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As Point Breeze previously discovered in the updates topic, I have been working on creating a website news feed. One of the issues identified in the recent SWOT analysis of the region is that it's sometimes difficult to find content, and in addition to the forum restructuring I feel this could be a solution. Eventually, I envision that this page will become a hub where everything in the region can be found...not just a news feed, but all our announcements, vital account stats, topics tagged as important or interesting by our ministers (never miss a contest again!), opportunities to do good things for our region, and more.

I hope that it will make it easier for users to see what is going on in the region and what's important to see, and thus will make it easier to get involved, take on jobs for the region, and increase activity.

The reason I'm posting this now is because with a lot of work finally finished on the recruiter page, I'm moving on to this project for now. The version that Point Breeze discovered was very rudimentary...it worked by refreshing the page every minute, which displayed the last ten posts made. Tonight, I replaced that with more complex code that automatically adds new posts and refreshes posts already on the page without a need to reload the entire page. There is still some basic functionality missing, namely the lack of ability to scroll back past 15 posts ago, but I think it's a good start.

As I develop this page further, I would appreciate any input or suggestions you may have. You can find the page here!

When you scroll towards the bottom of the news feed, older post will begin to populate automatically. It's actually a news feed now! The older posts loaded *should* update if they are changed as well, although this is untested...

I'm curious, has anyone tried the news feed? Any suggestions for it?

It's still a work in progress, but it's become easier for me to keep track of posts as they happen and reply back when I might have otherwise missed them. But then again, I'm not implementing things just for me. I'd like to know what you think.

Being an avid fan of the 'View Posts Since Last Visit' feature available on many forums, I was a tad disappointed that it wasn't available here. This feature you made, though, seems to have more or less filled that gap.

What might be helpful would be a direct link to the thread and/or link to the post. Currently you'd have to find the threads manually, or Reply and then find your way out.

For instance:

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Wintermoot posted in 20,056 Posts! (and counting)
32,000!

That was 17 days. ^.^
▲0 ▼0 Reply · Like · Dislike

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(Links for 'posted' and the thread were inserted by me to illustrate what I meant. The Reply/Like/Dislike links were left out since you know what those buttons do.)

Those are some good points that are easy to implement...I'll do so next time I work on it.

The request by Aaron Specter has been implemented. I call those Aaron's improvements. ^.^

I also added a quote button because not being able to quote directly was annoying to me. That's my improvement.

This is great!!

It may just be me but I am not able to see new posts made in the Citizens' Platform through the Newsfeed.

The script isn't liking the odd apostrophe in the title of one of the topics...the first below is what was used in the title, and the second is the normal one...

’

'

That first one is too fancy... It is not appreciated.

I don't even know how @Pengu used the 'too fancy' apostrophe, all I know is that when the script tries to parse it it skips any post with it in the title. I went through the topic and changed the apostrophes to get the posts to show in the newsfeed, but I'm at a loss as to how the two characters are handled differently at the moment...

I've implemented a potential fix. ’

Newsfeed RMB Posts

While this forum accounts for a large portion of our activity, our region page is still fairly active, and specifically has people that either don't have the time to get involved on the forums or don't like forums in general. Now, being part of the on-site Wintreath community has never been easier because posts made on our region page will show on the newsfeed! You can see what's being discussed on there, then click a link to go to message so you can like or reply.

I hope that this will make it easier for our active off-site community to interact with the on-site community. While our community is based on here, our region page is important both because of the people on it and because that's one of the easiest areas for new nations to ask questions or introduce themselves in. I think a more active RMB will create a more active region, which will create a more active forum. And that's good for everyone.