Website redesign – Update

It’s actually getting worse.

Agree. For some reason multi line titles appear to be acceptable in the stickies and in the links to the different forums but not in the content that actually matters.

Jamie + 1. New mobile site is frustratingly lacking.

With limited screen space it’s important to present the most pertinent information and also to ease navigation. In this case I’d suggest that the post count is irrelevant unless you use it as a link to the last post on that thread.

The icon at the left is only of use if you are viewing multiple forums, say bike and chat, at the same time, so it could be removed when viewing a single forum. Threads that are recent, less than 24hrs since last post for example, could be in bold text so you don’t really need the freshness column but if you wanted that info then I’d suggest having that rather than post count. At the moment the freshness column requires two taps to actually go to the last post, the first just shows a popup with the last poster’s name.

The multiple page icons as in the screenshot above are weird: [2][3][…]39]… ?? WTF?! It should be [1] … [40]

The icon on the left could also take you to the last page, last post or (most helpfully) first unread post. At least it would then have dual function.

And yes, scrap the forum description lines. I reckon we know the difference between items for sale and items wanted.

I hadn’t really even noticed the forum type icons but now it’s mentioned I agree they are unnecessary space takers. Perhaps more use of colour could indicate which forum the thread belongs in? Maybe the lovely green for bike, blue for chat and blood red for political?

Colours? What sort of witchcraft is this?

I did think of suggesting “themes” for each forum but it could get a little distracting and garish!

A line per thread like this for portrait mode. All elements are links: title goes to first post; pages go to relevant page; last poster goes to last post

Website redesign – Update [1] … [7] Whitestone

In landscape mode add post count

Website redesign – Update [1] … [7] 201 Whitestone

Why even bother with page count. Just have post count and make it go to the last post. Thread title to first post. Done. I only rarely go to a specific page and for those cases am happy to drop into the thread first

leffeboy may have it there – number of pages is somewhat irrelevant in a web world – posts are

Rachel

I think at some point they are going to have to resign themselves to needing multi line thread titles. There is no way they are going to get the whole title and thread starter on a single line while sticking to the kind of font sizes they appear to desire. One row for title. Second row (smaller font?) for author?

Also, why does the Posts column take up pretty much 25% of the screen width for what is most often a 2 digit number? Crazy…

I think at some point they are going to have to resign themselves to needing multi line thread titles.

Yep, Nexus 6P here so at the high end of wide screen for a phone and I get about 2/3 of the title, before I could just zoom and get a double width and post count, anything on a lot of pages I’ve got no chance of getting to the last page as the page count boxes are overlapped or missing.

subscription lapsed.

I wont be renewing till we get an idea whats happening tbh.

Hope it works out for you guys.

Would anyone mind if they just went back to the old one? Should be easy enough to do.

Would anyone mind if they just went back to the old one? Should be easy enough to do.

Maybe that was their plan all along? Make the update so bad, people would be clamouring to return to what preceded it, and never dare speak of forum upgrades ever again.

It really makes you think…

I hope not, the old site was appalling on a phone. It was bad enough on the iPad

4 days since the last update from “the authorities”. I know there have been extenuating circumstances 😉 but it would be nice to have some acknowledgment that the issues being raised are being taken note of.

I’m campaigning for Brexsite.
Everything so was much better before. Let’s go back to the old ways.
Freedom to zoom,freedom to go directly to the last page,freedom to see who started a post, freedom to read the whole thread title.

The redesign is oarsum on my pc with Firefox and oarsum with iPad/Safari. Loads up much quicker as well

Nice work to all concerned

4 days since the last update from “the authorities”.

Four days that included new year plus a bank holiday.

It’s almost as if you have anything else to do, Mark…

The redesign is oarsum on my pc with Firefox and oarsum with iPad/Safari. Loads up much quicker as well

Nice work to all concerned

Looks like they got to rocketman. 🙁

It’s almost as if you have anything else to do, Mark…

To be fair, if you’re going to launch during the holidays….

Jamie – he said “I think it’s time for lunch”. It all got a bit confused…

Rachel

We didn’t launch during the holidays.

Ok. You didn’t launch during the holidays.

Four days that included new year plus a bank holiday.[/quote]That’s why I said

extenuating circumstances

Still making change just before the holidays was always likely to be a risk.

I assume all the feedback is worthwhile Mark? It must be hard to test the layout when there are so many variations of platform involved.

Still making change just before the holidays was always likely to be a risk.

Think Mark covered this off earlier – they knew they’d be getting issues with advertising networks so decided to launch it during a ‘quiet’ spell as they knew they would be getting poorer adverts so figured getting it done (and re-learned) whilst this quiet spell was on was deemed a good idea.

It is never a good time to launch a new look and functionality on a website – doing it when advertising is quiet (when the money made from advertising is emphasised often) seems like a bad thing to do. Given it is holiday time and changes are underway on the site, I’d suggest that traffic and visit numbers are going to be higher, so the advertising issues are going to affect more people.

New site has been in place for around 3 weeks now…still plenty things not right with it, but it appears that the knee-jerk fixes are not happening…so the issues that are still present, are still present – but hopefully will be fixed.

I’m still liking the new look, but the issues that many others have posted about on the mobile are now affecting me and it is infuriatingly poor. However, I’m sure it will be getting worked on and a ‘fix’ will be released soon that sorts many of the issues (I’m hoping so anyway).

Since the new changes my usuage of STW has decreased by about 90%. It just doesn’t work effectively on my Moto G any more.

Shame.

That is good news for you as that means you will only get the high quality ads when you visit…apparently.

Not sure if it’s caught but the mobile width seems fixed so it won’t even show a full thread title in landscape mode (Chrome Newest Android Nexus 6P)

I saw this thread over Christmas, but didn’t bother posting because I was either looking at STW on my phone where it seemed to work OK (although the cut-off titles is a bit weird & not being able to go to the last page/post means a few more pointless clicks) or I was looking full screen on my laptop.
The phone is an old Xperia T running Jelly Bean, I think. I turned on the forced zoom in the accessibility settings.

But now back at work – holy moly it doesn’t seem to like being re-sized…..I normally make my viewing window quite narrow but this has the effect of the font jumping to some kind of comedy massive font size, although you do (sometimes) lose the ads.
Other times, the right hand ad column scootches over & ends up on top of the text so you can’t actually read the forum without re-sizing.

holy moly it doesn’t seem to like being re-sized…..I normally make my viewing window quite narrow but this has the effect of the font jumping to some kind of comedy massive font size, although you do (sometimes) lose the ads.
Other times, the right hand ad column scootches over & ends up on top of the text so you can’t actually read the forum without re-sizing.

+1

Also struggling with resize.

I tend to keep window small to only see post text. When doing that after the update the size jumps all over the place and adverts compresses the text area making it a horrible user experience!

Tabbed browsing appears to have stopped working today.

At work on IE Explorer 11, neither ctrl + click or Open in New Tab from the context menu from a link launches a new tab. Ta.

4 days since the last update from “the authorities”

I see the whiners are still whining.

A bit of patience would be advisable. Launching a responsive design across multiple browsers and devices is not easy.

Opening in a new tab (from context menu) in Firefox and Chrome on Kubuntu works fine.

Not a whine, merely seeking some acknowledgment that the feedback being provided was being picked up on and trying to do so in a light-hearted manner.

I’m sure if you’d read any of my other posts on this subject to you’d see that I’ve been trying to help out wherever possible.
That’s one of the problems with this place. Too many folk lack any sense of humour. But, you know, feel free to have a dig. Again.

Edit: Ah, what’s the point. As per Onion.

I’d suggest that traffic and visit numbers are going to be higher, so the advertising issues are going to affect more people.

The exact opposite of this. Christmas is the lowest traffic period of the year by a VERY long way.

New site has been in place for around 3 weeks now.

new theme (Not site) launched on 22nd December.

You’re letting facts get in the way…

You’re letting facts get in the way…

…of what?