Personal Home Page and User Profile Enhancement Requests

I see that the very top of the Personalized Home Page has been tweaked and that the content has been changed of the top box which includes our names and avatars.

While before it included our post count and bio material...it now lists:

"Latest Product Review"
"Latest Thread"
"Latest Stuff Added"
"Add Stuff to Your List"

Personally, I don't find ANY of those things useful or helpful in any way...much along the same line that I don't find all the stuff in the right-hand column that helpful or interesting.

While I'm not sure what info WOULD be most pertinent there (maybe links to Edit Profile options, subscriptions, etc.), I could also advocate personalizing the page with our names and avatars but bumping the "Stuff You Care About" section higher onto the displayed page. 

I, frankly, get aggravated that I have to scroll down to the list of my subscribed threads to see what's new past this force-fed menu of entirely random and disinteresting stuff.  I have a hard time anyone would click on a thread to read it simply because it is being presented to them as the thread which has the-most-recent post entered in it.  Who cares?  If I want reviews, I'll go seek out reviews.  But I don't care that the most recent review is "Batman: The Brave & the Bold: Volume 1"...yet there it is at the top of my personalized home page.  Not very personal come to think of it. 

I suppose you could always give us the option to customize out personalized home pages ourselves by-way-of-content?

Not sure about the purpose of your post Adam...but could we also include a "Home" link within the navigation system?  I hate to sound like a broken record...but it's hard to know sometimes which things get noticed.    Mine is a two-prong request.

Adam: I am more than happy to explain--as I have been pushing for this ever since the switchover was made. 

By "home", I am referring to a link to one's "Personalized Home Page" to be put in the forum navigation menu (which up until a few days ago was the drop-down menu).  Under the vb software, there was a "Home" link at the VERY TOP of all the other sub-forum choices.  It was on our home pages back then where we could see our subscribed threads and our favorite threads--the same basic forum function that the Personalized Home Page offers now.  

While I understand your point that there is a link to the Home page just a couple of inches away from the "More Forums" link...there is a huge thing to be said for making the navigation system consistent.  Looking at the HTF from the viewpoint that it is above-all-else a discussion forum, I think one should use the same navigational tools to travel within the subforum structure.

In other words:  when I start out on a typical HTF visit at my home page, to navigate into the subforums I have to click a "Forums" link and go to the main index page and then negotiate from there.  Why can't I have a navigation menu on the Home Page?  (And apparently you agree!  )  And thusly when I am navigating the sub-forums, why wouldn't I simply use the same navigational pop-up menu that I-always-use to return to the home page--which is simply a natural extension of the discussion forum and a place to which users are "pushed" to go anyway? 

As people note, we are creatures of habit and it makes logical sense to me (not always the most logical of people) to be able to use the same pop-up menu to get back and forth between our Home Page and the sub-forums.

Does that explain it?  Sometimes I'm not sure I use the correct terminology.

It's not just that "we always did it that way."  But I think it made practical sense to be able to reach "Home" from the navigation menu.  And still does.

Adam:  There should also be a forum navigation menu added to the Private Messages Page...for all the same reasons I listed above for including that navigation on the Home Page. 

Even though I'm in the business of communications...it is not always an easy thing, this, to get a point across so as to explain what people understand in the way of which I would like them to. 

Improve the method of managing subscriptions.

Current usability problems are:

1) The edit interface is slow to load.

I'm assuming the delay is due to the number of subscriptions I have (over 1,000) and the attempt by the system to list them all on one page. If the list only showed 20 threads at a time, it would be more usable as it's usually just one or two subscriptions I want to change.

2) The list defaults to alphabetical by thread title.

If it were sorted to start date, or even better, last updated (which would be a column to add), it would be even better, as it's usually a thread that is getting updated frequently that I'm no longer interested in following that I want to unsubscribe from.

Thank you.

I have already criticized the info in the "Welcome" box at the top of the personalized home page.  It went from having a review of our own bio info to a list of The Latest Product Review, Latest Thread and Latest Stuff.

This is info which, it seems to me, the new HTF layout is constantly trying to jam down our throats.  How are these things relevant to me?  Why do I want them on MY personalized home page?  Any chance WE can personalize the info on our own home page? 

I have written in the past about the usefulness of having a list of "Favorite Threads," for example. 

Why would even a so-called "power user" like myself care which of the millions of HTF threads has been posted in most recently? 

Yet this info shows up at the top of some pages, the bottom of every page and in the right-hand column of many pages.

So, on a whim I clicked on a Latest Stuff entry this morning on a Velodyne subwoofer and got taken to a page on which I had to hunt down a small link marked "Read Review."  What I got taken to after that reads like a blurb from a manufacturer's pamphlet found on a showroom floor.  I'm guessing that's not the use for which this function was intended.  Maybe it is.

Anyway, you might want to check that out (I provided the link above) but, my point is, the content of the site is drowning in a sea of extraneous (and useless to me) information: What Users Want, Other Threads, Recent Reviews.  It is repeated over and over on each page we visit. 

Maybe it's because of the extent of my time here and my familiarity with my way around the forum that this information seems useless to me...but it might be more useful for the casual user.  While I can get my head around that concept, I still have a hard time believing it needs to be so "in your face" and that certain parts of it can be useful to anyone, such as: "Most Recent Thread."

=======

After posting the above, I scrolled up the thread to see who had posted in it to get a sense of who might be reading this because they would be subscribed to it.  In doing so, I found an earlier post from myself in which I already listed some of the points from my little rant.  I'm sorry for the repetition.  I didn't realize I had already posted them here.  I thought I had only posted them long ago in one of the original feedback threads after the switchover.  But, if nothing else, I am showing some consistency in my opinions and thought process about the layout of the forum. 

Adam:  This seems like such a no-brainer.  We've (well, I've ) discussed this to death.  And, forgive me, but it seems like it would be an easy adjustment (this coming from a guy who knows nothing about what's going on behind-the-scenes and nothing about writing code for a website's layout).  What's the status?

It has gotten pretty quiet again around the board about what's being discussed/worked-on/etc.  regarding the forum layout. 

Adam:  Thanks for the update.


That's a concept that is easily misconstrued, I believe, by the membership.  For all the interaction I have with yourself and a handful of the administration team, I still find myself wondering on occasion if comments are being read and if action is being considered (either yea or nay).  I hope that honesty is useful to you and the team. 

Lots of changes to the front page tonight. I was able to discover the settings to restore it back to the original view I prefer: thread titles I'm sub'd to with new posts. I'm neutral on these changes, and can believe that others will find helpful the new features. I'll have to explore more.

However, there are some "bugs"

* It shows all threads, not subscriptions by default. Everyone time I go to the front page, I must again click "Subscriptions" to see my subscriptions.

* Clicking thread titles of subscriptions takes me to the first post, not the first new post. For first new post I must click the teeny little "first new post" in the lower right.

* It does not mark thread read after reading new posts. The main page still lists the sub with "first new post" active, which takes me back to what I just read.

* It no longer shows the # of new posts. I prefer to see # of new posts.

I'm sure these are easily fixed; they were working fine an hour or two ago. I hope they are soon.

Edited by DaveF - 10/21/09 at 7:35pm

Alas, I've found the front page is now useless to me; it's a clumsy and slow interface now. I've gone back to my old habit of using a direct link to AHL and then using the More Forums menu to navigate the forum and visually scanning thread titles. Navigation has regressed to a state worse than before the transition from vBulletin, as the More Forums is a lesser tool than the old-skool pop-up menu and the Back Page problems remain unfixed.

I hope these bugs are fixed soon. It's a real setback, for me anyway.

Dave:  I'm going to point you to THIS THREAD where more discussion is taking place on this issue (since there is no dedicated thread on this particular new subject). 

On the subject of our Personal Home Pages...

I was looking at the box at the top which says "Greetings, Mike Frezon!"  I was also looking at typical threads which have horizontal boxes at the top of each post identifying the poster:  avatar, name, post count and joined date.  There is SO MUCH empty space in these boxes, I really don't see why the avatars couldn't be changed from a 1:1 aspect ratio to 2:1 (or even cinemascope!)

It seems like it would be an easy way to provide an increase in avatar size without having to reinvent the wheel. 

Can anyone from Huddler (or the HTF) answer this question...to satisfy my curiosity?

Does a refresh of the activity feed on the homepage (by clicking on the little circle arrow icon) also refresh the PM link to let us know there are fresh PMs waiting for us?  Or, does it only work to refresh the thread activity feed?

I'm beginning to think the feedback area is a dead space.

My experience is that both Huddler and HTF Ownership are aware of feedback comments and issues. I've also seen that some issues are taking a lot of the oxygen in the room, and some lesser matters are pending.

Huddler and HTF has been aware of the issues since the day this thing changed hands.
As for the other part of your post that looks like double speak.

It has been mighty quiet for the past month or so.

I KNOW (as much as I know anything) that when I posted this question a month ago...the entire membership of the HTF stood on its collective toes and wondered aloud....ooooh.  I wonder if it does?!? 

I can now calm everyone's curiosity and answer my own question.  Today--finally--the perfect storm appeared on my home page and allowed me to scientifically get the information needed to answer the long-sought-after result to the weighty measure broached above.

Deep breaths everyone...

At one point today, I hit the refresh button on my Home page and revealed some newly-posted-in subscribed threads...but NO new PMs.  I then quickly refreshed the entire home page (using my Firefox refresh button) and a PM from much earlier appeared. 

Voila!  If someone should want to notify the Nobel committee, I would not stand in their way.