Info: CF v5.0 - Social Groups Feature

[Jeremy]

General Update

With the new CF v5.0 upgrade done, I can finish testing some of the new features to roll out. One of the biggest features I've promised is the new Social Group system. I haven't posted any updates about it for a while so I thought I would update everybody on where things stand and what to expect...

I will be working with the moderator team over the next couple days to do some extensive testing of the Social Group system to make sure we don't foresee any potential problems with how things are setup. I hope to have all the testing done by Thursday so I can have a day or two to write up some brief tutorials on what the system is and how it works - although it's very easy to use as-is.

Social Groups Overview & Purpose

For those that don't really know what the purpose of this system is, here is a brief explanation of why I think it's a key feature for the site going forward...

As you may have noticed, CycloneFanatic has become quite large and diverse. With millions of page views a month and countless topics going at any given time, it's getting harder and harder to focus on just the information you want to read and share about. With the new social groups feature we'll be able to have mini forums and pages where groups of members can communicate openly amongst themselves without having it clutter the rest of the site. Only the members that wish to join any given group will be able to see the messages, photo albums and communications that are belong to each group. If you grow tired of a certain group, just click a box to leave that group and you won't see it's content any longer. It's really a user-friendly way of creating more private areas of the site while also allowing everybody to have equal access to what they want.

Conclusion

I will post an update around the end of the week or over the weekend with an outline of how things work and I'll set the system live so everybody can do as they wish.

Thanks,

Jeremy Lind

[cyismydog]

Wow, sounds neat! Would there be specific groups for recruiting, travian, etc?

[Jeremy]

It's really up in the air right now what will happen with the categories. I have to work with the mods to define some general outline and then I'll solicit feedback to see what all of you want.

In general it should allow for tailgating groups, Travian nerds (I mean people), friend groups, etc. The possibilities are endless but leaving things too open-ended can make it very confusing and cluttered so it might be somewhat limited. I guess we'll just have to see what everybody wants and what works best.

Overall the goal is to help clean up the site some for those that only come here for sports but also allow for a better way to communicate for those that have other interests as well.