Rearranging the Site Topics

[Suaidan]

I would go back to the old organization and discuss the new arborescence before changing it.
Here, a cat would not find her kittens. I am struggling to find by posts and threads where I want to add elements. Let us see the organisation:

True orthodox christian Church:

• Intra-TOC discussions : can stay
• Other languages (Cyrillic, Greek Latinoamerica) should remain as an independent forum as it used to be. Many things are discussesd in these topics not all related to True Orthodox Church)
• Inquiring into orthodoxy : can stay
• Religious moral ethical topics : can stay

Site news should be reserved to the news of the forum and of the site and that's it. All forums under site news now are not relevant to "site news"

 

I will take all of these into account and am still merging forum topics. The big problem is that we have to do that without deleting them and a lot of these were private fora that were invisible previously. Unfortunately if I keep re-expanding them we're back to where we started, and at least a third of these have been inactive for over a decade. I don't want to destroy any historical records while at the same time not grant visual "real estate" to dead sections of the Cafe. I thought this was the best solution; but I guess it's going to take more work.
 

[Suaidan]

Also, I should add that our search feature works better than almost any site I know. It's REALLY efficient for finding topics....

[Suaidan]

I've heard no positives for the changes and all negatives. If this doesn't change by Sunday I will go back to the old format (WITHOUT the descriptions.)
 
 

[Barbara]

PHEW ! That is GREAT NEWS ! Jean-Serge is RIGHT.

Site news should be just for topics like this, or if the Forum needs to close for Good Friday or such.

OR -requests for the OLD Color Palette... !

Mainly, the problem is that the way it is now, it's possible for the group active today. But let's face it - these are VERY Advanced participants ! They understand everything ALREADY !
But don't we WANT the Forum to appeal to newcomers, inquirers, anyone curious to explore the topics here ?

Then we need to make it CRYSTAL CLEAR which topic is to be found WHERE>

I might say for example, Orthodox Synaxarion : we all know what it is.
But the eyes of a new arrival will glaze over, "What's THAT?" and never want to even open one Saint's life.
Maybe you could put "Lives of Saints and Holy Figures / Orthodox Synaxarion" like THAT< so it's clearer for anyone who might get interested to read lives of Saints and become interested in the rest.

I AGREE totally about the Search feature. I wanted to mention how much i DO appreciate THAT ! It's so nice to be able to find exactly what one wants without that discouraging reply from so many other venues "No results found"...

So, thanks for maintaining the highly helpful Search engine or whatever it's called. It's ESSENTIAL for frequent users of the site as well as outside people looking up any item of interest for them.
 

[Suaidan]

These are valid points. I am really busy this weekend, but I am hoping to do another site overhaul in the hope of making it work better for all users.
 

[Barbara]

The topics TOC Priests, Women, Youth are inactive. They need to be opened up so people can read them, especially since any information would be so old by now as to be obsolete and/or non-threatening to anyone's privacy, one would assume.

I think these 3 should be set aside maybe as 1 section and if no one is going to post much there, then put at the very bottom of the Index page. Of course it's better if people want to post, but right now, one has to skip past all that section to get to the most active areas.

Another idea is that the term "Heterodox Groupings" is way too vague. Why not divide that up into whatever categories are appropriate so all of us can find a specific forum in which to post on particular topics ? World Orthodox / Catholic and Protestant
I don't know whether there is enough material to justify a separate subforum for Vagante, but if so, it's better to keep that separate than all snarled up with the EP's latest misdeeds, etc.

because think how many readers may land HERE just because of having that SPECIFIC title which they will check to read when searching on the internet ?
Secondly, a newcomer will NOT have the faintest idea what the word Heterodox even means, let alone be able to ascertain to what a "Grouping" would pertain !

If I were browsing, and found THAT, I would never return to this Forum, as it sounds too weird ! NO OFFENSE but we want to make it easy for old and new members alike to feel comfortable here, so they will return over and over to learn important information to help their entire lives.

Looking forward to a great rearrangement, whenever time avails - no pressure at all.
 

[Suaidan]

I thought I did open them up?