New site layout

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lakinlakin
Posts: 121
Joined: 07 Jan 2016
Location: Scotland

18 Jun 2017

AttenuationHz wrote:
18 Jun 2017
On PC
The sidebar is a waste of time and space. It should go.

Not sure if this is possible but what if once you get passed the sidebar make it so replies below the luminosity take up that space. The top few replies get squashed.
That would be a good compromise, if the sidebar can't be removed.

User avatar
Redster
Posts: 156
Joined: 29 Mar 2016

18 Jun 2017

Gotta say it's pretty horrendous on android chrome. There's a grey bar at the top of the page that appears to be permanently in the way... in fact I am typing under it now...

Also the forum browsing text is too large... with the translucent grey permabar and the large text I can only see 3 posts in portrait and almost none landscape.

Not good.

Ostermilk
Posts: 1535
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

19 Jun 2017

A shopping mall is not a community.

Communities are generally self-funding, Aunt Flo organizes a jumble sale, Uncle Derek runs the Christmas raffle and gets local businesses to donate prizes, Brother John does a sponsored skydive and Lady Godiva rides her horse naked down the street, between those four they made well over a grand last year to cover their costs.

Funding arrives as a function of a community wanting to thrive, the more it thrives the more it is able to finance itself. If nobody is interested it dies a natural death..

I know I pledged donations when Brent first set this place on its feet I even seem to remember sending some cash at the outset has the community funding of this place been ruled out since, or is commerce the currently preferred route to attempt to cover costs and expenses?

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Kenni
Site Admin
Posts: 1245
Joined: 02 Jun 2015
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Contact:

19 Jun 2017

Ostermilk wrote:
19 Jun 2017
A shopping mall is not a community.

Communities are generally self-funding, Aunt Flo organizes a jumble sale, Uncle Derek runs the Christmas raffle and gets local businesses to donate prizes, Brother John does a sponsored skydive and Lady Godiva rides her horse naked down the street, between those four they made well over a grand last year to cover their costs.

Funding arrives as a function of a community wanting to thrive, the more it thrives the more it is able to finance itself. If nobody is interested it dies a natural death..

I know I pledged donations when Brent first set this place on its feet I even seem to remember sending some cash at the outset has the community funding of this place been ruled out since, or is commerce the currently preferred route to attempt to cover costs and expenses?
I'd like to get rid of the ads. I know the "Donate" button is hard to find but I don't like asking people for money. The ads were a "simple" way to cover the costs without making people feel "bad" about not chipping in.

But, as I've said so many times: Even without donations and ad income, the site will keep running. The advantage of ads is that we will get at least something and whatever is in excess of the costs we can throw at the community, like we did with the upgrade give-away.
Kenni Andruszkow
SoundCloud

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JiggeryPokery
RE Developer
Posts: 1174
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

19 Jun 2017

chk071 wrote:
17 Jun 2017

So why would i post a screenshot if you're not interested at all anyway? :P And i don't just use it for one forum, i use it for about 8 forums (maybe more).

BTW, i wasn't aware that Reasontalk is not advertising driven. Maybe i'm hallucinating, because i see ads on this site.

Yeah, I did install Tapatalk right after I posted so I could get a feel for what you meant, and to understand it rather than talk bollocks about something I knew nothing about ;) . I still might talk bollocks, but honestly I uninstalled it after about five minutes. It just drove me mad with an advert after every three or four posts, and trying to push me related (and unrelated) forums. Because the adverts are quite large (and the advert makers and Tapatalk know this perfectly well, it's quite intentional) it's difficult to swipe past adverts on phones and avoid accidental clicks on them every time.

Tapatalk doesn't exist to make using forums easier; it exists to make users think it makes using forums easier in order to push adverts at them. ;)

Since you do use a large number of forums then I do get that perhaps it makes some sense in overall useage management, but remember it's at the expense of being thoroughly tracked and marketed at. (Like Facebook, but sadly, even I find that a necessary evil despite my loathing of it). For people like myself who pretty much only visit one forum, I'd argue that we shouldn't need a third-party adslinger to make a forum readable and usuable, especially since it pretty much bang on as it was last week, both for site users, and users via Tapatalk. Now it's only designed for Tapatalk users, who won't see the actual site!

As for adverts, I disabled ads on RT as soon as I saw the dating scammers. I don't come here for that, neither on a metered connection nor a desktop. :(

Site income is a tricky subject; we know these things do cost money to run. A few of us (including me) set up monthly donations early on but we told to stop (so I did, I don't know about anyone else). As soon as the site moved to Tapatalk, it became, by Kenni's own admission (viewtopic.php?p=330585#p330585), about designing the site to make enough money to run it by accommodating the needs of those serving up the adverts, rather than those using the site, and those included not updating old themes to be compatible with the new and improved faster forum that washes whiter than white for 8 out of 10 cats. But go compare and the new theme isn't noticeably faster, either. ;) So I'm not seeing what the advantage is of a site that's harder to use for non-Tapatalk users.

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Kenni
Site Admin
Posts: 1245
Joined: 02 Jun 2015
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Contact:

19 Jun 2017

JiggeryPokery wrote:
19 Jun 2017
As soon as the site moved to Tapatalk, it became, by Kenni's own admission (viewtopic.php?p=330585#p330585), about designing the site to make enough money to run it by accommodating the needs of those serving up the adverts
That's simply not true.

Tapatalk changed the terms for site owners adding the support for tapatalk on their forums. Ads in tapatalk became forced, unless we pay $5 a month. We want to do this, but $5 here and $5 there...

Tapatalk wasn't added to generate money, at all! Tapatalk was added because it makes forum browsing for mobile users really, really smooth! I personally only use Tapatalk for mobile forum browsing, and so does 700 other users.

I've just subscribed RT to the premium Tapatalk plan so we can get rid of the Tapatalk ads. Covering the costs for all these options that the users actually have here (if you ask me) has to come from somewhere. That's why there's ads on the browser version of the site. It seems that all the old-schoolers are threatning to leave us and they blame it on the design and the ads. I'm feeling we're being punished for Propellerhead adding VST support to our DAW, and it's the current VST focus by the rest of the users that annoys them.

I'm not sure what to think about that, but in the end, we might have to disable the ads completely. If there's one thing that's for sure, what we do with RT is all for you, the community, and all the awesome material that's being gathered here. If the ads are, supposedly, in the way of all that, so be it. It just means we have to cut back on other things then.
Kenni Andruszkow
SoundCloud

chk071
Posts: 522
Joined: 12 Jul 2015
Location: Germany

19 Jun 2017

I'm one of the lucky guys who purchased Tapatalk, when it was still a payware app (back in 2011 or so...). One day, after it had gone freeware, i had a ad in it, shot the devs a message, and they changed my account to a Premium account, even though that was supposedly not designed to work (because people who bought it back when i bought it are not supposed to get the new "Premium" option). So, yeah, i can understand why one would get annoyed by it. On the other hand, designing software, and hosting a site, and hosting and developing plugins for a service costs money, and the people developing it want to live of it, so, your call whether you want to pay $5 for the Premium status of a app which IMO is really useful, because i haven't come along any mobile template which gets you the same amount of browse-ability as Tapatalk, or you don't pay, and have you to live with ads, or you don't want to use it at all. IMO, especially if you're a frequent forum user, and have a couple of forums you browse, it is well worth it.

BTW, i deactivated my browser's adblocker on this forum too. Simply because it doesn't block the whole site with ads, or annoys the hell out of me with ads everywhere. I can live with ads, and i can understand why they're there.
:reason: :rebirth:

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jonheal
Posts: 1213
Joined: 29 Jan 2015
Location: Springfield, VA, USA
Contact:

19 Jun 2017

I just now realized my ad blocker was blocking ads on the site. I've unblocked it. I added a few items to my Google Ad Preferences. Looking forward to slightly more targeted ads. :)
Jon Heal:reason: :re: :refill:Do not click this link!

chk071
Posts: 522
Joined: 12 Jul 2015
Location: Germany

19 Jun 2017

I just got a "ThaiMatches - Find your dream woman" (or something) ad in the sidebar. Go figure. :oops:
:reason: :rebirth:

WongoTheSane
Moderator
Posts: 1851
Joined: 14 Sep 2015
Location: Paris, France

19 Jun 2017

chk071 wrote:
19 Jun 2017
I just got a "ThaiMatches - Find your dream woman" (or something) ad in the sidebar. Go figure. :oops:
It should disappear after a couple of days (Google is sending generic ads at first until it "gets" your context, and fine-tunes it quite quickly). I only have relevant ads now (music and dev).

chk071
Posts: 522
Joined: 12 Jul 2015
Location: Germany

19 Jun 2017

Yeah. :) Was just a bit surprising as i thought Google already knows me. But, of course i don't know whether it is a "per site" thing or not, and i have no idea about the deeper dynamics behind it as well.
:reason: :rebirth:

WongoTheSane
Moderator
Posts: 1851
Joined: 14 Sep 2015
Location: Paris, France

19 Jun 2017

chk071 wrote:
19 Jun 2017
Yeah. :) Was just a bit surprising as i thought Google already knows me. But, of course i don't know whether it is a "per site" thing or not, and i have no idea about the deeper dynamics behind it as well.
I might be completely wrong but I think it's a mix of both: it accounts for the site you're on AND your personal history, but when ads are activated on a particular site, it has to merge the two data sources, which takes time (I'd say it's batched over two days from what I've seen). In the meantime, it's sending generic ads. Just a hunch though.

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Kenni
Site Admin
Posts: 1245
Joined: 02 Jun 2015
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Contact:

19 Jun 2017

Hang tight. To begin with, it's a mix.

I only get VST related ads (various VST synths, Spire in particular), and just now I got a travel agency ad because I just bought a vacation for the family :P
Kenni Andruszkow
SoundCloud

WongoTheSane
Moderator
Posts: 1851
Joined: 14 Sep 2015
Location: Paris, France

19 Jun 2017

Forum updated, please check this thread for a list of changes:

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=7501920

Ostermilk
Posts: 1535
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

19 Jun 2017

WongoTheSane wrote:
19 Jun 2017
Forum updated, please check this thread for a list of changes:

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=7501920
Much better, in such a short space of time too... ;)

lakinlakin
Posts: 121
Joined: 07 Jan 2016
Location: Scotland

19 Jun 2017

Much better. Thanks

User avatar
ljekio
Posts: 962
Joined: 21 Jan 2015

19 Jun 2017

I would like to see more noticeable marks "contains my messages in the thread". Thank you.

WongoTheSane
Moderator
Posts: 1851
Joined: 14 Sep 2015
Location: Paris, France

19 Jun 2017

ljekio wrote:
19 Jun 2017
I would like to see more noticeable marks "contains my messages in the thread". Thank you.
Currently, it works like this:
dots.PNG
dots.PNG (857 Bytes) Viewed 4902 times
The top-right dot means "contains messages from me", the lower-left means "hot" (lots of activity), and the color of the logo indicates whether you have unread messages (blue) or not (gray).

Do you mean bigger dots? Different color?

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ljekio
Posts: 962
Joined: 21 Jan 2015

19 Jun 2017

Maybe bigger, maybe other color or form (kinda check mark).
To see it when you look at the name of the thread.

chk071
Posts: 522
Joined: 12 Jul 2015
Location: Germany

19 Jun 2017

WongoTheSane wrote:
19 Jun 2017
Forum updated, please check this thread for a list of changes:

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=7501920
Looks really nice now. Especially the smaller font in the forums overview made it a lot more clear.
:reason: :rebirth:


User avatar
motuscott
Posts: 3420
Joined: 16 Jan 2015
Location: Contest Weiner

20 Jun 2017

Thanks for the quick change to the layout. This is better.
Who’s using the royal plural now baby? 🧂

avasopht
Competition Winner
Posts: 3931
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

20 Jun 2017

WongoTheSane wrote:
19 Jun 2017
chk071 wrote:
19 Jun 2017
I just got a "ThaiMatches - Find your dream woman" (or something) ad in the sidebar. Go figure. :oops:
It should disappear after a couple of days (Google is sending generic ads at first until it "gets" your context, and fine-tunes it quite quickly). I only have relevant ads now (music and dev).
All I'm getting are ads for monochrome socks and flavourless rice snacks :cry:

WongoTheSane
Moderator
Posts: 1851
Joined: 14 Sep 2015
Location: Paris, France

21 Jun 2017

avasopht wrote:
20 Jun 2017
WongoTheSane wrote:
19 Jun 2017
chk071 wrote:
19 Jun 2017
I just got a "ThaiMatches - Find your dream woman" (or something) ad in the sidebar. Go figure. :oops:
It should disappear after a couple of days (Google is sending generic ads at first until it "gets" your context, and fine-tunes it quite quickly). I only have relevant ads now (music and dev).
All I'm getting are ads for monochrome socks and flavourless rice snacks :cry:
I think Google has determined that monochrome socks and flavourless rice snacks are indeed your main interests, even if you don't know it yet. Embrace it! There's no shame in that! :lol:

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AttenuationHz
Posts: 2048
Joined: 20 Mar 2015
Location: Back of the Rack-1

24 Jun 2017

Can't remember but I'm nearly sure clicking links in threads opened the link in a new window. Is that something that can be added. Or is there a setting to enable it on UCP.
It is not too much of an ask for people or things to be the best version of itself!

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