SheepishPatio 2nd Anniversary Feedback and Meta Chat

Lumeinshin

Following on from the 2nd Anniversary blogpost, this is where we can post and discuss the site and make suggestions to shape its future.

Suggestions for the following:

Events
Contests
upcoming features
Site Iconography

Let's work to make the next year even better!
The 2nd anniversary blogpost can be viewed here

Ross_R

I still think the best idea I have about this place is the one I posted in Community Feedback, so I'll copy and paste it here, I guess. Filed under "upcoming features", perhaps?
Just remove it if you feel like you've heard it enought times, he-he.

I've been having one major, major suggestion which I hope at least someone will support: highlight the blogs.
Arguably, most interesting stuff has been posted in blogs. Granted, there's not much of it, but still, there is Lume's very own guid to XMPP and another user's music album (which I've actually ended up buying). Plus several other users' thoughts which I've found rather interesting.
Blogs are an outlet of creativity and original content, and nothing defines site as much as an original content. Seeing all the things I've just mentioned is what prompted me to make a blog post of my own. So I propose to highlight blogs on the homepage somehow, rather than it being a small unnoticable button among other on the menu. Hopefully, this will push more users into making - and sharing - their own stories, music, thoughts, guides to underground tech and whatever else. This is really the most interesting portion of the site in my opinion, however tiny it is right now.
Blogs also suffer that there's pretty much no reason to bump them, so once they've sunk from the top - they are pretty much down there forever with no one to discover them. They are not a discussion, and therefore the are perpetually at the bottom.
They should be treated like kind of a showcase instead, put up at the forefront of your store, so to say. They should be all prettied up and given a huge banner that says to end user: this is we, this is our stuff.
And - rather obviously, I think - regular tech updates should definitely be moved somewhere else along the way. Those make up most of the blog posts right now, but, I think, those are... a genre of their own.

Lumeinshin

Ross_R
I have split up the Blog tag into two sections, Blog and Siteblog, which can be accessed via the blog button on the left side (desktop) or top filter (mobile)

SiteBlog: For website updates and related items

Blog: for user posted blogposts

I could perhaps add a direct link to the website header for user blogs, ie About | Tags | Donate | Links | Blogs
It may be redundant since you can access the page already but it may be harder to miss that way?
Blogs are nice and a good way for people to post REALLY long form stuff, I think a lot of people just currently effortpost in threads than write a blogpost. The feature is nice but maybe just needs to find footing to distinguish it more.

Perhaps I could look into the blog highlights and adding them to the bottom of the main page on desktop?

Ross_R

Lumeinshin It may be redundant since you can access the page already but it may be harder to miss that way?

Lumeinshin Perhaps I could look into the blog highlights and adding them to the bottom of the main page on desktop?

Both options would be good to try, I guess.

Lumeinshin Blogs are nice and a good way for people to post REALLY long form stuff, I think a lot of people just currently effortpost in threads than write a blogpost.

I'm not even sure how many people are even aware that blogs exist in the first place.
I think there's also a problem that the blog section is all but invisble in mobile section. Maybe I'm just a dumb boomer, but it took me a while to figure out where to click to get to blogs on my mobile phone.

Also, for events/contests, you can try to contact Genosad on Agora Road. That guy seem to like that kind of stuff. I even eventually participated in one here: https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/7193/

Sheepishpatio.net is a forum running on the Flarum software, use of the forum is free. Please enjoy your time.

Friends of the site Here

If you are interested in creating imagery for the site, the resource page is Here