Update Sub-Forum Rearrangement and Archiving

Archived Threads
I have started the process of archiving all the older threads on the forum. This was done to save a bit of space on the forum. Posts from October 2006 (when the forum first opened) to October 2011 have been locked and moved to an archive section. These threads can still be viewed at the bottom of the forum homepage and found through the search feature. The descending node character (☋) will indicate a sub-forum that is archived and all archived threads have an hourglass character (⌛) prefix next to the title. If you see these in any searches understand that the information is at least 4 years old and might not be of much help. This should also prevent any necroposting from anyone who might not notice the time stamp on the older threads.

Sub-Forum Changes
I have merged several inactive sub-forums together. Here is what has changed:

• The Nightlife and Entertainment has been merged with the Dining sub-forum. The sub-forum now called "Dining - Nightlife - Entertainment".
• The Events forum has been merged with the Dumaguete City forum. I have added an "Events" prefix to the Dumaguete City forum.
• The Identify Fish and Marine Life has been merged with the Diving Forum. The sub-forum is now called "Diving and Marine Life"
• All of the "Other Destinations" sub-forums have been relocated and/or merged. The Surrounding Areas sub-forum has been added under the Dumaguete City sub-forum. This sub-forum covers Dumaguete's surrounding municipalities, cities and provinces and has had prefixes added to help with sorting. The "Other Destinations in the Philippines" sub-forum has been moved to the Special Interests category for now.
• The Pinoy Ako sub-forum has been completely archived. It was a dead sub-forum and there was no point in it staying open.

This was mainly done to avoid confusion on where topics should be posted and because inactive sub-forums doesn't do anyone a bit of good. The prefixes should help keep the threads organized and easily searched and sorted through.

 

Spoiler: Click to see long explanation

Since November 2011 there has been 20 threads created with the word "hospital" in the title

Since December 2013 there has been 1 thread created with the word "pharmacy" in the title.
"Generics Pharmacy" Locations | Dumaguete Info

Since April 2013 there has been 3 threads created with the word "prescription" in the title.


Since April 2012 there has been 17 threads created with the word "health" in the title.


Not really posting all that much about that topic and the same is true with dogs and pets. Not enough to warrant it's own sub-forum anyway. I am sure there are a lot more threads on the topic but they don't have easily searchable/topic related titles and they are scattered all over the forum....though the General Topics sub-forum is loaded with lot of threads that should be in a topic related sub-forum (I already pulled 200-300 threads out of there and placed them where they should be....and it is a rather time consuming, boring and....irritating process to go through). This makes it very difficult for people to search the forum and find the information they are looking for, it also creates confusing on where things should be posted. Also, Google hates content that is not structured/organized in to categories/sections and Google hates it even more when there isn't a single word in the title that goes along with the thread content, which a whole lot of threads on this forum are guilty of.

I could ask nicely that users make titles that are related to the content of their thread.....but very few are going to change their posting habits. So I'm just going to force everyone's hand on it a bit.

I have been working on making the sub-forums broader and as generalized as possible and then creating prefixes that can be used to sort through the different, but related, topics within them. I don't want to bring it down to just a handful of sub-forums but I do want to make it easier for everyone to know where they should be posting. It is better to have 10 active sub-forums that have frequent, on-topic, posts than it is to have 30 sub-forums (or more on some other forums) that are inactive and are always needing to have threads moved around by moderators.

The prefixes are also how I'm forcing everyone's hand with creating titles that are related to their post; currently there are a few forums that you simply cannot post a thread to unless you have selected a prefix. If you can't find a prefix that matches your topic you are probably in the wrong sub-forum

So, instead of having independent sub-forums for things like "Health & Hospitals", "Home and Gardens", "Food and Groceries" you can make a kind of "hybrid" sub-forum with prefixes that covers them all. Best just to show how it works:

Here you have a single sub-forum covering a broad range of somewhat related subjects. Prefixes are required so all titles on on topic and color-coded. If you want to see only "Health and Wellness" threads just click on the prefix.




Now the sub-forum only shows "Health and Wellness" threads, without the user having to go to a completely different sub-forum or having to use the search feature. This is currently how the "Passports and Visas" sub-forum works as well.


Unsorted with broad but related topics.


Same sub-forum, narrowed down to one specific topic with one click. FYI: To remove the sorting just click the "Reset Sort" link.
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Note: not every sub-forum is going to be setup with the prefixes and sorted like this. This will be for topics that are informative in nature that needs to be easier to search for.....and not for topics that are more subjective and will lean more towards opinions (such as "Dining - Nightlife - Entertainment", "Dumaguete City", "Military Veterans", "News" etc)

So, does that seem convenient and logical, or not so much? I don't think it is all that difficult to figure out or different from the original layout.....but then I'm the one who is setting it all up. I will work on the color coding as I I don't think it looks good yet, perhaps each sub-forum should just be different shades of one color.