@Daniel @Komposten Not sure where to POST this so feel free to move it to the correct section... Bin if necessary A Quick and simple process that’s easy to program. Start or Home screen, right side of window above YOUR NAME tag, will be three hyperlinks. Each link to one of the three Top/first Contest Sticky threads. So, for example the first link would be to the Short Stories top sticky by @Tenderiser. The next hyperlink to @thirdwind Top sticky in Poetry and the third link to @thirdwind Top sticky for Flash Fiction. Currently to date it would look something like this... [(Open Voting) Voting Open: December 2018 Short Story Contest] [(Announcement) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Poetry Contest Announcements ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)] [(Open Voting) Voting for Flash Fiction Contest #62 - Infomercial] [YOUR NAME] [Inbox][Alerts] When @Tenderiser or @thirdwind change the top sticky, it will change on the Front Page also. It just gives a non-intrusive prompt. The Member’s eye will always be drawn to the Alerts tag first on launch and the prompt will be noticed. It might be worth a try before the WF upgrades to see if it does increase Community participation either by voting or playing along... Analytics should be used also. I’m a newbie to the whole WF thing so value weight it accordingly. Having a great time so far and really enjoy the site and its community. Norfolk nChance
I'm not too sure about putting it above the notification area, both from a design POV and a coding POV. But we could possibly put it right below it, at the top of the "side bar" (where we currently have the fundraiser/"recent posts").
I wonder how many of us actually see that main page with the sidebar on a regular basis, though... If you stay signed into Forum and pick up wherever you left off from "Alerts" instead of signing in each time, or if you use the Forum from your phone, you don't see it. On a computer, to see the main page with "Fundraisers" and listing of "Recent Posts" requires clicking over to it. If you're on mobile you can't see it at all. If I tilt my phone landscape style (which I don't do often), I can see the "Contest" section at the far left of the menu bar, but never "Recent Posts" or "Fundraisers". It's only when I'm not reading the Forum on the Fly, am glued to a computer, and have time to settle in for a long read that I click over to the main page and refresh to see more content. I'd be curious to know how many others have a similar user experience. (added the word user and to change the word "notifications" to "Alerts" for clarity)
Daniel has gone walkabout again I think … the cage traps are set and the huge net is ready for his next appearance From a programming point of view I don't think its as simple in XF as it sounds.. the screen is laid out in 'forms' (think like tiles only not) Some are editable some aren't and some are only partially edible... I suspect that you couldn't put them where suggested without a lot of recording of the tile concerned. Also like Shen says - how many people regularly view the home page, vs coming straight into the forum ? I'd also speculate that Daniel won't make any changes like this until after the upgrade to XF2 since anything that was not stock code would have to be redone anyway
Yeah, I kind of wondered if a template was used and if so, how editable that template might be. I don't envy anyone who's trying to whip a template into shape! It's good to have the dream list, though, at any rate.
Personally, I always go to writingforums.org, and then navigate from there to wherever I'm headed: sometimes "Recent Posts", sometimes straight into a sub-forum, sometimes to my alerts. I understand that not everyone does this, though. Still, I don't think it would be too wise to put the contests (or whatever else) in everyone's faces on every single page of the forum. IMO when you enter a thread, conversation, etc. the site should focus on that content, and not bring up other (probably irrelevant stuff). Also, the sidebar does exist on mobile. It's just pushed down below the main board. We're not using a template as such. It's just that the entirety of XenForo is built from ground and up in a certain way. We can't change that, so we have to live with the options it presents us with. In essence we have a main content area (the forum board/thread lists/posts in a thread) and a side bar for "widgets". It's possible to change this around in different ways, but it will always be built of those types of main building blocks.
and hacking a building block apart to custom it, may be possible (its all ones and zeroes at the end of the day) but would take a lot of hand coding - which is beyond my ken, and even if compost or Daniel have the skills its probably not a good use of their time. Also I seem to recall from other XF forums that XF doesn't like it if you start tinkering with things you shouldnt
