Home Page Redesign

LizT

For me, one of the big problems is that there's a huge disconnect between what you see on the homepage and what you see on the first page of a forum. It's like two different websites. I miss this button on the homepage.

Is the long term plan to eventually change the layout of the forums too?

AlmightyCushion

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

A few of you are noting the whitespace between the thread and posts/thanks. AlmightyCushion things we want you to play eye tennis.

I didn't say that you intentional went out to do that. It is just a side effect of the design. It doesn't make any sense to keep them over to the right. It's good UI design to group related elements together. It's not a coincidence that vBulletin, reddit and many other sites group things like post/comment count close to the thread title. Same with facebook putting the person's name and picture to the left of their status/comment and why news sites put the related picture to the left of the headline when showing a list of articles. It's so that this information is available at a glance.

Eye tracking software show us that people usually read a website in a f shape pattern. They scan the left hand side of the page looking for something relevant or interesting and when they find it they move across to the right. Good UI design uses this F shaped pattern and builds the UI around it. Breaking established conventions like this is something you should try and avoid.

I just want to point out as well, that I don't hate the new design because it's new or because it has a thanks count for the thread or because it has a trending or thanks tab (those options were on the old design anyway and are easily ignored). I think the new design is rubbish from a usability point of view and makes poor use of the space available. I actually like that you got rid of the tiny arrow that lead to the last unread post. Commonly used features like that should have bigger target the a 15x15 icon (was it even that large). On a desktop/laptop that's a tough enough target to hit but on a touch screen device it's a lot worse. Having the post count take over for it though is just silly and not intuitive as can be seen by the amount of posts from people complaining about the thread title taking them to the first post in the thread.

cursai

Its the E3 announcement of XBOXone in terms of revamp. Just go back to the original.
It hurt nobody!

Boards.ie: Danny

nesf wrote: »

So your new API is incapable of delivering the data necessary to recreate the old homepage in a new style?

The API delivers the data to the User Interface layer, which supports one style only but many themes (colour versions). There are no plans to implement a style system on the UI layer, it is something we're leaving behind with vBulletin (the ability to change how the site looks in its entirety).

LizT wrote: »

Is the long term plan to eventually change the layout of the forums too?

Yes, the forums will move off vBulletin too. Piece by piece will will port functionality.

Danny

quarryman

Dav wrote: »

We've already mentioned that a big part was the make the page look a lot less like an Excel file - if anyone suggest that the home page of any website should look like that then I'm afraid that I must disagree with you with every fibre of my being. Our old home page looked horrible. It was build by developers, not created by designers and we've fixed that. Our designers are extremely capable people (and are all Boardsies) and aren't going to make suggestions they don't think will work.

12 posts isn't enough - this is obviously the biggest thing people are saying. It's a big difference from seeing 50 in a list, but we are trying to tidy up what was a mass of text. Most people who've been here a while won't have a problem with how the home page looked, but if you're new here and you see that, it's cluttered and un-organised looking. This is what people have told us, we're not making it up So lessening the initial "blast" of threads combined with a bigger call to action to get people to either sign in or register is a major part of why some of the design decisions we've made have been taken.

For existing members, I can guarantee you that we're going to see what we can do to tweak this or flat out change it. I don't know what'll happen, I will have some input, as will Nicola, Niamh, Rónán, Danny, Alvis, Gordon, Derek and JD (the designers) and most importantly you. I don't think it unfair to suggest that we haven't got a bad track record in trying to find a satisfactory result on design changes that people weren't wild about in the past and so lets just keep that in mind.

One of the big benefits of this now being completely disconnected from VBulletin is that making changes to the page will be a lot more straight forward.

Finally, can I just point out that this thread started in April and we've gone ahead with the current design based on some of the feedback that we got then. I'm not for one second trying to play this as a get out of jail card, but we didn't get a huge amount of feedback at the time (certainly no mention of 12 posts being a problem from anyone), so this is what we rolled out with. We have some work to do on making sure we get these things more notice though, so I'll put my hand up there and make sure that I try harder the next time we would like your input.

So keep in mind that all your feedback will be read and factored in to a review internally, but obviously enough I can't say what will happen or even when it will happen.

I've read every post in this thread now and want to reply to this one as it seems to represent the "justification" for the change.

A wall of text. How is that a bad thing? Check out one of the most popular sites on the internet; reddit.com. It is purely substance over style and performs brilliantly. Just because the old boards homepage resembled an excel spreadsheet doesn't mean it wasn't beautifully functional. 12 posts instead of 50 is a "tidy up"?

The latest version is a mess.

Just like the last change that was made where ads were inserted into the threads this one is also a fiasco. You mention that these changes are being made by "designers" instead of developers? In that case sack the designers and stop ****ing with the site.

This excuse where the change from vbulletin is forcing the design changes is pretty pathetic IMO. If the new engine is so inflexible on design why are we moving to it?

Lastly you mention that all feedback is being taken on board? What I see is the (very rare) positive posts getting Thanks by the admins and the rest are being ignored. Why not Thank the constructively critical ones too?

As with the last format changes this one seems to be against the wishes of the users and made by designers who are in over their heads implementing the wrong things that no one asked for.

Just like last time I predict these latest changes will be rolled back.

I really miss the days when Devore and buddies would avoid changing the layout for years and still run the site on a shoestring.
Now we have a team of "designers". Bring back the devleopers.

To end on a positive note. Can I commend the overlords on how stable the site has been over the last year or so. Rock solid. Not sure who's running the infrastructure side of things these days but give them a pay rise.

flynnlives

obviously the owners want to increase revenue by introducing more adspace at the expense of the amount of threads shown.

there is no other reason for this horrible unwanted and un-neccessary change.

MadsL

Guys...

Keyboard extensions??

If you are going to have 5 (5 yes 5) pages for the front page; why would you break the keyboard shortcut extensions plug-in or at least provide the same functionality.

Right & Left arrows would be logical for navigation of these pages? No?

bizmark

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

In a previous post I explained that due to technical changes we couldn't keep the old home page. wnolan1992 believes it's a lame excuse so I elaborated by explaining why sticking with vBulletin styles or even offering more than one style on the new platform is not a runner. This isn't me defending the current iteration of the homepage design, not in the slightest.

Danny

I dont know much about the back end workings of boards like these however i would respectful suggest you guys should of considered this before migrating the design is absolutely awful if it cant be changed easily then its a massive limitation of the tech picked to run this site.

But to be productive for the love of god use more than 25% of my screen for something productive and put in some sort of drop down easy to navigate menus

nesf

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

The API delivers the data to the User Interface layer, which supports one style only but many themes (colour versions). There are no plans to implement a style system on the UI layer, it is something we're leaving behind with vBulletin (the ability to change how the site looks in its entirety).

Ok, let me rephrase the question. Is your new forum software capable of generating the information necessary to recreate the old homepage? Specifically I'm asking that since we cannot go back to the old homepage based on vBulletin can we not just create a new homepage that has the same functionality with the new software.

flynnlives

what are the chances that the owners will re-introduce the old site for a small subscription.

seriously this site makes more then enough in revenue.

whats with the greed?

quarryman

flynnlives wrote: »

obviously the owners want to increase revenue by introducing more adspace at the expense of the amount of threads shown.

there is no other reason for this horrible unwanted and un-neccessary change.

This is what I think is the real reason for the change.

Can someone tell me if loading to the next 15 pages loads a new set of ads?

damned_junkie

flynnlives wrote: »

what are the chances that the owners will re-introduce the old site for a small subscription.

seriously this site makes more then enough in revenue.

whats with the greed?

Exactly how much revenue do you think boards makes?

Boards.ie: Danny

quarryman wrote: »

This is what I think is the real reason for the change.

Can someone tell me if loading to the next 15 pages loads a new set of ads?

It does not, and there are no increases in advertisement slots or sizes. If anything with the login widget the right hand side ad slot appears below the fold and may even get a lower revenue rate due to that.

quarryman

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

It does not, and there are no increases in advertisement slots or sizes. If anything with the login widget the right hand side ad slot appears below the fold and may even get a lower revenue rate due to that.

In that case I take back my "accusation".

flynnlives

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

It does not, and there are no increases in advertisement slots or sizes. If anything with the login widget the right hand side ad slot appears below the fold and may even get a lower revenue rate due to that.

that maybe the case now but ultimatly there will be more "tweaks" to "tidy up" the new layout.

Whilst i commend your efforts to make the site more efficient and faster its pretty obvious to me this is a move to a huffington post/journal style layout and thus there will be more opportunities for revenue generation.

Also not being fairly knowledgeable with vbullitin i suspect that you cant login and comment on threads in vbulliten with your twitter and facebook accounts.
I could be wrong on this.
Hence another reason why i think your moving to your own API.

Obviously i couldnt care less, a company owns this site and is well entitled to make as much money outta the site as they can. Its their right. I would surely do teh same.
But i think you might find that the current revenues will take a hit.
I personally would make the changes alot slower. Just look what google is doing with gmail and youtube. They are slowly but surely starting to merge.
All in good time as they say.

Fuzzy_Dunlop

Not sure if this has already been covered, but I can't seem to go to the last page of the thread I want to go to. Even for subscribed threads it just keeps bringing me back the the very start?

Seems like another rather unnecessary change to me.

Dick phelan

I prefered the old layout tbh, i liked the way the old home page was layed out with all the thread types on the left and the fact there where more threads in the home page

It's missing some things for me. Mainly the "Virgin" and "Most read" tabs.

There needs to be more than 12 threads on the home page, maybe not as much as 50, but definitely more than there is currently.

Just by going to the home page now using my laptop that only has a 1366 x 768 resolution I can see 15 threads without scrolling down. With the new design I can only see (just about) 7! That seems like a step backwards to me. It also looks like there's a lot of wasted space which others have mentioned too.

Also, because of the information that goes before the forum link ("Latest post a moment ago" or "Latest post less than 1 min ago by" etc..) and the length of the name of the poster; the placement of the forum link is not uniform, it's all over the place in that regard.

Last point is a minor one, I don't see the point of the "Thanks" listing for each thread, unless it's going to become a link that shows you the most thanked posts in that thread (which would be a good idea IMO) it serves absolutely no function because the information is largely irrelevant without being able to know which posts received the thanks.


I'm not of the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" brigade because if we all had that attitude we'd all be driving mid to late 90's Toyotas. I like that work is being done to move forward and improve the site, but so far this isn't an improvement, it could be with the right changes though.

the_syco

EPIC FAIL

For the craic, I clicked on the "My Threads" option.

It shows a post from;
5 hours
2 weeks
2 months
3 years
3 years
4 years
4 years
4 years
5 years
5 years
5 years
5 years



So yeah, f**k that tab

=-=

The thanks tab, 6 of which are the "Praveen Halappanavar says he has received abusive letters" thread.

=-=

The latest posts tab, I have to read the entire thing to see what forum is it in, as they're not all in the same uniform area. Annoying.

Xavi6

Woke up this morning, hit "My Forums" and now I have a headache

Lose the "thanks per thread" stat, it's absolutely useless (unless there's some reasoning for it that we've yet to hear?).

It all looks too cluttered, as in there's too much info in two lines of text yet a sh*tload of white space -

The 2013/14 New kits thread
Latest post 8 mins ago by jimjimjimmy in Soccer

Separate them a bit, like someone suggested earlier on, and it'd be a lot more liveable.

calex71

Don't ever visit the home page personally, i usually jump in via a forum specific bookmark and go from there.

Tested it though and it looks nice, and my ad block picks up and removes the talk to forum links on the right on the homepage. Took me a while to find the them in their new place in the top left, thats something that needs to be considered as many of us use a form of adblock and their removal from the Biz sub menu may cause issues for some.

Cookie_Monster

Dav wrote: »

It was built by developers, not created by designers and we've fixed that.

and there in lies the entire problem. developers build things to work properly, designers design things to look nice, just like architects and engineers. guess which works better in real life...

Ken.

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

and there in lies the entire problem. developers build things to work properly, designers design things to look nice get as much money out of you as possible, just like architects and engineers. guess which works better in real life...

I hate fyp posts but fyp.

AlmightyCushion

This is an idea of what I was talking about in my first post.

Before:


After:


This was done by chopping things up and moving them around so things are aligned properly but it's just a mock up.

You've got most of the information about the thread very close to the beginning of the thread title so makes it easier to scan over the list. To find the post count, thanks count, forum the thread was posted in and person who posted it don't result in your eyes darting all over the place.

Moving the tabs to the left gives us an extra row for threads. It also reduces the empty white space we had in the middle of the page. The tabs look crap because, like I said above, I was just chopping them and moving them about. Wouldn't be hard to make them look good though. The room below them could be used for other functionality as well. You could even move the all topics button above the latest posts tab. That may get confusing though as it refines what is showing in the existing tabs as opposed to being a tab it self. Any ways food for thought.

the_syco

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

and there in lies the entire problem. developers build things to work properly, designers design things to look nice, just like architects and engineers. guess which works better in real life...

I believe this picture sums it up perfectly?


The excel format may have been ugly, but it was awesome

HorseSea

I don't like the homepage, I preferred seeing the forum and then the post title, now it headlines the post title.

Sofiztikated

AlmightyCushion, that's the business.

I seem to be having a bug, I use the black skin, but now when entering text in the text field, the text colour is white. The text box is white. See where my problem occurs?

Norma_Desmond

Seems that people (myself included) just want a similar layout to the previous home page.

It is impossible to quickly skim through the homepage and find an interesting thread, as six (or twelve) threads is just not enough to grab people's attention.

Personally, I would skim the home page and open a tab of any thread which I thought might be interesting.
This has essentially been taken away from me, as I am not going to click through five homepages, would waste too much time.

The options, layout and amount of threads made the previous homepage easy to navigate.
Surely there is a way to change the page again to incorporate more threads and a similar layout.

To echo others also, the thanks per thread seems pointless.

I do understand a lot of work has gone in this and this is certainly not the response that you were hoping for, but criticism does have to be taken on board when in the process of designing something.

Hopefully you guys can find a happy medium.

whiteandlight

What are the chances of a reddit style scroll down for more posts on the homepage? Now that would be a change I could get on board with!

Passenger

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

So it's the feedback thread and keep in mind that we were asking for specifics back in April so I'll ask you now - what would you change, specifically? And "go back to the old one" isn't a valid answer

So far the most consternation has been over only having 12 posts per page, down from 50. So we can leave that one out - what else would you like to see?

Danny

1. Specifically, the layout is not conducive to legibility. The eyes just don't focus on anything in particular. Maybe its the colour contrast that impedes it's legibility or the line spacing or alignment.
   
2. Thanks count column is entirely redundant imo. How many thanks a topic has received has no bearing upon users clicking it or not. It's taking up unnecessary space.
   
3. Implement time stamps with actual time of posts.
   
4. Thread titles should be smaller and not Bold.

Those are the things the immediately come to mind regards the homepage layout. Thanks for taking the suggestions on board.