New forum Style

[quote:3496ace15f="PentaxDan"]even a simple news story took a lot of effort to add! quote]

Tip.

Post new thread in Announcements.

Job done.

Aha so am I now! It wasn't doing that earlier. Hooray. I really like looking at the photos this way. A definite plus point for the new forum

The people who put this mess together can't even spell the company's name:

"Magezine Publishing Ltd". (Bottom right on every page).

Says it all, really.

if I explain, maybe you'd understand - mag - ezine as in electronic zine.

You can also look at every picture uploaded by one member rather than trying to go through forum posts in a crappy way trying to find them. Only having a method of posting pics in forums is lazy way for the forum developer to have a gallery.

Can I just ask that those complaining let the dust settle before they get too upset? We've had the same experience on another site we rebuilt...and after a few weeks every single person who'd complained either got what they'd asked for or realised that they were wrong to complain and that we'd actually seen a better way forward and they now love it...it's often the comfy carpet slipper scenario.

Sadly, this isn't a typo.

http://www.magezinepublishing.com/

(sic)

I think it's a 'clever' play on the word "ezine" - "electronic magazine".

Fortunately we do know our company name!

No, that's spelled perfectly. That's the name of the company.

Dan

Although the non-forum part of the site certainly needed an update, the forum itself used one of the best examples of message board software. There was absolutely no need to change it, and it is unfortunate that this "for profit" organisation has wasted money making a sow's ear out of a silk purse.

G

And how would you have known to fix the things that were wrong, if people hadn't complained?

You just have to suck it up if you want the right result.

Well, at least one thing is clever.

G

[quote:3496ace15f="Daniel Bridge"]
I have to say I felt there was a dealine the guys were working to. I also have to say that this forum is essentially a business. It's run by Magezine Publishing Ltd, it's not a charitable home for Pentaxians, so it's only fair and reasonable for them to try to cover the costs of, and make money from, the business.

I do get the fact that it is a business, I just don't get how making things a lot harder to use would helps that business. More visitors = more advertising revenue. Alienating people makes them leave. I agree, seems rushed to a deadline.

It's also obvious to me the the 'business owners' are not avid 'Pentax Users' just accountants. There's a difference between better user experience and totally screw up the user experience. The better side of me wants to see businesses have ethics and GENUINELY think of their customers, not just the bottom line. Sadly this is true in every walk of life these days.



I must have missed a trick here, still can't work out the how and why there are 2 totally different contrasting galleries. Now the forum competition is being removed from the forum and placed into a gallery I knew nothing about!

I would too, but seriously I'm justing finding it such a pain in the neck to find them it's incredible.

Why did the powers-that-be not have the courtesy to warn people that it was coming? And then explain some of the new improved features (if such there be).

G

"Giving the site a good go" will not change views on the new design, in the same way that keeping on using a poor tool doesn't make the tool, or the experience, any better.

This new layout is just so dire. Probably my last visit.

Ray.

By the way, I raised a report, like they asked. I think the response deserves to be in the public domain, since I don't want to end up having the same discussion twice:

[quote="I"]Fixing the forum content width and enforcing a 550px inline image size is a really bad decision, I believe.

The content should resize with the browser, for a start, and if there has to be an image size limit, it should be 800px at least - preferably 1000px.

People have mostly learned not to post enormous images, so it's not an issue.[/quote]The response:

[quote="They"]Have you considered those on resolution of 1024x768? Believe it or not, we receive quite alot of traffic to the site on this resolution.[/quote]To which I replied:

[quote="I"]And have they been complaining about not being able to see the images? I'd have expected to see this in the forum itself if they had been.

As it is, we've had endless discussion about this very subject on the forum itself over the last year and a half.

This is why the weekly competitions are subject to a max size of 800px on any dimension - and it seems to suit pretty much everyone, or at least be the best compromise.

Even outside the comps, mostly people now post 800px as a max.

So why you need to summarily change it - and in a way that completely ruins a lot of the images when they're resized, I'm at a loss to understand.[/quote]

Glad you like it so much
We've been meaning to convert the site from the unsafe Phb bb forum into a custom built and totally spam proof system for a long time, but because this is not about profit we've had to balance it with the elements of the business that are profit based.

The usual thing is if you make the slightest change you will upset people. It happens all the time, but if you give it time to become familiar and suggest things that you found useful with the old system, rather than be insulting, we will accomodate everything we can. So we have a safe, and much more integrated system than a quickly pushed together forum that didn't have a good gallery system or user profile option. We're just bringing the site up to today's standards.