Thank you to all the members who provided feedback in the last entry where I discussed general thoughts on the site categorization. To recap, we are upgrading the site software in the near future and have been reviewing the current GameDev.net content categorization, which has been bascially the same since 1999.
Your feedback helped us identify areas for improvement, so I have an update on our latest thoughts and would appreciate more discussion from the community. Focusing on the forums first, we're considering the following structure:
- Audio
- Music and Sound
- Business
- Career Development (currently: Games Industry Job Advice)
- Production and Management
- Business, Marketing, and Law (currently: Business and Law)
- Community
- GDNet Lounge
- Coding Horrors
- GDNet CSI
- Your Announcements
- Indie Showcase
- Hobby Project Classifieds
- Game Design
- Game Design
- Writing for Games
- UX for Games (if needed)
- Programming
- AI
- Game Programming
- General Programming
- Graphics Programming
- Math & Physics
- Networking and Multiplayer
- Visual Arts
- 2D and 3D Art
- 2D and 3D Art
- AI
- Game Design
- GDNet Lounge
- Career Development (currently: Games Industry Job Advice)
- Music and Sound
The most dramatic change is probably the Graphics forum(s), but the same solution we'll use there will be applicable to every other forum. Since all Graphics related discussion would go into one forum, we'd organize through predefined Prefixes that are specific to the Forum. For instance, if you have a post about DirectX, then a "DX11" or "DX12" prefix might be used. If you have a general graphics question or discussion, then you might not use a prefix. Or maybe you want to discuss a research paper and use the prefix "Research" or "R&D".
These prefixes will be predefined and selectable when creating a post. And as I mentioned, every other forum would have prefixes available to select in order to narrow down the topic to something more specific.
The nice thing about using prefixes is that they are searchable and can be used as filters on the backend, so we can create a "Vulkan Hub" to show you all things related to Vulkan.
Tags will also be available, and we're considering making them predefined as well. However, tags would be a little more topic specific in definition. For instance, we're considering tags for things like "Mobile", "Unity", "Unreal", "Lumberyard", "Cocos", "HTML5", "Android", "iOS", etc. Things that can span multiple categories but may be too specific for its own forum.
Between the categories, prefixes, and tags, GameDev.net should become completely searchable, filterable, and in theory all members should be able to easily find content on any combination of topics.
Should we combine any other forums? Any that are missing or should be added? Any other thoughts on these changes under consideration? Please let us know in the comments below.