Mark as just a common user of your site I tend to feel that some type of menu driven aid would be a great help...Usually I just visit with a specific purpose to either read a section or find a certain file..I've always been able to find what I'm looking for after a bit of navigation but I'm a patient person ,,,Like Mr. foot pointed out most folks take very few seconds and if they can't find what they want easily they leave,,If it can be done without too much worries it would be a great improvement

Mark as just a common user of your site I tend to feel that some type of menu driven aid would be a great help...Usually I just visit with a specific purpose to either read a section or find a certain file..I've always been able to find what I'm looking for after a bit of navigation but I'm a patient person ,,,Like Mr. FsFoot pointed out most folks take very few seconds and if they can't find what they want easily they leave,a good example is his EAW Flight School easy to open the page you want to read,,,If it can be done without too much worries it would be a great improvement..but either way it's still a very valuable resource

Alright, I'll try something for the navigation / menu part of it.

The consolidating; I'm not sure what needs that. I know the bug and feature ideas page duplicates some of the information in the install help doc. I have been moving info over tto the install doc from other locations on the site.
I tried to not duplicate information that much when i made the site, but perhaps I failed in doing so.

A little guidance in this consolidating would be helpful for me to understand more.

I think all you need is a menu which takes you directly to one of your pages, a bit like what you alredy have now but from a main menu which only indicates what the topic(s) on that relevant page are. From there on it's just navigate through the page to find what you want. I think it wouldn't help much to have a menu like on my FTP if it can't scroll to the right passage on the pages. The best way is to keep it simple so you won't have to reorganise things.

something like:
Installing
video(cards)
sound(cards)
3D models
Theatres
Old EAW
New EAW
Online flying

In alphabetic order or in order of importance. You have the most insight in what's there, so see if you can find the red line which connects it all from the viewpoint of a newbie and how his install would progress stepwise. You could even use several different descriptions which reference the same page, that way you have more freedom for a good design.

I think Sandbagger's website might help you a little, the problem with it being that there were no links to select relating to the topics but the topics themselves were clear and obviously the importance of the site related more to the modding community and their creations. Obviously most links which were there died since then so many are useless, yours are still fresh and not outdated.

VonBeerhofen

I've added a site search now,
provided by google.


Other things to consider:

>Green Download Links - should they be a different color?
>Menu system - Would a frame be useful?
I would only have to edit one page when i add to the menu.
otherwise
I think the example FsFOOT gives, means editing each page , every time I add a menu link?

Mark, I typed into the search engine a couple of search terms for which topics I have looked-for in the past, and it seemed to work OK for "Versions of EAW" (exactly what I was "looking" for), and gave results for "Best Gun Sight"--didn't go down the list of results on that one, so can't comment on the provided links/search results. .

I think the search function is an excellent addition, and will be of great help. Allow me to suggest something to you: Dig back in your mind over the next week or so, and write down the questions you remember about various people asking how to find something on your help Site.

See if there is some common thread amongst the requests. If so, then ask yourself: "How can I re-organize the Help Site so as to minimize requests for specific info"? Far better to re-org, and spend your valuable time on better things than answering the same questions repeatedly.

Might just be that the Search Function will act as an Index to the Help Site. Maybe that's all that's really needed. However, a really good index in a book will allow one to find things which they didn't originally know they were looking for. That's because computer search users need to enter search terms, and a written index will most likely provide such terms--as well as many more-- for the user. To sum: the search function is only as good as the search terms entered by the user. Some users are better at entering various search terms than others.

Let it rest for a while. You did well at adding the Search Function, and think about the sorts of requests you've received in the past. for the basis of a possible, future re-org of the Help Site.

I will add this: When first beginning to get EAW running, your Help Site was invaluable in doing so. IMHO, it is a fundamental resource to the Game, and to the EAW community. My sincere thanks to you for proving the means to get the game up and running. Without your Help Site, I would not be a newbie EAW user, and not pestering you all with (sometimes) ignorant questions.

According to this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness#Red-green_color_blindness a vivid, light blue would seem to best perceived by most people.

Granted, trivial in itself--unless one is color blind, as are a considerable number of males. Males being the vastly greater part of flight sim players. Why make things needlessly harder for them? FWIW, Electric Boat has certified me as OK as far as color vision goes. Just speaking up for general good practice, that's all.

Yeah I thought about what people ask, is normally install instructions, then configure and add-ons. Then everything is random beyond that what there looking to read next. They say they read stuff they didnt even think about and learned from.
Anyway, just by a simple one sentence question, invoked me to re write the install doc in areas, then add in a paragraph of info. Thats all it takes if I see that it needs it.
The INI doc is popular too. The Joystick one is also.

Anyway, I'll try to find the right color # for Download links (vivid, light blue)

As far as "Flight Training and Testing" section of Help Site goes, may I suggest directly linking any and all of the usual "Flight Schools" which pertain to EAW? Your comments are valuable, but other "Flight Schools" expand on them, and give different viewpoints. Perhaps of some interest is the addendum to STK EAW article here; http://www.combatsim.com/htm/2000/09/stk_eaw_new/page25.htm

When I am forced to deal with the great, unwashed public, as I am sometimes forced to do, I treat them as intelligent, but ignorant people, and always politely; they deserve no less. I make a point of asking what they want to accomplish, and once that is made certain, I allow them as few, confusing/conflicting choices as possible. IOW, give the customer what they want, and as little blathering as possible.

Works for almost all of my customers, with very rare exceptions.

The point about the customer is that most of them are ignorant, but not stupid. Make things easy for them to find, and they will find it.

I get the impression your Help Site was written for a certain type of user, one who was strongly motivated to get EAW up and running, and in its' present state, willing to read it from end-to-end. Modern newbies are more likely to want "instant info' as regards their particular problem, and become impatient with anything else.

How many new motivated users have popped into this forum in the last year or so?

Now, the influx of new users (or lack of them ) cannot, by any means, be tied to the Help Site. But accessibility of the EAW game to brand-new users ought to be paramount, to my thinking.

So, I encourage every single old-timer here to make everything they do, everything they offer as simple and easy as possible. I know that there have been some, initial, efforts to do so.

That is all to the benefit of the game, but, as a mere newbie, and a simple user, may I suggest that the effort to make the game --and its add-ons-- more initially friendly to new users might be given higher priority?

Younger people that might want to give the game a go are notoriously impatient with anything other than E-Z downloads. and press-the-FLY- button to get flying.

These are the potential newbies that you are dealing with. May I say that ignoring them, regardless of what one thinks of their approach to things in general, is ignoring reality.

Personally, I like, and appreciate the people here in this forum. Like many families, you all have arguments amongst yourselves that alarm a newcomer, until the newcomer realizes that these dust-ups are 'family" arguments, and things will settle-down after a while.

Perspective is valuable, both with respect to family arguments, and newcomers.

I added light blue links, but they suck to read for me. They washout mostly. I may have to go darker.
We'll see what happens then.

I'm listening to what everyone's saying.....

Re organizing, may or may not happen, It would have to take a lot of time to do it in one full sweep.
I don't think it needs a full re-organizing though. Just some replacement of the main page and its links into perhaps a frame web page, horizontal.

There where talks of doing a Q and A Help Doc but that fell through.
Maybe there's a way to create an exploded index, site map type of thing.
Whatever is the least amount of work will win out, as I rather do help docs then constantly updating menus and stuff.

Some content in some of the docs might get moved to there own doc/page.
The internal references to documents, the links that are; Please see or read this page LINK, might get cut from the site as if the page names change then those links would be dead. I'd rather remove the links then have to keep updating them a few times a year based on changes.

added Menu Bar on top.

good show there Mark the added touches are much appreciated

NP Russ.

I've removed some repetitive sections on the front page and adjusted the menu bar across the top to reflect the less amount of bookmarked links.
Updated the links page and fixed the page titles for better search results display.
The color of links where changed and boldness added last time,. (are the links better color now to see?)

I may remove more stuff from the main page and add a new document or so called pages.

I may break the site down more so, slimier to what VBH mentioned, like installing / Video / Sound etc...

okay, re - organized the site, its almost done. Been a long day. So I should have more ideas later on in the week.


I no longer will be putting jump links within my help documents. There too much trouble and they just muck up the pages. However the references to a help document remains.

The documnets are listed in order of importance then in a whatever order after that.
I'm still thinking so If you have some more ideas for my site please fill me in. I appreciate it. :))

EAWHS
https://eaw.neocities.org/

I see what you mean about the light blue washing out. The blue used to designate the links in this sentence stands out just fine :"Post or PM me (MarkEAW) on the CombatACE EAW Forum or on the SimHQ EAW Forum."

no the download blue links, not the purple ones. I'll have to change the colors eventually again.

Anyway, the search engine needs to catch up, so give that some time to re-index the site to properly use it. It has to drop the old pages and insert the new ones.

While the search eninge is syncing up. I have been improving the new pages/help docs to read better as separate pages from the original docs I took the info from.

Theres a few docs I'm not sure if I should separate the info yet or not.
If anyone sees information sections that may need there own document, please let me know.


EDIT:
I'm seriously thinking of eliminating all the codegroup separate help documents and transplanting those doc as sections into the standard docs. This way all the info will be together. This is because I have found you still need to reference the stock game information to make sense of the info in the codegroup-help-documents.

@RIBob......I think I have all the changes you mentioned and others as well in place.I just haven't added 'flying tactics' from other people in the one related help doc. I can however if its EAW related, add a link for each occurrence on the LINKS page on my web site, in a new section. Do you have a Link(s)?

I believe I asked several specific questions regarding my progress on transforming the site....without rereading my posts, I forget. So if you have (even if you don't have) feedback I'd like your opions on the current state of my site, please.

I'm still filling it out and correcting text to make more sense in the new locations of given information. lol
How about the FIRST USE help document? I'm having a hard time really filling that out. Its suppose to be steps and information for beginners (or returning oldies) to help them quickly understand what they need to know and do.

Regarding the search engine; I'm not sure how it works as far as getting rid of old pages, but so far its added a few of the new pages. I have a redirect page for people looking for the site(or specific page on the site.)

One thing I had to do is move some of the credits to the main page because I can't remember which portions of the pages I got info from whom. I'll eventually be removing credits from every doc as I will be cherry picking information from them and creating new pages.

Please read my past posts to answer my questions if you guys can find the time to do so.
(80,000 views from Feb 2015) That's pretty good for an old game. I don't think that includes every hit, or returning hits in a short amount of time.

Thanks Guys, your words and support have allowed me to take the past few days to changes things up, even with renewed interest in helping out.

Hi Mark,

I think the lightblue links aren't standing out enough, I have a hard time reading them. Always use a high contrasting color, on a grey page it needs to be closer to the darkest. Dark red, purple, green or blue will work fine. On black or dark background pages the lighter colors will work better.

VonBeerhofen