Forum Posts as Front Page articles

[Jagan]

One of the ideas that I want to implement on the new RAFCommands website/forum is to publish some of the most informative posts, accounts from the forum ( Rafcommands.com/forum )as reference articles that are easily readable and accessible on the front end website. (Rafcommands.com).

To illustrate this idea I have posted a few articles on the front page that are essentially a collection of posts from the forum - copied as is, but formatted a bit better using the features of the front end software.

Some of the posts that are readable as 'articles' are

1. http://www.rafcommands.com/reference...-investitures/ by Hugh Halliday taken from here
   
2. http://www.rafcommands.com/reference...rvice-numbers/ by Pete/Resmorrah taken from here
   
3. Several of Ross's posts on AIR Reference for the SAAF.

The copyright of such 'articles' on the front site ofcourse still remains with the author of the post. This is just a way to provide higher visibility and ease of access to good posts..

I am sure the forum has hundreds if not thousands of such informative posts that should be hosted as reference pages. Please feel free to suggest such posts here.

[Lyffe]

Jagan

While I applaud your proposal (assuming it is a proposal at this time), a few questions/proposals if I may?

1. Having accessed your two examples (and very much approve the design/concept) does "Front Page" mean you will introduce a new catagory to the RAFCommands Forum page?

2. Will you be the editor, or may anyone suggest a subject is suitable for inclusion?

3. Will the Front Page have an Index as the first entry? As the Front Page develops it would be useful for users to be able to see what the page contains without having to guess. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of the current Useful Books and Research Material page; it contains a vast amount of useful material, but it is scattered randomly throughout the link.

Brian

[CZ_RAF]

Jagan, I also like your idea and I also would like to know the answers to questions laid by Brian.
I suppose that answer to No. 2 should be that you will be the editor but that you can also accept suggestions from other forum members.
Also Index as suggested by Brian should be very useful.

Pavel

[Resmoroh]

Jagan,
Go along with the idea of some sort of Index for your Front Page.
Peter Davies

[Jagan]

1. Having accessed your two examples (and very much approve the design/concept) does "Front Page" mean you will introduce a new catagory to the RAFCommands Forum page?

No this is outside of the forum page - the forum will not have any major changes and will continue as is. I am talking more of the main website - which usually didnt have much activity or updates going on and can be used to feature posts that are of suitable quality for easy reference with better presentation. (I forone tried to search Hugh's post for a while and really struggled to find it..)

2. Will you be the editor, or may anyone suggest a subject is suitable for inclusion?

I think anyone can suggest a subject suitable for inclusion. ofcourse articles /posts have to be of sufficient length and content to be featured up front. We can take the help of forum moderators to chip in with their opinion should we find something needs to be evaluated.

It need not be limited just to posts and discussions, but anyone who has written an article or a story of an airman, or a campaign, or a subject matter that they are passionate about , (As long as it has a relevance to RAFCommands can submit it to be featured.)

3. Will the Front Page have an Index as the first entry? As the Front Page develops it would be useful for users to be able to see what the page contains without having to guess. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of the current Useful Books and Research Material page; it contains a vast amount of useful material, but it is scattered randomly throughout the link.

Most sites provide some navigational capabilities through the "Categories" , "Tags" boxes on the right side of the page. I believe we can also add "Authors" at some point (still exploring the features). that should make it a bit easy to locate an article if one knows the keywords. A Table of contents box is also possible - but it has to be accessed via a link. similar to how one would use a sitemap page.

[dfuller52]

Hi All,

I recognize what Jagan is doing and have seen this on other sites. The idea is to display existing content items better by posting them as blog entries and putting a "face" to the site, while keeping the original forum content as is.

Instead of creating a new index of blog entries, I would suggest merely adding a link to the original post, so people can access the existing index on the forum page. Since this is not new content, I think it would be a make-work project to create a second list of articles.

If we do start adding new content to the blog, I think that would be a good time to look at indexing articles.

[grounded]

I agree with this thread.
Also, I suggest another category titled something like, "The Unanswerables."
Sometimes valid questions are asked where there is no immediate answer.