Planning for forum improvements

Thread in 'MechSpecs News and Info' started by Excalibaard, Jan 11, 2019.

  1. Excalibaard

    Excalibaard 101 010 Staff Member

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    Hi all,

    As promised in the new years post, here are a few updates on what we hope to improve on MechSpecs site and community in the coming year.

    One of the main complaints that goes around is that it's difficult to search builds. A more powerful search engine is a resource intensive and expensive feat. Therefore, we want to add an extension to the forum that allows multiple 'prefixes' and the ability to search/filter builds based on these prefixes (which is oddly not included in default XenForo). This would make it easier to find builds for certain playstyles, attributes or costs, which of course depends on people setting their prefixes correctly and monitoring of the staff.
    Another benefit with this upgrade that we envision for the future is to appoint a few high- or competitive-level players that are exclusively allowed to give/revoke 'META' tags to highlight the current best builds in the game. This would make it easier to find the absolute best, while not impacting the notion that every build is welcome!

    Also, the discord is becoming gradually more populated and more integral to the community. In the future I hope to find a non-intrusive way to integrate the discord with the site. This will make it easier for people to find our discord server and engage with likeminded people, while not

    These prefix and discord upgrades can only be added when we get a new XenForo license. This will also improve overall security and enable two-factor authentication, which I feel is something that should be offered in 2019. Sadly, I missed the last sale and they recently increased the prices. I'm in between jobs, so have to save on spending too much for now. I hope to have a job by feb/march, which is when this investment can be looked into.

    Until then, I'll be gradually updating some legacy code/writing that I've wanted to do for a while now. This also includes adding MechDB in the navigation bar and looking if a similar API as Smurfy uses can be applied to PGI codes and MechDB links. Along with some other changes to the site navigation such as 'Matched Content' adspaces which can recommend random threads on the site (including some of the older ones), this may directly improve your experience :) If it doesn't, let us know in the site feedback section.

    I'm not good at keeping time-related promises and won't give you a cheesy 'Soon TM', so hit me up if you have some questions on the progress of some of these projects ^^

    Cheers,
    Xcal and the MechSpecs team
     
    Gun Tuv, CarloArmato and Dagonus like this.
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