It's patently obvious that newcomers to the Forum struggle to find their way around. As a result posts are often directed to inappropriate forums in sheer frustration. Even us old stagers sometimes can't remember where the appropriate forum is located. KatTai did a very useful forum map some while ago but newbies just don't know about it.
I've been playing about with ideas to get an interactive visual aid to navigating around the forum. I've started with the Wildlife Forum which is the messiest in my opinion. What I've produce is a sort of Flow Chart which shows the structure of the Wildlife forum so you can easily see where each of the sub-forums, blogs, photos etc fits in with the whole.
The only way I could think of doing it was as an Adobe Acrobat pdf file. This is it.
Wildlife Flow Diagram
Click on the link and it should open in Adobe Reader if you've got it installed. The headings and the links are all clickable and should take you directly to the appropriate forum page.
Before I do any more work I'd be grateful if some of you could try it out to see if
The biggest decision I had to make was which forum to post it on . LOL
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Tony
My Flickr Photostream
Well done, TeeJay. Your map deserves a new tab at the top of the page.
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" - Wlliam Blake
Well done TJ
It's a great map to make it easier to find forums etc under the Wildlife Tab. It's just a shame that the RSPB techies couldn't have organised it better to start with.
Best wishes Chris
Click Here to see my photos
I have now produced a diagram of the whole Forum. This shows only the forums under the main ones we use, namely Wildlife, Chat and About. I've used the main title bar that we are all familiar with except I swapped the Chat and Our Work to fit the diagrams better. All the headings, boxes and links are clickable. If anything doesn't work please post to tell me.
I hope you find it useful. If the Mods are happy with it perhaps the link to it could be made a sticky so that newcomers could find their way around the forum more easily.
Here's the file:
Forum Diagram
Clicking on the above link should open the file in Adobe Reader (I hope)
Brilliant TJ.
The links I tried all worked, and I have downloaded it to my PC. From there I can open the document and press a link to get to the appropriate forum.
Thank you TJ. Lots of Brownie Points for you.
Cheers, Linda.
See my photos on Flickr
This is great thanks very much
Shameless bumpety bump
It's even better now TJ. I have saved it as a favourite, downloaded it onto my PC and printed it off so I can always have it available. Let's face it, it probably won't be made into a permanent sticky as they became unpopular when they cluttered up the first 2 pages of the Community Home pages.
Thank you - very useful! Appreciate the hard work...
My Flickr Photos
Wow! This is brilliant TJ, thank you so much for all your hard work in producing this, I am sure it will help both old and new users of the site.
Claire
Will help us oldens but why wasn't something like this put on top of the opening page to start with
enough people were complaining and have lost a lot of members
Ray
a good laugh is better than a tonic