What features would you like to see on AFN?

[Tiny Bubbles]

I’d love an AFN app. I don’t like Tapatalk. I used to be very active in another grow forum that I shall not name, and they have their own dedicated app. It made browsing the forum using my phone (which is about 99.9999% of the time I’m on here) much easier.

 

[AutoWonders]

I’d like to see a general “Indoor Growing” discussion. A sort of all-encompassing place for general indoor growing questions and discussions.

I agree with this as well. The last change took that basic part away and replaced with "new grower journals" and "indoor journals, completely handcuffing the previous section. I felt there was a distinct pattern of less posting when that change was made. Bring back the new grower section and or as a general questions section as referenced above. I believe it's needed.

 

[DTOM420]

I agree with this as well. The last change took that basic part away and replaced with "new grower journals" and "indoor journals, completely handcuffing the previous section. I felt there was a distinct pattern of less posting when that change was made. Bring back the new grower section and or as a general questions section as referenced above. I believe it's needed.

Glad the idea seems to be getting some approval from other members. I hope the powers at be, like @Son of Hobbes , will agree.

 

[IceWater421]

I'm also looking at a solution that allows editing of rotation of pictures uploaded to the site for those weird picture uploads lol.

I've also sprung for the Enhanced Search add-on, which according to the devs makes using the search function AMAZING and actually useful (it's a big pain in the ass at present.)

my thoughts exactly ! be great to rotate those pictures !

 

[IceWater421]

I'm also looking at a solution that allows editing of rotation of pictures uploaded to the site for those weird picture uploads lol.

I've also sprung for the Enhanced Search add-on, which according to the devs makes using the search function AMAZING and actually useful (it's a big pain in the ass at present.)

my thoughts exactly ! be great to rotate those pictures !

 

[Son of Hobbes]

Hey good morning everyone!

I love the new journal format! When will that go live?

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We have a new dev server for the site that we're going to be working on changes/implementations on; so we'll be working on it through the year. Realistically I'm hoping towards the mid to end of year (things just don't happen as quickly as even I'd like them to.)

What about viewing a whole thread start to finish on one page option......reading a page then having to click to next page is time consuming especially on what device is used.........did someone mention earlier?...maybe in staff area.....that there was a control option for this? where you can set how many posts per page.

This is actually a feature of the new blog software I was talking about in a previous post in this thread; essentially you create your blog (grow journal,) then as you update it, you add "blog entries," which are dated. So instead of doing an update, then having 10 members post 37 replies on it so that you'd have to skip forward 4 pages just to find the next actual update, instead it would list ALL of those updates on the sidebar (so you can jump into Day 1, Day 7, Day 10, whatever) with the click of the mouse, or you can choose to read the entire journal with each entry listed one after another (like you were suggesting,) making it one big ass, long ass read. All the comments for each entry get pushed to the bottom (like how comments show up if you read a news site or news blog,) so people can still comment on your specific journal entries too.

So yes, the new software -should- (fingers crossed) be able to do this.

One thing I would be eternally grateful for is revamping the smilies. I find looking for what I want a challenge

I am no techie so I haven't a clue what I am talking about but here goes: make the icons only (not the actual smilies) a uniform size and line them up on a grid. Or arrange them by size. Even better if we could pick favorites that stay on top, sort of like smart phones do, or search them.

100% agree, we need to go through the entire list and redo them. Some of those emoticons are the same ones we had in the days of vBulletin (and even then they weren't properly sized.) I've looked at custom emoji packs (but then this place will like your cell phone text message.) We can make CUSTOM emoji's as well (not sure how painstaking it is,) but hoping to get some more canna-inspired emoticons too. But agreed and it will be something we can work on.

I’d like to see a general “Indoor Growing” discussion. A sort of all-encompassing place for general indoor growing questions and discussions.

I may be new to AFN but I’ve been utilizing discussion forums for several of my interests for roughly 15 years. One thing I’ve noticed about the best ones is that it’s easy to get a question answered or to get a larger variety of replies to a comment. There’s a great outdoor section and a great organic section that I frequent and can find lots of threads to read an participate in. But for indoor growing, the topics seem to be covered by a variety of different forums. There are times where I struggle to find the appropriate section to post something, in regards to an indoor grow. This, by itself, isn’t that big a deal but I feel like the spreading out of all the various indoor topics makes for less traffic on each one; and less traffic means slower response times and, often, less responses.

Not sure if I’m explaining it right. For example, as an (attempting) organic grower, I can jump to the organic section when I have time to get on AFN and quickly scroll through a lot of threads to see if there something that interests me or where I feel I can help. It’s all pretty consolidated in one easy to find, easy to peruse. Same with my outdoor growing. But, when it comes to indoor growing I’ve got to decide....is this a lighting issue or a medium issue or a nutrient question or something else. Then, I have to go find the right specific question or else I gotta throw it into the chat section - which I don’t think is really the purpose of that section. Like an indoor IPM question - where does it go if you’re not growing organically?

My suggestion is a general forum called “Indoor Growing.” Then, include things like Hydro & Irrigation, Lighting and such things as sub forums if you want. But, until the site gets bigger with more traffic (i.e. higher daily new thread counts) why not let all those sub topics get included into one general “Indoor Growing” forum? To make it easier to sort later, you could require each new thread to select a tag with a topic indicator like the system now that puts a little colored banner by the title. Heck, you could even enable a search feature to let folks viewing such a general thread to ‘show all’ threads with a particular topic tag.

Anyway, I just thought I’d throw it out there while there seems to be some shuffling and consolidation growing on. HTH

¡Viva AFN!

Additional comment: To further illustrate the need for a general “Indoor Growing” section, go check out the “Grow Room Component Review” section! I just posted a grow tent review and it was the ONLY review on the 1st page of the forum section. The rest of the threads on page 1 (and possibly more) were all questions about grow room components - the type of questions that would normally be posted in something like a general indoor growing section. Since there isn’t one, members are posting their questions in a variety of different sections that aren’t really the right place for them; but where else SHOULD they post them? And people looking for reviews have to dig into the section just to find the first few reviews buried amongst off-topic threads.

​

I agree with you; I didn't realize we had short changed the Indoor discussion. I'll work on implementing that in.

Possibly have access to our own journals much more direct under our user info area, say I wanna update 2 journals, click on my name above tool bar, drop down appears as it does but oh look my journals icon is listed also?

I'll have to research this to see if it's possible. Profile area and signature are probably the two easy band-aid fixes, but I don't think that's quite what you're wanting. I've seen some things that help build out user profiles a lot more (making them a bit more like a social profile,) maybe that would have what we need. I'll have to get back to you on this one.

Just to add to what DTOM420 was talking about, I also find it very overwhelming try to find a correct place to ask questions. It would be great to have a specific section just for all noob questions. Something a bit more consolidated.

For example, I really love the Infirmary section. It feels very specific and to the point. It's dedicated spot for if you have sick plants of any variety, you go there and get help. But if I want to ask about soil I need to find the "grow mediums" section , and if I want to ask about light schedule, I am not even sure where I would ask that.

I agree with this as well. The last change took that basic part away and replaced with "new grower journals" and "indoor journals, completely handcuffing the previous section. I felt there was a distinct pattern of less posting when that change was made. Bring back the new grower section and or as a general questions section as referenced above. I believe it's needed.

We used to have the New Growers Forum and over time it just started merging into other forums. I have zero problems bringing it back as a catch-all for newbie questions if it's wanted. Consolidating the forum and creating ease of navigation have proven to be interesting challenges, so please guys, keep giving us the feedback here on how to make things easier to find, sort, etc! Consider it done!

I’d love an AFN app. I don’t like Tapatalk. I used to be very active in another grow forum that I shall not name, and they have their own dedicated app. It made browsing the forum using my phone (which is about 99.9999% of the time I’m on here) much easier.

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Unfortunately I don't see us getting an app for the forum aside from Tapatalk (which we don't own or have anything to do with aside from being a supported software, it's like a forum wrapper software that's compatible with a variety of forum software (like Xenforo, that this software runs on.) We just don't have the resources available to pull that one off. I'm extremely hopeful for our next software upgrade here, we're doing a major version upgrade (going from a version where everything has begun end-of-life support to a version that is FULL of support,) so it's like a whole world of awesome new things become available for us to take a look at for the site. With those upgrades comes possibilities to fix problems that didn't have a clear path solution before too!

Great suggestions everyone!

 

[midIN]

Hey good morning everyone!

​

We have a new dev server for the site that we're going to be working on changes/implementations on; so we'll be working on it through the year. Realistically I'm hoping towards the mid to end of year (things just don't happen as quickly as even I'd like them to.)

This is actually a feature of the new blog software I was talking about in a previous post in this thread; essentially you create your blog (grow journal,) then as you update it, you add "blog entries," which are dated. So instead of doing an update, then having 10 members post 37 replies on it so that you'd have to skip forward 4 pages just to find the next actual update, instead it would list ALL of those updates on the sidebar (so you can jump into Day 1, Day 7, Day 10, whatever) with the click of the mouse, or you can choose to read the entire journal with each entry listed one after another (like you were suggesting,) making it one big ass, long ass read. All the comments for each entry get pushed to the bottom (like how comments show up if you read a news site or news blog,) so people can still comment on your specific journal entries too.

So yes, the new software -should- (fingers crossed) be able to do this.



100% agree, we need to go through the entire list and redo them. Some of those emoticons are the same ones we had in the days of vBulletin (and even then they weren't properly sized.) I've looked at custom emoji packs (but then this place will like your cell phone text message.) We can make CUSTOM emoji's as well (not sure how painstaking it is,) but hoping to get some more canna-inspired emoticons too. But agreed and it will be something we can work on.


​

I agree with you; I didn't realize we had short changed the Indoor discussion. I'll work on implementing that in.

I'll have to research this to see if it's possible. Profile area and signature are probably the two easy band-aid fixes, but I don't think that's quite what you're wanting. I've seen some things that help build out user profiles a lot more (making them a bit more like a social profile,) maybe that would have what we need. I'll have to get back to you on this one.




We used to have the New Growers Forum and over time it just started merging into other forums. I have zero problems bringing it back as a catch-all for newbie questions if it's wanted. Consolidating the forum and creating ease of navigation have proven to be interesting challenges, so please guys, keep giving us the feedback here on how to make things easier to find, sort, etc! Consider it done!

​

Unfortunately I don't see us getting an app for the forum aside from Tapatalk (which we don't own or have anything to do with aside from being a supported software, it's like a forum wrapper software that's compatible with a variety of forum software (like Xenforo, that this software runs on.) We just don't have the resources available to pull that one off. I'm extremely hopeful for our next software upgrade here, we're doing a major version upgrade (going from a version where everything has begun end-of-life support to a version that is FULL of support,) so it's like a whole world of awesome new things become available for us to take a look at for the site. With those upgrades comes possibilities to fix problems that didn't have a clear path solution before too!

Great suggestions everyone!

My lady friend has that xeno on her Verizon phone and she put the afn on it to show me, only way I could add videos and watch them was this route only, besides my laptop can watch them but I'venever been able to load videos, now with her phone it was going to let me but I tested it, but not at&t phones or my labtap. But her phone running on that program already made the whole site way more badass and usable. @sonofhobbs ya just a simple journal Icon under our name drop downs where even if we had to cut paste drag our journal there when finished or if it could sync and save the updates for the journals in real time there or when we finish, it gave an option when u click completed do u want this saved in you completed journal area or not.

 

[DTOM420]

@Son of Hobbes

Thank you sir! It’s awesome to see that you actually care what your members think! Most forum owners don’t give a hoot.

I think your consolidation is terrific and I don’t want to disturb that mode. So, I wanted to point out that my suggestion of a catch-all general growing section could meet the needs that @AutoWonders mentioned. IMHO, adding a general “Indoor Growing” section AND a newbie growing section would be redundant and make finding the right place harder to do. Topics that newbies regularly ask could be addressed by pinned threads at the top of the section. Besides, if ALL the threads (both newbies and veterans) related to indoor growing were in ONE section it will increase the visibility of individual threads. For example, a veteran grower might not choose to go look at newbie posts but if they were mixed in with all the general indoor threads in one place, that veteran may see a thread title that intrigues him/her enough to pop in and, possibly, share some wisdom - wisdom they wouldn’t have shared had the thread been located elsewhere. Same thing works in reverse- forcing newbs to fish around in the general section will expose them to more info.

I hope that you’ll stick with the ‘less is more’ theme of consolidation here on AFN. It really helps to spread the knowledge (IMO) and prevent members from staying in their own narrow lane all the time - it mixes us more, I believe.

Once you finish your reorganization, it might be worth considering making rules that threads be placed in the proper sections and using mods to enforce that policy by moving threads to their proper sections. There would need to be clear definitions of what each section is meant for, though. For example, the Stoner Chat (again, IMO) should be a place to talk about all things NOT related to growing cannabis and topics that don’t fit into ANY other sections. The grow journal sections shouldn’t have ANY questions or general commentary or helpful threads in them - the grow journal section should have grow journals ONLY. Etc.

Again, thank you for all you do for us and for being willing to actually listen to our input!
¡VIVA la AFN!

 

[davisgirl]

I can’t say where I would be in my first grow without AFN, but I certainly wouldn’t be almost ready for harvest, that’s for sure. There is very little I can complain about on this forum. The people and the flexibility are top notch.

I wonder if there might be a way to improve the search feature? I like to try to answer my own silly questions before I put them out there, and searching for “what is the best height for cobs” returns a lot of results that don’t apply. Of course, it’s possible I’m not using the search feature correctly.

I AFN on my phone exclusively, so I guess I’d want full functionality off the laptop/tablet.

Someone pointed me towards growdiaries at one point and there were a few things (very few) I liked. I liked being able to search for journals growing the same strain. The rest of it — no thanks. Felt like data entry. No flexibility. And the system where you make an entry in a journal and “earn” the right to ask a question? Good grief! Please don’t change to that format!

 

[MassMom]

Just to add to what DTOM420 was talking about, I also find it very overwhelming try to find a correct place to ask questions. It would be great to have a specific section just for all noob questions. Something a bit more consolidated.

For example, I really love the Infirmary section. It feels very specific and to the point. It's dedicated spot for if you have sick plants of any variety, you go there and get help. But if I want to ask about soil I need to find the "grow mediums" section , and if I want to ask about light schedule, I am not even sure where I would ask that.

Yes....NOOB CENTRAL would be cool.