New Infield Parking Groups Screen Shots
Before the holidays, I wrote about the groups feature that we are building in the new platform for Infield Parking. I have some screen shots to share with you. As I mentioned in that post,
The groups feature gives a user (you) control to setup his/her own area for chatting about topics of interest to you and like-minded other members. You are then responsible for managing this group. As the administrator, you can decide if a group is public - open to all users, or by invitation only, meaning participants in the Group must be approved by you before being admitted. You can also share the admin duties with other friends in the group.
From the overview page you can see the basic features of a group and their location in the layout.
Each group will have a:
- logo or graphic uploaded by the group owner
- name
- button for “applying to the group”
- lock icon to show if the group is invitation only or public
- summary of the number of members, media uploads, and discussions
- intro text where the purpose or philosophy of the group can be stated
- list of the group administrators
Below the summary information are call outs for the group discussion board, group media (images, video and audio supported) uploads and the group members. Behind each call out on the group main page is a detail page. A couple of points on these features are:
- the groups discussion board is not as full featured as the public forums (no media upload into posts and no sub-forums).
- media uploaded to a group page will also be uploaded to the media section of a users profile.
- comments made on media will be attached to the media and viewable from the user’s profile who uploaded the image.
There will be a main listing of all of the existing groups on the main navigation. You will be able to browse or search for different groups. There is also a groups tab on the user profile, so you will be able to manage your groups from your profile, as well as see what groups your friends have joined.
There was a lively conversation after my first post regarding the Groups feature and its use. As I mentioned then, I am very excited about the feature and hope that it has a really positive effect on the IP community. I also wanted to mention that the designers had a lot of fun with the comps. The sample images and text are very tongue-in-cheek.
-Mike
January 27th, 2009 at 18:58
Hey Mike,
This sounds very interesting. It also looks very promising so far. Thanks for keeping us updated with the progress.
January 27th, 2009 at 19:23
Wow, you guys have been busy! It sound really good so far. Do you have any idea when all the changes will be taking place? How will you choose who admins each group?
Thanks,
Melissa
January 27th, 2009 at 19:30
Wow, the new InfieldParking looks like its going to be a five star social network. This looks just amazing!
I love it! I also like the groups idea because it will keep the current “groups” seperate, better for them and the non-group members.
But, the design crew is doing a wonderful job, I can’t wait to see the finished product.
And, to second Nancy, I am so glad that Infield Parking is keeping us posted on the developments.
January 27th, 2009 at 21:18
I’ve been trying to figure out the foreign language on some of the screenshots in the last 2 blogs. What is It?
Nice to see screenshots of the new site……a picture says a thousand words. Is screenshots still a bad word on here?
Thanks again for the updates. Keep drinking the Red Bull.
January 27th, 2009 at 23:14
Hi Mike,
This groups feature looks great. Thanks for the update. I cant wait till we all get to use it. Have a good week.
Jeannie
January 28th, 2009 at 10:23
Looks great and all. But WHEN???
I feel like I am chasing a carrot tied to my harness!
Lee
January 28th, 2009 at 11:50
@gfunkerror We are not prepared to announce a date for the launch. I am not trying to be coy, but with all of the missed deliverables of the past, we made a decision not to announce a date until the platform was ready. That carrot will be delicious once you catch it.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:30
@MelissaZ The admins will be chosen by the user who makes the group. For any groups that are made by Infield Parking, we will act as the admins. For any group that you make, it is up to you to choose who will help you administer the group.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:41
okay, let me try this again, I got an error the first time, lol
How are you going to control the number of groups, or is it going to be more like facebook with hundreds of groups? Call me silly, but I personally like the fact that IP doesn’t have that many groups.
January 28th, 2009 at 13:00
@MelissaZ we are not going to limit the number of groups, but may weed out inactive groups. So in theory, it could become unruly. One of the main differences between us and Facebook (aside about 100 million users) is that we will also have the public Forum. People can still congregate there and have public conversations.
January 28th, 2009 at 13:05
@Dale Jr. is the bestest ever.. at the bottom of the second screen shot the designer use Lorem Ipsum for the text. It is dummy text used by designers and printers. You can read more about it and even generate it yourself from this site http://www.lipsum.com/
January 29th, 2009 at 09:36
This sounds very exciting. I cannot wait.
January 30th, 2009 at 08:39
So in theory, if we wanted to start a group aimed only at Tony Stewart fans, we could do that? And also if the group is invitation/approval only can people put a message in saying why they want to join? For instance, if I’m running a Stewart one I don’t want people that are just gonna bash him and cause trouble to mess with us so could we leave it private and let people say “Hey I’m a Tony fan, lemme in” and go from there?
January 31st, 2009 at 17:37
Looks very cool, can’t wait to see it. Keep up the good work Mike!
February 1st, 2009 at 21:42
I can not wait for this new site to get going.
IT’s pretty bad when the mods are saying things like this on the site:
“We would like to make a request of the Misfits tonight. THIS IS NOT A DEMAND.
Since so many are in the Superbowl thread would you mind holding the pics until the conclusion of the game?
Many use the search page to keep up and it’s very hard when there are so many large images taking the space.
Thanks!
Again … not a demand … just a request.”
Not a demand, my Jr., and about 5 people in the Super Bowl thread. Wow, that’s a lot of people.
Is this a Nascar site, or is it a football site? And, why have pics enabled on here if it makes it so “difficult” for others? Disable the pics, or quit crying mods. I don’t mind scrolling through pics on the search page at all, they have a nice little wheel on the top of the mouse that really makes it convenient.
February 1st, 2009 at 21:52
And then, to have the same mod say this in the same thread a little bit later:
“I guess a simple request was too much to ask for.”
Is IP really going to be like this with the new platform? UNREAL!!!!!
February 2nd, 2009 at 17:17
@Dale Jr. is the bestest ever.. I don’t moderate the current site, so I can’t really say what the issues where yesterday. I will say that the current platform is very tenuous and needs a lot of care to keep up an running (you may have noticed). I would hope that you would respect the requests of the current administrators, as I am sure they are just trying to keep the site up and running. The alternative would be to shut the site down until the new one is ready.
The new site will not have these issues. The new administrators have vowed that the site is completely scalable and any slowdowns will be easily avoided by adding hardware whenever we start pushing the maximum thresholds. I have looked at the traffic patterns on other sites running the same base platform and they are very impressive.
-m
February 9th, 2009 at 17:59
did you happen to updates to the site and completely shut it down ? once again no one seems to warn anyone or no one seems to know …. this seems to be a pattern we would really like it if IP staff could let us know something