Well being a community site as well as a tutorial resource, its sometimes hard to please everyone. Thats obvious from the different site upgrades that have happened within the past year or two. One of the most important things is that you guys get the most out of it and all the tools available to you give you the most benefit.

Anything that you would like to see happen? Long term or even short term, just post them here, or feel free to contact us.

What about features and tools? Anything new that you would like added, changed, removed?

Anything you find hard to use? Hard to find? etc. Is it user friendly? Easy to access?

I am just getting some feedback on various things from the members of the forum.

[Suggested Ideas] Updated 12.14.07 6:47 EST

Tutorial Category Menu on left (v3)

Filter Listings are hard to read

Become more like Social Site

Open Source Community Projects

Remove Tutorial Free-For-All with P2L Publishing

Become more like Social Site

Tutorial Writier specfically for Tutorial Requests

Gallery for Art / Portfolio System

Personal page / portfolio on Community User page (publishing user)

Have a list of all tutorials submitted and published by user

Revamped Featured Tutorials

Front page has less to offer than v3

Blue & Green = Stale

Finish Side-Projects (MSN Bot, etc)

P2L Store

Ability to browse published tutorials (make it more obvious)

Make list of all these ideas and put them in a list

I haven't had time to go on P2L much after the Hammertime (I think it was called that) upgrade and the one after. One thing I would suggest though, is that I preferred the tutorial menu on the left (rather than the current hover one) where you could easily browse all the different categories without having to mouseover - any chance of that coming back?

Thanks!

For me it's mainly things like this...


And all other menus like it have to go sorry, it's just extremely hard to use and looks horrible as well.

I disagree, it is really helpful to have that.

I'm not saying I'm unhappy with the actual feature, just the way it's laid out. Trying to quickly pin point a single category in that mess becomes a challenge...if it was columnar and still in alphabetic order it would be much faster and easier to use.

Just what I think anyway

Very interesting input guys. Any more takes?

Give me a day or two to right my full report

I cant really say that im a happy user, only because I haven't used you guys hehe. one think I dont think u need is the warning function. I must say everyones art is really good! I would like to see this forum be abit friendlier to the newcomers.One thing I have noticed is that everyones art on here is great but people take along time to respond, why is that?

Almost every forum across the internet has this same problem, activity. Since the rise of social communitys forum activity has decreased. On this forum I see a reply in two days or less, 95% of the time. Which is pretty damn good compared to other forums on the internet.

But this is an issue that I don't see leaving until the trend of social communitys dies out. Which, I hope, will be in the near future.

It's time to destroy Facebook and MySpace!

idk they can be helpful. like facebook is good for alot of collage kids, and myspace I think i can be useful sometimes. like alot of my friends that live far away from me I can talk to them there. so they are really helpful to those peeps who really us it. also companies us myspace alot now and I can tell that helps alot, same for bands.

If you find a way let me know, I will give full support.



It seems everyone has forgotten about email and instant messengers... That is always the argument I hear about social community's, "I can keep in touch with friends". That is just another way of saying I am too lazy to talk to them on the phone, or worst of all email them. What is this email you talk of?

I was looking at jobs ads the other day and I saw a job listing for a 'Facebook Devleoper', what is this world coming to.

well alot of my cousins and some friends live in the UK so I cant call them and email is ok but myspace and things like tat got pics about me's and just a better way to know people. I will say that I HATE myspace, but it has helped me gain a stonger relationship with my friends.

Every member posting is welcomed by Staff, majority of forums don't even have Staff welcome members or have a forum where they can post.

Every member gets the main guidelines more or less placed in their lap after they post a welcome topic, the guidelines wern't being read and we could tell. The sig guidelines are very simple but we always get a few that choose to ignore and think they can do whatever they want as if they own this site and then give Staff a hard time after we correct them.

We have a contact page where you can send your complaints direct to Faken, and trust me he looks into every complaint received or member banned, but complaining because your sig was removed after ignoring our guidelines will most likely also be ignored.



The trend of social networking sites is killing forums and I can't see them dying for a very long time if at all the membership is too strong, if your talented go make applications for facebook because you can make good $$$ doing so I've seen them selling at Sitepoint and people are buying them.

Referring to your part quote:

There killing forums, so forums must kill them!

Alright... A little off topic, anyways, move along.

I'VE GOT IT pixel2life should become a scocial networking site that will fix the decrease of activite.

Maybe if the community had projects that they could work on and develope, somewhat of an open source community project. I also think this site needs somewhat of a graphical make over. We have been seeing the "same" overall design since V2, Yes I know there have been changes to the site in how things are displayed but it is still the same old green and blue.

addition:
Also what is the whole point of the Tutorial Free-For-All, is it really needed since P2L has a way to actually write a tutorial on the site, I don't really think that is needed anymore except for the tutorial request one.

Hoot

I agree with you Hoot all the way! Well said!

Have fun haha but I would join if you do find a way also... never use those sites and I hate them haha





First of all they technicly did change the colors on this site with the hammer time update.... but every body started bitching early (sorry for language) instead of trying it out for a bit first... I personaly liked it....

and for your addition comment Hoot... you are right about that being pointless but why not remove that and maybe have a better system so that people could ask for certain tutorials...


My ideas:

Idea 1:

How about we have a system kind of like the tutorial writer you guys made but instead it will be for like tutorial requests... and when people request it they say like what catagory it would go in like Photoshop, 3D, Maya, CSS and so on and add tags so people can search for keywords... and maybe have a brief description of what they really want... and then the people that have no idea of what to make for tutorials they could just check this list that would be created and organized threw this system and they can easly spot what tutorials people want for certain programs... It's just a better way of organizing the forum thread for the tutorial request I find... maybe also have a little reply part to the requests so that people can ask more question on their request....

(If you want me to say this more clearly just PM me haha because I start too ramble on and repeat myself after a while when I try and explain things)


Idea 2:

Have like a proper gallery system for final art submissions of all our members (kinda like on 3Dtotal.com) and maybe even have a type of portfolio style system like CGsociety.org where members can post their art... kind of like a modified version of what we have now when we click on a users name in the forums... instead have less things about what they posted and more stuff on like porfolio style of features



those are my 2 cents... would be glade to explain more or clearafy more on my ideas if it is needed!

while expanding the gallery subject I would like to add the following idea:

how about a personal portal/portfolio added to the personal page of each user in the publishing system. It would bring together as much credibility as a Social Website while still staying in the computer/web related topics.. dunno if you get my point here but hey! That's the kind of things that popup in my head at 23h33 a monday night!

Hoot,

What type of projects do you think would suite an open source development of? Can you expand on that topic more please.

I like the sound of that, but what Chaos King said.

Well for example on blender.org (this is slightly different then what I mean but it will work for an example) they took some good 3D artists (who were known around some blender forums) and then they were brought together to build a short movie. I think it would be cool if the community built a web tool or some sort of software, not sure what but I think it would be a blast. It would be a great learning experiance.
I can't think of really any examples because P2L has a wide range of users that have different tallents, c++, php that type of thing, so its hard to say what kind of project could be worked on. Probably something web based since lots of the site has website stuff, but it would be cool for a downloadable application.

Hoot

So basically you could get people on board different things. And they could make like services and stuff and then release it as a p2l project or what ever. There could also be like a suggestion forum to gather ideas of what some of the projects could be about.

Add diff website themes haha and um o.O Like I mentioned in the beta area Make it so all your tuts whether submitted as a link or written in the publishing system is in one list, you can easily get to the list of the source site and then your publish things, but would be nice to have them combined?

I like that... but I do recall a topic in General Discussion where a bunch of P2Lians were trying to organise a project together... didn't turn out well lol... no leadership or committment

Okay, I see what you are saying now. Any other takers? All comments are welcomed and appreciated.

Lol, we could make an open-source tutorial management system Of course, it wouldn't be used here, that would be impracticle in too many ways. But it could be done none-the-less. I've always been interested to be a part of something like that, can't imagine how those kinds of projects are ran/organized though.

Although, this could be counter-productive. With the rise of tutorial sites being what it is (or at least has been), something like this would have a dramatic effect on that statistic...

One thing i've always been interested in is making something like Matematica. Unfortunately, i doubt many people here have the math skills alone required to do something like that, let alone the programming skills (note, calc2 is what i'd call a minimum requirement).

Anywho, i'm just here for the forums mostly these days. So i can't offer any real ideas on what could be improved around here, other than of course, to look into AJAX functionality (but that brings with it plenty of headaches).



Ahh, so great minds do think alike! I believe i mentioned this in the staff area some time ago

I'm sure the majority of people have found it rather brain-heavy to look through the categories like that. Although the current Category Browser is really nice and efficient, I'd much rather have all the categories layed out to the side.

Honestly, I have thought about creating and open source CMS for tutorials. But as you said, I don't know how you can turn that into a community project. Its not like I can say, hey you user, create me an administration panel for the site. lol. Too many minds and no structure.

What is Matematica? I don't think I have never heard of it. That should be interesting yes, but I am only in calc one =/

Well take OO programming for an example you can easily have people create different classes, there is a lot of structure to it then.

Well I think you would have to make sure they can actually do the job and even if a person was incharge of a few functions and stuff it could still speed the process up. It would also be a great learning experience.

I agree completely with Bug.


And I'm glad to see this discussion is turning to what I had initially brought up, Pixel2Life being social-like. Well I'll sit back and watch what you guys cook up, 'cause I dont have any ideas right now.

yes, it is very good forum.

I like the forum skin verymuch. But it is very hard to find a busy buy/sell section.

Okay I've done some thinking, and the following are things that have no inspiration over what has been said already (even though some ideas are similar)

More Community Involvement
Now I wasn't a big user of the site when V2 was around, but I remember the front page having so much more to offer than there is now. I remember there was something by the name of Twodded(?). Either way, it would be great if there could be more things a P2Lian cool look forward to on the site.

I remember there being people (could be wrong) that searched for articles all over the net that they thought users would find handy. Just things like that keep us entertained greatly

Right now the only cool things this site offers is a Tutorial Engine and place to write tutorials (excluding the forums and all the contests etc it has right now). Forgive me if I'm wrong, but the whole place is a little bland at the moment.

Featured Tutorials
Okay! Time to take this up a thousand notches! I have quite a few suggestions/things I'd like to see in this category:

• Two [or more] featured tutorials - For me [and probably many other people], I rarely ever go into the "Write" section to view tutorials, as they're already listed in the main P2L engine. So, it could almost make sense to have the featured Publisher tutorial on the front page as well.
• Previous Featured Tutorials - If you're like me, then you're a person who loves to be taught by the best quality tutorials (in terms of end product and ease-of-read etc). So, it would be really good if you guys could add in a feature that list all previous featured tutorials. This would also include previous feature Publisher tutorials - whether or not you want to put them into a seperate section is another thing.
• Faken's view [lame name lol] - Like on dA, maybe have a little section in the comments area or something where Faken (as he's the only one that approves of tutorials in the first place?) explains why he chose that particular tutorial to be featured (unless the user paid lol).

Site Design Renovations
As said by a few other users in this topic, I think we all know it's time that P2L took a turn in the colour scheme and template industry. The Green & Blue has been awesome thus far, but wearing a bit thin in the boredom department.

Side-projects
Touching on what was already been said before. I'd really love to see side-projects coming out left right and centre - give the users something really cool to look forward to, or maybe something to ease tutorial search; be creative!

NGPixel, I remember a long while back you were working on a P2L MSN bot - now that was a REALLY cool idea, and I reckon it should be continued. If you don't have the time or something, why not try to introduce someone to your code (maybe someone already experienced, or someone who's trying to get into the desktop programming industry - kind of like a leg-me-up at the same time as learning).

Just things like that that people can enjoy using.

Also finding some members to be committed to being involved in some sweet P2L projects would be cool - as many of us are students and dying to get our hands on something like that.

----------------------------------------------------------

Now I understand that some of these things require enormous amounts of work from the Staff, which is why I love the idea of bringing in different users in different areas to help you guys out - Kind of like a win/win situation (I think lol).

Mind you, this is probably one of the reasons in the decrease of forum activity - a lot of site happenings went missing after v3 was introduced - so I don't think the increase in social networking is all to blame.

That's it from me... sorry if there's anything not clear in that peoples - I rushed through it all and couldn't be bothered to proof read Atm my brain is bursting with more ideas... but I don't want to overwhelm you guys

http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html

The whole deal would be a little complicated, and you may be confused by the fact that mathematica is an actual program, but they do have web-based stuff. The feature i'm most fond of: The Integrator

calc101 is a nice site that is built off of mathematica

Ohh, I am very familiar with the Integrator. Those are indeed some very powerful math tools.

Good calls Bug, your ideas will definately influence choices made in the future.

Everything seems good guys, I am really enjoying reading all the comments. Keep them coming

I like the networking idea;

Instead of showing pictures of yourself posing (Sorry syntex I know you like to an'all) you show your works'yz

Like www.pixel2life.com/S0LDIER. - 17 Year Old $DESIGNER from UK

$Designer = You select what you do on sign up and can change it...

ORRRR

A P2L Store, I want a P2L Keyring, Tee shirt, Door mat, Bumper sticker, socks, etc.

ohhh bad lol a store haha.. I wouldn't mind it though but hey it might work... maybe the profet can go to like prizes for contests....

but yeah theirs some good ideas here but some of them you just gonna watch for organization and what not to make it work well... because if you don't think of the problems that might happen befor hand then watch out when they happen...

hey Chaos King, maybe make like a list of all the ideas up to date in the first post so that no one repeats the same things... also it would be easier to see what exactly people are thiking and maybe others can add on to the ideas....

just a thought

anyways keep the ideas comming...

Thanks. Check out the list now, its all organized.

lol! cheeky admin here ^^

made me laugh haha

btw awsome job on the list... hope we get more suggestions....

At this rate, we'll be in an infinite-loop in no time

I've always been interested in this place making a small store like thing, but the one thing i've always wondered is what we would sell? P2L branded mousepads and coffee cups? People have enough of those to last a dozen life times... p2l branded ones would only serve to worsen the problem.
Then i started to think about what kind of services we offer, and decided we could sell tutorials, but that would just be ridiculus on several levels.
So short of turning into some derivation of DeviantArt/Sitepoint/everybody else, i can't think of anything original.

Twodded was a personal project of Jay's when he was on Staff all of those tutorials were moved into P2L Publishing.

Myself and Dan used to post the articles, if you read the Forum news hint hint http://www.pixel2life.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=30240 you'll find that Forum was removed because of the publishing area and the articles are now in General Webdesign Help.

we could always sell like P2L T-shirts in the store... or even not just P2L but maybe have some members just make some shirt designs and I'm sure other people would buy them if they were awsome....

1. P2L Should host a 24-hour Film Fest! It would really crank up activity in the forums!
2. P2L Is a tutorial site right? We should have like a set topic and have some requirements and have a tutorial-creation race!
3. A tutorial Execution Race! Someone releases a tutorial and we see who can finish it first!

I kinda get what you mean with 2 and 3 but your 1st suggestion iss teh one I don't understand.. would you like to elaborate on yoru idea a bit?

3 wouldn't work, simply because of Time Zone differences (ie. some people would be asleep/working and therefore the race would be biased)

Nice ideas though

Ability to browse published tutorials!

What do you mean? You already can... In the Category Browser go to P2L Publishing [very last one on the list]

Okay. I guess we need to make that more obvious. lol.