Posting is becoming very frustrating.
As usual, when a top accountant in a large company sees a way to maximise profitability(ie reduce overheads),the net result doesn't filter through till several months later-at which point it is argued quite easily the two events are not related.
Not terribly sure what bearing that observation has on the matter at hand, given that the site seems to have found its own ways to make life difficult for us all with no intervention from management, bean-counters or Satan's little helpers...
Not terribly sure what bearing that observation has on the matter at hand, given that the site seems to have found its own ways to make life difficult for us all with no intervention from management, bean-counters or Satan's little helpers...
Interesting alteration to your original post,which says to me it's better to hide behind the canvas rather than face the bigger picture, but hey, that happens everywhere.
I'm not sure what my anti-virus software (Norton) is doing but I've never had issues with any adverts or rollovers on this site. In fact I'd rate it as one of the best I visit wrt pop ups and rollovers etc. I do occasionally have issues with not recognised as 'logged in' but that's common and I can cope with that.
I know the feeling. That's why I hardly reply anymore.
Most of the time, after I typed a reply and hit the "save" button, I first need to fill out some hardly readable characters and need to "save" again. And then the whole reply is gone.
I don't even think about giving it another try.
The big pop up adds are VERY ANNOYING. But we don't pay for it, the adders do, so I doubt they're going to take them away.
Bugging a few subscribers that buy the magazine isn't such a big issue as losing a big sponsor.
I wonder how many times I'll have to post this message.
Agreed.
So flippin annoying - please please please sort this out What Hi Fi.
Disable rich-text.
Enable rich-text.
Allow html.
I might be a bit simpleton typing / pc wise but all this means nothing to me (and no I do not care to want to know either thanks).
I just want to be able to post something on the 1st attempt.
I too am fed up with over complications.
What Hi Fi - please take note.
Doubt this will work but ......
Ooo will you look at that...
I first need to fill out some hardly readable characters
Not any more.
Expansion, not alteration, in an attempt to clariify my explanation.. Which says to me it's better to try to consider the size of the catflap needing to be constructed, rather than being blinded by speculation about the myhtical origins of the oncoming cat. Or something.
But please rest assured no-one is hiding behind, or in denial about, anything. Rather, as Andy C has said, we share your frustration, and are stepping up the pressure to get things put right.
And once again, apologies to those users experiencing problems.
I often find myself "logged out" after pressing "save".
+1
Expansion, not alteration, in an attempt to clariify my explanation.. Which says to me it's better to try to consider the size of the catflap needing to be constructed, rather than being blinded by speculation about the myhtical origins of the oncoming cat. Or something.
But please rest assured no-one is hiding behind, or in denial about, anything. Rather, as Andy C has said, we share your frustration, and are stepping up the pressure to get things put right.
And once again, apologies to those users experiencing problems.
Ironically as I tried to quote your post,I was logged out,so revenons aux moutons.
The big pop up adds are VERY ANNOYING. But we don't pay for it, the adders do, so I doubt they're going to take them away.
I forgot about this, sorry.
We thought long and hard about the software to use for forums when we rebuilt the site a couple of years ago. As those who have paid any attention to my posts since, you may know that the site is build on Drupal (v6 currently, FWIW), an open-source content management system (CMS) that has plug-in, community-provided modules to provide extra functionality, such as this forum.
There were times (usually at 4am when I was migrating half a million pieces of user generated content and a hundred thousand users) when I wish we had used an off-the-shelf product (which as you point out are available for a couple of hundred bucks, so cost wasn't the issue), but the advantages offered by the fact that this forum is actually part of the website - as opposed to a completely different one with a subdomain tacked on it to make it look as if it's the same as would have been the case if we chose a different product - are manifold;
- you get rid of the need for a subdomain, as was the case before (community.whathifi.com), which offers you some SEO juice (though not a huge amount tbh, and you could probably get round it);
- all the content is in one website (for example reviews, forum posts, blog posts, reviews comments and forum comments are all the same thing technically), so you can maintain one search index;
- content can be linked more easily (we could attach product tags to forum posts, for example, which if we so wished could give us some nice contextual advertising hints, though you'll notice we don't);
- user management is unified across the entire site
- theming of the site is global - if it wasn't, they'd have had to do the redesign work twice: once for the forum and once for the rest of the site
- it offers a single administration point for editors/admins
- there are no hoops to jump through to get the forum to 'integrate' with the rest of the site in terms of URLs, links, blah - it 'just works' (technical issues notwithstanding)
Is that clearer?
Any 'technical issues' the site might have are to me just defects that need to go on the list, because to my mind there isn't a while lot needs fixing - sporadic logging out appears to be some sort of cookie expiration problem, double posting I don't know, blank posting I don't know, the sh-tty 64 character thing would take about ten minutes to fix the javascript that auto-populates the title field of replies (or the title could be removed altogether, I'm not sure it serves much purpose), etc. Any more you can think of?
Note that the tech team aren't exactly huge, and they run about fifteen other websites as well, so it's usually a case of joining the queue...
Really useful post that John, thanks for taking the time and effort to post it.
You're welcome. It's also worth pointing out that the forum is not the most-frequented part of the website (surprising as that may seem to those of us who frequent it), and therefore is not necessarily the area that would get first attention when things are wrong with it.
I just made a post... What a frustrating experience that was!
i had to spend about 25 min (excluding typing the post) getting it right' trying both from ipad and win pc - and it is still all over the place.
if I knew it would take that long I would not have bothered at all.
please sort it out.
Thanks Andrew and Andy.
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