Forum Updates (November 2024)

Based on recent user feedback, general forum usage, and whatnot, I've applied the following adjustments to the forums structure and layout of the main page by reverting some past changes and improving upon that a bit.

Beer Talk & The Bar
The Bar experiment is over. I think there's a better way of achieving what it intended to do by playing off of some of the ideas in this recent feedback thread and back when it was first introduced.

• All threads that were in The Bar, expect for locked What beer are you drinking now? (WBAYDN) threads, will be moved back into Beer Talk.
• The Bar subforum will be renamed to "WBAYDN (Archive)." Its purpose will be to clean up these locked daily threads that once dominated up Beer Talk and make other threads more discoverable.
• "Threads from The Bar" on the homepage will be removed and the number of threads under "Join the Discussion!" will be increased.

One less forum for most people to check, and Beer Talk will be less flooded by locked daily/weekly threads.

Regional
We now have three regional categories and all forums contained within them will be main forums (again) vs. subforms:

• Regional (North America), which contains: Canada, Mexico, and all United States regional forums, plus North America (Other) to cover everything else / topics that span multiple regions within North America
• Regional (Europe), which contains: Belgium, British Isles, France, German, Netherlands, and Nordics, plus Europe (Other) to cover everything else / topics that span multiple regions within Europe
• Regional (Other), which contains: Australia (formerly Oceania + the Australia subforum), Africa, Asia, and South America (formerly Latin America)

This gives us the flexibility to add more regional categories and forums as needed, and makes the regional forums (and their last activity info) once again easier to access.

Grid Layout
The grid layout for desktop and other devices with wider displays is back, which helps condense things a bit and just looks cleaner. On smaller devices the list of forums is similar to before, but accessing the regional forums is much easier now.

Protips

• Watch forums that you're interested in. You'll see the option right above the list of threads, and you can mange your watched forums as needed. Not only can you select to get alerts, but threads for the forums you watch will show up on the homepage when you're logged in.
• Under Forums subnav you'll find New Posts, which is a great way to catch up.

That's it for now, and thanks again for the feedback!

 

I banged this out a lot quicker than I expected. Still making some adjustments, but the core updates have been completed.

Issues? Feedback? Let me know, but I'm about to grab a beer...so, brb.

 

Returning to the grid layout takes a moment to adjust.

Going to see what it looks like after a few beers.

 

@zid: It's temporary. Haven't moved it yet either. Still kind of thinking about it to be honest. Might just make it a WBAYDN archive and name it accordingly.

But I'll definitely ponder your feedback...after I have another beer.

 

Yeah. Going with this. Adjusting now...and then going back to my beer. Thanks for the nudge, @zid.

 

First morning with new flow: Locked WBAYDN and moved it into the WBAYDN (Archive). I dig it and it's easy for those who like to go back in time to do so.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/forums/wbaydn-archive.68/

Going forward I'll wait to move the locked thread until the new one is created, which will make it easier for people to number (#XXXX) the thread properly. I've also set the default sort order of the archive forum to thread start date (descending).

 

Likes should be enabled now.

 

Update: Partially reverted some of these updates to do some testing. Specifically the default forum node view (flat vs. grid on desktop) and nesting regional forums.