News Forum revamp coming soon!

Will Flanagan

Product Manager
Frontier
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Greetings Commanders,

We're excited to reveal that in a few weeks time, we will be upgrading the Frontier forums to a brand new system! This will allow us to modernize the forums, improve their accessibility, and help make it easier for you to participate in the discussions that matter to you!

Our new forums are set to go live at the end of March. We're working hard to ensure that your account details carry across and that there's be minimal disruption for you.

As part of the update we're taking the opportunity to streamline forum sections so it will be easier for you to navigate topics of interest. Here are some of the changes:

  • New game-specific forums allowing you to focus on discussing the game that matters most to you;
  • Planet Coaster is joining the Frontier forums and will no longer be a separate site;
  • Streamlined forum sections so you don't have to check multiple areas to find the information you want;
  • Connect your Frontier account - one system for all your Frontier needs!
  • New forum options such as tags to improve searching for content and badges to unlock for participating;
  • Global Off Topic area.
We'll be removing inactive forum sections to make it easier to access all current discussions. The changes will be game-specific, so please check out these forum announcements in each game section to see what changes are coming to that game's forums. Here are the changes for the Elite Dangerous-specific section of the forums:

  • All News sections will now be merged under one heading. Tags will allow you to locate Patch Notes or other news.
  • The Newcomers section will be merged with Guides;
  • The Special Events section will be removed;
  • Groups & Squadrons will become Groups, Squadrons and Factions;
  • Thargoids & Aliens will be renamed Thargoids and Guardians;
  • Community Goals will remain but Community Goal Archives, CG notes and Community Goal Submissions will be removed and merged with the main CG section;
  • Engineers will be merged with the Ships section;
  • PvP, Powerplay, and CQC will be merged into a new Playstyles section;
  • Horizons section will be removed;
  • Community Events & Creations section will be removed;
  • Player Tools & API will be merged into one section;
  • International Discussions will be removed as there are new, dedicated Frontier International sections;
  • Many inactive Private Forums will be removed;
  • Bug Reports and Support will be moved to their own dedicated websites.
In terms of Bug Reporting and Support systems, we will be launching a new, dedicated bug tracking website in order for us to make that process easier, better, and more manageable! You will be able to log issues as you're used to, and the community will be able to vote on your issue which will consider it confirmed - this means we can put more focus into examining the highest ranked issues.

Although we have made these changes to improve the functionality of the forums, please do be aware that we will still be fine-tuning going forward. Should changes be required we'll be able to alter this and add/remove new forum sections if necessary.

We're really looking forward to sharing these changes with you. If you have any concerns or queries please post them here and we'll do our best to answer them as soon as possible.
 

Brett C

Frontier
Exciting times.

Please remember to keep those alternative pastel themes available. Not everyone (i.e. me :) ) can live with white writing on a black background.

With XenForo2, each game section will be locked to its game-related forum theme. Don't have the capability to permit user-based overrides like what we can do with vBulletin.
 
you ought to have a section called "the salt mine" ;)

in all seriousness great news the forum is quite split up into niche un-visited areas without a clear purpose.

With XenForo2, each game section will be locked to its game-related forum theme. Don't have the capability to permit user-based overrides like what we can do with vBulletin.

the sea of orange it is then! im gonna rock pastels until march for nostalgia :(

tenor.gif


*edit back to official theme :)
 
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Brett C

Frontier
you ought to have a section called "the salt mine" ;)

in all seriousness great news the forum is quite split up into niche un-visited areas without a clear purpose.



the sea of orange it is then! im gonna rock pastels until march for nostalgia :(

tenor.gif


*edit back to official theme :)

The good news is that our Creative Services team has been hard at work with some really nice game-based forum themes. I wouldn't fret about it. :)


Also 'Salt Mine' has been vetoed. ;)
 
Will we still have the Power-specific forums?

Will editing posts finally work properly in mobile mode?
 
With XenForo2, each game section will be locked to its game-related forum theme. Don't have the capability to permit user-based overrides like what we can do with vBulletin.

Still, people could use most browsers' ability to customize CSS for websites, so that may help people not liking the default themes or having issues with them, right ?
 

Brett C

Frontier
Will we still have the Power-specific forums?

Will editing posts finally work properly in mobile mode?

Current plan is to consolidate all of the Powerplay powers forums' threads into the primary Powerplay forum, and attach prefixes to the threads of the forum that they came from (that was hard to say out loud, but it should make sense!) :D


XenForo2 at its base is 100% responsive-design. Which, in simpler terms denotes that no matter how big or small you make the forum theme, it changes according to screen size. There technically isn't a "mobile mode" with XenForo due to that. :)
 

Brett C

Frontier
Still, people could use most browsers' ability to customize CSS for websites, so that may help people not liking the default themes or having issues with them, right ?

That would be correct. There's many addons/plugins to browsers to modify website colorings to how you see fit. Granted, results vary when editing such via a browser addon/plugin. :)
 
This is good news since the current site feels like a labyrinth at times. :) However, I hope the design stays similar to the current one and will not look like Ubisoft forums where a single post can fill the whole screen on mobile. I like small, dense designs so more information and text can fit on the screen. Not too much blank space, please! :)
 
I'm sure it'll be lovely. Don't like change tho' so right now this fills me with dread.

On the other hand, if it all blows up ... well, I've been down here too long anyway!

[video=youtube_share;om5rbtudzrg]https://youtu.be/om5rbtudzrg[/video]
 
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