site from Vannu, a good friend of mine.

This is Rina the owner of http://www.nihonomaru.com . Have you tried Vbulletin forum? i use it myself. I don't really like Vanilla forum style and it is very basic but if you like to try something unique and different and an open source forum, try discourse! : )

http://www.discourse.org/
https://meta.discourse.org/

rjd22

Hey @Rina

Yea I had to choose between vanilla or discourse. The reason I chose for vanilla over discourse is because it integrates really nicely with the main website and I was able to import vBulletin.

I'm also planning to write write my own profile system similar to that from myanimelist but I'm still working on a better homepage first.

How is it going with nihonomaru?

Rina

Hey, I think if you give discourse a try, it will turn your forum more active and you can send the mass email you send before and i think your members will love it : ) unless you like to use Vb 4.x, i can help you with it as well. Ask your members which forum they like. I know discourse might pick up more participation for your users.

Niho is doing good, but i am working on a new project that should be launched i think in Sep if no delays but will see : ) We're currently working on the manga side, we finished the anime pages similar to MAL but with better functions http://www.nihonomaru.com/anime/41/shingeki-no-kyojin-%28tv%29 and the profile pages long time ago ex mine http://www.nihonomaru.com/profile/rina-touin.1/about but because i find it hard connecting the homepage with vb forum, that is one of the reason i am moving the homepage to a new project and most probably will use discourse for that new project and integrate it with the homepage via single sign on plugin.

Although i would love to use Vb 5.x but it is not good at the moment, would probably need 1 or 2 years to turn stable. But in the mean time i am looking at discourse.

I personally think you should focus on the anime and manga and drop the real "Movies" , focusing on one niche instead of many, i don't see relation between real movies and anime/manga but that is my opinion.

rjd22

What I'm wondering about is in what way discourse will be better than vanilla. Since I won't use their default layout because it doesn't integrate well with my main layout.

I like some features that discourse has but I'm planning to port those to vanilla. But for the rest I think discourse and vanilla are quite similar.

@Rina what is your reason for finding discourse better than vanilla? Can you name some specific thing you really like and miss in vanilla or work better in discourse?

Btw another reason I use vanilla is because of PHP since I'm more experienced in developing PHP applications.

Btw. Are you also a Developer @Rina ?