Improvement suggestions regarding the JOTM uploading process.... And stuff

[Dan]

Thanks Marc. Im going to try and be as constructive as I can with this post. Its stuff like this that has killed the forum for me in recent months, it is so unnecessarily complicated and ridiculously cluttered, it's so off putting. I really like the forum content and the members but, (in my opinion) something needs to be done with the layout and set up, none of the pages scroll properly and why are there so many "like" options for a post? I can't be the only one who is of this opinion. Yes the software is great and has all these options but, lets be honest, the vast majority of it is a bit pointless. It's hard to write this without sounding like I'm having a moan but, good grief, something that should be so simple and at one time was user friendly, has quite frankly, turned into a massive mission, to the point where I just can't even be bothered trying to post.

Please keep your moans to their own threads lol is this about the 14 thanks buttons or the uploading to the contest.



It's work in progress hang in there.

Been busy on the plumbing forum to be fair.

 

[Dan]

Okay I've changed the name of the button to "Upload JOTM Photos".

Other than 'make it like Facebook' I can't see what else I need to change from the posts above. Any actual suggestions?

 

[Ian]

Ok. It's impossible to say anything without sounding critical, that's not what I'm trying to acheive. To try and get across my point I'll say this, if this forum and it's layout was what greeted you if you went to www.brianthetiler.com, what would you think? Me personally, I'd press the x in the top corner and that's coming from someone has has spent far too many hours of my life on this forum and the internet as a whole. I get forums and how they work but, this, is so needlessly over engineered, imagine a newcomer trying to work out what to do. At the end of the day Dan, you do what you feel is right you've always had my support but, this has gone a long long way in the wrong direction. Does anyone have any watched tags? Yes I get that they help with searches but, no one wants to tag their threads, they just end up writing the thread title out in tags. I won't go on, I've said my part and hope I've got my point across without sounding like a ****.

 

[Dan]

Sooooo I change what?

 

[Dan]

You know the tags get automatically added?

 

[Dan]

Trying to find some suggestions out of this.

I've removed the watched tags feature from some usergroups.

 

[Ian]

The navigation would be a great start, can you remember how the forum used to look on tapatalk? That was brilliant while out at work, if I had a problem, I took a picture, wrote a few words and posted it, people could see it easily and replied. Now that's essentially how Facebook works except stuff just gets lost after a day or 2, the fact is no one cares about tags or even forum categories, they want to see what's been posted recently and when they reply it needs to be simple quick and I they want to add a picture or 2 it's only a couple of clicks away. This is the navigation page on another forum, it's so basic it's verging on prehistoric but it works, it's simple and it's what people want. Try to view it through the eyes of a tradesman not a computer expert

 

[Dan]

Not sure our menu is a million miles from that one in your photo.

I'll take a look at it in the week.

Problem is we have a dozen areas of the forum now, not just the forum.

You can hit new posts and get the latest content. Or hit new thread then pick a category to post in. Also just tested uploading a contest and it's a couple of clicks from any page of the forum.

I think it's just a case of being used to it maybe.

Tapatalk was simple but not really the way to go these days a lot of forums are pulling from it. They're collecting too much data and sending emails out from them direct to forum users when people haven't agreed to that when signing up to the forum etc. They're under different laws with being Chinese.

 

[Ian]

That's a perfect example mate, how does anyone know that's a menu? It's just 3 lines next to the forums button, if you showed that picture to 100 people I guarantee less than 10 of them would know that was a navigation menu.

 

[Ian]

And I'm not saying go back to tapatalk just that I thought the simplicity of the layout was easy to navigate, especially on a mobile screen, and while on the go at work.

 

[Dan]

That's a perfect example mate, how does anyone know that's a menu? It's just 3 lines next to the forums button, if you showed that picture to 100 people I guarantee less than 10 of them would know that was a navigation menu.

It's a standard menu button across all modern websites. Checkout TTA website for example. The fact it doesn't say the word menu in it doesn't mean people don't click it. It's intuitive to click it.

Tracking the patterns of new visitors, I see it gets clicked far more than just 10%.

The other thing is, most people don't want or need to click it. They've arrived on a page, read it, and click next on that page (thread) if it has more pages. Those are the buttons we need to show them more so.

If they're unregistered they get presented with register or login buttons.

If they're looking for something I've usually worked out what it is by how they've arrived here and it'll be presented to them.

That's how you manage a huge website. Not just have a menu button replaced with the word menu.

Another thing is; visit the website on a PC and it's an actual menu. 70-something percent visit it on a PC. So why change the website for the rest and not consider those...?

 

[Dan]

And I'm not saying go back to tapatalk just that I thought the simplicity of the layout was easy to navigate, especially on a mobile screen, and while on the go at work.

It's only managing a forum though and not a mammoth of a website. It becomes featureless then and people cant get to other areas I'm trying to promote.

 

[Ian]

I think because you have a computer brain, the more features the better whereas from a forum users point of view, less is more, it's surely more about ease of communication rather than how fancy and jazzy it looks.

 

[Dan]

It's about how much we can do for tilers. There will always be room for improvement and as a one-man-band behind the scenes I think i do pretty well.

But I'll take a look at the menu this week.

 

[Ian]

Ok so if all of that's true, why are so many people being drawn over to Facebook, I'll answer that for you, it's because it's way easier to post, easy to view and there aren't that many options. I don't particularly like Facebook I much prefer the specialist set up of a forum but, even as a seasoned forum user I find this really hard going. I see how it would be easier on a pc so maybe a simpler version for a mobile because as it stands it's not great compared to several other options available.