What do you think of the new Site?

[will_j]

i prefered the old version, but then again i don't like any change... guess who's voting blue when he can vote!

 

[Jan]

I like the new site with its format, ease of navigation, options and color scheme. Thanks John for all of your efforts.

 

[John]

AnnMarie,

I agree about the horizontal format in that it wastes a lot of space at the top. I have the option of redesigning the message templates to mimic the old setup. However I would really need more voices in favour of that change before I mess with that.

Salamander smilies would be nice. Anyone?

Yes there is a donor area for people with donor status (you just can't see it). I confess I have yet to update donor status on people who have donated in the last 6+ months or so. I can look at doing that in the next few days.

I'm not sure why reputation power is there. I'm going to turn it off (at least how visible it is) if I can figure it out.

 

[John]

Reputation power is no longer shown in messages.

 

[nate]

Hey John,

Looks good.

Could you please drop me a line at .........

-Nate Nelson

 

[John]

Ok Live Food has been cleaned up a little.

Nate: I emailed you but I'm still wondering why you didn't just click my name to contact _me_ .

 

[nate]

"John has chosen not to receive private messages or may not be allowed to receive private messages. Therefore you may not send your message to him/her."

Any chance you could edit out my email now?

Nevermind, I edited it. I'll catch on.

 

[Abrahm]

Thanks for getting the display names back! I like that feature, makes it feel like I am replying to people.

I like AnnMarie's suggestion about putting user info on the left in a separate column compared to messages. I would say that was my favorite thing about the old software.

I like the subforums also. I just realized that if you click on the forum link that has subforums it shows the expanded list. Otherwise you can just see the newest activity on one subforum and a list of all subforums. Pretty slick.

Could I suggest maybe moving the Donor and Site Contributor section to the bottom or close to it? It's not a very popular area and moving something that gets more attention, like the help topics, will probalby be more useful.

 

[John]

I'll look into reorganizing the message layout.

I'll move the donor/site contributor sections in a few minutes.

 

[freves]

Looks good John. As already mentioned I think that it will take a few days to get used to.
Chip

 

[jshadowstalker]

reputation

yes whats the reputation for ...?

 

[John]

"User Reputation in its simplest form is a ranking of your user's benefit to your forum. Its basis comes from the opinions of all of your forum users that choose take part in it.

Users gain and lose reputation based on how their posts are scored by other forum participants. Users with the ability to affect reputation, will either give or take aways points by approving or disapproving with a post's content."

 

[ajc]

I don't like the visual style much, but is seems to work. Why this rather than phpbb John?

 

[John]

Way more features than phpbb plus the huge amount of addons and hacks. Not to mention (as I've already encountered) the support is awesome.

 

[coendeurloo]

A very wise choice, VB is much better in my opinion! It always takes some time to adjust, this is for the better.

 

[ian_uk]

I too think it would be better to have the user info on the left as in the old forum, not sure if this is just what I'm used to or not, but it would save on the amount of scrolling when reading through... Just on looking at people's one-liners here, the user info takes up the same amount of space as their actual message (if not more). Otherwise I think the whole site is looking great and I'm sure everyone will adapt soon enough to however it remains.

 

[mantighoul]

Sorry to be a bother again, but I was wondering, are you going to keep the old version as an achive somewhere. One of the most important things that was lost in the transfer were all the valualbe photographs that accompanied most posts. The photots were a great resource Depending on how things changed, it may be a lot of work to get old photographs working in old posts. So, do we just move and use photots that will arrive in the future as references, or is there a a read only version of the old forum or what. I am just curios on to how this will be tackled. I mean we several areas dedicated to photography with no pictures for display.
Also, why are some people able to display avatar and some not?I probably missed something simple.
At the top I noted that a link is missing,(which was displayed on the old forum) which was a link to the caudat.org webpages, such as caudata culture and axolotl.org. Has this been merged with Links or moved somewhere else. This link was called "sites" and it can be viewed in the navigation when one visits "home".
Well, the chat works alot better than the last one
In a way i miss the "NEW" shouting at me when something new was posted. It was so cheesy i loved it. The new way is so less invasive. Its nice.
New webpages are exciting! Things are shaping up nicely.
Thankyou for your time.

 

[Abrahm]

AnnMarie, about the avatars. The picture you attached to your profile is a user picture which is only displayed in the profile. If you select the avatar and upload a picture, then that is what is displayed on posts.

 

[John]

AnnMarie - I might work out something so that a copy of the old photo gallery is available but it's not a priority for me right now. Running a copy of the old forum just opens another door for security problems.

 

[jewett]

To repeat what others have said, it will take me some time to get used to and be able to maneuver around the new site as well as I did the old. But I do like the new color and layout. I have noticed that some of my old posts are under the user name "heather" instead of "jewett" which caused me some confusion, as "heather" is not a registered name and so I had no profile. I am partely posting this just to see if its all corrected and if I CAN even post (so kinda like a trial run)!
Heather