Trevor

Crap, wrote a long post and the forum crashed on me as I tried to post it. Let me create this post in smaller chunks so I don't swear in front of my dog again.

A lot of here in the community do "work" and "maintain" threads around the forum. Many of these threads involve tables and other fancy formatting. It's often unwieldy to work on this formatting while the threads are active. It often takes me a lot of work and experimentation to get the tables "just right".

I've often thought that it would be cool to have a "personal thread" somewhere on the forum, a place where I could stash stuff I'm working on, and experiment with formatting.

I thought about using an old thread in premium or feedback or groups, or some other rarely used corner of the forum. But one, I didn't want to be rude and have others have to see all of my "bumps", and two, I'd hate to put a lot of work into something and then have "premium" or "groups" disappear.

I'm thinking that a few other Challenge runners and other "thread runners" would appreciate this as well. And heck, even as just a Challenge or other viewing log thread participant, it'd be cool to have all of my lists in one thread for easier searching and collating of stats.

I'm thinking it'd be a minimal drain on resources, perhaps even easy to work into the existing forum structure somewhere.

TheBang

When I used to actively maintain a couple of moderately complex threads, notably the Columbia House FAQ, I used to keep all the code/HTML in a text file on my computer. I would do all my editing on that text file, and to view the appearance of the code, I would simply copy and paste it into a DVD Talk thread using the "Preview Post" functionality, and then tweak the code until it appeared correctly. When I was ready to actually post the updates, I would then edit the post, and just replace the entire post with the contents of the text file. Would that not work for what you're doing?

Trevor

That would work, and it is what I sometimes do now.

But I do a lot of forum stuff at work or on the road, so just keeping everything that I work on here, here, would be more convenient.

Plus the more I think about it, it'd be really cool to have all my viewing lists here in one sequential thread.

Trevor

Ib?

IBJoel

Hi Trevor, since I'm unfamiliar with the challenge threads you're referring to, could you link one? That way I can check it out and get a better understanding of why this might be a tool you/others would find valuable.

Trevor

Thanks, sure!

Here are the two current threads about the upcoming Horror Challenge, both full of various tables and such.
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/dvd-talk/63...checklist.html
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/dvd-talk/63...1-10-31-a.html

And here is a list thread to show you how fancy people get with their formatting. I've tried to put multiple years of my list post into one post and it crashes the browser/forum software.
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/dvd-talk/62...st-thread.html

TheBang

It sounds like you basically just want a "Test Posts" forum? I don't see why anyone would object to a "Trevor's Test" thread in the Feedback forum. Or, you know, Book Talk.

Trevor

Pretty much. Although putting all my monthly viewing posts in one thread has appeal. And if I did that it'd be bumped at least once a month. And if I had a thread then I'm sure a view other Challenge participants or monthly viewing thread posters might want a thread. So that's multiple bumps disrupting everyone's viewing. So I figured I'd ask permission before going rogue.

Maybe a new groups subforum? Is there a way to turn off forum-wide post notifications from specific subforums or subgroups?