View Full Version : How can we improve the forum?
The new forum seems to be settling down nicely, with a recent surge of visitors - thanks to all who participate!
If there is anything we can do to assist members generally to do business here, then please let us know.
Regards to all!
Dale & Simon Hubbard
invincible
13-07-12, 05:59 PM
A few personal observations:
I like that the forum uses the new vB software. I like the lack of advertising and other unnecessary things bolted on.
Things I am not so keen on right now:
I find it annoying that I'm logged out so soon. I'd prefer not to be or to be given the choice not to be! I appreciate the fact that some forums are within other forums, although I prefer configurations where it isn't possible to post in the parent forum as well (i.e. the parent forum is left as a category only). This prevents me from overlooking posts within the parent forum that are located below the child forum links, where I need to scroll, at the top. One of the other problems when using categories to store forums is the "Last post" on the overall main page is a little deceiving. By design it can only show the last post across all sub forums rather than the last post from each sub forum. It also doesn't mention which sub forum the last post is within until the post is clicked. I think it may be possible to custom improve this. I think I might also prefer slightly stronger contrasting colours on text. The light blue and grey seem a little faint for me.
I hope this is of interest. :)
GreyWing
13-07-12, 08:30 PM
I agree with Invincible, I'd stop people posting in parent categories. Even for forum veterans, navigating this place and finding posts can get a bit confusing.
At moment can usually find it through last post but if forum gets busier finding stuff could be a real pain.
For me the speed of the forum is a major issue using firefox, it took around 60 seconds for the site to load on this visit and the css never seems to load correctly for me on first load, images all screwed up. I visit multiple times a day but mainly do it on my mobile as it's so much faster but isn't really the best way for replying etc.
Grant
Chrome loads quick and fine - not helpful I know - but would indicate error for FF.
Browsershots.org is decent to test on multi screen sizes / browsers etc etc.
Thanks all - we'll be installing a vBulletin upgrade over the next couple of days and will address these issues after that process.
Latest vB installed. Now looking at tweaks...
We have changed the main forums into categories and moved threads accordingly, but there's an issue with nesting the sub-forums on the home page which will be addressed soon.
davedevelopment
15-07-12, 12:46 PM
Just for info, I use FF on the site all day in my office, don't have any problems with performance or rendering.
invincible
15-07-12, 07:30 PM
Just for info, I use FF on the site all day in my office, don't have any problems with performance or rendering.
I currently use Chrome and Firefox. Trying this now with latest Firefox under Windows and am not appearing to have any performance or rendering problems either! Grant, has this improved for you?
invincible
15-07-12, 07:35 PM
We have changed the main forums into categories and moved threads accordingly, but there's an issue with nesting the sub-forums on the home page which will be addressed soon.
Dale, what is the exact issue you're experiencing? I see that the conventional way of displaying each forum individually is now in operation. The downside that I am aware of is that this does make the overall length of the forum (top to bottom) much longer than the nested way within categories. It's something that I have mulled over when comparing the two methods and have wondered if there could he a happy medium between the two. Any thoughts? :)
Dale, what is the exact issue you're experiencing? I see that the conventional way of displaying each forum individually is now in operation. The downside that I am aware of is that this does make the overall length of the forum (top to bottom) much longer than the nested way within categories. It's something that I have mulled over when comparing the two methods and have wondered if there could he a happy medium between the two. Any thoughts? :)
We've tried it a number of ways, but the current display method seems to make the most sense.
Must be a FF add-on issue or something for me then. Once I've visited the site it runs quickly. If I go away and clear the cache I've then got a 60 second+ wait for it to initially load again.
Grant
It seems to work perfectly for me now. I couldn't see more than 5 or 6 posts in the past using taptalk.
Now I can see everything. Woohoo.
Have to admit it looks good on a mobile even without taptalk. Very clean and fits the screen well. But glad taptalk is working now.
Must be a FF add-on issue or something for me then. Once I've visited the site it runs quickly. If I go away and clear the cache I've then got a 60 second+ wait for it to initially load again.
Grant
Are you still having problems Grant?
Are you still having problems Grant?
My Firefox updated this morning and things seem a lot better, there's the odd occassion where it's a bit slow but much better than it was.
Cheers, Grant
Grant, were you accessing from your normal workstation?
http://gfxzone.planet-d.net/articles/zx_spectrum_graphics-pentagon_128.jpg
Grant, were you accessing from your normal workstation?
http://gfxzone.planet-d.net/articles/zx_spectrum_graphics-pentagon_128.jpg
:) I've added a couple of 16k ram-packs since then, proper fast!
When visiting the forum via typing in the domain, I've noticed it automatically forwards me to /activity.php rather than the list of forums and sub-forums on /forum.php. It does this whether logged in or out, so for non-members the activity stream could look confusing compared to the correct homepage.
Not sure about anyone else, and the homepage is only a click away so not really a big issue, however I personally think it would be better forwarding everyone to /forum.php not /activity.php. :)
Hi. I'm not sure how it changed over to activity.php but we've switched it back to forum.php now, as agree it's less confusing for first time visitors.
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