Upcoming Article System Changes

I'm slowly but surely knocking out the software prerequisites needed so we can implement the long-needed forum software upgrade. This included the workshop credits system and new blogging system. Though I've encountered some issues with the credits system and continue to configure the updated blogging system, these were and are still important things that needed to happen before we can upgrade our software.

I'm starting this blog entry as a notice I'm going to start updating the article system over the next few days or weeks and to log the progress. (I'll continue to work on the two systems I mentioned above as well). This blog is meant to keep you guys up-to-date on changes I'm making and hopefully act as a mechanism for community-feedback on those changes. As always, I'm open to criticism and ideas.

Right now the article system is not heavily utilized, and the software we've used for it is clunky and not idea for displaying or preserving the articles we do have as we upgrade our forum software. The new article system is created by the same developer as the new blogging system, so I'm hopeful the new system will be dynamic and add value. At the very least it will preserve the existing articles and interviews that have taken place over the years.

I'm conducting configuration and import tests on my test forum boards. So far so good. The new system should be able to import the article content, author, views, and likes. I'll manually review each post to confirm correct category, URL redirects, and other important information.

For my own records, here are some screenshots of the current article system:



I'm still configuring the new article system on the demo board, but right now this is what it looks like:



Article Comments & Discussion

One of the major configuration/upgrade options I need to consider is whether to keep replies to articles displayed as comments blow the article, or have a discussion thread associated with each article, or both. The present article implementation has replies displayed as comments below each article, which seems more intuitive, so that's my inclination. See:



In the option with the "Discussion" tab, it opens a thread, but displays no comments below. The alternative is to have comments below the article and no discussion thread. (We could do both, but there doesn't seem to be a reason to).

Article Categories

The second consideration is categories. We have many categories defined, some have been used, some articles have none. I'm going to keep the existing categories and article associations where in makes sense, but I'm also restructuring the parent and child categories.

Here are the current tentative categories based on the existing categories/subcategories, but reclassified:



I'm open to suggestions on reorganization top-level categories, missing categories, or combining redundant classifications. There's also a thread on the same topic in the support and feedback forum.