What would you like to see on Nairaland?
As a good Nigerian who wishes well for his fellow man, I really would love to see enviable changes on Nairaland in terms of appearance, features and services offered. Since there has not been any noticeable changes and upgrade for a long time, I am proposing the following and please, you may add your own suggestion and why you think it should be considered. Please no bad belle o.

We want to catapault Nairaland from the present level to the next level of ‘international’ and money making social platform like its peers - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, My Space, etc

Nairaland has over a million members, yet we remain stucked to a wallpaper homepage that reminds one of NTA 2's 1993 TV card board wallpaper. It’s time to upgrade (make e no be like say na only complain I sabi). I have therefore proposed the following and I enjoin my fellow change-mongers to contribute sincerely so we can be more proud of our very own Nairaland representing WAZOBIA home and abroad.

1. Like, dislike, rating - Almost all online media and social sites use these to show like or dislike for comments. Youtube, cbc.ca, CNN, BBC, disqus, etc I think it will be a welcome development (I'd give more reason soon)

2. Nairaland search tool (using # or ##) - Facebook copied Twitter 2 months ago using '#' to search mainstream on the social media. I once tried to search for my favourite people on Nairaland (names withheld for security reasons ) but it was near impossible; I was referred to Google. With '#' or '##', it might be possible to get exact search items. Please get your developers to work on it.

3. Email - I think Nairaland should have a way to make people open emails instead of sending mail requests to our email boxes. Something like delors@nairaland.com Aint that cool? Memebers should be able to have an account for mail services.

4. Image/profile photo - I know this created a sort of controversy a while back when Nairaland tried to introduce but I tell you it is important as it adds more colour and live to the forums. It is not a must one uses his/her/it's real image but image is cool. Make room for it. Whoever wants to upload can do so. With time, the people will get used to it and it becomes a no-issue. It adds more seriousness to our dear Nairaland.

5. Feeds - whenever I open Nairaland, it is the same dry wall paper of FP topics listing. Nothing is moving! While this is not bad, I think there should be a part of the FP where hot topics that cannot make it to FP can be showing like flash vids on the side like Facebook, notjustok.com, 360nobs, breakingnews.com etc I 'll explain better. For instance, if there are say 10 more topics that are hot but no room on FP, let them slide in a small segment of either the right or left side of the homepage. This might not work for all devices 9especially phones) but for users of laptop, handhelds ipads etc, there is nothing cooler. (I am pretty sure you know the devices that access your site, if not, check woopra.com

6. Side bars - The sides of the wall on homepage dedicated to ads are redundant and wasting away. Fill them up with better things. Live feeds for instance, Nairalander of the month/week, comment of the week, topic/week etc With the 'rating' tool, you can get highest commenter or most viewed topic of the week.

Over to you guys. Apps developers, business developers, creative thinkers, idealists, realists, engineers, computer scientists, bloggers (and aspiriing bloggers), your constructive views are strongly welcome. Let us make our own great!

_{Wanna see Seun rubbing shoulders with the Zuckerbergs and co.}


Thanks.

7 Comment page numbers - I have a problem with the comment pages. Why do we have page 1, 2 ... 11,499? Why can't we have a page with all the comments like most social media - Facebook, Twitter, breaking news, livescore, and co? Who's gonna read a comment on page 56 of a topic for instance? Not me anyway. The comments can be on just a page or max 2 pages and so users can scroll down to check comments. If my comment is on page 13 of a 27-paged topic, i am pretty sure nobody would read it. That needs checking as well.

8. Ads - what's up with adds? There seem to be no worthwhile ads on the Nairaland's FP and I keep wondering how NL makes money. My suggestion is that your business managers home and abroad should do more. They dont have to be big companies, little ones and start up companies should be patronized as well and as way of doing charity, you could help some with free ad (if possible). Attend shows where all these business socialites go. They have boutiques home and abroad and they need marketing. Reduce the ads fee, more like charity thing but eventually there would be floods of ads and then you can start making big money from it. So many firms (big and small) dying for ads in Lagos, Abuja, PH, etc and Nigerian ones abroad but high fees scare them off. Re-strategize. Ads dont necessarily have to look like posters, make them light, flash ads so as not to slow down loading.

9. Account Closing - How come there is no provision for this? If i want to delete my account, how can I do that please? Anybody?

On the home page, I honestly would love to see the following changes:

A, we can just have "Nairaland" instead of "Nairaland Forum"

B, The search box is way too big. Reduce it and move it to a strategic angle on the page. Also, if there is a way the search can first be restricted to Nairaland mainstream before going Google, that' ll be cool. For instance, if I typed 'delors' in the search box, it leads me to Google. Why not Nairaland first?

C. We could just have "Forum" on that bar removing both "Nairaland and Nigerian" because the "Nigerian" there serves no purpose. We have topics and sections for international news, sports, etc so this is not about Nigeria alone any longer, we are 'international'.

D, Wouldn't mind having to place my image (maybe not mine sha ) somewhere close to my ID.

E, I think the segment for the topics is too wide. Reduce it to create room for other stuffs.

F, The left side could be for ads arranged in a colum downward or arrange in 2 columns downward while

G, for live feeds of trending topics, something something of the week/month etc...stuffs people could click to see whats up in the section especially those sections people rarely patronise.

H, when you click on a link (not the topic/comment links), music, video or ads for instance, let it open in a new tab otherwise you are forcing people to leave Nairaland page if the clicked link opens in the same tab.

I, Why do we have everything on FP underlined? Just curious
J, and please 'remix' the colours. They are dry and unattractive

Cool dont forget to:
add the 'unregister button;
make a post escape being hidden by adding a disclaimer so people can sue and be sued;
make me a mod;
allow us to send direct messages.
More coming....

We could just have "Forum" on that bar removing both "Nairaland and Nigerian" because the "Nigerian" there serves no purpose

i assume the op is not nigerian.

I totally agree with U man. 1. First of All The background colour must especially Shud b changed. 2. We shud b able to see who liked our posts. 3. Live chat with members if that's possible. 4. Dislike button shud b available so that it'd b easy for the mods to ban the Montessori nairaland kids, the first to Comment Crew, the Likes seekers, Garri crew, just pasin by gang, space bookers and those derailing topics.

tpia@:


i assume the op is not nigerian.

Full blood. Lagos born. I mean we have news and basically foreign news most of the time on FP and in sections so 'Nigerian' in that bar doesnt seem to catch the full content of the forum. we could simply have 'Forum'.

delors:
Full blood. Lagos born. I mean we have news and basically foreign news most of the time on FP and in sections so 'Nigerian' in that bar doesnt seem to catch the full content of the forum. we could simply have 'Forum'.

Very incorrect.

I dont know if foreign news dominates frontpage but where are you seeing foreign news in politics section, or are you referring to the "nigerians deported from other countries" as the foreign news in question.

And even at that, still relatively little interest, so to speak.


You sound very suspect, however, you can carry on.

@Tpia Look at the screen shot posted by delors, the first and second are foreign news. I can count 5 foreign news on that FP topics.
And on today's FP, I can still count several foreign news on Egypt, Iran, Venezuela hair , Czech etc etc
I think delors has a point there.

^ i counted three directly unambiguous foreign news threads on his screenshot, out of a total of roughly 17 fp threads.




the rest:

2 foreign news involving nigerians (botwana deports nigerians, obama invites jonathan for talks)

2 general threads (virgin mary, facts of life- dont know if the mary thread should be considered foreign news, the posters seem to be mostly nigerians).

the rest of the threads are nigerian write ups, about nigeria.

however, he should carry on, like i said, no need to derail the topic. I simply asked for clarification about his statement that nairaland is not a nigerian site.

tpia@:
^ i counted three directly unambiguous foreign news threads on his screenshot, out of a total of roughly 17 fp threads.




the rest:

2 foreign news involving nigerians (botwana deports nigerians, obama invites jonathan for talks)

2 general threads (virgin mary, facts of life- dont know if the mary thread should be considered foreign news, the posters seem to be mostly nigerians).

the rest of the threads are nigerian write ups, about nigeria.

however, he should carry on, like i said, no need to derail the topic. I simply asked for clarification about his statement that nairaland is not a nigerian site.

Oh ok. So i didnt say it is not a Nigerian site but that putting Nairaland nigerian forum on that bar might not be cool enough IMO. After all, everybody knows Nairaland is a Nigerian site. Facbook is US, Twitter is US, same with LinkedIn. Skype is Estonian but we really dont see them writing 'US', France, Estonia, etc on their forums. Anyway, its just my opinion.

And when you quote someone or tag someone, the person being quoted or tagged should get a kind of notification so that he/she/it can explore more...

And when you click on the ads, let it open in a new page (new tab) rather than on the nairaland tab.

Op, ur no 2 is called HashTag.



I'd like to see topics that everyone is viewing, like back then.

adaobi123: Wow. This is interesting ! I like your changes !

Also a quote notification would be good too.

really. But for the name time, I just search out my name from the search box.

Emmyk: Op, ur no 2 is called HashTag.

I'd like to see topics that everyone is viewing, like back then.

Yeah, i know it is called hashtag. I am just saying in case Nairaland doesnt want to copy twitter and facebook using just a single hashtag, they could double it

When I click on a link, please let it automatically open in a new tab Even JJC sites know this already

tpia@:


i assume the op is not nigerian.

vampire

I think this is working. I just noticed that you can now do a local search for Nairaland members and topics without being re-directed to Google. Check the base of your page, you'd find 'LOCAL SEARCH'. I can be it is new and in response to this topic. More should be done. And due acknowledgement necessary. Seun never gives credit for such ingenious suggestion. Na wah o.

Let the the pages refresh every 10minutes.

There should be improvement on Notification , display who qoute and like a comment, proper email should be enhanced .

Nice one
Have been thinking of opening a thread like this,
Thanks OP
You even covered every area I thought of plus more.
Jisike

I requested to change my username and seun denied the request telling me about references and popularity. Isn't that violation of my nairaland fundamental and human rights?

I wanna be part of this!

delors: And when you click on the ads, let it open in a new page (new tab) rather than on the nairaland tab.

I like that feature also, and it helps Members or Users to get the ads info without leaving their current page on NairaLand.

But, What if you are on mobile?? I mean browsers with no Java Script?? Actually you can do that youself on your browser.

We want to catapault Nairaland from the present level to the next level of ‘international’ and money making social platform like its peers - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, My Space, etc

Sorry bro, but Nairaland is a Forum, a Nigerian Forum!

The site works great as it is(fast and efficient).

Its not a Social Network.

sarutobi:

Sorry bro, but Nairaland is a Forum, a Nigerian Forum!

The site works great as it is(fast and efficient).

Its not a Social Network.

Exactly!!

Indigenous Social Network is not going to work in this part of World.

See what happened to NaijaPals??

NairaLand Is A Forum !! We Likey!!

baynix:

Exactly!!

Indigenous Social Network is not going to work in this part of World.

See what happened to NaijaPals??

NairaLand Is A Forum !! We Likey!!

what happened to naijapals?