Geocaching Australia

H Senators (and other interested parties).

At the moment the GCA website is a little disparate in the ways and means of setting your specific user settings.

e.g. Gurus are set via the my page, home co-ordinates are set via the forum page, user profiles are set via a different page.

I would like to drag all of these things together into a single access point for ease of the member experience.

I have some ideas which is basically a dashboard of all of your specific user settings which you can then click on and make changes as necessary.

i.e. You click on "user settings" (or something) and you get a page where all of your settings are. e.g. Home state, home co-ordinates, guru status, profile, forum stars, skin, etc. You click on the particular setting which then takes you to another page where you can make your changes and at the completion of that change it takes you back to your "user settings" page showing what you now have.

I am soliciting feedback from the community and ecpecially the (informal) senate with regards to the navigation style and potential layout as this will have a direct impact on how you, the members, will utilise the site.

I may not respond initially to every post, but I will read and try to understand every one. If you want you are free to make drawings, etc which may aid in your explanation.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

If it is a on/off option (as in guru status) could it be available with out traveling to another page as in just click to set.

Postman Pat wrote:If it is a on/off option (as in guru status) could it be available with out traveling to another page as in just click to set.

A most excellent point. Will incorporate.

Hi
Another group I belong to has a user control panel that is visible on every page that I visit within the group,



from that menu I get a larger menu, like this.

A bump for the start of week members

Honest opinion, I don't mind, most are set and forget settings so it is not as though they have to be at easy access each time I log in.

So I prefer all the settings on one page where I can change the values with a single save button. Don't like the idea of jumping to a different page to change an individual settings nor do I like it if the saving action sends me to another page that simply tells me the update has been successful.

Will you be able to have the forum settings and other GCA stuff all on one page?

There we go, my opinion in a post rather than with a Big Tex burger.

Facitman wrote:So I prefer all the settings on one page where I can change the values with a single save button. Don't like the idea of jumping to a different page to change an individual settings nor do I like it if the saving action sends me to another page that simply tells me the update has been successful.

Will you be able to have the forum settings and other GCA stuff all on one page?

There we go, my opinion in a post rather than with a Big Tex burger.

Forum settings in the way they impact your use of the site rather than the forum, I would expect so.

Avatars, forum settings, BBCodes, smilies on/off, etc, would still be handled through the forum profile.

It would be good to have them all in one place. Most settings don't need to be changed very often if at all but being all together would be convenient.

I'll give a bit more info on the proposed split between forum and site.

The standard forum information would remain in the forum updates. The reason being that should we update to newer forum software the functionality would remain in the same place without having to be replicated.

Username:
E-mail address:
Current password:
ICQ Number:
AIM Address:
MSN Messenger:
Yahoo Messenger:
Always show my e-mail address:
Hide your online status:
Always notify me of replies:
Notify on new Private Message:
Pop up window on new Private Message:
Always allow BBCode:
Always allow HTML:
Always enable Smilies:
Timezone:
Date format:

GCA specific information which is currently updated through the forum profile would ALSO be updated via the new widget.

Country/State/Island:
Location:
Your home coordinates:
Mobile Phone number:
Website:
Occupation:
Interests:
Send me cache updates:

While some of these are standard forum entries, they are the ones used by GCA for certain functionality and are the ones displayed on your cacher page.

The same widget will also allow updates of Guru status, forum stars and profile page (content).

With one exception (profile page content), I intend to accept the first suggestion which is "do and return". i.e. You make the change on the page, it updates with the "submit" and you come back to the same page which will show the changed information. No secondary page to go to do updates (excepting profile page).

Profile page is very large in terms of real estate and it's visually better to move to a second page for this.

I'll wait for a few more pieces of input and then submit the changes so you can see what's going on. At that time I'll also disable the old links and update the wiki.

http://geocaching.com.au/my/settings/

Comments?

At a quick glance it looks good to me .
When I get more time I will have a better look and see if it still looks as good.

Looks nice and tidy.

Looks good to me

Sometimes it is interesting to look at such issues through totally new eyes...(so please, if what I am about to say sounds completely dense, take into account how any new user might see the site/forum).

I have been trying to "set things up" re profile etc and also tentatively contacting a couple of cachers and have spent ages "looking" for items I have seen/set previously and wish to update. Until I saw this forum I didn't realise there was different items in different places. I think combining everything in one area is an excellent idea - especially for new users.

Why is there differentiation between the website and the forum? A one-stop-profile-shop, accessible from the website (to my way of thinking) would be an intuitive way to set things up.

Perhaps there are historical / practical / technical reasons for the "separation" - just my thoughts from the newbie perspective.

(and just quietly, how do I get back to the website from the forum - am I completely blind ?)