Suggestions Please

[reverse_side]

sorry for any heavy hearts guys

(Jun Hui - Jun Hui, no more rounds to come Snooker, PM fine)

[reverse_side]

Had a fruitful time thinking of some more ideas last night, bout 30 of them!! will post them when I've tightened their description/explanation. ttfn.

[Snooker]

Good, I will look forward to reading them.

[Phired]

Two suggestions I think the "My Favourites" on the arcade section needs some re-colour-coordinating and grr...can't remember the other one atm...it'll come to be, bbl.

[Phired]

I remembered... I noticed that when you click to view a topic it takes you to the first page, it might be more useful if it took you to the last page... Or even better if you had viewed the topic before it could take you to the last page and if you hadn't, to the first page.

[reverse_side]

Here are the ideas I had the night after zimrahil-gate; all resolved amicably you'll be glad to hear!

1. If we could get a Class 1 referee involved in the Forum, we could have a Topic entitled, "Ask the Ref". An email to one associated with Frank Callan's website has drawn a blank at the moment.
2. Animated smileys/emoticons?
3. Group the current Moderators together with their profiles & quicklinks to PM them.
4. If there's a flood of ideas in the future & it's a task to choose the ones to give members the most benefit from; let the members do the work and ask them to vote for implementing various possibilities esprcially as it's very rarely an an option to deploy every suggestion.
5. Arrange for a Pro to take questions off the members.
6. Off Season activities and a request for suggestions?
7. Show schedule of every tournament, ranking or not and where you can watch it. (maybe include important amateur comps too - the champion of the World Amateur final is always mentioned as a career highlight of a current Pro, but never advertised as a forthcoming attraction anywhere)
8. Forthcoming exhibition matches.
9. Add some Links to online snooker media; Pix'n'Clips, (most would be the BBC)
10. Use P2P software to share footage between members. (Need to make people aware to use a firewall). Can a specialist advise on a way to record the footage streamed by the BBC so we can play it offline)
11. Is there someone who has a WSF title on the Forum, is worldsnookerforum still kicking around somewhere?
12. Is there a stat available to show how long individuals stay online that could be added to their profile? (Stall the stopwatch if they're idle on any single page for more than a specified amount of time; would save an overnight login skewing the stats).
13. Are they any advantages to logging guests' and members' IP addresses? Why do some sites say, "IP Logged"? How does this help the Webmasters & Admin Officers?
14. Would links to members' Snooker League sites be of interest? Foreign members' activities/culture/interests are always interesting. ('Links' section had a technical problem when I was checking what was in there)
15. For snooker players who may want to have their League hosted on the internet, some links to companies who offer this service may be useful. www.yellowjersey.co.uk offer exactly this type of service, and I think they do it for free. Initially aimed at competitive football, there are at least 2 snooker events on there now. This would appeal to snooker players who haven't even got a League in their area - it's easy to start one now.
16. If the site recognises IP addresses, then a globe showing where our members & guests reside, flags (animated or otherwise) illustrating their geography could be shown too. A vertical side-bar flagpole could be used showing all users' locations/nationalities (sometimes not the same; Peter-D). Animated and flying for those online, still and lowered for those offline - size proportional to volume of numbers if more than 1 nationality/location is online or registered for that country.
17. Is the SnookerForum's support Team approaching other companies and associations to add a link back to the forum? I've asked John Parris personally & sent an email to Frank Callan's website - can but try.
18. Some webmasters allow their surfers to look at their own website visitor stats; pages viewed, time spent online, browser info etc, this may appeal to some visitors/members and nurture extra interest & enthusiasm resulting in more guest-to-member conversions.
19. Some websites add a 'top 10 referrers', section…. would this be useful?
20. When the season finishes, would a perpetual countdown to the opening tournament be appreciated?
21. Are there any plans to show a star rating for the volume of posts and/or quality?
22. Inspired by ferret.... Would members appreciate the opportunity to alter the colour scheme and other accessibility options? Dyslexic and colour blind users especially. (peter ebdon may drop in!)
23. There's some software that can read pages of a browser out loud via a person's pc speakers - a link to the site perhaps (not tested this though).
24. Would a link to the hunger site be appropriate?
25. If any members/guests have PDA's they could use Avantgo (or similar) to download the site to their device for offline browsing.
26. If current members email the Forum's URL to a friend or anyone else, can they give a URL that benefits their REP count? Also, can a new member retrospectively submit the username of the member who referred them, when they subsequently find out their username?
27. Does the forum supply any poster templates that members can print off and advertise in their Club/Uni/Workplace/Noticeboard/website etc.
28. If people put the HTML coding to advertise the SnookerForum, are they rewarded in any way? Apart from an altruistic glow of course!!!
29. To help prospective members feel immediately at home, could their IP address be used to scan where they are in the world, then compare with the forum's membership database and show them the current number of members that are near to them? An extra step could be for the system to display the 'local' usernames it's found. If this isn't technically possible, maybe offer a choice via a dropdown menu of areas…. one 'uk counties/cities/towns', another for our potential global members. It may be necessary to ask all members (existing and future) to make sure they've filled in the location specific fields in their user profile information though.
30. For those without good vexillology knowledge, could a 'fly-over' bit of coding tell us the country a member's from instead of currently having to 'right click' & 'save as' when your cursor's over their flag icon.
31. Have a poularity poll. (as hendry is the undisputed king of the game, apart from some that would say Joe Davis won 15 world titles without losing a match; not the same level of opponents Vs imaginary battles with modern day players)
32. Hall of Fame; colour picture gallery with biographies (with or without ranking position) - vote in ex players and current Pro's. Have a mass discussion on defining the criteria.
33. Introduce, "Star(s) of the Future" gallery.
34. As a development of the Buddy List, is it possible to have an immediate email when one of your selected Forum Members posts anything?
35. If we get a database of Avatars, then there's a section in the FAQ where they could be placed: pre-defined avatars. The Forum could display all the current Avatars that members are using, make the username clickable to view their profiles too.
36. If Members filled in their profile (User Control Panel), prospective members could be given several snapshots of the current Members. E.g. demography (age spread), occupations, snooker standard, geography, gender etc.
37. Does the vBulletin company offer a info/toolbar that can be installed within Microsoft File Explorer or an Internet browser to advise Members of new posts, then scroll the content with a clickable link to show the new text?
38. Would some Links to free Internet Security downloads? E.g Lavasoft Ad-Aware, Spybot, AVG Antivirus, ZoneLabs firewall be prudent to try and help our members protect themselves online?
39. Tournament Predictor competitions for next season? As Peter-D says, a great chance to make a foo, of yourself as your favourite gets hammered in the first round!
40. If there's an option to change the colour scheme, could some background music be an option - members to choose content or a jukebox option with a choice to have it silent as well.
41. Is there a stat that could show how active the membership is in posting and to show the number of lapsed memberships etc? Hot Posters?
42. To encourage members to post, could the member with the highest post-rate be highlighted/congratulated not just the member with the most number of posts? Threats by Mods to delete some posts if it's obvious members are posting with this as a target. Some extra benefits could be introduced to entice higher post rates too.
43. Could the Calendar be updated to show both all the Snooker Tournaments and other sporting events through the year? An associated countdown to each event too.
44. Could News and Sport headlines be fed into the site; rolling ticker.
45. During tournaments, this feed could be supplemented with results and news from the event.
46. As we're a global site, do we need some world clocks?
47. If we have many more votes happening, and some important ones were restricted to 'members only', this would both encourage guests to register and give existing members some pride.
48. Have we any contacts within Corporate circles or Tournament Directors to acquire some competition prizes; tickets and/or travel Accommodation packages etc
49. A stat showing the 'average number of replies'?
50. Would a 'members only area' have any positive results?

I was gonna post this list after the World Championships have died down, but I'll gve that choice to Admin. As this is getting to be such a vibrant corner of the Snooker World, it's easy to see potential and therefore a long list of suggestions writes itself with the knowledge it'll be received with common sense and enthusiasm. TTFN. Hunter Vs White's on.... tuned in at 7 though and it had already started!!! White 3-0 up, Hunter's pulled one back and it 64-1 up in the next. Good Lad. 38.5Hrs to go!!!!!

[mirocri]

WOW !!!... Extremely interesting ! To say the least. I've saved the page to re-read and think about it ...

[reverse_side]

Ta Mirocri, hoped you'd see some cherries there for you to pick - I was gonna say we could possibly reset the, "most ever users online" - unless that's really true, in which case, OMG. But then a 50 break has a nice ring to it! Welll done Paul, 3 in a row for a draw - poor jimmy can't get in the semi tho, I'll let you tell everyone else anything else now!

[Snooker]

This has been very usefull thank you, I have replied to most of them, please have a read and get back to me with any questions.

1. If we could get a Class 1 referee involved in the Forum, we could have a Topic entitled, "Ask the Ref". An email to one associated with Frank Callan's website has drawn a blank at the moment.
   This is a brilliant idea, and i'm sure that it would prove to be very useful to members. I've never really been very good at writting e-mails that attract people to come here and help. So I don't think i'm the right person to email these people, if someone could help it would be nice to hear your responces.
2. Animated smileys/emoticons?
   It's on my list and will be coming soon
3. Group the current Moderators together with their profiles & quicklinks to PM them.
   We currently have 2 moderators and 1 admin, these will increase as the forums get busier, I don't think this would be that useful until we get more staff, maybe we could have a staff section.
4. If there's a flood of ideas in the future & it's a task to choose the ones to give members the most benefit from; let the members do the work and ask them to vote for implementing various possibilities esprcially as it's very rarely an an option to deploy every suggestion.
   Good idea, we can add poll's to the forums now and may add some choices in the near future.
5. Arrange for a Pro to take questions off the members.
   Again the same answer as question 1. We mist take in to account, this may cost, and we currently make nothing from the site and have a very limited budget.
6. Off Season activities and a request for suggestions?
   Yep.
7. Show schedule of every tournament, ranking or not and where you can watch it. (maybe include important amateur comps too - the champion of the World Amateur final is always mentioned as a career highlight of a current Pro, but never advertised as a forthcoming attraction anywhere)
   This is another feature that should be arriving for the next season. There is no point doing it now as the season is next to over.
8. Forthcoming exhibition matches.
   Maybe implemented.
9. Add some Links to online snooker media; Pix'n'Clips, (most would be the BBC)
   Maybe.
10. Use P2P software to share footage between members. (Need to make people aware to use a firewall). Can a specialist advise on a way to record the footage streamed by the BBC so we can play it offline)
    BBC's footage would be copyrighted, so the maybe some legal complications in doing this.
11. Is there someone who has a WSF title on the Forum, is worldsnookerforum still kicking around somewhere?
    We use to be called WorldSnookerForums.com, for the first 2 months, yes it is still ranked in the search engines.
12. Is there a stat available to show how long individuals stay online that could be added to their profile? (Stall the stopwatch if they're idle on any single page for more than a specified amount of time; would save an overnight login skewing the stats).
    This could be implemented, we have a statistics page you could take a look at, http://www.thesnookerforum.com/community/statistic.php
13. Are they any advantages to logging guests' and members' IP addresses? Why do some sites say, "IP Logged"? How does this help the Webmasters & Admin Officers?
    Admin and moderators have access to your IP address (you shouldn't have access to them, please tell me if you do) this is used to stop people from posting under two accounts. It can also be used to report users to their ISP if the attempt to hack, destroy, threaten the forums.
14. Would links to members' Snooker League sites be of interest? Foreign members' activities/culture/interests are always interesting. ('Links' section had a technical problem when I was checking what was in there)
    We have a links section for this, its currently not working but should be soon.
15. For snooker players who may want to have their League hosted on the internet, some links to companies who offer this service may be useful. www.yellowjersey.co.uk offer exactly this type of service, and I think they do it for free. Initially aimed at competitive football, there are at least 2 snooker events on there now. This would appeal to snooker players who haven't even got a League in their area - it's easy to start one now.
    We can offer this, and will be completing a website for it in the near future.
16. If the site recognises IP addresses, then a globe showing where our members & guests reside, flags (animated or otherwise) illustrating their geography could be shown too. A vertical side-bar flagpole could be used showing all users' locations/nationalities (sometimes not the same; Peter-D). Animated and flying for those online, still and lowered for those offline - size proportional to volume of numbers if more than 1 nationality/location is online or registered for that country.
    We have flags on people profiles currently.
17. Is the SnookerForum's support Team approaching other companies and associations to add a link back to the forum? I've asked John Parris personally & sent an email to Frank Callan's website - can but try.
    We have links on many sites, but need more, we really need support from our members to spread the word, and get links on other sites. Maybe on your sig on other forums (check their rules), Thanks. Its very hard advertising a site like this without cash, so word of mouth is probably the best. How about posters for your clubs notice boards, if they allow this, would people be interested?
18. Some webmasters allow their surfers to look at their own website visitor stats; pages viewed, time spent online, browser info etc, this may appeal to some visitors/members and nurture extra interest & enthusiasm resulting in more guest-to-member conversions.
    http://www.thesnookerforum.com/community/statistic.php
19. Some websites add a 'top 10 referrers', section…. would this be useful?
    http://www.thesnookerforum.com/community/statistic.php
20. When the season finishes, would a perpetual countdown to the opening tournament be appreciated?
    Yes good idea.
21. Are there any plans to show a star rating for the volume of posts and/or quality?
    This is a future plan, but we havent yet decided on exactly what we will do.
22. Inspired by ferret.... Would members appreciate the opportunity to alter the colour scheme and other accessibility options? Dyslexic and colour blind users especially. (peter ebdon may drop in!)
    This could be done, if there are any colour blind members here, would you mind telling me if the site is hard to read.
23. There's some software that can read pages of a browser out loud via a person's pc speakers - a link to the site perhaps (not tested this though).
    mmm Don't know.
24. Would a link to the hunger site be appropriate?
    Don't know this site.
25. If any members/guests have PDA's they could use Avantgo (or similar) to download the site to their device for offline browsing.
    This site is not compatable on a PDA, but a version can be made available.
26. If current members email the Forum's URL to a friend or anyone else, can they give a URL that benefits their REP count? Also, can a new member retrospectively submit the username of the member who referred them, when they subsequently find out their username?
    If you reffer people to the forums and they signup, your referal count will go up. Take a look at your profile for this, it will tell you how many refferals you have made, you also get a lot of points for refering people. Please read http://www.thesnookerforum.com/commu...l&titlesonly=0 this will explain how to do it.
27. Does the forum supply any poster templates that members can print off and advertise in their Club/Uni/Workplace/Noticeboard/website etc.
    We will do soon, its just getting time to do them, maybe someone could volunteer to do this, it would be really helpfull.
28. If people put the HTML coding to advertise the SnookerForum, are they rewarded in any way? Apart from an altruistic glow of course!!!
    We cannot reward cash at the moment, do you have any ideas for other rewards.
29. To help prospective members feel immediately at home, could their IP address be used to scan where they are in the world, then compare with the forum's membership database and show them the current number of members that are near to them? An extra step could be for the system to display the 'local' usernames it's found. If this isn't technically possible, maybe offer a choice via a dropdown menu of areas…. one 'uk counties/cities/towns', another for our potential global members. It may be necessary to ask all members (existing and future) to make sure they've filled in the location specific fields in their user profile information though.
    Maybe hard to do, but I will look into it.
30. For those without good vexillology knowledge, could a 'fly-over' bit of coding tell us the country a member's from instead of currently having to 'right click' & 'save as' when your cursor's over their flag icon.
    yes this does need doing, its our fault we've never done it correctly.
31. Have a poularity poll. (as hendry is the undisputed king of the game, apart from some that would say Joe Davis won 15 world titles without losing a match; not the same level of opponents Vs imaginary battles with modern day players)
    It maybe a good idea to get a poll poster sometime in the future.
32. Hall of Fame; colour picture gallery with biographies (with or without ranking position) - vote in ex players and current Pro's. Have a mass discussion on defining the criteria.
    Again a very time consuming task, but a good idea and we will consider.
33. Introduce, "Star(s) of the Future" gallery.
    Maybe
34. As a development of the Buddy List, is it possible to have an immediate email when one of your selected Forum Members posts anything?
    So people use the buddy feature, I think this is already available, I will look into it.
35. If we get a database of Avatars, then there's a section in the FAQ where they could be placed: pre-defined avatars. The Forum could display all the current Avatars that members are using, make the username clickable to view their profiles too.
    Maybe.
36. If Members filled in their profile (User Control Panel), prospective members could be given several snapshots of the current Members. E.g. demography (age spread), occupations, snooker standard, geography, gender etc.
    yea good idea.
37. Does the vBulletin company offer a info/toolbar that can be installed within Microsoft File Explorer or an Internet browser to advise Members of new posts, then scroll the content with a clickable link to show the new text?
    Can you explain further?
38. Would some Links to free Internet Security downloads? E.g Lavasoft Ad-Aware, Spybot, AVG Antivirus, ZoneLabs firewall be prudent to try and help our members protect themselves online?
    This can be added in the links section when working.
39. Tournament Predictor competitions for next season? As Peter-D says, a great chance to make a foo, of yourself as your favourite gets hammered in the first round!
    We will be implementing a betting function, which should be ready for the worlds.
40. If there's an option to change the colour scheme, could some background music be an option - members to choose content or a jukebox option with a choice to have it silent as well.
    I think this will start to use up the bandwidth.
41. Is there a stat that could show how active the membership is in posting and to show the number of lapsed memberships etc? Hot Posters?
    The main poster is displayed on the homepage.
42. To encourage members to post, could the member with the highest post-rate be highlighted/congratulated not just the member with the most number of posts? Threats by Mods to delete some posts if it's obvious members are posting with this as a target. Some extra benefits could be introduced to entice higher post rates too.
    Should be possible.
43. Could the Calendar be updated to show both all the Snooker Tournaments and other sporting events through the year? An associated countdown to each event too.
    We will place this in a separate calendar.
44. Could News and Sport headlines be fed into the site; rolling ticker.
    Yes this will be done next season.
45. During tournaments, this feed could be supplemented with results and news from the event.
46. As we're a global site, do we need some world clocks?
    Each user has the option to set this to their local time.
47. If we have many more votes happening, and some important ones were restricted to 'members only', this would both encourage guests to register and give existing members some pride.
48. Have we any contacts within Corporate circles or Tournament Directors to acquire some competition prizes; tickets and/or travel Accommodation packages etc
    I think this would be hard for me to do personally, im not the negotiating type.
49. A stat showing the 'average number of replies'?
    This may already exist, ill take a look.
50. Would a 'members only area' have any positive results?
    Well guests cannot post anywhere, but can view.

If you have any concerns about my replies, please get back to me.

[reverse_side]

Ta for looking so quick, no concerns, happy chap, will have a proper read soon. Appreciate your interest. Hope our members feel further enthused because of the effort that goes into this project. 35.991 hours to go.

[reverse_side]

Reading through the encouraging responses, I can only congratulate the enthusiasm they were received with and I had to get to No.24 before I need to explain something further...
the hunger site makes it possible to distribute a cup or fortifide food to those in need by simply clicking a link on their site http://www.thehungersite.com/cgi-bin...jects/CTDSites
I suppose, when the Links section is revived, it could be added there - there's about 5 other similar ways to be charitable; Breast Cancer, Rainforsts etc

No.28 Rewards for referrals and extra site traffic could be some tsf points I guess.

And lastly No.37 To import the highlights of the sites onto a member's PC without having to log back in regularly would probably take some conversion of some site content into an RSS feed; so without too much experience on this technology it'd be unfair to expect this as a new feature, and anyway the email alerts provide a similar service but you obviously need to be subscribed to a thread before you'll be informed there's been a reply. Maybe a way to advise members when ANY post has been added to the site could be implemented?