Bug 14045 – Redo the forums entry page and links

We need a few improvements to http://forum.dlang.org/: 1. Please remove the "digitalmars" prefix wherever appropriate, particularly for the main forums "digitalmars.D", "digitalmars.D.announce", "digitalmars.D.learn". The association with Digital Mars has only historical and logistics significance and nowadays is more confusing than anything. Just use "D", "D.learn", and "D.announce". This has been approved by Walter already (and obviously by me). 2. Please change the group links to the simpler http://forum.dlang.org/D, http://forum.dlang.org/D.learn, http://forum.dlang.org/D.announce. The "group" interstice has no use to anyone. 3. Also please make lowercase versions of the above redirect to their uppercase variants: http://forum.dlang.org/d, http://forum.dlang.org/d.learn, http://forum.dlang.org/d.announce. 4. The old links should continue to work by redirecting to the new links. 5. (Optional.) While at it I suggest we switch to a shorter and more uniform shorthand notation, e.g. using hashes.: http://forum.dlang.org/146b2b2c5af96fcf instead of http://forum.dlang.org/thread/[email protected]?page=4#post-xsdhwedlfetclszbhqmt:40forum.dlang.org

I need to figure out a way to be notified of these issues. I don't read all Bugzilla or newsgroup traffic so I probably miss a lot of issues filed in my direction! Anyway, I've already started working on a forum update, with changes in line with those ideas. Stay tuned.

(In reply to Andrei Alexandrescu from comment #0) > 3. Also please make lowercase versions of the above redirect to their > uppercase variants: http://forum.dlang.org/d, > http://forum.dlang.org/d.learn, http://forum.dlang.org/d.announce. From a quick look, using uppercase letters in URLs seems to be bad UX: http://stackoverflow.com/a/19543846/21501

(In reply to Andrei Alexandrescu from comment #0) > 2. Please change the group links to the simpler http://forum.dlang.org/D, > http://forum.dlang.org/D.learn, http://forum.dlang.org/D.announce. The > "group" interstice has no use to anyone. Will need to be careful with this as then there is no way to distinguish between a group's index page URL and that of another resource on the forum. Future group additions or renames could in theory collide with existing resources on the website.

(In reply to Vladimir Panteleev from comment #3) > (In reply to Andrei Alexandrescu from comment #0) > > 2. Please change the group links to the simpler http://forum.dlang.org/D, > > http://forum.dlang.org/D.learn, http://forum.dlang.org/D.announce. The > > "group" interstice has no use to anyone. > > Will need to be careful with this as then there is no way to distinguish > between a group's index page URL and that of another resource on the forum. > Future group additions or renames could in theory collide with existing > resources on the website. OK, I'll defer judgment and tactics to you. The high level point is that human-readable, simple URLs are a net win. Facebook has had an entire project a couple of years ago to humanize its URLs, and it's been a success.

OK, I realize we can bikeshed about this ad infinitum, but two pertinent questions I could go either way with: 1. Do we want short URLs, or human-readable URLs? E.g. forum.dlang.org/t/aZ09 vs. forum.dlang.org/thread/aZ09/d-2.345-released 2. Should the group name be present in all URLs? E.g. forum.dlang.org/g/announce/t/aZ09/d-2.345-released vs. forum.dlang.org/t/aZ09/d-2.345-released

(In reply to Vladimir Panteleev from comment #5) > OK, I realize we can bikeshed about this ad infinitum, but two pertinent > questions I could go either way with: > > 1. Do we want short URLs, or human-readable URLs? > > E.g. forum.dlang.org/t/aZ09 > vs. forum.dlang.org/thread/aZ09/d-2.345-released The hierarchy would be human readable and short is better than human readable is better than short is better than others. > 2. Should the group name be present in all URLs? > > E.g. forum.dlang.org/g/announce/t/aZ09/d-2.345-released > vs. forum.dlang.org/t/aZ09/d-2.345-released I think it should. BTW you don't really need "g" to say "this is a group". Just use forum.dlang.org/announce and use some other convention for everything that's not a group, e.g. forum.dlang.org/_/whatevs. Those will be rarely used.

(In reply to Andrei Alexandrescu from comment #6) > (In reply to Vladimir Panteleev from comment #5) > > OK, I realize we can bikeshed about this ad infinitum, but two pertinent > > questions I could go either way with: > > > > 1. Do we want short URLs, or human-readable URLs? > > > > E.g. forum.dlang.org/t/aZ09 > > vs. forum.dlang.org/thread/aZ09/d-2.345-released > > The hierarchy would be human readable and short is better than human > readable is better than short is better than others. Well, yes, but ultimately you have to pick a balance between length, how much information the URL carries, and how predictable the URL structure is. For example, reddit and StackOverflow both use long, non-ambiguous URLs with optional short URLs available on request. (We could add optional short URLs too.) > > 2. Should the group name be present in all URLs? > > > > E.g. forum.dlang.org/g/announce/t/aZ09/d-2.345-released > > vs. forum.dlang.org/t/aZ09/d-2.345-released > > I think it should. BTW you don't really need "g" to say "this is a group". > Just use forum.dlang.org/announce and use some other convention for > everything that's not a group, e.g. forum.dlang.org/_/whatevs. Those will be > rarely used. Can't do that because existing links must be kept working. Moving to another domain name would solve that, but not worth the hassle and SEO drop.

(In reply to Vladimir Panteleev from comment #7) > (In reply to Andrei Alexandrescu from comment #6) > > (In reply to Vladimir Panteleev from comment #5) > > > OK, I realize we can bikeshed about this ad infinitum, but two pertinent > > > questions I could go either way with: > > > > > > 1. Do we want short URLs, or human-readable URLs? > > > > > > E.g. forum.dlang.org/t/aZ09 > > > vs. forum.dlang.org/thread/aZ09/d-2.345-released > > > > The hierarchy would be human readable and short is better than human > > readable is better than short is better than others. > > Well, yes, but ultimately you have to pick a balance between length, how > much information the URL carries, and how predictable the URL structure is. > > For example, reddit and StackOverflow both use long, non-ambiguous URLs with > optional short URLs available on request. (We could add optional short URLs > too.) Well I'll leave these choices to your discretion. > > > 2. Should the group name be present in all URLs? > > > > > > E.g. forum.dlang.org/g/announce/t/aZ09/d-2.345-released > > > vs. forum.dlang.org/t/aZ09/d-2.345-released > > > > I think it should. BTW you don't really need "g" to say "this is a group". > > Just use forum.dlang.org/announce and use some other convention for > > everything that's not a group, e.g. forum.dlang.org/_/whatevs. Those will be > > rarely used. > > Can't do that because existing links must be kept working. Moving to another > domain name would solve that, but not worth the hassle and SEO drop. Ack.

Which forums should be kept on the index? C++ stuff - remove? DTL - remove? DWT - move up to "Ecosystem"? DMDScript - remove? digitalmars.empire - remove? There's also some stale mailing lists, or mailing lists only used for GitHub announcements (phobos, dmd-concurrency), keep/remove? CC Walter Bright

(In reply to Vladimir Panteleev from comment #9) > Which forums should be kept on the index? > > C++ stuff - remove? Yes > DTL - remove? Yes > DWT - move up to "Ecosystem"? Why? > DMDScript - remove? Yes > digitalmars.empire - remove? Yes > There's also some stale mailing lists, or mailing lists only used for GitHub > announcements (phobos, dmd-concurrency), keep/remove? > > CC Walter Bright I think it would be too disruptive to rename the NNTP forums, though changing them for forum.dlang.org would be fine.

(In reply to Walter Bright from comment #10) > I think it would be too disruptive to rename the NNTP forums, though > changing them for forum.dlang.org would be fine. Agreed. Vladimir, is some sort of redirection/aliasing possible?

(In reply to Walter Bright from comment #10) > > DWT - move up to "Ecosystem"? > > Why? Because it'll be the only group left in the "Other" section if we remove everything else. > I think it would be too disruptive to rename the NNTP forums, though > changing them for forum.dlang.org would be fine. Yes, I plan to add new "human" and URL labels for each group, but still use the old names internally. For example, "digitalmars.D" could become "General".

Group stuff is done and live: http://beta.forum.dlang.org/ As for the URLs... I've tried implementing this and didn't get very far, as I found out I need a full reengineering of the database to use numeric indices to use allow this in an adequate capacity. I might do this in another development cycle. However, I've added some JavaScript which should hide URLs such as: http://forum.dlang.org/thread/[email protected]?page=4#post-xsdhwedlfetclszbhqmt:40forum.dlang.org Instead, you should always see canonical URLs in the address bar, such as: http://forum.dlang.org/post/[email protected] which are somewhat less unwieldy. This should also take care of the "please always use canonical links" headaches.