Topic: News - Membergroup and badge changes coming soon

[Jim]

It's been about a year since we moved to the full version of SMF so of course it's getting about time for a few changes.  I promise these will be painless. 

First off, I hate the stars.  They are on just about every forum you go to.  I got rid of the stars and created badges for the staff and I intend to do the same thing for the membergroups.

Right now I plan to create badges similar to the ones we currently have for the Mod Squad and Administrator.  We will use different colors for the flag portion of the badge, for each membergroup.  If you have an idea for the badges, or are good with a graphics program and would like to submit a design for a badge, I would definitely be interested in seeing it.  The size is 22 x 100 pixels.

The membergroups will change shortly.  We will get rid of the new ones that I created a couple of months ago and go with the standard groups.  These don't really mean much as they are post count based.  Right now we have 13 groups and that will change to just 6.

Hopefully this is not too confusing.  I hope to make the changes as soon as I finish up the current badges.  If someone comes up with a neat badge design, it doesn't take much to make that change so don't let the fact that I am doing this now keep you from submitting your design.

[patches]

Well, this sounds like it's not going to affect anything that I have to do differently or will have to learn.     I hope!!!   

[Jim]

The new badges are up.  As I posted earlier, I have eliminated several of the membergroups.  They really didn't serve much of a purpose and having fewer makes it so much easier to manage.   

The membergroups are "post based" which means they change with the number of posts that you have.  One assumption that most forum software makes is that if your post count is high then you have been here quite a long time.  Of course that isn't always the case.  Anyway I am posting these just for your information.  Here are the groups that we currently have:

Noobie - this is the entry level group.  This group has all standard permissions with the exception of being able to view the memberlist and profiles of other members.  There is no badge for this group.

Newbie - this is the group a Noobie goes to after posting 20 times.  This group has all the permissions of a regular member.

Jr. Member - this is the group a Newbie goes to after posting 50 times.

Full Member -  this is the group a Jr. Member goes to after posting 500 times.

Sr. Member - this is the group a Full Member goes to after posting 1500 times.

Elite member - this is the last group and a Sr. Member moves to this one after posting 5000 times.

Feel free to reply to this topic if you have any questions.

[Penny]

  One assumption that most forum software makes is that if your post count is high then you have been here quite a long time.  Of course that isn't always the case. ...

Nope  ......not always 

[Jim]

Some folks just have the gift for gab, huh? 

I'm glad someone finally replied to this topic.  Thanks Penny, I was beginning to think the badges were only changed on my screen and everyone else was still seeing stars  .   

[Hillhound]

What badges?
 
 
 

[Patty S]

Calm down, John! The "badges" are those things on each post... on the left, below the name of each person's post, where it says whether they're a "Sr. member", "Jr. member", "Admin", etc.  (There used to be stars there, & I guess Jim didn't like seeing stars.)    I don't know why he calls them "badges" either, & I had to figure out what he was talking about, myself! (Must be lonely for him, up there at the top!)

[Hillhound]

Only joking Patty! although the screen reader I use does interpret the badges as guess what?

Your right! Stars!

Calm down, John! The "badges" are those things on each post... on the left, below the name of each person's post, where it says whether they're a "Sr. member", "Jr. member", "Admin", etc.  (There used to be stars there, & I guess Jim didn't like seeing stars.)    I don't know why he calls them "badges" either, & I had to figure out what he was talking about, myself! (Must be lonely for him, up there at the top!)

And if Jim is fed up of seeing stars then he should take Diannas rolling pin off her and behave himself!

[Jim]

Ok, so exactly what would you call them Patty?  Like it or not they are badges! 

John I do behave...most of the time.  Dianna don't know where I hid the rolling pin so not many stars around here now.  Course, that frying pan hurts too.

[Patty S]

I guess I'd call them "member group labels" ...cuz we dont pin them onto our shirts!

Sorry John, I forgot that your computer talks to you.   Apparently that didn't make a difference though, cuz I'm thinking that quite a few of us were wondering what a "badge" was, too!  

By the way, what do we sound like when your screen reader reads our posts?  Do we all come out sounding like computer robots, or can you make the voices gender specific?  (My voice is in a lower range, for a woman, but I think if you can set Jim's as a falsetto, you might be hitting it pretty close!) 

Oh... and thanx for the purdy "badges", Jim!

[Hillhound]

Quote:
"By the way, what do we sound like when your screen reader reads our posts?  Do we all come out sounding like computer robots, or can you make the voices
gender specific?
dunno (My voice is in a lower range, for a woman, but I think if you can set Jim's as a falsetto, you might be hitting it pretty close!)
BigGrin"

I have a thing somewhere I did for another forum sometime ago, I'll dig it out and put it here in another topic so as to not take this one off topic.

It tells about screen reader use and how they work. Now it's time for work almost so it'll have to be tonight.