Home Page Redesign

super_furry

I like it. Good job.

dori_dormer

I agree with a lot of the above, especially the home page I dont like all the extra clicking. makes the home page practically useless to us lurkers and wanderers.

also

Thread titles dont seem to 'un-bold' like they used to when you've read all the posts in the thread. A few times now Ive clicked on a thread and realised Id read all the posts. Very annoying. Unless theres some new indicator Im missing?

Also a few threads have for example said 4 posts, 2 thanks when in fact theres only 2 posts in the thread and 0 thanks. Some kind of counting issue?

Also when you clicked on 'my forums' on the top right it used to display the 'my forums tab' now it does nothing. I used that all the time.

Toto Wolfcastle

Boards.ie: Rónán wrote: »

This is a bug, we'll do our best to get it sorted asap, Thanks for the heads up

It's working for me now, but not for my husband. Just so you know.

Boards.ie: Rónán

dori_dormer wrote: »

Thread titles dont seem to 'un-bold' like they used to when you've read all the posts in the thread. A few times now Ive clicked on a thread and realised Id read all the posts. Very annoying. Unless theres some new indicator Im missing?

Thread links never acted like this on the homepage

Also a few threads have for example said 4 posts, 2 thanks when in fact theres only 2 posts in the thread and 0 thanks. Some kind of counting issue?

Haven't encountered anything like that so far, but will keep an eye out. Any particular tab?

Also when you clicked on 'my forums' on the top right it used to display the 'my forums tab' now it does nothing. I used that all the time.

Fix incoming for this one

wnolan1992

The "Posted [TIME] by [USER] in [FORUM]" thing.

Could the TIME be replaced by the actual timestamp? "A moment ago" or "Less than 1 min ago" repeated for 6+ threads on the home page is annoying IMO.

Morag

IS there away to set my forums as the default?

I contour with the points being made about the lack of time/date stamp,
to much space, not enough content and why the thanks?

seamus

Chrome 27 is working for me now, Win 7 x64

Yeah, I'd be on the pro-timestamp side too. Never been a fan of the "about an hour ago", "a month ago" timestamp stuff that's become very popular, I prefer exact timestamps. There's probably some UX theory behind it though and I'd imagine it's a non-trivial change at this point.

testicle

OK, that looks horrible.

Boards.ie: Rónán

seamus wrote: »

Chrome 27 is working for me now, Win 7 x64

We got a fix live there a few minutes ago, thanks everyone for the heads up and patience. Any further issues don't hesitate to drop over to site dev and let us know.

Rabies

No need for a thanks count either I think.

For me the default view should be latest posts. I like to browse other forums.

wnolan1992

Working now.

I like the new tabs, but I would move Trending over to before Thanks. I don't think it makes sense to have it after Latest Posts.

The "Latest Posts - My Forums - My Threads - Trending - Thanks" configuration would be better IMO.

Also, nice work on the "All Topics" drop down. great feature.

partyatmygaff

wnolan1992 wrote: »

The "Posted [TIME] by [USER] in [FORUM]" thing.

Could the TIME be replaced by the actual timestamp? "A moment ago" or "Less than 1 min ago" repeated for 6+ threads on the home page is annoying IMO.

Not to mention pointless.

With the amount of posts made on the site throughout the day, you might as well have "Less than 1 min ago" as a static object under each thread.

Mr E

Now that you've fixed the tabs, I like it. Good job guys....

kayos

Boards.ie: Rónán wrote: »

The thread links on the homepage never functioned as described above. If you click on the postcount it'll take you to the last unread post of the thread, just like before.

No but it had the little icon beside the thread title to do it. We did not have to click on post count

lindascribbler

Stupid question - do I have to be logged in to read forums?
When I open the boards link I get a blank page now and it looks as if I have to log in to read. I haven't read all the info on your upgrade so this may be already covered.

I am pie

Boards Announcements strikes me as a grevious waste of space, those are fairly static threads and don't merit such a large and prominent portion of the screen.

Boards.ie: Nicola

lindascribbler wrote: »

Stupid question - do I have to be logged in to read forums?
When I open the boards link I get a blank page now and it looks as if I have to log in to read. I haven't read all the info on your upgrade so this may be already covered.

Which link are you referring to?

Call Me Jimmy

Two things:

When I click a link it brings me to the first page of the thread rather than the last read.

Also, an opinion: the forum of the post should be much more prominent. I usually filter things I want to read by scanning the forum names.

Sofiztikated

Links don't unbold after I've read them now.

And don't say they didn't, because they did.

Boards.ie: Nicola

I am pie wrote: »

Boards Announcements strikes me as a grevious waste of space, those are fairly static threads and don't merit such a large and prominent portion of the screen.

That section will also be used for competitions, as you can see we have been making more of an effort to put dynamic content in the Announcements forum-the likes of Q's News being a prime example.

It is envisioned that the widget will be far more active and useful in the future, hence it taking a prominent position.

HelpImAlive

Is there any way we can change back to the old homepage? This one doesn't show all the "new post" threads like the last one and I don't really like it..

Dav

We've already mentioned that a big part was the make the page look a lot less like an Excel file - if anyone suggest that the home page of any website should look like that then I'm afraid that I must disagree with you with every fibre of my being. Our old home page looked horrible. It was build by developers, not created by designers and we've fixed that. Our designers are extremely capable people (and are all Boardsies) and aren't going to make suggestions they don't think will work.

12 posts isn't enough - this is obviously the biggest thing people are saying. It's a big difference from seeing 50 in a list, but we are trying to tidy up what was a mass of text. Most people who've been here a while won't have a problem with how the home page looked, but if you're new here and you see that, it's cluttered and un-organised looking. This is what people have told us, we're not making it up So lessening the initial "blast" of threads combined with a bigger call to action to get people to either sign in or register is a major part of why some of the design decisions we've made have been taken.

For existing members, I can guarantee you that we're going to see what we can do to tweak this or flat out change it. I don't know what'll happen, I will have some input, as will Nicola, Niamh, Rónán, Danny, Alvis, Gordon, Derek and JD (the designers) and most importantly you. I don't think it unfair to suggest that we haven't got a bad track record in trying to find a satisfactory result on design changes that people weren't wild about in the past and so lets just keep that in mind.

One of the big benefits of this now being completely disconnected from VBulletin is that making changes to the page will be a lot more straight forward.

Finally, can I just point out that this thread started in April and we've gone ahead with the current design based on some of the feedback that we got then. I'm not for one second trying to play this as a get out of jail card, but we didn't get a huge amount of feedback at the time (certainly no mention of 12 posts being a problem from anyone), so this is what we rolled out with. We have some work to do on making sure we get these things more notice though, so I'll put my hand up there and make sure that I try harder the next time we would like your input.

So keep in mind that all your feedback will be read and factored in to a review internally, but obviously enough I can't say what will happen or even when it will happen.

Mountjoy Mugger

First reaction. Absolute crap.

Sofiztikated

Hey Dav.

I appreciate that you are trying to redesign the site to be more welcoming, but I feel that it has added to the wall of text, not taken away from it.

The Talk To... Box is massive, condensing the text, and there's a lot more text in and around the thread title.

Now the tabs are fixed, looks a lot better.

+1 on the timestamp needed.

Mickeroo

That was quick, that looks much better now. Fair play guys!

wnolan1992

Dav wrote: »

12 posts isn't enough - this is obviously the biggest thing people are saying. It's a big difference from seeing 50 in a list, but we are trying to tidy up what was a mass of text. Most people who've been here a while won't have a problem with how the home page looked, but if you're new here and you see that, it's cluttered and un-organised looking. This is what people have told us, we're not making it up So lessening the initial "blast" of threads combined with a bigger call to action to get people to either sign in or register is a major part of why some of the design decisions we've made have been taken.

Couldn't this be (relatively) easily fixed by adding a dropdown by "All Topics" where you can select the number of threads to display? 12, 20, 30, 60? Store it as a cookie a la posts/page and problem solved.

Victor

Dav wrote: »

Logged In
https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/213423/260853.jpg

Looks like lots of white space. Is that screen shot from a very large screen?

This is what I got for the bottom half of the page after about 30 seconds.

lindascribbler

Boards.ie: Nicola wrote: »

Which link are you referring to?

www.boards.ie

And now that I have actually logged in forums and trending wont open

Dav

Sofiztikated wrote: »

I appreciate that you are trying to redesign the site to be more welcoming, but I feel that it has added to the wall of text, not taken away from it.

The Talk To... Box is massive, condensing the text, and there's a lot more text in and around the thread title.

That's actually a banner ad and it's been on the page for a while. It's a space we do sell, but we're making a push on Talk To forums at the moment. So it's content will change over time (but it's the same size as what was there yesterday, so that hasn't changed).

wnolan1992 wrote: »

Couldn't this be (relatively) easily fixed by adding a dropdown by "All Topics" where you can select the number of threads to display? 12, 20, 30, 60? Store it as a cookie a la posts/page and problem solved.

This has been suggested by a couple of people, it certainly seems like a handy solution, but we'll have to see exactly how easy or difficult it is to implement before saying if it'll happen or not.