Forem Creators and Builders 🌱

Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern

Posted on

Community activity box?

We've discussed internally about a widget that could exist on some or all forems that includes an activity feed to best get a sense for what's going on now....

The way I envision this is that it could toggle between contexts, like...

People I follow | My tags | Global
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...And it would be a list of activity, both published posts and comments, in a one-per-line chronological capacity. Users could click in to jump into whatever the conversation is they're seeing. Hopefully it includes profile pics for max skimmability.

Question: Would this be best as a card within the feed (probably always the second item after the featured post?)

Or should it be a sidebar widget?

E.g....

Alt Text

Latest comments (7)

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will profile image
Will Araújo

Interesting proposal, do we have ideas/ possible features under consideration organized somewhere?

forem.dev/will/forem-roadmap-5e2n

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lee profile image
Lee

I think what would be useful in the feed is to create an article ‘maybe its a ‘how to get the best out of forem’ article and have it sticky in the homefeed

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showmebillyjo profile image
Billy Jo

This is a great idea, like an h2 to the featured post's h1.

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lee profile image
Lee

I think keep the feed for valuable content. Let’s utilise the space in the sidebar for dynamic forem widgets.

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pp profile image
Paweł Ludwiczak

Wild "Custom sidebar widgets" appears.

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akhil profile image
Akhil Naidu • Edited

In my opinion, this is probably because most of the people in the community, especially those who want to reinstall, at present, are focused on this article. At least that is how I'm being hooked up with the highlighted article, now and then.

But when we consider in a more diverse, more users base, more content-oriented forem (which will be in future); having such an opportunity to float at the top is necessary and reasonable.

Right now, in this forem instance, we are about 500 users, and if I'm correct, there are not more than 200 to 300 active recurring users. So trying to accept a sidebar widget will not be a healthy idea in any long run projects, this is just my perspective and one among different types.

But, having a feature which enables the admin to do such a thing is very plausible; I guess there is no need for me to point out the absolute reasons, but I do; for future references.

  1. We are already facing an issue which requires such a widget to have a more diverse and fresh looking home page.
  2. If you look around and see the number of users in mastadon communities, we can realise that the number of participants in a new community, usually never cross the 1000 mark easily.

This leads us to a informative conclusion that if an admin wishes to do such a thing, like of adding a side bar, he should be able to do it; which enables him to keep his community feed look fresh.

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akhil profile image
Akhil Naidu

The reason I mentioned for it to be on the top might not be correct; I realised it was a different article than the one I usually revisits. But I guess you can get my point out of it