Here are a few suggestions for the website that I wouldn't mind seeing for future updates, whether v4 or later. Whether administration agrees or how easy these are to implement is a different story, but I might as well list them. Some may have already been listed by other members. I have been using the site for over 3 years as a member and around 6 as a lurker.
For Main page
1. Since the forum order is locked it would be good if there was a way visitors can get to their sections quicker if they're at the bottom. Example: I almost always want to get to the US section, but the "North America" forum is behind General, Community, Off-topic, Australia, a very long Europe etc. Not as big an issue on desktop but on the vertically-focused mobile it can be a pain with the long scroll. Potential solutions can be to somehow change the order of the continent forums based on visitor location, or if not possible just allow visitors to expand/collapse forums.
For members, perhaps one day we can each customize the forum orders to our personal liking. I personally would move the Games and Off-topic sections to the bottom since I rarely if ever use them. Maybe even the order of sections in each forum can be customized; a UK member can put United Kingdom normally at the bottom of Europe all the way to the top for example.
For Continent Subforums
1. I would like another drop-down filter that gives quick access to threads based on categories. Potential categories to include:
- News
- Trip/Reviews
- Species Lists
- Population Statistics
- Rankings
- Guides/Trends
- Speculation
- Trending (recent threads with many pages/replies)
That way threads not just specifically linked to a zoo can be more easily accessed with one of those categories instead of being buried by newer news threads that may not be relevant to the user for example. Some great threads that could be found this way include ones like "Europe's 50 must see zoos" and "Trends in European zoo collections in the 21st century" by
@lintworm, "America's 100 Must See Exhibits" by
@pachyderm pro, "American Herping" by
@Coelacanth18 and many more.
Tags and the search function currently can be used in a similar way to an extent, but I find their reliability finicky and this would anyways be a quicker way to access more threads. Plus it would be hard for new users or visitors to find certain threads without knowing they exist.
Such a feature can possibly be implemented by having member or moderator add a category when creating the new thread, just like they add a zoo tag to new threads. Or maybe there is a way to automatically place a newly created thread into one of those categories based on keywords or specific criteria? Not sure about the technical aspects of all this.
2. The zoo drop-down filter should only show zoos that have threads created. Many zoos don't have any and may never have them and they just take up space when scrolling through the drop-down to find the zoo you want to filter (its especially an issue on mobile). When on the page for creating a new thread however, the unused zoos would show up in the drop-down when adding a tag.
3. The ability for users to pin a certain number of thread to the top of the subforums could be a nice feature.
For Gallery
1. Currently when clicking on either a continent folder or a country folder, nothing shows up. I feel these folders should show the recent photos that have been uploaded to that particular continent/country. For example an Australian user might want to see just the recent photos uploaded to Australia and New Zealand and not have to click through dozens of pages showing recent uploads from US and Japanese zoos, so having Oceania show that would be a way to filter out the unwanted zoos.
2. While I don't think its practical to break down each zoo gallery based on exhibit or species, I would like to see a way to filter actual photos taken at zoos vs "zoo memorabilia" (ie scans of maps, brochures, postcards, master plans, books etc).
For example
@snowleopard has uploaded thousands of map scans randomly over the last few years including dozens for particular zoos, But these maps are often now peppered distances apart throughout the particular zoo gallery. If a filter was added, all those maps can now be seen close together. Alternatively, someone who is interested in only seeing actual zoo photos can filter those map scans and similar media out.
Rather than adding more subfolders, maybe this idea could be implemented with a drop-down filter in the gallery page? Or break the gallery webpage into two sections, a larger one for the zoo uploads and a smaller one containing the non-zoo photos?
3. I would also like to see a way to filter by upload year. The large zoos have dozens if not hundreds of pages and its pretty much impossible to filter a specific year so if I would want to see photos uploaded in 2017 from Chester Zoo for example, it would be very difficult since its somewhere lost in the middle of a gallery with 500+ pages. Like the zoo/merchandise filter, this could possibly be accomplished with a drop-down. It would also be based on upload year rather than the actual year a photo was taken since this is more practical.
4. For the US, I do agree another subfolder section breaking the zoos into states or even just regions (ie Northeast, Southwest) would be extremely helpful. The US is so large and with so many zoos that its annoying to scroll through all the folders. Its currently the equivalent of lumping all European zoos into just one folder.
While not as big an issue for other countries, similar breakdowns could be implemented to them as well. Australia could be divided by their states and UK could be divided by England, Scotland etc as examples.
This breakdown should probably be exclusive to the galleries and not other parts of the forum (having 50 US subforums based on each state in the North America forum sounds terrible).
5. As with the subforums, hiding galleries that are empty on the main media pages would be a good idea. Of course, when uploading photos those empty galleries should show up as an option in case users have media to upload to them.
6. Please oh please, add an autofill search bar or something similar to the media page for mobile version. The scrolling to find zoo folders here is really frustrating and clicking on those little folder links is a pain, I constantly click on the wrong one.
For Maps (one of the tabs on top)
1. I liked the Maps section and even before officially becoming a member I used it to find smaller zoos in my area. I know Simon mentioned he is working on fixing the broken functionality on it.
Besides that, this section contains more than just a map of a countries zoos, its also a database of sorts. Should the tab be renamed or should all that additional info outside the map be moved to a new "Zoo Database" section of the forum? I definitely would like to see an expansion of the zoo database. Zoochat is essentially the only global zoo discussion forum out there and having a continually growing zoo database would be relevant. Most of the elements are already there, they just need to be updated.
2. Simon already discussed this as something he wants to do, but being able to add zoos to the database without having to create a forum tag/media folder would be great. This would be a helpful way to add zoos that may never get a discussion thread or media upload to the database without creating clutter in the media and forums. Closed zoos could also be added for historic reference, and certainly most of those will never get photos or threads added to them (there are many dozens of empty galleries in the US media folder that are for closed facilities for example).
3. Breakdowns on the selected zoos that show number of media uploaded, if they have News, Species Lists, etc created and similar statistics. Some aspects of this already exists right now as you can go to the zoo in Maps and click on the Forum to see all threads but this would give numbers and more details.
4. It would be cool if the database could show which members visited which zoos. Maybe how it would work is members would be able to go to a zoo in the database and click a checkbox or something similar indicating they visited this zoo. The database would have a counter that would show how many members visited the particular zoo and other members could actually see the list of who visited in case they want to PM those members to discuss the zoo. Even just having the statistics on which zoos are the most visited by members of the site would be pretty neat.
