It's about YOU

[Boone]

It's true, the NFL season hasn't even had it's big party yet. But here at BGO, we've got little else to do except plan for the upcoming season and year. Since opening our doors and inviting each of you in last Summer, we've slowly built a fine group of members, folks who like us may have been searching for a site where their voices could be heard above the maddening din of the crowd. We think we've built that place.

We've also focused on providing you with lots to read, do, and play with on the site. Because we figured out a long time ago, man does not live on Redskins football alone.

It's been a great inaugural season for BGO. We can't tell you how exciting it is to put your blood, sweat, and tears into building a place, and then see folks come ambling in who really seem to like what we're doing here.

We've said from day 1, this place isn't about its Owners or staff - its about YOU, our members, and what you hope to enjoy as members.

So we'd like to hear from you.

Are there things we aren't providing you that you'd really like to have here? Are there things you already enjoy, but that we could take up a few notches? What do you like most about your BGO experience, and what doesn't quite do it for you?

We've already got a lengthy off-season 'To Do...' list. Some of those items involve fixing minor glitches, or improving existing features, others involve developing aspects of the site that don't yet exist. But ultimately, you are the ones we're trying to please.

We'd love to hear from you as we work on making BGO an even cooler place for you to put your feet up and enjoy.

 

[InsaneBoost]

The only thing that I can say I would like to see changed or an addition to is the current forum layout, I'm really not feeling it too much. I know it's a new site so I'm not to worried about it currently.

As I told OM, I would be more than happy to help out with whatever. I can do photoshop stuff. So if you want avatars without a background I can do that, signatures, etc. I know HTML and some PHP so I can always help out if a coding problem occurs and if given some time I could do a new layout.

 

[Om]

The only thing that I can say I would like to see changed or an addition to is the current forum layout, I'm really not feeling it too much. I know it's a new site so I'm not to worried about it currently.

As I told OM, I would be more than happy to help out with whatever. I can do photoshop stuff. So if you want avatars without a background I can do that, signatures, etc. I know HTML and some PHP so I can always help out if a coding problem occurs and if given some time I could do a new layout.

Thanks for the feedback and offer, IB. Gotta be honest though, I can't really tell much about what kind of changes you're talking about from "really not feeling it too much."

Anything a bit more specific you have in mind?

 

[Lanky Livingston]

I like the current layout, but I could see how some would think it was a bit plain. It doesn't "pop." Maybe I'm getting old though, cause I think I prefer easy reading to popping.

 

[beamish]

on the home page, should the latest discussions section be at the top so that you don't have to scroll down to see the latest posts?

 

[Boone]

I like the current layout, but I could see how some would think it was a bit plain. It doesn't "pop." Maybe I'm getting old though, cause I think I prefer easy reading to popping.

I'm assuming you're talking about the 'Forums' page and not the 'Home' page? My personal feeling, although I'm hardly objective, is that our home page looks great, while the forum page is a bit duller (partially by design)...

on the home page, should the latest discussions section be at the top so that you don't have to scroll down to see the latest posts?

I like the idea, but the problem right now is we have a LOT of threads showing up in the latest discussions section. That can be trimmed down though so we'll consider this... The other thing we could look at is a 'Hot Threads' module that would show you the top 3 current discussions so you could see the most recent discussions at the top with the remaining thread list still down towards the bottom of the page. Definitely worth looking at...

 

[InsaneBoost]

Thanks for the feedback and offer, IB. Gotta be honest though, I can't really tell much about what kind of changes you're talking about from "really not feeling it too much."

Anything a bit more specific you have in mind?

Haha understood.

I think I like it more of a text versus images type thing. Like the standard forum layout you start off with, just with Redskins colors is what I like. I'm a simple plain kinda guy I guess you could say.

 

[Blondie]

I love it here.

And the chat room is great. I would however, enjoy a ladies room.

 

[Alaskan]

I love it here.

And the chat room is great. I would however, enjoy a ladies room.

You can use ours. We'll leave the seat down for you.

 

[Sarge]

I love it here.

And the chat room is great. I would however, enjoy a ladies room.

You know you use the men's room when the ladies room line is long............

 

[The Burgundy Ghost]

Gentlemen,

IB asked me about bringing back the "Challenge to the 12th man" pep-rally threads that I used to do at the other site before home games.

I'm on board doing this however, I wanted to clear it with you owners/mods/admins. before I start them during the season.

Your thoughts?

 

[Mark The Homer]

Hey Mike -

Not that I'm here that much, but when I am, I do the same thing you do. What I do is just skip through the ones with zero replies. That makes it easy.

Hope to see you in Canton.

 

[InsaneBoost]

Wait, what is Mike talking about? I'm confused.

 

[Boone]

Upper right hand corner of the home page brother, there's a 'New Posts' link that'll take you to any posts recently made. He's right, any member posts show up there, but so do our auto-generated RSS feeds. I know what you mean Mike - and I'll take a look at the settings. We could set it so only new member posts would show, but I think that'd lead to folks not getting the Skins news breaking fairly regularly during the season and draft time. There's probably a happy medium there we can find - good thoughts....

And Mark - saw in the suggestion thread you mentioned wanting a 'homepage' link - can you help me understand what you mean there? We have a 'Home' and a 'Forum' button at the top of every page for exactly that reason, as well as a 'BGO home' and 'Forums home' link at the bottom of every page....

 

[Boone]

Gentlemen,

IB asked me about bringing back the "Challenge to the 12th man" pep-rally threads that I used to do at the other site before home games.

I'm on board doing this however, I wanted to clear it with you owners/mods/admins. before I start them during the season.

Your thoughts?

Honestly WD - it's your all's site as well as ours - I'm sure others would enjoy it, so I don't see why you wouldn't do those kinds of threads if folks enjoy them. Go for it

 

[InsaneBoost]

Oh okay Boone I see. Perhaps you should just set it to the Sons of Washington section rather than all sections? That might help keep it a littler clearer.

 

[Mark The Homer]

...

And Mark - saw in the suggestion thread you mentioned wanting a 'homepage' link - can you help me understand what you mean there? We have a 'Home' and a 'Forum' button at the top of every page for exactly that reason, as well as a 'BGO home' and 'Forums home' link at the bottom of every page....

Yeah you do.

A lot of sites have a hot link underneath the main graphic at the top.
Redskins.com for example. It's a convenience thing.

It's just a suggestion. I don't mean to imply it's a necessity or lacking it is a fault.

 

[Boone]

Yeah you do.

A lot of sites have a hot link underneath the main graphic at the top.
Redskins.com for example. It's a convenience thing.

It's just a suggestion. I don't mean to imply it's a necessity or lacking it is a fault.

Didn't take it as anything but a helpful suggestion - I just can't figure out quite what you mean Then again, I never claimed to be that sharp on the uptake...

 

[Om]

We tried to work with the New Post settings when we started, but found it was severely limited in options (like selecting only certain forums to draw from). I know Boone put in several hours inquiring about it on various vBulletin forums and if I recall, the consensus was we'd need to hire a programmer to tweak the code. We shelved the idea, but I agree it's one we'll want to look at again. For that feature to be useful, it needs to sort wheat from chaff a little better.

Mark, on the hotlink to the homepage issue, it's a legit question. The BGO template we use has Flash elements in the header that made it impractical to also make it a hotlink. The programmer who installed the customized Flash recommended against it over concerns about possible load issues and general bugginess. Didn't seem worth the extra expense or risk (particularly as the forum grows and bandwidth demands increase), so we tried to make navigation as intuitive as we could by placing the HOME button top left just below the logo ...

 

[Mark The Homer]

Yeah, I did notice that (that the heading was a Flash heading).

Okay.