Message Board View

Will add a forum list later that resembles something like this. Nothing big change-wise is coming. Steady as she goes. All the other sort options or views will remain.

The old version of Toledo Talk had forums. I'd thought I would add them again to organize the posts, so that a therapeutic, political rant doesn't get mixed in with posts about food or pets.

I like you just the waaay you ahhhrrrrrrrrr

noice. will it change automatically or do we have to do something? I'm used to PHP boards, lol.

The great thing about this change will mean threads that are most active will "bubble up" to the top. And those that aren't active will fall by the wayside naturally. Like everyday conversation.

I like it. I agree with toledoen that the more frequented threads will rise to the occasion. Keep up the good work jr!

I created the columnar message board view http://toledotalk.com/bb several weeks ago.

But this non-columnar message board view http://toledotalk.com/ra was created last September or October, and it's the view I used most of the time until the column version.

Both sort the same way. Behind the scenes: same module, different templates. Either one is fine with me. Is one easier to read than the other?

It seems most traditional message board or forum software displays the list of discussions or topics in column format. Local examples:

• News forum at the MonroeTalks.com message board.
• Toledo Area Rare Bird Alert forum at the Rarebird.org message board.

But the Vanilla software discussions on its Web site displays the discussions in a simpler, non-column format. I know modules exist to display Vanilla discussions in other views.

upso, do you have links to other Vanilla-based message boards. I cannot find such a list on the Vanilla Web site. I wanted to see how other Vanilla-based message boards were displayed.

Also most message boards display the forum or category list first while the Vanilla app displays all the discussions first.

And most message boards display a "views" count for each thread. I never understood why. Why does it matter how many times a thread was viewed? The old version of Toledo Talk tracked view counts for each discussion, but I never displayed that info. I just started tracking view counts a couple weeks ago on this version of Toledo Talk, but I may choose again not to display the info.

JR, i'll send some examples soon...

From a pure readability standpoint the columns on /bb are a preferred layout. It's one of those typography rules—type size vs. number of characters vs. letter and line spacing.

JR, there are a ton of examples on google, if you search for: "vanilla is a product of lussumo"

but here are some ones that all are styled very differently:
http://forums.makezine.com/
http://www.cleeseblog.com/Vanilla/
http://terminatorsalvationthegame.com/forum/ :)
http://www.sploder.info/

Thanks for the links, upso. I like the color scheme for sploder.info.

"It's one of those typography rules ..."

Speaking of typography, did you see the Jul 13, 2009 Slate article titled Down With Verdana! - "Typography on the Web is basic and dull. A startup called Typekit will fix it."

agree with upso...vanilla is pretty tight and easy to set-up and mod.

also as cool as I think @font-face is going to be...i can see it getting seriously abused.

I'll have to enable it so a user can choose a different color scheme or theme to use here. This would be at the individual level. The current color pattern will remain the default, but I like the funky sploder color theme, and I would like to use it when I'm logged in. I've been using this at Toledo Talk for the past day or so.

simple blog view at Toledo Talk

message board view

Yes, I love the switch but an ability to upload and share css styles would be awesome.

I made a "slight" change in the default view for the home page. For the moment, anyway. A test.

The old default home page view of showing posts in the order of Recently Created is available in the sidebar on the home page.

Thanks for all of your hard work jr!

I like the fact that topics with current comments get bumped up to the top.

Once topics fell from the first page, I rarely followed them again. I'm sure I've missed plenty of follow up/response comments to things along the way.

It's good!

looking good jr

GREAT JOB!!