Jump to content

The difference between Pages, Topics and Blogs.


Neopopulas

Recommended Posts

I have been playing around with the organisation of game forums and i had a couple of questions about the categories of 'pages' in the game forum. What are the three types of 'pages' for.

You have Page, Topic and Blog.

I understand Topics (they are - usually - game threads).

I can understand Blogs - i think - in that you can provide updates for a game - or whatever you have - and it has an RSS feed which is nice. But I couldn't test it because of the privacy setting of the forum but can other people post in blogs or just the owner/GM/CO-GM?

Lastly is Page. Page seems like just one big static, well page. Is the goal to use this for sort of like.. game information that isn't subject to change and won't be updated often, as opposed to the blog that would be?

These aren't complaints or anything i'm just trying to get an idea of what the purpose of all the options are.

Also is there a reason that the Page.. page, has a different layout? I ask because before i complain about it i wanted to know if there was something going on that needed to happen I didn't know about, because right now its all squished because it has a member list on the side that seems unnecessary;

spacer.png

Squishy! Though it would be cool if you could put stuff down the side like external links but the members list is kinda boring.

My only other question about organisation is if there is a way to hide default pages. Overview, for me, is sort of unneeded. It doesn't hold a lot of information and just takes up valuable space on the menu, it would be great to be able to hide that. Members is also something that is kinda useful, but seems like its not really necessary to be on the main menu, maybe it could be hidden and display in Overview.

And since i'm complaining I do want to mention that the changes from when Baldr went into testing to now are amazing and i'm really appreciative of all the work everyone has done and how open you are to listening to feedback, even when you don't agree with it all you at least listen and thats great.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First things first: We should be able to remove the members list from the side when looking at a Page. I don't think it's supposed to be there in the first place actually.

 

Now, pages! Pages are a wiki-like area where you can put world info, etc, and organize it using a table of contents that links within the page. A small example can be found here in one of my games. So while Blogs are great for news stuff, Pages are great for info dumps the players can browse.

 

As far as hiding default elements, that's a thing that'll need @Eric's answer because I couldn't tell you viability of that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In addition to where you can find details about the game (as with the OGMW Game Profile page), Overview is the default location for where prospective players go when your game is in the advertising phase. Members contains both the member list and the membership management tools. I understand the perspective of "I don't need to reference these much", but we can't make them go away entirely. I'll think about what might be possible.

The members list on the view for Pages will definitely be going away. Already fixed it for the Overview tab, so it's just a matter of applying the same fix to the other template.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Colin said:

First things first: We should be able to remove the members list from the side when looking at a Page. I don't think it's supposed to be there in the first place actually.

 

Now, pages! Pages are a wiki-like area where you can put world info, etc, and organize it using a table of contents that links within the page. A small example can be found here in one of my games. So while Blogs are great for news stuff, Pages are great for info dumps the players can browse.

 

As far as hiding default elements, that's a thing that'll need @Eric's answer because I couldn't tell you viability of that.

Awesome, sounds good. The Page, well Page does look good now that i know you can have a table of contents, but how do you do that, i can't find a button. I can do it in HTML but i was just wondering.

 

I see, sending people to overview automatically during advertisement does make it hard to hide. Does being in advertisement mode override the order of the menu? The New User Guide says that whichever item is first in the navigation bar is the default item that options when you click on the game, so you should put whatever topic you want first in the order if you want to go their automatically.

 

Also as an aside when i was playing with the HTML just then to test the Table of Contents i found that if you are editing, click on Maximize, and then click Preview, you will get a big screen with just the page background and what looks like a red transparent layer over the top and you can't click on anything. It took me a bit but i found you CAN get out of it if you hit escape - to cancel the overlay - and then you can hit the X.

This does however only happen - as far as i know - in this specific setting (editing the Page)

Edited by Neopopulas (see edit history)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I use the Blog feature as a Compendium for my campaign's rules and setting info. You can check it out HERE.

I pinned the Table of Contents blog post to always appear first and linked all the other blog posts there.

One issue I noticed and brought up HERE is that non-members of my Game were able to comment on my Blog posts. Not a big deal, but it would be nice if the permission to comment on blog posts matched the permission of my game settings. Also, I think if I were to make my game private, my blog posts would still be able to be viewed by non-members.

As for Pages, I plan to use them to track things that will change frequently over the course of the campaign or stuff I want the players to have quick and easy access to. Examples would be quests, in-game news/rumors, player rankings based on bounties (a feature of my campaign that needs to be tracked), and links to any external websites that will be used.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Can either of you walk me through creating the links in the ToC that scroll down to the relevant location in the Page? Is that some command in the text field I'm missing..? Scrolling down the Page doesn't create a new URL, so I'm guessing this is not a typical "Link".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, Sorithar said:

Can either of you walk me through creating the links in the ToC that scroll down to the relevant location in the Page? Is that some command in the text field I'm missing..? Scrolling down the Page doesn't create a new URL, so I'm guessing this is not a typical "Link".

Only pages (within a game) have that ability. Not blogs or regular topics.

It also might be for Community Supporters only, not sure if it has been released to everyone. Screenshot below.

 

 

 

pages.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you wanted to do it with threads you could link the TOC to specific replies. You would have to make a new reply for every topic of course, but you could then have the first post in a thread be the ToC and then every other post in a thread be one of the headers in the ToC. It wouldn't be totally smooth - because it would open new pages unless you could use some html witchcraft to force an 'open in same tab' option but it'd be similar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 6 months later...

Not really, no.

You can hide a Page from non-site members and from people who are not members of your game, but you cannot hide a Page from players in your game. Also, the "private text" feature does not appear to work on Pages. You can add the tag and input the name and hidden content, but it is still visible on the Page by everyone.

Edited by Butchern (see edit history)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...