Parkz 2014

[Richard]

The forums will probably be given a complete overhaul come the next version of IP.Board -- which is due at some point this year. The plan is definitely complete/consistent integration.

[Zanstabar]

Overall, the whole redesign is great. I really like how the banner changes for each park in the index. Reminds me a bit of FB's cover photo system.

Only let down is that the forums feel a little stale now, but thats all gonna change soon, right?

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Only let down is that the forums feel a little stale now, but thats all gonna change soon, right?

Question

The forums will probably be given a complete overhaul come the next version of IP.Board -- which is due at some point this year. The plan is definitely complete/consistent integration.

Answered!

Will the new forum version come with an upgrade to Richard's avatar?

I remember long ago a pic of a curly haired dude, which later became this golden waterfall type deal... sidenote - Richard what is your current avatar?

[Richard]

Epcot at Night -- as arbitrary as it comes I suppose. I had a closeup of some rocks at some point in the past too...

In terms of updates to the site, login is now available from the main site -- for those not logged in. It includes one-click Facebook/Twitter login too. Features are going to be added at a pretty quick rate over the next few weeks/months.

[westical]

Site looks great! Was getting on in years etc. etc.

ps. Camp Minnie-Mickey at DAK is closed.

[Richard]

Thanks for that -- member content editing is still a little ways off, but soon it should be a two-second job to flag/update these sorts of things in the near future.

[Reanimated35]

You got the favicon fixed. Nice work

THEME PARKS BY CITY

• Gold Coast, QLD 11
• Sydney, NSW 8
• Adelaide, SA 6
• Sunshine Coast, QLD 5
• Brisbane, QLD 5
• Melbourne, VIC 4
• Canberra, ACT 2
• Werribee, Vic 2
• Australia 1
• Macquarie, ACT 1
• Sapphire Coast, NSW 1
• Blue Mountains, NSW 1
• Coffs Harbour, NSW 1

The city of Australia in Australia - it just links back to the same page - shouldn't be there. (Same with all the other states listed.)

http://www.parkz.com.au/parks/AU/Sydney/Unknown_West_Sydney_Theme_Park - shouldn't this be WnW?.

[Gazza]

Nah, the unknown Western Sydney park was from ages ago, basically when there was an ad in the paper or somewhere looking for investors for the project.

[Reanimated35]

In that case, shouldn't WnW be added to the Sydney parks?

Sure, it's under Prospect, but the place even calls itself WnW Sydney

[Nick]

In that case, shouldn't WnW be added to the Sydney parks?

Sure, it's under Prospect, but the place even calls itself WnW Sydney

I'm with you, it peeves me off every time I look at it. Y U NO SYDNEY!?

[Reanimated35]

....Aren't you the one responsible to fix it?

[westical]

Las Vegas is listed twice too under USA.

[Richard]

Fixed the duplicate -- there were two spaces between the Las and Vegas which the site decided was a different city. Likewise Wet'n'Wild Sydney has been moved to its rightful (less accurate) place.

Thanks guys!

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I recently went through the Parkz database clicking all the little 'i've been on this' buttons.

I found it really counter-intuitive - I did all the parks first, and then went and started on rides (not finished yet). I guess the issue as I see it is:

The rides are all randomly listed. No alphabetical order (no discernable order at all), so you really have to read each listing to make sure you're not missing any.

Idealy, once you've selected the parks you've been to, it would only show you the rides from the parks you've been to (had to catch myself a couple times when the attraction was the Florida version, rather than the Hollywood version). I also found it very difficult to chop and change between country state locality.

It would be nice if the database was structured in such a way so as to 'drill down' each level:

Pick the countries you've been to > then pick the states (where relevant) > then pick the parks > then pick the rides and shows... end result being you're only shown results from the filtered list you selected previously.

I do however like the ease at which they're added (simply clicking a button to have it added to the profile is a leap and bound ahead of my expectations based on the former database). A quick check reveals i'm up to 30 parks, which i'm fairly sure is a complete list for me - the ridelist however is a little out - didn't quite get to finish that one.

[Richard]

I've moved this over to this topic so we're not derailing the other thread too much.

The default sort is probably a bit random at this stage -- we have some new features coming down the track that will mean this makes a whole lot more sense. At the moment it defaults to the order it is in the database, which you're right is not exactly meaningful. But you can change the sort very easily, see: http://www.parkz.com.au/search/rides/sort/alphabetical, http://www.parkz.com.au/search/rides/sort/fastest, etc. You can also filter rides by country, city and park through this as well.

There's no plan to filter the result completely to the end user's experience -- at the end of the day the purpose of the database is to catalogue info/stats/news/photos regardless of whether you've been there or not -- but an "☑  At Parks I've Been To" checkbox on the ride filter page might work in this respect.

I personally built up my profile park-by-park, rather than all parks then all rides, so I didn't encounter any of these issues, so it's good feedback to get.

It's definitely still a work in progress -- the more feedback we get the better.

[Reanimated35]

I found it easier to look at the park's listing then just select all the rides in that park, then move on to the next one. At least that way you'll know you're looking at the right location* instead of across the country/world.

*although some rides are listed in the wrong parks.

[Richard]

Any quick examples of rides in wrong parks?

[jjuttp]

Some rides don't exist at all.

Eg. Spooty Spin/ Avalanche.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

that would be because.... they don't exist?

I think they're doing a cracker job to get current attractions loaded in on as many parks (including a photo of them in a lot of cases).

If we were going to ask for every ride ever in the park, we might be here a while. It'd be nice to have, but at the moment I think it's better to concentrate on currently operating rides and attractions first.

Just my view.

[Richard]

Cases like Avalance/Spooty spin are a bit of an oddity -- when Roller-Coaster.com.au launched we lumped areas like Nickelodeon Central, Looney Tunes Village/WB Kids, Cartoon Beach into one single entity, purely in the interests of cutting down the amount of work that was required in going from a database of 0 to almost 300 or so when the site was launched and it was only myself adding every single park, ride and photo. Long term we'd definitely like to get this fixed, but it's not been a priority; as AlexB suggested we're most interested in getting the latest and most current information in place.

We'll shortly have add park/ride functionality in place in addition to the edit system we currently have which is where users can help us, and in the process help their park/ride count stats.

[Reanimated35]

Any quick examples of rides in wrong parks?

Not at present sorry, I remember a few being out of whack when I went through all the parks to fill my profile. If I get a bit of time later I'll have a look through and see what I can find.

[Reanimated35]

Just had a quick look through. It's either been fixed, I missed it or I imagined it. Sorry.

[Reanimated35]

The mobile site - don't have a problem with other sites but I don't really have any I visit that use IPBoard.

When typing and using Swype as the keyboard, it lags when entering text into this site. I don't have this issue on other websites. Not sure if it is something on this end or if it's something with the site itself not being completely optimised for mobiles.

Sometimes it will actually lag so much that it shops entire words. Will gray another keyboard and report back.

Using a Galaxy S4 running kitkat (4.4.2)

Testing this with the built in Samsung keyboard and it looks like it might in fact be an issue with Swype being too resource hungry.

Looks like I need to go searching for a better keyboard sadly

Edited June 25, 2014 by reanimated35

[Richard]

I'm writing this on an S4 with Google Keyboard. Never noticed any issues.

The mobile version of the forums is a bit clunky. With a bit of luck the next version of Invision Board will be out in a few months and should handle mobile much more intuitively.

[Reanimated35]

Yeah I switched over to the samsung one and it had no issues. It's just a shame because I really liked the Swype keyboards. It has been playing up a bit though since they "updated" it.

I didn't know google had their own so I might have to play around with a few tonight and see what's good. Realistically though I should probably do some actual work and just look at the forums when I get home