More changes on the development site - feedback welcomed

Like the new buttons.

I forgot "text-decoration: none" to remove the default blue underline on the line.

I like the font-size increase. Will test out on mobile later today.

Thank you.

In comment 14441565 widmerseyebrow said:

Quote:

I forgot "text-decoration: none" to remove the default blue underline on the line.

*on the link

looks good on mobile too

I like it. Thanks.

Looks terrible to my eyes.

It seems to interact with Safari's "Reader View" seemisly.
Now if only the text was dynamic...that is controllable via Apple's iOS setting.

...vote against that change. These other functionality tweaks are good. You should get full input from the site in general on the specific question of a font change. Not just bury it in a dev post. It's terrible.

...vote against that change. These other functionality tweaks are good. You should get full input from the site in general on the specific question of a font change. Not just bury it in a dev post. It's terrible.

not a fan of the font. Everything else looks good.

would be a better font choice. Also would be good for differentiating between subject and comment text.

But the threads do seem to be less clear on my IPAD. Probably just old age.

I just don't like it, and I do think it makes it harder to read.

In my opinion, arial is the clearest font at any size.

the font within these comment windows is better than the site overall. Is this an Arial or related?

I'll contribute to BBI no matter what font you choose.

agree that if you can erase the blue line under the return to forum links I'd do that. Looks funky otherwise.

But, I do like the font size. On mobile, the submit button still seems small. I'm not sure if that's something you changed.

not a fan of the font itself

BBI really needs to make the move to a more modern forum technology. It feels like there are constant issues that continuously need to be addressed and the unique code requires unnecessary maintenance. The new font is, IMO, a major regression and the font size is still absurdly small unless zoomed in at least 125% (as compared to other sites). Is it a cost issue or something else? Just seems very old school.

Would be great if we could implement some newer tech such as direct messages, notifications when someone is responding to you within a thread, etc.

I understand that people are always going to be adverse to change...especially when it comes to technology. At some point, we're going to have to adjust to using something new and unfamiliar and it's probably in all of our best interest to do this sooner rather than later.

We have an awesome community here and it would be great if the site allowed for the conversations and dialogue to be expanded and more interactive.

Has a "Crisp" feel/

emphasis here is to make the Forum more user-friendly on mobile devices. As Gary has mentioned before, he will be looking at the menus for example.

I only have a limited number of mobile devices in my house, which belong to my wife and kids. I am actually surprised at how this old forum shows up as well as it does on the various devices. The exception seems to me to be the small text and having to manually enlarge it and the menus.

The front page will be easier to address because it will a more standard out-of-the-box option that can easily adjust to mobile technology. The Forum needs a more hands-on approach by Gary.

More difficult for me to read... maybe my old eyes.

On most threads, I'm seeing a white space between the first post and the subsequent reply posts.

Strangely, the space is wider when I am not logged in to my account. Is it related to the ads on the right side?

Mac, Safari, 27" monitor.

On my iPad IOS 12.3 Safari Landscape view the ads are on the left and I have to scroll a full screen to get from the first to second post. Text is larger.

In comment 14441955 VTChuck said:

Quote:

More difficult for me to read... maybe my old eyes. On most threads, I'm seeing a white space between the first post and the subsequent reply posts. Strangely, the space is wider when I am not logged in to my account. Is it related to the ads on the right side? Mac, Safari, 27" monitor. On my iPad IOS 12.3 Safari Landscape view the ads are on the left and I have to scroll a full screen to get from the first to second post. Text is larger.

That space is related to auto-ad adjustment (ad moves from the side to below the text for mobile devices). I find it annoying. If we can get rid of it, so much the better. But the text covering issue seems to be gone.

we may want to run a poll on font options.

font

👍

Still need an edit feature. I could have edited my previous post.

Especially as you're maintaining the same table layout regardless of screen size. Sans serif fonts have better readability, especially on mobile. Maybe keep the serif on the thread titles if you really want to use it.

You already have some media queries in here, why not hide the columns Views and Posts under 825px? You'd decrease the need for people to zoom on the main page.

In comment 14441943 Eric from BBI said:

Quote:

The Forum needs a more hands-on approach by Gary.

Why don't you just use disqus and ditch the diy?

really would prefer Disqus? I think that is fine for brief responses to articles but a back-and-forth conversation?

In comment 14442236 Eric from BBI said:

Quote:

really would prefer Disqus? I think that is fine for brief responses to articles but a back-and-forth conversation?

Have a look at forum.umhoops.com. I'm there all the time. I think it works great. Easy to quote replies and navigate to/from responses. I'm pretty sure it's disqus, but I can ask the site admin.

In comment 14442236 Eric from BBI said:

Quote:

really would prefer Disqus? I think that is fine for brief responses to articles but a back-and-forth conversation?

And it looks great on mobile. My pet peeve on bbi is that the drop-down corner forum menu is a PITA.

Not a fan of the font.

Scales and resizes properly on Chrome on Android.

Does *not* scale on Firefox mobile. The margins are completely off and it looks like a zoomed out desktop page. If you zoom in to read the text, you have to keep scrolling left and right to read.

In comment 14442246 bebopson said:

Quote:

In comment 14442236 Eric from BBI said: Quote: really would prefer Disqus? I think that is fine for brief responses to articles but a back-and-forth conversation? Have a look at forum.umhoops.com. I'm there all the time. I think it works great. Easy to quote replies and navigate to/from responses. I'm pretty sure it's disqus, but I can ask the site admin.

I don't think that is disqus. I'm on some disqus sites and they don't look like that. I also don't see the disqus sign-in when you click on "log in".

In comment 14442250 bebopson said:

Quote:

In comment 14442236 Eric from BBI said: Quote: really would prefer Disqus? I think that is fine for brief responses to articles but a back-and-forth conversation? And it looks great on mobile. My pet peeve on bbi is that the drop-down corner forum menu is a PITA.

Gary is working on the menus.

seems harder to read -- may be just a question of getting used.

I like that the letters seem wider and possibly bit more space between them, but at the same time look distorted (as if they need to be higher)

I definitely find the new to be harder to read.

Has the font size changed?

I am fine with the tweaks. No issue for me on the font.

Meanwhile, what I am going to suggest here may be more involved.

We have just one funnel for ALL threads on the main page. Other than selecting NFT, you see a thread regarding the draft below a thread about draft beer.

When you reference menus, it would help to have categories within the forum.

Other sports
Food
Home and auto
Finance
Politics (enter at your own risk)
etc etc etc

Discussions in these other areas would likely increase web traffic by keeping people on the site longer.

The way the forum is now, the older threads are basically gone after a day because nobody is going to tab down more than two pages of threads. If you were to start a thread about a BBQ rib recipe, it would be dead in a day or two. If it was in a food and drink section of the forum, that thread would likely still be visible on the top half of the screen for another week...generating more responses. More time for eyes to be on ads.

Is that permanent or temporary?

Don�t know if it�s the font but the ads are sometimes oversized compared to the text in the comments.

In comment 14442265 Eric from BBI said:

Quote:

I don't think that is disqus. I'm on some disqus sites and they don't look like that. I also don't see the disqus sign-in when you click on "log in".

I sent him a DM to find out what it is.

I haven't gotten a response yet, but I poked through the source code and it appears to discourse

and the larger size format

But just for the record, we're not seriously considering moving to a new forum platform because:

1) This forum implementation is unique and gives BBI a lot of its character. The majority of BBIers like it.

2) There are over a decade's worth of posts and comments archived here. That's a lot of value.

3) No good replacement that would make everyone happy actually exists. All forum implementations have their own quirks and features that people would need to deal with.

4) Any "out of the box" solution would require a significant amount of work to customize it so that it would be suitable for BBI.

5) Ads in the forum make up a significant chunk of BBI revenue. Any solution, like Disqus, that eliminates forum ads is a non-starter.

In comment 14442468 bebopson said:

Quote:

I haven't gotten a response yet, but I poked through the source code and it appears to discourse

I don�t know much about forum software or how this compares to other options available but this does seem like a far better solution than what we�re running BBI on now. I would love to see us be able to migrate to something more modern like this.

As I expected it would be.

I may try a sans-serif font tomorrow and see how that looks.

Quote:

1) This forum implementation is unique and gives BBI a lot of its character. The majority of BBIers like it.

You should consider that you could be turning off as many people as you're retaining.

Quote:

2) There are over a decade's worth of posts and comments archived here. That's a lot of value.

They can be migrated.

Quote:

3) No good replacement that would make everyone happy actually exists. All forum implementations have their own quirks and features that people would need to deal with.

You can't be serious. The functionality and robustness of this platform is way behind the curve.

Quote:

4) Any "out of the box" solution would require a significant amount of work to customize it so that it would be suitable for BBI.[quote] It's a blog and some static content with a forum, don't over-think it. [quote]5) Ads in the forum make up a significant chunk of BBI revenue. Any solution, like Disqus, that eliminates forum ads is a non-starter.

The example I cited is actually discourse.org, and it has an official advertising plugin.

In comment 14442556 Gary from The East End said:

Quote:

But just for the record, we're not seriously considering moving to a new forum platform because: 1) This forum implementation is unique and gives BBI a lot of its character. The majority of BBIers like it. 2) There are over a decade's worth of posts and comments archived here. That's a lot of value. 3) No good replacement that would make everyone happy actually exists. All forum implementations have their own quirks and features that people would need to deal with. 4) Any "out of the box" solution would require a significant amount of work to customize it so that it would be suitable for BBI. 5) Ads in the forum make up a significant chunk of BBI revenue. Any solution, like Disqus, that eliminates forum ads is a non-starter.

Gary, these excuses are all (excuse my language) horseshit. It�s way past time for BBI to be upgraded and none of the points you listed above are real reasons we should avoid improving this forum. Only rational reasons I can think of are cost and time. And I respect the decision if those factors make it unachievable but hopefully we can make it happen.

Their 500K page views per month plan is $300 per month. FYI, that's less than a quarter of the Corner Forum's worst monthly page view count in the last two years.

The previous two months were some of our best of all time with the Corner racking up nearly six million page views in both March and April of 2019.

I can't imagine what Discourse.org would charge us for that, but it would be some significant multiple of our current monthly server bill.

There are nearly 200,000 threads currently in the database along with nearly six million comments. Nobody is going import that into any kind of existing software.

The Forum, as it exists right now, is ridiculously successful and popular. I'm trying to make it more mobile friendly and to improve some functionality without ruining what makes it different and special.

Those are their paid plans. Scroll down, you can also self-host. It's FOSS.

How many of those 200K threads are actually generating traffic and making you money? I would bet 99% of traffic is on the last two days of threads. You're making a lot of legacy kinds of arguments that just don't fly.

Also keep in mind that your thread comment model is totally de-normalized. A lot of your bandwidth is serving up duplicative content (quoted comments). Most importantly, every time a new comment is added to a page, you are serving up a new version of the page, which means you're not taking advantage of any caching. With a more modern architecture and data model your bandwidth should go down significantly.