Suggestion to improve the site

  • Imagine you are sipping tea or coffee while discussing various issues with a broad and diverse network of students, colleagues, and friends brought together by the common bond of physics, graduate school, and the physics GRE.

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Nova
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Sep 29, 2005 2:00 am

Suggestion to improve the site

Post by Nova » Thu Sep 29, 2005 4:41 pm

I think the site could used a little organization. As a new member I found that there are many useful tips and answers posted, but kind of hard to find them. As the exam is nearing, many of us will have questions from the old tests. How about we have separate sections for GR####? Questions/answer/comments germane to a particular test will be much easier to find that way. :lol:

Grant
site admin
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 7:55 pm

Post by Grant » Sat Oct 01, 2005 6:04 am

Hi Nova,

I agree that the forum has kind of grown a bit erratically in certain areas. We have 319 topics in the forums now, and it can be a bit overwhelming to read all the posts in each of them.

I try to summarize the main findings from the forums within a fairly well organized main site:
http://www.physicsgre.com
(i.e. a site map, and essential tour)
(i.e. when the GR0177 came out I included that finding in the main site)

As a quick response to your original post I have combed through the forum and found all posts pertaining to the ETS physics problems (i.e. GR0177, GR9677, GR9277, and GR8677) and moved them to the ETS Physics Problems Forum. Also I added the test and problem number into the title of each post (i.e. GR0177 #61). Perhaps setting up a new Q and A forum for each test would be a good idea but subdividing the forums too much can add to the confusion. I think what I might try is to post a "sticky" thread on top of the ETS physics problems forum that indexes all the threads that talk about certain ETS problems.

I also think I am overdue to do full sweep of the forum to give it more organization. Some of the things I plan to do are:
1) move some of the off topic posts into the "everything else forum".
2) re-word some of the titles so that are highly descriptive of what is contained in the thread.
3) move all posts into the most appropriate forum category.
4) of course delete any spam - but I already do a pretty good job at getting rid of all the random spam stuff).
5) ?? other suggestions are welcome

I also plan to simplify the forum layout a bit so it is less busy. Also, I plan to include a different header in the forum so people know that there is a main site.

I think I should also read all the threads and identify some of the really useful ones and link to them from a prominent area of the main site.

I also think I should look for a moderator to monitor the forum on a daily basis as my time is somewhat limited - but i do enjoy it when i have the time to improve the site and so I make time.

I appreciate your comments. They give me motivation to give the site some more attention.

Grant
site admin
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 7:55 pm

Site Search Feature is Ready

Post by Grant » Sat Jan 21, 2006 10:20 am

I just completed the initial phase of a major rework on the site. The site search feature is now fully operational. It spiders every page on the site including the forums.



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