Front page news and forum integration

[Greendogo]

I think it would make a lot of sense if we started to put the front page News/Announcements in a subforum in General called "News and Announcements", disabled the Wordpress comments section on the frontpage, and linked each post (via a link at the end) to the forum posting so that all discussion regarding questions and comments for the front page news and announcements can happen on the forum. This will give questions and comments regarding news items more visibility and will mean you don't have to create a thread in the forum just to address the news.

Proposal:
I recommend creating a "News and Announcements" subforum in the "General" section and retroactively adding the last 3 to 6 months worth of front page posts to the new subforum (via lgro copy and pasting them there). Then, henceforth it should be standard procedure to post the news or update in the "News and Announcements" subforum alongside posting it on the front page; additionally, the front page post would have a url to the forum post at the bottom, instead of a comments section.

[raevol]

I'm in favor of this.

[Zini]

Sounds reasonable. But do we really need a subforum for that? Our forum page isn't that cluttered yet that we couldn't handle another top-level forum.

[Sslaxx]

Sounds reasonable. But do we really need a subforum for that? Our forum page isn't that cluttered yet that we couldn't handle another top-level forum.

Is the important thing more that it exists, rather than where it exists?

[Okulo]

The actual subforum itself could be hidden, right? If not through forum software, then through the CSS sheet - give it an id and a display: none; property.

[Greendogo]

@Okulo: The idea is that you would be able to find it in the forum. It being invisible would be counter to the goal of integration.

[Greendogo]

lgromanowski, I've seen you've been around lately. Is this something we can do?

[lgromanowski]

lgromanowski, I've seen you've been around lately. Is this something we can do?

Hi,
new "News" forum has been created - news writers can post there.

[Greendogo]

Thanks lgromanowski! Is there a way you can disable the old "Comments" section for future front-page posts so that we can start to permanently redirect all of those comments back to the forum post of the news items?

This was the original intention of creating the News forum: so we can make sure all of the site visitors have a place to discuss the News that will be easily seen by everyone on the site. The old comments section often had comments that were never answered or seen by anyone.

[Okulo]

@Okulo: The idea is that you would be able to find it in the forum. It being invisible would be counter to the goal of integration.

Right, I totally misunderstood what Zini was saying. I did find it kinda weird that he would want a hidden subforum when we have a function comment system under each news post right now...