can I make a suggestion..

[BrhTiling]

Well, first of all I want to say I enjoy reading the forum very much and I appreciate that this is a free service...

However...

I do feel that browsing the web site here is made difficult by the fact that there are far too many sub forums (42? by my estimation), and the fact is the site at present only has 800 or so active members.….. Some of the sections are barely used and spotting new posts can be hard work,

Surely if some of the sections were merged it would make it more easy to navigate the site (especially as it is not the fastest to load pages) and spot new / interesting threads.

I am trying to be constructive here so please don't take offence.

 

[Varley]

No offence taken yenool, all comments are welcome and you do have a valid point, there are a lot of sub forums. Dan is really the man to take this into consideration, however I can offer one piece of advice that may help, along the top of the forums under your private message box is a 'new post' button, by clicking this it will show the most recent posts saving you searching through all the sub forums trying to pick out the new ones. Im sure Dan will respond to your comment when he sees this thread.

It's a really difficult situation as there are a lot of different areas to be covered just in tiling alone and Dan puts in a lot of time and thought into making it as user friendly as possible. I'm not 100% sure he will be able to do much about it but I know he will be greatfull for your suggestion as he is always looking for ways to improve the forum, and respects all members feedback.

 

[BrhTiling]

It's a really difficult situation as there are a lot of different areas to be covered just in tiling alone and Dan puts in a lot of time and thought into making it as user friendly as possible. I'm not 100% sure he will be able to do much about it but I know he will be greatfull for your suggestion as he is always looking for ways to improve the forum, and respects all members feedback.

Well, I enjoy the site and now that I am trying to get into tiling myself (having completed a course), I will be asking questions and contributing as much as possible.

I understand there are a lot of areas to cover, and once the site gets more members I think it will probably need all the sub-sections it has, but right now it is a bit like going to a library where all the books are scattered about on half empty shelves.... it can get a bit hard work wondering up and down the place looking for what you want :wink_smile:

Hopefully Dan will see this tomorrow and comment.

 

[brian c]

what course did you do?As you are a member YENOOL and a pro tiler you will appreciate the work that goes in to running a forum but your comments are valid my friend but i do think that DAN and the lads do a brilliant job on here and i for one am thankful .KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK LADS. BRI

 

[wivers]

Like Vars said, if you use the new post tab then its easy to see if anyone has replied to any of your posts etc. Also if you go into your control panel you can subscribe to all the threads/posts you find relevant and it will update you when there is any action on them. You can even opt to be alerted by e-mail once you have a reply.

 

[BrhTiling]

Like Vars said, if you use the new post tab then its easy to see if anyone has replied to any of your posts etc. Also if you go into your control panel you can subscribe to all the threads/posts you find relevant and it will update you when there is any action on them. You can even opt to be alerted by e-mail once you have a reply.

And how many casual browsers or new members (possibly with limited internet experience) are going to know how / want to do that? :wink_smile:

I think what you have to understand is that most people are lazzzzzy (myself included) and any extra effort required, especially when it comes to technology is time wasted. IMHO anyway.

blah, I'm having a bad day today, I just discovered the advertising rates for the local papers... sigh... and why is it always PLUS vat... those two little words that are so depressing!

 

[formula one]

we all have bad days yenool , but your welcome to the forums and you will get used to the way dan as got this site running and the rest of the lads on here . if we can help just ask:wink_smile:

 

[Dan]

Sorry it took so long for me to reply.

Firstly, I sort-of agree, there are loads of forums and a I think a smaller set of forums would be easier to navigate around when you're not looking for a specific topic.

The problem is with having just a few forums is the fact that the categories are too wide and it can be hard to find the topic you're looking for resulting in the same post being in more than one forum and on a similar note similar topics are started in different forums.

Although the forums can be time consuming to browse through if you are not looking for a specific topic, I feel having so many forums makes it obvious where to post and find a specific topic if you have one in mind.

Generally there are users that come to the forums and use only the category or two that they are interested in and that's generally what I aimed for here.

If you look down the forum homepage you'll spot the first two forum categories are useless to regular members, as one is the 'Rules' and 'How to access...' and the other is the training cat with three subjects as sub-forums. Then you could say the same for the bottom two categories, one is off-topic related stuff and the other is Tilers Forums updates and similar. Then obviously the 'find trusted tradesmen' forums are not forums you'd visit regular either.

So taking that into account, there are actually less usable forums than you think.

May I suggest clicking the arrow (

) on the right hand side of the forum categories that you don't wish to view and it will close them for you so you don't have such a large forum homepage.

Other than that, if you can suggest a forum layout better than the one currently I'd obviously listen.
----
Hows the new layout for you mate?

 

[Fekin]

I would of agreed with this thread on my first visit to these forums that there were too many sub-forums, but as you say, once you see that "new posts" link, it dosent matter if there were 1000 forums, as the "new posts" link takes you to every single thread thats had a message in since the last time you were here.

Give it 24hrs and it's still only just under a page to browse through really.

 

[Dan]

But you'd still need to navigate to a forum if you wanted to start a new topic right?

 

[Fekin]

Yeah, you are right there, but it's only 2 or 3 clicks to get where you need to be.

On the other hand though, might be an idea just to have a wall and floor tiling forum that encompases everything to do with that, instead of having wall tiling, floor tiling, stone\marble, mosaics etc, one forum would be enough in my view.

 

[brian c]

still the best tiling site on the web.

 

[Varley]

Yer Darn Tootin'!

 

[Dan]

We've now got over 2000 members and have tweaked the forum plenty server-wise to speed it up and forum-wise with features.

Although we now have even more forums we're targetting many more areas than similar forums including overseas countries such as Spain, Australia, USA and Canada.

And obviously note that we support MANY training centres and not just one. So we'd have more forums than others for that reason too.