Hello everyone. As part of a drive to improve our forums, you may have noticed a couple of changes recently in an attempt to tidy up and streamline the user experience. Before doing anything more drastic, we wanted to get your feedback on what you think could be improved.
Thanks to the 312 of you who shared your opinion in the offseason survey, we now have an absolute ton of actionable feedback that we can use to hone in on the best user experience possible! We’re committed to achieving this on both desktop and mobile, as the requirements of both can differ.
We read through all your responses and grouped them into 51 individual action points. And without further ado, here they are, listed along with the number of you who mentioned it. I've also included initial thoughts to it but would really love to hear your feedback on any or all items!
FORUM REORGANISATION
These are ideas that would require just a little work to implement with the aim of making our forum as intuitive to navigate as possible.
1) Better grouping and organisation of the forums and categories (16 of you suggested this)
- This was a sentiment shared by many of you and there were lots of great suggestions about how to better organise things below that we will look to take into account.
2) Easier to access weekly training (11)
- This was a very common one brought up by 11 of you, so clearly something needs to be done. Currently a Honolulu player has to navigate to 'Player Central > Bank > Player Transactions > ISFL Player Transactions > Honolulu Hahalua' to reach the place where they post their training + equipment purchases. I think a good place for this would be under the Player Development category, but open to other ideas. Would it work for the banking team if it was separated from the Bank forum @Opera_Phantom ?
3) Move Player Development up (10)
- Currently we have our Community links, 'Game Pass' and 'Player Central' above Player Development. I agree that Player Development should be higher up than all of these, as it's the main bit of the forum that everyone with a player visits weekly.
4) Hide old unused forums (5)
- We have already taken steps towards this, consolidating similar forums and hiding outdated ones. I'll be reaching out to department heads to see if there are subforums that we can hide within their sections.
5) Put announcements right at the top (5)
- I agree with this. I'm proposing to separate Announcements into its own category that sits just below Getting Started
6) Make player builder more visible (2)
- This will be added into the sidebar
7) Remove history sections (2)
- The history sections have swapped positions with the Team sections as they see far more traffic
8) Move Community down below player sections (2)
- I agree with moving it below Player Development as mentioned above, but Player Central could do with renaming and might merit staying lower. Perhaps to 'League Office', containing only the Bank, Unassigned Player Database and Player Retirement subforums.
9) Put teams into a subforum to consolidate the homepage (2)
- Not completely sold on this one but keen to hear your feedback. It would be a shame to hide the amazing team banners we have behind an extra subforum!
10) Move bank higher / to player development (3)
- I think we could do with separating out the 'Player Transactions' subforum into Player Development, while keeping the Bank section there for things like Contract Deposits, Job Payouts etc.
11) Hide history categories (1)
- We do also have a prominent link to the wiki high up so these have been moved below the Teams forums.
12) Make Retirement a subforum of ISFL & DSFL Transactions (1)
- These threads are usually very high traffic with a lot of engagement so I wouldn't want to hide them further. It shouldn't be in the Getting Started section though, so this has been moved to just below the Player Database forum (which I think we can rename Unassigned Player Database, seeing as it doesn't contain players on teams)
13) Split Announcements up more logically (1)
- I agree with this. It's not super clear right now which Announcements go into each forum. My idea is to have 3 subforums within Announcements: HO Announcements, Team Announcements, Department Announcements.
14) Make the schedule its own link (1)
- The current season schedule is currently present in the sidebar
15) Make rookie tasks into its own section (1)
- Not sure about this one, as it might get confusing for a rookie to have point tasks in two different places.
16) Make player contract deposits thread easier to find (1)
- This one just sits in the Bank forum so not sure there's much more we can do. It's only really relevant for GMs so not sure it requires a sidebar link. Maybe we could look at having a GM quick links section that shows up only for GMs that links to everything relevant.
17) Remove Game Pass section and promote sidebar (1)
- This might be possible if we can get the sidebar, or an alternative for the sidebar, visible on mobile
18) Move fantasy football to Community (1)
- I agree with this one
19) Undo all recent changes to the forum structure (1)
- I know that once you're used to a layout, it can be frustrating to see it change (like when Facebook changes their layout every so often). But I really believe we're working on a layout that will be a lot more intuitive when all is said and done! If there was something specific you really liked about the old way that you want restored, please do reach out.
BIG PROJECTS
These are ideas that were floated that would really improve the user experience on the forums, but are large enough that they would require a lot of time and a lot of users to be involved. If anyone is keen to help out with exploring any of these, let us know!
20) SHL style banking (7)
- This was the most popular big improvement mentioned. It would obviously be a huge undertaking but it would clearly be a gamechanger for the user experience.
21) Auto player generator (4)
- I love the idea of this one. Using something like the existing player builder to spit out a nicely formatted forum post for a new player would be great. I don't know how feasible one that integrates with the forum would be, but adding an export functionality to the player builder sounds realistic.
22) A tracker of current TPE opportunities / To Do list (3)
- Love the idea of this. We will explore how best to implement something like this.
23) Make updating more user friendly (2)
- We know that updating your player is not the smoothest process and I'm keen to figure out specifics behind how it could be improved, so feel free to comment with feedback or ideas on this.
24) Streamline create a player process (1)
- I would think if we can nail the auto player generator, this will go a long way to making this smoother. Levels recently wrote a great piece on this so we will be taking this feedback on board.
25) Make an external rookie guide with images, examples, links (1)
- We do have a forum based one that I think the RM team has done a great job with, and I know some DSFL teams have put their own versions together to help their rookies that they are welcome to share with the rest of the league if they'd like, but happy to hear specifics on what else you'd like to see in the way of an external guide.
BACKEND FORUM PROJECTS
At first glance, these all seem achievable but will need work to the backend forum software
26) More mobile friendly (7)
- The current skin isn't ideal for mobile. It removes a lot of the functionality that is available on desktop rather than repackaging it. We will look to see if there are quick fixes we can make but if not, might look into developing a new skin that does everything we want.
27) More icons/graphics/styles (6)
- I agree with this. We will explore ways to introduce unique icons to add more flair to each category/forum.
28) Navigation section at the top of the page with dropdowns (4)
- This would be a great and modern alternative to the sidebar, and would be useful for mobile too. Will look into this one.
29) New Posts on mobile (2)
- We will be adding this functionality to the header on mobile
30) Ability to close categories and have that save (2)
- Not optimistic on this one without a lot of coding (experience that I don't have) but will look into it all the same. Hopefully the reshuffling of categories/forums negates the need for this one.
31) Restore Last Post Info functionality from jcink (2)
- Keen to hear exactly what this was and how it worked.
32) Who's Online link (1)
- You can now click 'Complete List' in the Who's Online section on the Light/Dark skins to see who is viewing what.
33) Sidebar on all pages (1)
- I think a permanent header with dropdowns might achieve this better without taking up too much of the page, so will likely look into this first.
34) Make our update pages easier to get to (1)
- I agree with this, it's not as easy as it should be to reach your own update page.
35) View Unread Posts on Dark Mode (1)
- This is now there in the desktop header. Working on getting it on mobile too.
36) Remove post size limit (1)
- Can someone point me in the direction of where it tells them what the limit currently is? From the forum configuration it looks essentially unlimited.
37) Show post edit history (1)
- This isn't available out of the box so probably not super high on the priority list.
38) Directory bar at the bottom as well as the top of page (1)
- This should be easy to do.
39) Reply button at the bottom and not just at the top (1)
- This also should be easy to do.
40) Directory bar not showing up on mobile dark mode (1)
- This is the same issue that's making the header disappear on smaller screen sizes. Will hopefully be able to fix this along with the header issue.
41) Remove 30 second wait between searches (1)
- I believe this is in place to avoid server overload but I think we can get by just fine with that being lowered to 10 seconds.
MISCELLANEOUS FEEDBACK
These are bits of feedback that didn't fall into one of the other categories above and might involve other teams.
42) More in sidebar (3)
- There's already quite a lot in the sidebar and want to avoid essentially replicating the forum there. Hopefully there'll be less need for this with a consolidated restructure
43) A how-to video for rookies (3)
- The Rookie Mentor team have recently refreshed these and you can find them here and here!
44) Adding better descriptions to each forum (2)
- Agree with this, all forums should have a description. We'll get this done.
45) Make major trades more visible (2)
- A few weeks ago we opened up the Budget-RSS channel in the Management server for all to see and to connect other servers to. We'll look to have it push into the main ISFL server too so that all can see on Discord.
46) Show send downs more visibly (1)
- I think the best place to see this is on the budget sheet rather than within the forum.
47) Keep GMs and sidebar up to date (1)
- We will be more on top of this going forward! If you ever see anything out of date, please feel free to get in touch with someone from HO to rectify it!
48) Review pinned posts in every subforum as many are also in sidebar (1)
- Good idea, it's on the to do list!
49) Bring omnibus back (1)
- Definitely keen to revisit this but just focusing on optimizing the forum for now
50) Recruitment Rewards (1)
- I agree it's tricky for someone who referred someone to know if they're eligible to claim TPE and I am not sure what the current process looks like. We will brainstorm options for making this more visible.
51) Draft History (1)
- Outside of the draft stream and the wiki, the draft results are not visible on the forum. I think this is one for HO to tackle, so we'll discuss it internally and make sure there's an easy way for everyone to see draft results.
A lot of stuff to digest there, but I wanted to circle back on the forum reorganisation stuff as I think that's something we can tackle pretty immediately. As a result of all your feedback above, I think this is the structure that I'd like to propose.
GETTING STARTED
Join Our Discord
Create a Player (Player Templates)
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Announcements (HO Announcements /Team Announcements / Department Announcements)
PLAYER DEVELOPMENT
Activity Checks
Player Transactions
Point Tasks
Training Camps
COMMUNITY
Media (Graded Articles / Pressers)
Graphics (Submissions / Sig Shops/Sig Requests / Logos / Awards and Draft Graphics / Graded Weekly Submissions)
Podcasts (Graded Podcasts / Podcast Questions)
Fantasy Football
Casino
Trading Cards
Twitter
Discussion (Suggestion Box / Thunderdome / Off Topic / Affiliates)
LEAGUE OFFICE
ISFL/DSFL Team Transactions
Bank
Job Applications
Sim Info
Punishments
Player Retirement
Unassigned Player Database (Prospects / Free Agents / Retired Players / Retired Players Updates / Unassigned Players / Unassigned Players Updates / DSFL Ineligible Players)
ISFL WIKI
Link to the ISFL Wiki
TEAM SECTIONS then HISTORY SECTIONS below this
If you have any feedback on this structure or any of the individual points, please do either leave a comment or DM me directly. Thank you!
Thanks to the 312 of you who shared your opinion in the offseason survey, we now have an absolute ton of actionable feedback that we can use to hone in on the best user experience possible! We’re committed to achieving this on both desktop and mobile, as the requirements of both can differ.
We read through all your responses and grouped them into 51 individual action points. And without further ado, here they are, listed along with the number of you who mentioned it. I've also included initial thoughts to it but would really love to hear your feedback on any or all items!
FORUM REORGANISATION
These are ideas that would require just a little work to implement with the aim of making our forum as intuitive to navigate as possible.
1) Better grouping and organisation of the forums and categories (16 of you suggested this)
- This was a sentiment shared by many of you and there were lots of great suggestions about how to better organise things below that we will look to take into account.
2) Easier to access weekly training (11)
- This was a very common one brought up by 11 of you, so clearly something needs to be done. Currently a Honolulu player has to navigate to 'Player Central > Bank > Player Transactions > ISFL Player Transactions > Honolulu Hahalua' to reach the place where they post their training + equipment purchases. I think a good place for this would be under the Player Development category, but open to other ideas. Would it work for the banking team if it was separated from the Bank forum @Opera_Phantom ?
3) Move Player Development up (10)
- Currently we have our Community links, 'Game Pass' and 'Player Central' above Player Development. I agree that Player Development should be higher up than all of these, as it's the main bit of the forum that everyone with a player visits weekly.
4) Hide old unused forums (5)
- We have already taken steps towards this, consolidating similar forums and hiding outdated ones. I'll be reaching out to department heads to see if there are subforums that we can hide within their sections.
5) Put announcements right at the top (5)
- I agree with this. I'm proposing to separate Announcements into its own category that sits just below Getting Started
6) Make player builder more visible (2)
- This will be added into the sidebar
7) Remove history sections (2)
- The history sections have swapped positions with the Team sections as they see far more traffic
8) Move Community down below player sections (2)
- I agree with moving it below Player Development as mentioned above, but Player Central could do with renaming and might merit staying lower. Perhaps to 'League Office', containing only the Bank, Unassigned Player Database and Player Retirement subforums.
9) Put teams into a subforum to consolidate the homepage (2)
- Not completely sold on this one but keen to hear your feedback. It would be a shame to hide the amazing team banners we have behind an extra subforum!
10) Move bank higher / to player development (3)
- I think we could do with separating out the 'Player Transactions' subforum into Player Development, while keeping the Bank section there for things like Contract Deposits, Job Payouts etc.
11) Hide history categories (1)
- We do also have a prominent link to the wiki high up so these have been moved below the Teams forums.
12) Make Retirement a subforum of ISFL & DSFL Transactions (1)
- These threads are usually very high traffic with a lot of engagement so I wouldn't want to hide them further. It shouldn't be in the Getting Started section though, so this has been moved to just below the Player Database forum (which I think we can rename Unassigned Player Database, seeing as it doesn't contain players on teams)
13) Split Announcements up more logically (1)
- I agree with this. It's not super clear right now which Announcements go into each forum. My idea is to have 3 subforums within Announcements: HO Announcements, Team Announcements, Department Announcements.
14) Make the schedule its own link (1)
- The current season schedule is currently present in the sidebar
15) Make rookie tasks into its own section (1)
- Not sure about this one, as it might get confusing for a rookie to have point tasks in two different places.
16) Make player contract deposits thread easier to find (1)
- This one just sits in the Bank forum so not sure there's much more we can do. It's only really relevant for GMs so not sure it requires a sidebar link. Maybe we could look at having a GM quick links section that shows up only for GMs that links to everything relevant.
17) Remove Game Pass section and promote sidebar (1)
- This might be possible if we can get the sidebar, or an alternative for the sidebar, visible on mobile
18) Move fantasy football to Community (1)
- I agree with this one
19) Undo all recent changes to the forum structure (1)
- I know that once you're used to a layout, it can be frustrating to see it change (like when Facebook changes their layout every so often). But I really believe we're working on a layout that will be a lot more intuitive when all is said and done! If there was something specific you really liked about the old way that you want restored, please do reach out.
BIG PROJECTS
These are ideas that were floated that would really improve the user experience on the forums, but are large enough that they would require a lot of time and a lot of users to be involved. If anyone is keen to help out with exploring any of these, let us know!
20) SHL style banking (7)
- This was the most popular big improvement mentioned. It would obviously be a huge undertaking but it would clearly be a gamechanger for the user experience.
21) Auto player generator (4)
- I love the idea of this one. Using something like the existing player builder to spit out a nicely formatted forum post for a new player would be great. I don't know how feasible one that integrates with the forum would be, but adding an export functionality to the player builder sounds realistic.
22) A tracker of current TPE opportunities / To Do list (3)
- Love the idea of this. We will explore how best to implement something like this.
23) Make updating more user friendly (2)
- We know that updating your player is not the smoothest process and I'm keen to figure out specifics behind how it could be improved, so feel free to comment with feedback or ideas on this.
24) Streamline create a player process (1)
- I would think if we can nail the auto player generator, this will go a long way to making this smoother. Levels recently wrote a great piece on this so we will be taking this feedback on board.
25) Make an external rookie guide with images, examples, links (1)
- We do have a forum based one that I think the RM team has done a great job with, and I know some DSFL teams have put their own versions together to help their rookies that they are welcome to share with the rest of the league if they'd like, but happy to hear specifics on what else you'd like to see in the way of an external guide.
BACKEND FORUM PROJECTS
At first glance, these all seem achievable but will need work to the backend forum software
26) More mobile friendly (7)
- The current skin isn't ideal for mobile. It removes a lot of the functionality that is available on desktop rather than repackaging it. We will look to see if there are quick fixes we can make but if not, might look into developing a new skin that does everything we want.
27) More icons/graphics/styles (6)
- I agree with this. We will explore ways to introduce unique icons to add more flair to each category/forum.
28) Navigation section at the top of the page with dropdowns (4)
- This would be a great and modern alternative to the sidebar, and would be useful for mobile too. Will look into this one.
29) New Posts on mobile (2)
- We will be adding this functionality to the header on mobile
30) Ability to close categories and have that save (2)
- Not optimistic on this one without a lot of coding (experience that I don't have) but will look into it all the same. Hopefully the reshuffling of categories/forums negates the need for this one.
31) Restore Last Post Info functionality from jcink (2)
- Keen to hear exactly what this was and how it worked.
32) Who's Online link (1)
- You can now click 'Complete List' in the Who's Online section on the Light/Dark skins to see who is viewing what.
33) Sidebar on all pages (1)
- I think a permanent header with dropdowns might achieve this better without taking up too much of the page, so will likely look into this first.
34) Make our update pages easier to get to (1)
- I agree with this, it's not as easy as it should be to reach your own update page.
35) View Unread Posts on Dark Mode (1)
- This is now there in the desktop header. Working on getting it on mobile too.
36) Remove post size limit (1)
- Can someone point me in the direction of where it tells them what the limit currently is? From the forum configuration it looks essentially unlimited.
37) Show post edit history (1)
- This isn't available out of the box so probably not super high on the priority list.
38) Directory bar at the bottom as well as the top of page (1)
- This should be easy to do.
39) Reply button at the bottom and not just at the top (1)
- This also should be easy to do.
40) Directory bar not showing up on mobile dark mode (1)
- This is the same issue that's making the header disappear on smaller screen sizes. Will hopefully be able to fix this along with the header issue.
41) Remove 30 second wait between searches (1)
- I believe this is in place to avoid server overload but I think we can get by just fine with that being lowered to 10 seconds.
MISCELLANEOUS FEEDBACK
These are bits of feedback that didn't fall into one of the other categories above and might involve other teams.
42) More in sidebar (3)
- There's already quite a lot in the sidebar and want to avoid essentially replicating the forum there. Hopefully there'll be less need for this with a consolidated restructure
43) A how-to video for rookies (3)
- The Rookie Mentor team have recently refreshed these and you can find them here and here!
44) Adding better descriptions to each forum (2)
- Agree with this, all forums should have a description. We'll get this done.
45) Make major trades more visible (2)
- A few weeks ago we opened up the Budget-RSS channel in the Management server for all to see and to connect other servers to. We'll look to have it push into the main ISFL server too so that all can see on Discord.
46) Show send downs more visibly (1)
- I think the best place to see this is on the budget sheet rather than within the forum.
47) Keep GMs and sidebar up to date (1)
- We will be more on top of this going forward! If you ever see anything out of date, please feel free to get in touch with someone from HO to rectify it!
48) Review pinned posts in every subforum as many are also in sidebar (1)
- Good idea, it's on the to do list!
49) Bring omnibus back (1)
- Definitely keen to revisit this but just focusing on optimizing the forum for now
50) Recruitment Rewards (1)
- I agree it's tricky for someone who referred someone to know if they're eligible to claim TPE and I am not sure what the current process looks like. We will brainstorm options for making this more visible.
51) Draft History (1)
- Outside of the draft stream and the wiki, the draft results are not visible on the forum. I think this is one for HO to tackle, so we'll discuss it internally and make sure there's an easy way for everyone to see draft results.
A lot of stuff to digest there, but I wanted to circle back on the forum reorganisation stuff as I think that's something we can tackle pretty immediately. As a result of all your feedback above, I think this is the structure that I'd like to propose.
GETTING STARTED
Join Our Discord
Create a Player (Player Templates)
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Announcements (HO Announcements /Team Announcements / Department Announcements)
PLAYER DEVELOPMENT
Activity Checks
Player Transactions
Point Tasks
Training Camps
COMMUNITY
Media (Graded Articles / Pressers)
Graphics (Submissions / Sig Shops/Sig Requests / Logos / Awards and Draft Graphics / Graded Weekly Submissions)
Podcasts (Graded Podcasts / Podcast Questions)
Fantasy Football
Casino
Trading Cards
Discussion (Suggestion Box / Thunderdome / Off Topic / Affiliates)
LEAGUE OFFICE
ISFL/DSFL Team Transactions
Bank
Job Applications
Sim Info
Punishments
Player Retirement
Unassigned Player Database (Prospects / Free Agents / Retired Players / Retired Players Updates / Unassigned Players / Unassigned Players Updates / DSFL Ineligible Players)
ISFL WIKI
Link to the ISFL Wiki
TEAM SECTIONS then HISTORY SECTIONS below this
If you have any feedback on this structure or any of the individual points, please do either leave a comment or DM me directly. Thank you!
![[Image: image.png?ex=6569460d&is=6556d10d&hm=910...7d8a8a4c3&]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/785957452163448877/1174900172292112385/image.png?ex=6569460d&is=6556d10d&hm=910cbbf6ac9696b3320237073da9a413dd9aa3be4e603c1d3bd1e9d7d8a8a4c3&)
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