Dysfunctional site

I think the designers had bigger eyes than their code ability… Search function is difficult last time I searched in XJ40 …XJs stuff comes up some nonsense of jag journal with topics totally unrelated… sad sad sad
I suspect you have lost some of your members and annoyed others who are forced to adapt… site needs much improvement it is not intuitive also colors are a bit fairy dust light severely lacking any contrast… it is usually trued coders programmers should never design a GUI
15 characters for a site??? WHY… odd at best

As my daughters would say, “Now that’s random.”

Thanks for the feedback.

Some users took a while to get used to the new platform, it has it’s quirks, but as far as I can tell most find it an improvement over the old one. @Nick and @gunnar spent a long time evaluating potential forum software, and the new software (https://www.discourse.org/) was the best in terms of migrating the old site (1.8 Mio. posts, going back to the original mailing list of the early '90s). The software was also available for members to try and provide feedback on, but few actually looked at the trial site.

There is a user guide category with help information: #user-guides-and-how-tos, and you can also run an automated tutorial, see: Headsup: New online tutorial facility

The search is one of the features which is much better than the old site. Could you send me a screen shot of the search you tried on XJ40? If search is in fact ignoring filters then I will report that to the developers and they will provide a fix in short order. (my bug reports and suggestions for adding functionality to the search have been very quickly addressed in the 9 months or so that I’ve been providing feedback.)

There was some work on implementing user display themes back in the spring, but they ran into some issues and are working on it. A high contrast theme was one of the aims there, and once available we will implement that.

The 15 character limit does seem to be a thorn for some users. I think it’s a decent value, if we shorten it much more then titles will become cryptic, meaning that users would have to open the thread to figure out what it is about. Thread titles need to be unique, but also informative. Imagine trying to reassemble a restoration where all the storage bags or boxes have been marked “Bits, 1a”, “Bits, 2a”, “more Bits”, “Important Bits” - you’d spend most of your time opening and examining the content of your storage, rather than bolting bits onto the shell.

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I have to agree with Andrew. I wish you would have given your feedback back when we were testing out various forum software packages and were actively soliciting feedback. Thanks though, feedback is always useful.

No one forum software will please everyone, and there’s always something “better” out there. I’m sorry to hear you don’t like this one, but now we’re pretty much stuck with it, at least for the foreseeable future. I spent an entire week off from work (over Thanksgiving break last year) implementing the move to this forum software, I’m not too keen on doing it again. That said, if you have a better suggestion, and can help fund what it would cost to hire someone to perform another move, I’m sure we’d consider it. Please just keep in mind that with close to 2 million forum messages and over 100,000 members (41,000 active), it’s not a trivial task. And of course, it all has to happen while the site is up and running, with around 25,000 page views per day.

Like Andrew said, we’ll be happy to look into the search problem if you can provide a little more detail, it’s one of the most important functions of the site.

As for design, contrast and so on, could you post a link to a forum site that looks better to your eyes? If we have something concrete to start from, perhaps we can create a “skin” more to your liking.

The developers whom you dislike and disparage so much, are actually a community of developers, designers and UI experts. I suspect their tastes may run a little more modern than what you’re used to, but that’s the natural evolution of the web. You can find more information, and voice your displeasure directly to them, here:

Thanks,
Gunnar

I think that there are many good parts to the new site and I would just like to express my thanks and appreciation for all of the work that you, Andrew and any others that contributed have put in. I know you can’t please everyone. Illigetimi non carborundum.

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One useful feature which I think is partially implemented would be for very long threads to be broken up into pages.

I did notice that if a thread grew very quickly, e.g. the “show pictures of your favourite car” thread, then the whole thread had to be reloaded every time someone added to it, just so you could see the last entry. What would be great would be for a thread to load just a little before where the user last opened it, but I guess that would mean recording who has viewed what and storing that for at least the short term.

kind regards
Marek

HEY!!! You been spying on some of my car projects??

:joy::joy::joy:

Interesting. I think thread does remember what a user last looked at (provided he is permanently logged in)–so the information you mention is available. But, also, I think the entire thread does load. I also noticed that, for long threads, my browser’s “slider” at the far right of the screen seems to get overwhelmed. But a similar slider within the site works fine.

Andrew. You can please most of the people most of the time (sorry Abe) and for that we should be grateful… but some of the people you will never please and they usually start their bark in with a broadside.
The site is great and serves the purpose… even if some find their purpose in nitpicking!
Trev

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