News

[The Reefuge]

Hello everyone,

I am going to post a fairly long update, so please take your time to read it, as there are some huge changes that are about to happen to The Reefuge. As you have all seen, this website constantly changes bits and pieces. This is because I do like "slowly" changing things, so members get use to new things. Some of you like this, and some of you don't, but it is the nature of the beast.

Unfortunately, some things can not be implemented in small sections, and do require some website downtime and immediate integration. This will be slightly annoying at the start, but once you get use to it you will really start enjoying this site.

The purpose of this website is as follows;

• A community where every bit of documented knowledge is free and available for anyone to use.
• A community where people learn from one another by being polite, understanding, and helpful.
• To help all LFS's and OLFS's where possible, and to make available tools to help their business grow.
• To make the user experience second to none. Ease of use, and easily readable information.
• To always stay at the front of the latest website technology, and move forward with the times.

By following these basic steps, The Reefuge has grown quite fast for a reef forum, and due to the principals stated above, we have, what I believe to be one of the best little communities on the Internet. The relaxed atmosphere, users helping out, and general manners have made this place a really great community.

Not many people know this, but I myself am not a "reefer". I have minimal understanding of any sort of aquariums, pets, etc. I am the administrator here, and my job is to focus on the technology side of this community. People who volunteer their time here, such as the moderators, the content creation team, and the members are the real heart and soul of the community, as they are the people who fill it with great information, funny posts, and make it a really nice place to hang out. Even I have learned things reading peoples posts about their tanks, and had a good laugh along the way. Thank you to all of you, this is the best community I have ever had the privilege of running.

Now, on to the updates. Over the next few months, expect to see these appear overnight. I can not give you an exact time on when they will go live, but in about four weeks they will start to appear online, and go live shortly after.


Thread Displays

The thread displays are going to slightly change. Right now everyone is viewing the forum in a linear style. This is what 99.99% of the forums on the internet use. This looks nice, and is neat to the eye, but from a readability point of view it is not really that great.

Thread displays will soon move to "Threaded" displays. Most blogs use this sort of display with their comments systems. This allows the user to easily keep track of who is talking to who in comments made to the thread.
Right now, members are "quoting" other users. This means that if the first reply to the thread was quoted 20 posts down the thread, you would need to go to the 20th post to see what a user has replied. This is not very easy to keep track of.

What a threaded display will do, is allow you to reply directly to the person you want to reply to. This will shift your avatar slightly to the right, followed by your reply. If the thread has 100 replies to the original poster (thread creator), and you would like to reply to the second post comment, you can click reply and it will show up directly under it. This allows for all messages to stay in line with their topic. A lot easier to read, and the information stays within its own topic.


Blogs

User blogs are on their way. As opposed to using a blog system, we are going to be using an AFBG (Automated Forum Blog Generator). This means, that for the users blog, it will be a dedicated forum to the users. This will allow the user to make as many sub-forums (tank journals) within their dedicated forum, and as many threads (latest updates) within their tank journals.

Users will then be able to post replies to the users tank journals, and again, everything will be neat and in line. This will allow an extremely powerful blogging system for the users to build their tank journals on. There will be no limit to the amount of tank journals a user makes within their blog forum, and users will have control over their own content (updating titles, sending out updates, etc).


Shops

The shops feature will be a huge section of The Reefuge. This is going to work as a trading platform for businesses and traders. Here is a basic list of features that the shop will offer.

Sell unlimited products - There is no limit to the amount of products sold through the store. It can be a single item, or a full online LFS. This service was added to The Reefuge with small shops who do not have an online website in mind.

Sell Services - Moving tanks, cleaning tanks, and any other service you wish to provide customers. You can easily sell it here.

Ability to Add Orders manually - If for some reason you would wish to do this, the option is there.

PayPal, 2CO, and ccBill payments - Three main gateways will be hooked into this website. All of them are safe and secure.

Special Deals - If you wish to have specials on your products or services, you can easily let everyone know about them.

Unlimited images per product - You can add as many images as you like to your products description.

Customers can rate and review products and services - ONLY customers who purchased from your store can rate you. This will free up the rTrader for other purposes.

Delivery locations - A simple form that will automatically tell you who paid, what they purchased, and where you should ship the item.

Invoice creation - Automatic invoice creation. This will update automatically as orders are placed.

Rss Feed - If you would like to add your RSS feed to other sites, or users feeds, this option allows for that.

PM system - Your shop will send a PM to both you and the customer with the order details once payment has been made. VERY handy.

Wish list - Allows users to build up a wish list of that they wish to purchase.


Currently these are the main modifications that will change things on The Reefuge. By doing this, it will allow our community to move forward and grow. If we do not make changes like this, we will end up being "another" reef forum and eventually fade out and die.

I would also like to take this opportunity to put a stop to some rumours that have been going around lately (to the best of my knowledge). I have heard that there are a lot of users who are lurking these forums to "see what happens". Apparently, this is because they have heard this community will not last.

This community is forever growing, forever changing, and is going to be around a very long time. It is not on shared hosting, it is running on a dedicated server, and the server has been online for the last three years. So believe me when I tell you, we are not going anywhere.

Thanks.

 

['vspec']

Yea-ha!

 

[Agent M]

I'm loving the sound of all of this. Well done!

 

[rockerpeller]

Sounds great god

I had no idea you weren't a reefo... lol

 

[Sarg]

Very Very cool :worship

Victorians think so anyway ; )

 

[DavidS]

Very Very cool :worship

Victorians think so anyway ; )

Speak for yaself ya mug! :D

Good work The Reefuge - unless you implement timeline like Facebook, in which case you're in trouble :p

 

[Edison]

Great to see the site is always ever improving.

 

[geoff308]

good to hear that you are addin to the site, it will be wicked when its all done.. i dont have a marine setup atm but it will come in time.. there are alot of helpful info on here, keep in comin..

 

[chimaera]

The thread displays are going to slightly change. Right now everyone is viewing the forum in a linear style. This is what 99.99% of the forums on the internet use. This looks nice, and is neat to the eye, but from a readability point of view it is not really that great.

Thread displays will soon move to "Threaded" displays. Most blogs use this sort of display with their comments systems. This allows the user to easily keep track of who is talking to who in comments made to the thread.
Right now, members are "quoting" other users. This means that if the first reply to the thread was quoted 20 posts down the thread, you would need to go to the 20th post to see what a user has replied. This is not very easy to keep track of.

What a threaded display will do, is allow you to reply directly to the person you want to reply to. This will shift your avatar slightly to the right, followed by your reply. If the thread has 100 replies to the original poster (thread creator), and you would like to reply to the second post comment, you can click reply and it will show up directly under it. This allows for all messages to stay in line with their topic. A lot easier to read, and the information stays within its own topic.

I am going to sound like an ass given this is my second post, but I'm not really looking forward to this change at all. Surely there is a reason that 99.99% of forums use linear style ... ?

 

[MagicJ]

I am going to sound like an ass given this is my second post, but I'm not really looking forward to this change at all. Surely there is a reason that 99.99% of forums use linear style ... ?

We will let you off with a warning but only because you are new here :p

No, only joking - there is nothing wrong with an alternative point of view. BTW :welcome.

Probably best for The Reefuge to comment on your specific query.

 

[The Reefuge]

I am going to sound like an ass given this is my second post, but I'm not really looking forward to this change at all. Surely there is a reason that 99.99% of forums use linear style ... ?

Hello chimaera,

Welcome to The Reefuge.

The reason 99% of forums use linear is because nobody ever really made "threaded" views right. If you go to www.reddit.com you will see what threaded views are, and you will also see that it looks messy and ugly. Most forum software comes with this view as an option. Nobody really uses it because of the way it is styled. It is hard to read, keeping track is a pain as you are contantly trying to figure out what post was in relation to the other post, and it just looks ugly. The reason nobody uses it, is because nobody has ever done it right.

The threaded system that is going to get added here is going to change that. It will make viewing threads a hell of a lot easier, it will be easier to track comments, and it will look very neat. The main reason I am changing to this is to allow people to easily read posts, as opposed to keeping track of them.

There is a lot of back end work to do in regards to the styling of this view, and it is highly likely that The Reefuge will be the only site on the internet with a threaded forum with this way of displaying information.

I will post up a mock up photo of it later, using this current thread as an example, and you will see exactly what it will look like. From there, I am happy to receive suggestions on how to make it better. It will take some getting use to, but once you have settled in, you will wonder why other boards do not do the same.

It took me a few hours to come up with the idea, and I strongly believe this will be a better addition to this site.

Thanks.

 

[chimaera]

Fair enough, I look forward to being proved wrong =0)

 

[shane_h]

Now I know why this is the only forum I'm active on :)
And the only aquarium forum I've actually signed up on.

 

[The Reefuge]

Fair enough, I look forward to being proved wrong =0)

Hello chimaera,

I have made the mock up (which took quite a bit of time) so you can all see how the threads will operate. Please note, this is simply a mock up and things will not look / work exactly as it is shown here, this is simply to show you how the threads will function.

As you can see, as opposed to quoting a post and having your reply being next in line, it will display your reply to the particular post underneath it. This will keep all conversations within threads easy to read and easy to keep track of.

The Reefuge members have a habit of going off topic and hijacking posts. As opposed to moderating the threads, or over-moderating the forums, it is easier to implement systems that help with this issue. If a thread were to get hijacked now, a user would be able to skip all the conversation of the off-topic discussion, scroll to the next major reply (major being a reply to the original poster) and continue reading.

This makes finding information very easy, as you now do not need to look through countless posts to find where the information gets back on track. It also allows for different aspects of the main discussion to be discussed more in depth, whilst sticking to the context. This means that the thread now acts as a mini forum, and the posts within it act as threads.

Please mouseover the image and left click it to expand it to it's full size.

Thanks.






................................Start Image.................................

 

['vspec']

I'm impressed with that, I have a copy of a copy. :confused:

How long did you say you worked on that.? .lol

Although yes............ guilty as charged. ~

is something of an art form around here!

 

[chimaera]

Hello chimaera,

I have made the mock up (which took quite a bit of time) so you can all see how the threads will operate.
[snip]

Looks good. I guess I am used to the 'old school' way having been on a forum of some description for 15 years now and having run a couple of my own. But I can deal with change ... honest =0)

 

[Buddy]

How does the go to newest post button behave with this? Say if there is more than one reply to different posts in the same thread, will it just go to the newest one closest to the top?

 

[The Reefuge]

How does the go to newest post button behave with this? Say if there is more than one reply to different posts in the same thread, will it just go to the newest one closest to the top?

Hi buddy23,

To tell you the truth, I have not actually put a lot of thought into that. I can see it being one of two things though.

1) It will take you to the newest major reply (reply to the OP)
or
2) Will take you to the latest reply in which you participated in

I may actually make it take you to the latest major reply. This is because if someone minor replies to you, it will alert you in your alerts section.

But great question, I will need to think about it a little bit more.

Thanks.

 

[allira]

This sounds awesome. Pretty glad I joined when I did and am able to understand why these changes are taking place. It also makes me wonder if perhaps I should become a bit more involved including this new blogging system. Have met some pretty nice and generous people on here so I am pretty proud to say I get to be a part of it all. ;)
Top work guys, it doesn't go unnoticed.

 

[allira]

I may actually make it take you to the latest major reply. This is because if someone minor replies to you, it will alert you in your alerts section.

Also, sort of hoping you don't do this. Just a bit of an idea but it might put new-comers into a bit of a shy position. If their questions and what they have to say gets pushed to the back behind all the big guys it might make this place a bit intimidating. I know I'll certainly feel that way, however I already know the people on here won't just ignore anything, but you never know what might happen.