The folks that do not like what is here should TRY and develope a forum or webpage. This forum is more of an industry standard wihout all the frills.
The fact that you must have an idea of how to post the dreaded “[img]” is a good safety valve against flooding with all kinds of pictures. If you have a picture you wish others to see you will learn the format and post if it is NOT that important you will not bother to learn it, simple.
I wish one of my people would have taken the time to work on our webpages and forum like you did.
Thanks for the time and effort. This old dog will learn all the new tricks if he wants to be able to use them.
I know that when I first signed on to this forum, I was a little lost in all the features. It took me a while and lots of visits before I felt comfortable on here. Before “the change”, I was still finding new areas that I had not explored.
Now that “the change” has taken place, it’s going to take a while before I am as comfortable as I was with the old forum format, although this time, my learning curve should be sharper! (Maybe! LOL)
There are still plenty of places for me to explore. Some of them are ones I explored on the old forum, just a little different or perhaps harder to find.
It’s only a matter of time before most members will feel really comfortable with the changes. The important thing is to keep trying and have fun.
I have no problems with the new forum. I can see everything I want to, post & reply , post pics with no problems. I think it’s great! Only thing I notice the number of posts seems to be way down. Apost will stay on page 1 a lot longer than before.
I agree with Tom. The fact that the number of posts is down is doubly good, in my opinion: we seem to have lost some of the “star collectors”, and this allows some of the more interesting posts, as noted, to stay on page one longer, garnering more thoughtful input.
I’ll cast my vote in this topic, not the other one. I think the old forum software was feeling its age, and we need to get accustomed to changes like this. This one runs faster. You get a formatting toolbar (no more [i], [b], etc. for emphasis) and other word-processor-like features.
TBat - try ctrl-home from anywhere. Pops you up to the top like a cork in a bathtub.
Thanx MrB, for teaching this ol’ dog a new trick![tup]
Being an intranet web developer/administrator myself, I can feel some of Bergie’s pain. Oftentimes I’ve thoroughly planned and tested, then deployed a major upgrade as soon as the 100th ‘malfunction scenario’ has been successfully tested. But it’s always the 101st, the unanticipated one, that bites me - usually a particular user’s PC has something running on it preventing his/her browser from interpreting my site’s HTML/Javascript properly. And even when they do “all the right things” it still doesn’t work!
One major headache for site administrators is dealing with the licensing vendor of the software that ‘drives’ their site. The vendor may (1) go out of business, (2) be merged into a larger company, or (3) raise their maintenance/support rates exorbitantly to the point that they become unaffordable. [Every year, when I submit a requisition to renew our annual support agreement, I hear the same question: “Do we really need to continue working with this vendor?”]
I’ll bet that one of the conditions I described above applied to the vendor of the original Kalmbach forum software, and that is why Bergie [or higher-ups] opted for this major change. These types of decisions are never made lightly!
I agree with everyone here. What amazes me is the complete self-centeredness of a few individuals who feel that this forum is their divine right and if it isn’t exactly the way they want it or are comfortable, then they are going to take their ball and go home. This is a FREE site, put here for our entertainment by the goodness of the sponsors’ hearts. They have a right to change and update this in order to make it cheaper for them, less headache for them or even just for their prerogative. If you don’t like it, you have the right to go elsewhere, but for crying out loud, don’t pull the Chicken Little that the sky is falling because this site isn’t the way it used to be.
I’ll add to those who are relatively happy with the change. The departure of the stars and polls seems to have taken with it a number of threads and some users. My life is no worse without the stars and I ignored polls completely. I still stumble around on some things, but that is a function of me, not it.
The only troubling thing I am consistently seeing posted is the difficulty Mac users seem to be having.
As for attaching images, when I have any number of them I want people to see I tend to dump them to a website and then attach the links as URLs within my posts (without calling them up with IMG). If people want to see the pictures, they can click on the links. Saves bandwidth here, and I have gotten comments from people that have viewed them despite the extra steps on their part.
As for anyone with technical difficulties, I am using a couple of PCs to access this site with Mozilla Firefox, and I’ve had no problems. I’m generally on the most current or a fairly recent release of Firefox. I can’t speak to how well or poorly the Mac version of Firefox works.
Running a forum is no small task. Random users can find more ways to louse up anything computer related than most people can imagine. And that does not include those who get pleasure from lousing things up. Providing this at no real charge to us is a good gesture.
I actually like the new visual appearance. I find it more aesthetically pleasing and less harsh. The other changes I am getting used to - just a matter of learning how to get around the site. Overall I’d rate it as an improvement.
Enjoy
Paul
skiloff wrote: " I agree with everyone here. What amazes me is the complete self-centeredness of a few individuals who feel that this forum is their divine right and if it isn’t exactly the way they want it or are comfortable, then they are going to take their ball and go home." As is so often the case with apologists, you utterly miss the point. Since the forum was changed, a number of users, myself included, have had fundamental problems with the functionality of the forum. Not the appearance, not the lack of stars, the loss of the polls, nor any other superficial nonsense. You seriously reckon complaining about the lack of functionality and what I presume are the bugs that compromise the functionality is being self-centered? I want to continue to participate in the forum, but if I can’t even access basic features such as quoting a post in reply, then I 'm entirely justified in complaining that the forum isn’t the way it used to be. Mark.
I can understand some peoples’ frustration with the functionality of the new forum software, but the reality is that there is new software, they’re not going to go back to the old software, and we all might as well get used to it. Negative comments (read: “whining”) to Bergie are not going to make it any better.
I don’t know for sure, but I’m willing to bet that Bergie did not personally design the software, and whoever did design it, did not custom design it specifically for this website. It appears to be an off-the-shelf software package, as evidenced by the broad generic information in the “help” section. I’d also be willing to bet that the decision to change software was made at least a couple of paygrades above Bergie’s level.
Granted, there are some functionality issues and little features that we’d all like to change because the old software did it better (e.g. - “quick reply” box, pictures of the smileys on the smiley pull-down menu, etc.). It seems that a lot of complaints are about how “hard” it is to do some things (post pictures, reply to posts, etc.), but the reality is that you can do many of the same things in the new forum, but you just have to do it differently. IMHO, “I used to be able to do X by performing action A, but now I have to perform action B instead because action A doesn’t work anymore” is not a valid complaint.
The best Bergie can probably do is collect any constructive input on this, and feed it to their software contractor to see if they can get it written into the software, but this will take some time and won’t happen overnight.
In the meantime, we all need to get over the fact that a change has occured, take a few moments to learn how the new system works and how it doesn’t work (i.e. learn how to use it), and in general, just “suck it up!”
As I said earlier, Mark, your type of problem is the most troubling part of this to me. A consistent number of the problems that seem to be technical or compatibility issues are coming from Mac users, and those need to be addressed. I would have thought that somewhere along the line Mac compatibility would have been tested on this software, probably not by Kalmbach but by the software producer. For this level of problem to be surfacing is, in my opinion, simply not acceptable and Kalmbach should be screaming at the vendor about it, unless of course they knew of it up front.
For evey legitimate complaint we see several that are noise:
I liked the old one better, why did they change,
I can’t figure out how to do “x.” Despite the fact others do it all the time, it must be the software,
The new one sucks,
Why didn’t they do a survey to see what we all wanted (as if that could be determined), then hire engineers to custom design it for a free forum, and I don’t want to pay for it,
I just want to complain about something, and there are no polls or stars to complain about.
In my professional endeavors, I have been involved in several major system changes in a much more critical application than an internet forum. The pattern of complaints has been pretty much the same in all of them as it is here: 1) those described in the bullets above, which are largely just people complaining, 2) technical problems and 3) user issues. The user issues are largely familiarity and will be corrected over time with more use and help. It would help if there was a tutorial page about how to do various things. The technical problems need to be addressed. The general complaining…well, you could send out $100 to every person on this forum and a good number of them would complain that they deserved $200.
To those having real technical problems, I hope you hang in there and the problems g
stokesda wrote: “It seems that a lot of complaints are about how “hard” it is to do some things (post pictures, reply to posts, etc.), but the reality is that you /can/ do many of the same things in the new forum, but you just have to do it differently. IMHO, “I used to be able to do X by performing action A, but now I have to perform action B instead because action A doesn’t work anymore” is not a valid complaint.” What utter tripe. I’m not complaining about doing things differently. I’m complaining about not being able to do things AT ALL. The button marked “Quote” doesn’t work when I click on it, period. There is no “action B” to overcome this. My complaint is valid. At least half the posts in each thread are not visible to be read unless I click on the reply button. There is no “action B” to overcome this. My complaint is valid. "In the meantime, we all need to get over the fact that a change has occured, take a few moments to learn how the new system works and how it /doesn’t/ work (i.e. learn how to /use/ it), and in general, just “suck it up!” More utter tripe. My complaint is not that a change has occurred, it is that the new forum has basic features that DON’T WORK! The button marked “Quote” doesn’t work when I click on it, period. There is no “action B” to overcome this. What do you suggest I learn to use instead?
Adelie wrote: “A consistent number of the problems that seem to be technical or compatibility issues are coming from Mac users, and those need to be addressed. I would have thought that somewhere along the line Mac compatibility would have been tested on this software, probably not by Kalmbach but by the software producer.” Would you? I wouldn’t. As a Mac user, I’m all too accustomed to this sort of nonsense. 99% of the time, I take the view that if a website can’t be bothered catering to me by sorting out compatibility problems, then I can’t be bothered struggling to use that website. And as a consequence, there are many businesses who have lost me as a customer for ever. I enjoy participating in this forum, but I have to ask myself whether it’s worth the aggravation… Mark.
Sorry, Mark, I guess I misunderstood your particular case. As Adelie (the “other” Mark [;)]) has pointed out, there seem to be some genuine compatibility issues related to specific users’ machines, probably due to a common program or OS they’re using. And I agree that the software company should figure out what the common denominator is to all these problems and correct it right away (again, this probably won’t happen overnight, or over a few dozen nights).
My comments were mostly directed at those who seem to be complaining primarily because things are different from the way they used to be.
Well, Mark, I hope that this problem for you Mac users can be solved, partly because I’m going to be purchasing one soon, but also because I always enjoy reading your posts, and your particular “take” on things.