[Adam]

Today, I spent some time implementing a few relatively large changes which will without a doubt make site navigation easier, in addition to providing a whole new array of forums, including the Article System! These changes will hopefully serve as a smooth transition to our new site homepage, which will be ready to launch the day we reach 500,000 total forum posts!

New NavBar



In order to make browsing consistent accross all site pages, and to make navigation easier and faster, buttons on the navigation bar have been rearranged, and new ones have been added. The "Home" button will now ALWAYS take you to www.pentaxforums.com, since the "Forum" button can take you to the forum index instead. Three buttons were removed: calendar, member list, and FAQ; four were added: forum, gallery, articles, and lens reviews. This change also brought some slight modification to the QuickLinks dropdown, as you can see below:



The 3 least-frequently used buttons have now been converted to links in this menu. Note that this change has been implemented across all four forum skins.



Article System

Our previous attempt at an article system, the "Pentax Photography Knowledgebase", ended up being nothing more than a forum in which users were confused over what they could and could not post. Therefore, it's been replaced with our new Article System, which is isolated from the remainder of the forum, yet still easily-accessible and easy to use. Forum members may submit articles for review to this section; they will then be moved to the appropriate category by the moderators. No links here please.



Two New Forums:
-"Professional Photography and Business"
-"Pentax Beginner's Corner Q&A"

We hope to have filled the gap of what we were missing in the past by adding these two forums. Professionals now have a dedicated sub-forum, and newbies have a place where they can ask away without embarrassment!




Two Forums Merged

"Gatherings and Events" and "Photo Trips and Travel Planning" have been merged into a single forum: "Gatherings, Events, and Photo Trips" as proposed by our members. This forum is still located in its old location as a sub-forum of General Talk.

Future Planned Changes

In the near future, we hope to bring you a camera review database, and, of course, a new homepage.

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I hope you enjoy using these new features and changes as much as I enjoyed adding them! I also changed a few minor things, such as the "last post" and "collapse" arrow icons in the Modern skins.

As usual, please report and bugs or typos that you may encounter.

Adam
PentaxForums.com Webmaster (Site Usage Guide | Site Help | My Photography)



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[roentarre]

Adam, this is an incredible improvement for the forum. The site format is growing into a sophisticated format and part of my daily life routine to browse through along with another 9 fora :P

The lens review navbar is a really great addition. It allows users to browse through the forum a lot easier.

Thanks for the hard work! (When is the mass pm function going to be avaiable? Hehe I am a little ungrateful)

[Adam]

Speaking of the mass pm feature, have you tried using it since the forum was upgraded to 3.8.1? That may or may not have resolved the permissions bug- won't hurt to check!

[jct us101]

Looks great!

[Rense]

Adam, this is a great improvement, for a forum that was incredible already....!

[Rense]

Adam, there is a small minor typo in the article database heading (or is it just my poor understanding of English...?)

[DJey]

Wow! thanks!

[PrimeObjectif]

Good stuff!

[iced]

Thanks Adam enjoy the forum, the end results of your hard work is greatly appreciated and shows in this outstanding forum.

Ed

[Miserere]

Great stuff Adam. You've managed to implement changes that actually improve the site. You'd think this would be standard practice, but so many sites make changes that annoy users and make things worse.

Glad to have a webmaster that know's what he's doing

[rormeister]

Any chance we could also have a Post Processing section added to the articles section?

Keep up the great work!

[Dr Windmill]

Thanks, Adam. I appreciate your hard work in providing such a useful and informative site.

Adam, good work, this will make our stellar forum super stellar.

[Adam]

Thanks guys! I'm glad everyone likes these changes

Any chance we could also have a Post Processing section added to the articles section?

Keep up the great work!

I think that would be a great new category! I'll add it later this afternoon.

[Adam]

The new article category has now been added