Forum and Plugin Availability

[imilne]

Not that I ever told anyone, but I actually had a go at doing this in PVRX2 about half a year or so before it was canned. I'm now well aware of how time consuming this is. I think I included the skin files in the installer, so if you've still got it installed, you should be able to see it by running: PVRX2.exe -direct "first time guide"

That's a pretty good effort to be honest, but I agree, it must have been a huge amount of work. And you'd have to do it all in duplicate too because people would still expect the existing Windows forms.

Perhaps there's a hybrid solution in there somewhere - stick with the dialogs, but somehow make a (shudder) wizard to guide users through the initial steps and tuning. Only crack open the access to the full config once the basics are out of the way (and hopefully working).

Iain

[lovemyram4x4]

I'm a new NPVR user, w/ above average PC knowledge that's been doing the HTPC thing since before MCE. Though I've had quite a bit of trouble getting things to work properly(I have a more complicated set up using newer un/limmted tested things for NPVR) I find that doing a basic set up say using OTA the settings menu is pretty much self explanatory, but when it comes to find more direction or info it can be sparse or hard to find(question about x thing might be found in a thread about y thing and wiki gives little to no info about x thing). The wiki for set up xmltv seemed to be quite well but it would have been nice if the page for MC2XML would have mentioned some of the setting you might want to set to get the xmltv right for NPVR like:-F output channel "name" first (rather than "number name"), I was able to figure it out on my own, but I don't think Joe six pack would have.

[johnsonx42]

getting back to steeb's original question about plugins and the forum, I think a big part of the problem is that the plugin forums are very disorganized. about half of them are so obsolete they've not seen a post all year (or perhaps even last year!). many of the remaining active forums have obsolete titles that no longer reflect the plugins being supported there. I have no idea how I'd figure any of this out if I were a new user.

[lovemyram4x4]

getting back to steeb's original question about plugins and the forum, I think a big part of the problem is that the plugin forums are very disorganized. about half of them are so obsolete they've not seen a post all year (or perhaps even last year!). many of the remaining active forums have obsolete titles that no longer reflect the plugins being supported there. I have no idea how I'd figure any of this out if I were a new user.

It also has plugins for GBPVR and NPVR mixed together, I being a new kid on the block and not know which is for what I don't even want to bother w/ the section of the forum.

[imilne]

How about a massive simplification in the short term... move/hide/lock? all the existing plugin forums, and create a new - single - forum for the current set of plugins and skins. There isn't really that many of them yet, and I've not seen that many threads about them, as opposed to lots of posts within a single thread. Maybe even drop the community announcements forum too and just have announcements for all third party stuff in the plugins/skins/utilities forum, seeing as that's what the announcements are about anyway.

Iain

[bgowland]

It also has plugins for GBPVR and NPVR mixed together, I being a new kid on the block and not know which is for what I don't even want to bother w/ the section of the forum.

This is a valid point (particularly WRT gbpvr/npvr stuff being blocked together.

I know this would take some initial work for a forum mod but how about a proposal?...

1. Rename the 'Plugin and skin support' forum to something like 'Add-ons (3rd party plugins, utilities and skins)'
   
2. Create a 'sticky' (called something like 'Where to find 3rd party add-ons...') at root of the forum with links to the wiki for each. In this way, a new user might visit the 'Add-ons' folder not even knowing the wiki exists and immediately have an introduction to it.
   
3. Create two sub-forums - one for gbpvr and the other for npvr
   
4. Move everything that is clearly gbpvr-only into the first
   
5. Create sub-forums in the npvr sub-forum for 'Plugins', 'Utilities' and 'Skins'
   
6. Create a policy that devs should have a sub-forum for each 'item', for example what does International Cinema Listings have to do with Webcams?
   
7. Give the devs the relevant mod capability to move anything between their own legacy an current folders then try and persuade them all to do a bit of house-keeping.
   

On the one hand it looks like I'm suggesting a more complex view of the plugin/skin support area with all of the different levels of nesting but it would clearly indicate a particular tree to follow, e.g., 'Add-ons' -> 'NextPVR' -> 'Plugins' -> 'Some plugin'

Another idea would be to give 'all users' (or at least devs who request it) the mod capability to close their own threads in 'Community Announcements' - as imilne (I think) mentioned, many of us use this forum for announcing 'add-ons'. The ability to then direct the users to the relevant support forum and close the thread preventing comments or support requests in the announcements, would help keep things clean.

Just some ideas.

Cheers,
Brian

[bgowland]

How about a massive simplification in the short term...

lol - took me so long to compose my post (with primarily that point) that you got there first.

[McBainUK]

+1 for bgowland's forum structure suggestions.

[sub]

I generally like bgowland's suggestion, but 4 deep sounds a bit extreme. I'm never going to browse through that reading posts, and I'm sure others aren't too.

GBPVR is pretty much gone now, so you could simply it putting 'GBPVR Legacy', 'NextPVR Skin', 'NextPVR Plugin', 'NextPVR Utility' directly under 'Add-ons (3rd party plugins, utilities and skins)'.

[bgowland]

GBPVR is pretty much gone now, so you could simply it putting 'GBPVR Legacy', 'NextPVR Skin', 'NextPVR Plugin', 'NextPVR Utility' directly under 'Add-ons (3rd party plugins, utilities and skins)'.

Yes, agreed. I have to admit I wasn't completely comfortable with the level of nesting I was suggesting. Your structure makes more sense.