PM from Mike

The RSS thing is interesting. Could we have the software do it automatically? That'd be really interesting...although quality control might be difficult.

AR:

1. The easiest implementation would be more of a landscape/horizontal box at the top - probably below the HuskerNation banner. There are two downsides to placing it on the side bar I can see off the top of my head. First, if a user elects to kill or hide the side bar, he'll end up hiding the news feed. Second, incorporating it in the side bar will be tricky - both from a code standpoint and from a size/placement standpoint. We'd almost have to remove one of the boxes in the current side bar, I'm thinking. Right now, the current boxes extend (at least on my monitor) to about the bottom of the last form (Feedback) that non-Mod/Admins can see. If we don't remove one, we'll be extending the side panel beyond the Feedback forum; aesthetically, not sure that would look good.
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Ah, I hadn't thought of the users who closed the sidebar. That is a definite big strike against that option. Although, we could make the side bar not close-able...not a huuge fan of that idea, but maybe :) Generally I feel it's too narrow, and also that the status updates are an entrenched medium of interacting already and it'd be a shame to lose that.

I don't know if I like a landscape box at the top though. I feel like that takes away from the index page's current role as the message board index. The sidebar was something I disliked a lot and closed at first because I felt it took away from that, by narrowing the display of the forum threads, etc, as well as introducing a distraction to it. The landscape box displaces all of that critical information vertically, which I think makes it a greater offender than the sidebar. Also, I think scrolling is painfully slow and not a good option. You want links you can see at a glance, not wait for them to slowly scroll through.

Maybe a very thin (vertically) bar with some quick-hit inline links...(i.e, not each link on a new line). A way that we could increase the number of links listed, without quite the effect of scrolling, could be to do what Si does with their front page and have several 'pages' of links. That is, display 4-5 links at once. After five seconds, those get replaced by another set of 4-5 links, and then it cycles back and forth. Presumably the user would have the option to pause on one page.

Might be a complex solution code wise (some php and ajax libraries/javascript probably - not that sure how ajax works honestly) but maybe minimal impact to the forum index concept.

 
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Do we really want to create a new thread for each article though. I do realize that's essentially what Nexus does anyway, but he only posts articles he feels warrants conversation.

I have two thoughts:

1. We can use RSS feeds in a couple of ways that would not interfere with the actual forum at all. Here are two examples. The FIRST one is a website I put together that has a "Husker News" section in the middle that flashes the current articles from several sites and blogs. This type of feed is good because its not obtrusive. The SECOND is a widget that essentially is a mini RSS reader with tabs for each feed. The positives of these methods are that they are completely maintenance free. It would update itself. The negative side is that it takes people away from our board via external links.

2. We could also just have a section on the main page that has the article titles, and link them to their respective thread. We would continue to let board members post news articles (Nexus), then just add that thread to linked section. The positives here are that it would keep members on our board instead of sending them to a different site. The negative side is that it would take a decent amount of upkeep and there would likely be some lag once things are posted. Plus it really doesn't take much effort to just scan the forums instead.

I'm not saying we need to change anything. I feel that people don't necessarily come here to get their news as much as discuss it in a centralized location.

 
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