Please note that the forum re-organization is still a work in progress. The next phase will involve mass moving, prefix adding, combining, etc of tens of thousands of threads and will be performed at a later time.
Q. "What is new?"
A. Lots of stuff
Lots of bug fixes, and hopefully not too many new ones introduced. A new look (a return to classic colors, actually). A new tabbed browsing structure to navigate our numerous forums... And, some entirely new features and areas of the site. I will try to break them down briefly.
News / Events, Film School Tabs:
These tabs are introduced as part of the new CMS on DVXuser. Here you will find information based content published by site Moderators, Admins, and other Volunteer contributors. The focus is on providing easy access to the latest news from showroom floors, and a comprehensive collection of the best filmmaking articles posted over the last 8 years on DVXuser.
Q. "Can I contribute articles or article suggestions to Film School?"
A. Yes. Anyone who is interested in contributing original content that would be valuable and useful to our membership base, please feel free to contact me. We are grateful for all who are willing to contribute to improving DVXuser.
Additionally, Moderators (to start with) have the ability to promote posts from the general forum to Articles to go into film school, and/or future cms sections of the site. So, if you make a really kick ass contribution to the board, you may just find yourself being featured in the film school
Product Reviews:
Product Reviews is a new feature as well. Commonly discussed products will have a "product review page" containing product description, a link to buy, etc. Additionally, members will be able to submit their own reviews of any product listed in the "Product Reviews" section of the site. Now, instead of having 20 different threads discussing the same product, users will be able to get product information, and read the full collection of user submitted reviews all in one easy to navigate location... That's the goal anyway.
Q. "Ok, so I can submit a product review, right? Can I also submit a new product to the database? How does this work?
A. Yes, you can submit product reviews, as well as new products. All product reviews will be placed in a moderation queue, and approved after spam check, and verification that the review is actually a review (and not a rant, or a discussion, or something other than a review that has the intention of adding to the information pool of a product for the benefit of future users).
Submitting a new product (pending admin approval) can be found from the product reviews tab in the main navbar. Once at the product reviews homepage, to the right (above the search button for the product reviews page) you should see a text link that says "+ Add New Product". Simply click it, and fill in the relevant details about the product you wish to have added to the list of review-able products. From there, An administrator will process it and send it live as a review-able product.
Tabbed Forum Browsing:
Let's face it... DVXuser has grown enormously since its humble beginnings. And, so has the number of forums. The initial implementation of tabbed forum browsing that you see on the website is intended to break all the forums of the site down into Category Tabs (Filmmaking / Creative, Cameras / Technical, etc). Hopefully this makes things a bit easier to find and get to, and will help us all avoid a bunch of scrolling on the main page to get to the couple of areas that you might like to frequent.
We may tweak the tabs and/or the overall organization of the forums after we've had a chance to evaluate how it is used by people in a live environment. In the future, we have other features we are planning to implement into the tabbed forum browsing feature. Things like, ability to choose a default tab via your usercp. Even better, eventually we plan to implement a "User Tab"... A custom tab, that individual users can setup from within their usercp. The goal here is to not only allow you to build your own tab, but to choose specific forums, or sub-forums, and not only entire categories if you want to.
Maybe you just like the Screenwriting and Directing forums, and that is all you care about. You will (eventually) be able to set up a custom tab for your account that has only those forums in it.
That's the idea right now anyway... But, subject to change depending on real world use/feedback.
Marketplace Feedback/Rating System:
It's long overdue... Now, finally, you can give and receive buyer/seller feedback in the marketplace at dvxuser. The implementation is very similar to an eBay style feedback system, so it should already be familiar to many who frequent the marketplace. Here's how it works:
From within a marketplace thread, the original post (the buyer or the seller) will have a "Rate Seller" button in the footer of their original post in the thread. You can just click this button and follow the steps to leave feedback, summary comments, and more detailed comments. The detailed comments will only be view-able by you, the buyer/seller, and DVXuser Marketplace Staff/volunteers). The rating and the short comment will be publicly visible.
Additionally, you now have a couple of options relating to the new Marketplace Feedback system in your USERCP, which can be accessed by clicking "settings" from the menu at the top right of any page on dvxuser (above the banners in the top right corner, where you log in to the site). Once you are viewing your settings, from the left menu, you are looking for "Marketplace Options".
Once there, you will see that you can enter what you are looking to buy and/or sell. Other members will be able to see this information from the "homepage" of the Marketplace Feedback system.They can also search for buyers/sellers based on the product they are looking to buy/sell, and (if there is a match) a list of users who match will be displayed. Easier to find all the people selling an af100 now, for example.
The "Homepage", if you will, for the feedback system can be found under the "Forum" tab (which if you are reading this, you are already under) in the grey secondary navbar menu (i.e. New Posts, Private Messages, FAQ, etc). You should see "Marketplace Feedback" as the last option to the right. Click it and you will see more options... Browse around, and enjoy. We will be monitoring this system as it is a brand new implementation that has not been used in a live environment yet.
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Q. "What happened to the "Articles" forum?
A. It is hiding in the vault for the moment. The Articles forum is now defunct, and all of the content from there is in the process of being ported over to CMS. Should go live with some of that content over the next week, and should be finished tranferring it all over to the new system within the next 2 weeks. In the meantime, at the bottom of the site, you will find "The Vault" forum. This is where the current "Articles" sub-forum is located.
There are some other things under the hood, and lots more stuff coming, but the above should cover the main things you are seeing right now after the upgrade of dvxuser. Comments, questions below.
Thanks.
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