New Topics/Category Organisation Update 20:45 - Post 100

Toto Wolfcastle

Has Topics moved over to the right for everyone else? And Adverts.ie is in the middle?

_Kaiser_

Bobblehead Panda wrote: »

Has Topics moved over to the right for everyone else? And Adverts.ie is in the middle?

Yep same here

El Guapo!

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Well this is the end of Boards for me it was good while it lasted, what next are going to start charging to post here too. Who ever thought this was a good idea I just don't know. Call me when you change it back. Can't find a thing now.

Not sure if serious..........

TerrorFirmer

It's absolutely dreadful.

SimonTemplar

I'm a little baffled why Regional is deemed the only category important enough to get a place in the main menu.

Some of the forums under "Social & Fun" are extremely popular, and things would be improved by moving that to the main menu too.

catallus

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

It's absolutely dreadful.

It really is horrendous, it's like someone told them they need to hide all the forums away from people!

Peregrine

Bobblehead Panda wrote: »

Has Topics moved over to the right for everyone else? And Adverts.ie is in the middle?

Yeah

Hollister11

The topic drop down menu should show the sub topics when you hover over a topic, and not keep every sub topic in the menu even when you looking through a new topic.

Dav

OK, folks, once again, this "Topics in one list" thing is temporary, we're weeks rather than months away from the new site design rolling out, but we might be able to divert some time into making a better listing of the topics. There is a bug that we're trying to track down that will automatically close sub-forums you've opened when you open another section, so that will make a big difference to making sense of the menu.

If you're following forum, they stay in your My Forums list as always and this has been functionallity we've encourage everyone to use for the last number of years, so if you're not doing so, then this might be a good time to try it out. You'll see the Follow Forum button on the top of left of a forum's page.



As you can see from the image, the search bar is designed to do 3 tasks - search for forums, search for members members and of course, content of posts on the site. You should be able to find any of your forums with that too.

I'm really sorry this hasn't gone as smoothly as we wanted, I can assure you all that we did test all this yesterday on our test environment in the office, so I'd ask for your patience whilst we're working on this.

_Kaiser_

Thanks for the update Dav...

With all respect though, if you're going to do something as big as this you can't do it piecemeal.... changing the whole structure of the navigation setup and moving it into a temporary layout for weeks(??) is only going to frustrate and alienate your users and confuse things even more when you eventually change it all again!

You either go 100% with this or you hold off until you're ready to do so. I'm genuinely trying to be constructive but this is a mess and not just because of a few bugs

trellheim

If you are rolling out a new site design in a few weeks why for pete's sake did you blow the gherkin with this particular change beforehand instead of doing it then .... is there some particular annoyed state you want regular users to be in perhaps ?

Smart people would leave a link like "don't like the new look ? ..CLICK HERE to use Classic Boards.ie" but perhaps that's not what this is about.

httpete

Terrible change from a usability perspective.

It now takes a few seconds longer for every single person on this site to get to whatever forum they want to.

And I assume every user here, like myself, views multiple threads on multiple forums on a daily basis and now every single time we want to switch forums it is more awkward.

Lowering usability just so it 'looks nicer'....what year is this? Flash website died out even before HTML5 came in because everyone realised that they were a bigger pain to use than a regular website, even though they looked better.

Surely your team of web devs and designers understand that usability is the most important thing on a website. Its a real pain now having to navigate to a chosen group of subforums to expand them and then naviate to the desired forum. It used to grand just hover, navigate click....please undo this.

The easy access navigation menu was one of the best and most unique features about boards.ie....It put it ahead of every other vbulletin site out there in terms usability and speed of navigation.

SimonTemplar

I agree. Transitioning from a well known layout, to a temporary one lasting only a few weeks, then to another new layout is a strange decision to make.

httpete

MY GOD THIS IS A PAIN. I just decided to visit After Hours straight after posting and...here we go..sigh...hover..navigate....(have to be careful to hover on the correct category or even more time gets wasted)...expand..navigate...click.. Jesus I used to be able to get to After Hours in milliseconds.

And we now have "Talk to"..."Boards.ie" and "Adverts.ie"...getting huge billing at the top. I imagine regular users like myself click these once in a blue moon..."Talk to"..maybe once a year if I've a problem with Meteor. "Boards.ie" a couple of times a year. "Adverts.ie"....just about never as if I'm going to buy or sell something I always go to adverts directly from google. Total waste of space, if you were going to just have 5 categories at the top they should've been Social, Regional, Politics, Sports, Tech. I'd imagine they are by for the most visited categories for your standard user.

Orion

httpete wrote: »

MY GOD THIS IS A PAIN. I just decided to visit After Hours straight after posting and...here we go..sigh...hover..navigate..expand..navigate...click.. Jesus I used to be able to get to after hours in milliseconds.

Follow the forum - then it appears in your My Forums link.

Quazzie

Terrible "update" that seems to have been "terribly" implemented.

My big question though is - Why?

If it aint broke - don't fix it!!!!!

Quazzie

Orion wrote: »

Follow the forum - then it appears in your My Forums link.

Why bother having them up there at all then? If the endgame is that we all navigate the site the same way, why is there an alternative at all?

I had hoped this was a delayed April fools joke, but sadly it isn't./

whatismyname

Orion wrote: »

Follow the forum - then it appears in your My Forums link.

Still takes longer from what I see, needing to go back to the homepage every time to get into 'my forums' rather than just hover ---> click.

blatantrereg

Sidelining the whole community aspect of what is fundamentally a community site to put the commercial aspects dead centre.

_Kaiser_

blatantrereg wrote: »

Sidelining the whole community aspect of what is fundamentally a community site to put the commercial aspects dead centre.

I noticed that too, particularly with moving the actual Topics/fora to the last in the list with the latest change.

Degag

Deleted User wrote: »

While we're on the topic of the format, is there any way to move the bar on the left a bit to the right by a few pixels? I only just now noticed (after a decade of being here) that my name looks like:

boneyarsebogma
n

You seriously only noticed that now?!:pac:

thirteen.

The top should be Boards, Topics, Regional/Talk to. We read from right to left so why put the main site content last?

Dav

Topics should be in the middle as we want the most eyeballs on it, I don't know how it's moved with Adverts, but that's not the intention at all.

[edit] I'm sure some folks can confirm that's the way it was earlier and if you see my screen shots on the OP of this thread, you'll see that was the intention from the off.

I'm afraid I don't have enough tech knowledge to try and give you an explanation yet folks, I'm waiting on an update from the dev team.

Hello. Are these changes the reason why the A-Z on the touch site is all over the shop? The first category letter is E. Had to have a proper look for this forum :P

httpete

Orion wrote: »

Follow the forum - then it appears in your My Forums link.

I rarely log in. I am on the site multiple times a day from multiple computers and often the phone but I have no need to log in when all I want to do is read. I log in if need to ask a question. Looking at the figures for the number of boards.ie users vs the amount of people you see posting regularly I'd imagine the way I use the site is the standard method for the vast majority of users.

Suggesting I log in all the time to have a usable site is yet again lowering usability. Basically every discussion site I visit on the net, including multiple stackexchange sites and subreddits, its the same procedure. I only log in rarely, as its unnecessary hassle when I just want to read.

Toto Wolfcastle

Dav wrote: »

Topics should be in the middle as we want the most eyeballs on it, I don't know how it's moved with Adverts, but that's not the intention at all.

I'm afraid I don't have enough tech knowledge to try and give you an explanation yet folks, I'm waiting on an update from the dev team.

Initially when Adverts moved to the middle I was seeing Topics flashing up briefly before it settled on Adverts. That isn't happening any more though.

thirteen.

Bobblehead Panda wrote: »

Initially when Adverts moved to the middle I was seeing Topics flashing up briefly before it settled on Adverts. That isn't happening any more though.

It's happening for me now to.

LadyAthame

Had no dropdowns for a while then they keep switching position up at the top??

Toto Wolfcastle

thirteen. wrote: »

It's happening for me now to.

Yep, just started happening for me again.

LadyAthame

Ah I guess it will have glitches for a while. Sure yis are great....*subtle suck up*