I did fiddle around with them yesterday to provide better contrast between a couple of adjacent topics, make OT and CE shades of gray so they faded back a bit from horse-related topics in the Latest view, and black just seemed right for Tech Help.
I was considering some sort of āPick Your Category Colorā voting event in each forum at some point, if anyone cares. Iām open to it if anyone wants to organize itā¦and there arenāt any clear reasons to avoid doing it that Iām not thinking of.
If these pics load in the right order, the first one is from yesterday. The rest are from today. The format is a little different in that today, the info is not laid out exactly the same way, and it has column headers.
Also, the icon to upload photos is at the top today, but until now it has been near the lower right corner of the reply box for me. And the next screen that pops up after that also has changed a little. It seems to involve an extra step now to actually add the photos.
On the bright side, I havenāt been booted off the site yet today. So thatās an improvement. Yay. Knock wood!
@MHM it looks like youāre using the desktop layoutā¦on a mobile device?
That might be the difference youāre seeing. Mobile vs desktop layout. You can switch back by clicking the three line hamburger menu and then āmobile viewā at the bottom.
Yep, just totally reproduced all that by using the desktop view on my phone
I am sorry to have to say this. The new and āimprovedā forum is very difficult to use. The pages tend to jump around all on their own. Logging in is problematic (first time in over a week). Your widget still insists I am ānewā. I still have so-called ānotificationsā that appear to be from years ago. The pages are so ābusyā that my eyes glaze over trying to actually read what someone has posted. There is just too much going on; if you are going to have a discussion forum then perhaps the discussion forum should be the focus of the web page and not real estate spotlights, other advertising, popularity statistics, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. Moreover - it was even very difficult to find where to reply to a post because the innumerable suggestions of other forum topics were aggressively cluttering the page. Mods, I am not exactly without technological experience having run several interactive databases including for a medical facility, along with websites with multiple interactive features; I am, however, unpleasantly disturbed at the difficulty in participating in the forums as newly re-created. While the old forum may have been past its prime, it was strikingly more user friendly. The āimprovedā version may be more webmaster friendly. User friendly, not so much.
Wellllll, someone has to help pay for the play time we get here
You mean, the big dark green Reply box with the big arrow at the bottom of the last reply, or the bit Reply with big arrow at the bottom of every comment, and above the suggested topics section?
To be fair, with so many screenshots in the thread itās difficult to distinguish the real reply button (and other functionality) from the screenshots. Thereās no visual separation or border between a screenshot and the forum background. Hereās a pic of what your post looks like. Which reply button is the real one?
Plenty of people are going to be confused and if they click the wrong one, itās going to open up a picture and thatāll lead to even more confusion. Adding this screenshot is probably going to make things even worse, sorry about that.
To make matters even worseā¦ if I screen shot some text and paste it like this, which text is mine, and which is yours? It would really help if there was some kind of colored border around pics to make it clear that it is a pic.
Text below this line is just a screen shot and not something I typed:
This probably isnāt going to go down wellā¦ but your advertisers pay to advertise to your users. If the forum is too difficult to use and your userbase drops, so will your advertisers. Noone wants to advertise on a site with few users. Iām not saying you have to bend over backwards to cater to your users, but if you disregard their difficulty in using your site, and instead expect them to adapt beyond their abilities, you will lose users and that will ultimately cost you $$ in lost advertising revenue.
The ads are pretty much identical to the ads we had before. We were without ads for several months after the last board imploded, but that sure wasnāt feasible to continue.
Something that I think is pretty cool is how many new names Iāve seen pop up since the switch over. Part of noticing is that itās actually called out when someone is new or has been gone for a long time, but I donāt think itās just itāthere are just a lot of new names. It seems that weāre getting more new & returning posters with this format. Cool, huh?
If new users at the expense of your old loyal ones is something to aim forā¦ then yes I guess thatās cool?
Iām not really an old or frequent user so not talking about myself, just that Iāve seen plenty of what look like long-time posters expressing their difficulty so far.
Iām truly sorry youāre so very unhappy with the new software. But Iāve also noticed that the conversation has died down here in tech help and has really picked up in the discussion forums. No, I seriously doubt COTH is trying to leave anyone behind. But a lot of people seem to be using the site and getting back into the swing of things. Mod1 has made it clear that the possibility of alternative themes to tone down some graphical elements that a few have reported as overwhelming is on the table once the devs work through the bigger ticket items. COTH has really been incredibly responsive to feedback.
Iām neither here nor there about it to be honest. I wouldnāt say that I like the new format but Iām not a regular user of this forum so it doesnāt really affect me.
ThereasanAppfurthat does appear to be a regular user and JBās patronising reply to someone who appears to be struggling was a smidge uncalled for IMPO. Iām not sure if JB is affiliated with the forum or not, it kinda feels like they are just by the tone of their posts, so I guess Iām just expressing concern if thatās the vibe coming from owners/moderators/staff/volunteers on behalf of coth.
It looks to me like you were not logged in for the first screenshots, and you were logged in for the second ones. If you look at your first screenshot, your avatar (which is just an M since I guess you havenāt uploaded one) is missing and there is a link to log in.
On the flip side, many of the long-time users did express difficulty initially and, as theyāve used the new software (based on Discourse) many have come to appreciate the flexibility and features of the new platform.
Any new software will have a learning curve associated with it and many of us, including Mod1 and the Dev team, were expecting a bit of a bumpy start as people started using the new COTH forums. I personally have been impressed with the response by both Mod1 and Dev to addressing the more time critical problems. Iām also anticipating that as the more critical problems get resolved, weāll see some of our wish list features being addressed.
Adsā¦ they are here to stay because someone has to pay the bills. At least on this new software, the perfomance other than the first few days, has been consistently stellar.
Iām in no way affiliated with anything having to do with running the forum. Iām a long-time member who has been through a LOT of forum upgrades that people didnāt like in the beginning.
I was not patronizing, but neither do I usually take time to add smilies and other things to make doubly extra sure nobody is offended (which some people actually do despite their actual words being very patronizing or condescending, as if a makes it all better).
Itās like my husband looking in the fridge for 12 minutes looking for eggs, says he canāt find them, and I say āyou mean these eggs right behind the pickles?ā - no snark or patronizing intended.
I find the Reply options very, very obvious, especially the one with a dark green box around it. Thatās all.
I realize screen shots of just text, let alone screen shots showing snippets of the regular forum, run together with āliveā text. But most of the time youāre not looking at screen shots, and I thought Iād just point out the 2 reply buttons.
I did fiddle around with them yesterday to provide better contrast between a couple of adjacent topics, make OT and CE shades of gray so they faded back a bit from horse-related topics in the Latest view, and black just seemed right for Tech Help.
