HTF of new vs. the old layout / style / board / software, etc. - Page 2

Quote:
Most of my technical complaints have been addressed but I still wish for a lot of changes that bring the personality back.  These are two chief among them.  The thing that scares me is that it doesn't so much matter what "The management" here wants so much as what the Huddler Team considers important.  And unlike many other forum packages the Huddler consistency across sites really hamstrings HTF from being individual or friendly.  Sorry but that's how it seems to me.  I love HTF and I really like the guys who run it but even today I am not sold on Huddler as a platform.

Todd H I know Michael has gone through your response point by point refuting much of it from his perspective but I agree with you nearly completely.  I'm sorry that it seems like an "Us versus them" where Us is the oldest members and "Them" is alternatively either the Mgt. or the flood of new readers (Not many of whom seem to have become regular contributors it seems, just lurkers) but clearly there are many here, maybe not a majority but at least a sizable contingent, who feel exactly as you do.

I've tried to keep my complaints to myself but it really is frustrating when someone comes along like Todd does and lays out exactly what could still be improved around here and then his post gets turned into a point my point battle like it's something that can be won by superior logic and taste.  It's not.  These are opinions and in my opinion the old forum for all its faults had personality and that personality has been lost in the move.  You can say traffic is up and you can say it's merely old timers with rose colored glasses who give the old gal more credit than what she is due, but today's HTF looks totally boring to me on one hand and garish with ads on the other.   

Well this is my first visit in about a week and first post in over 2 weeks where I used to visit many times a day and post almost as often.

To answer the OP question. People in general do not like change. If there is not a good reason to change, then do not. Change just for the sake of changing things is annoying. Just look at many features that were changed in vista that worked just fine in winxp and they just changed the name or location.

One thing that I think was the biggest error of all in HFT switching the format is the way it was done. I know hindsight is 20-20, but I feel it was an awful transition. There was a lot of excitement before the change and then the new format came out not even 50%(?) completed. This was a huge shock to me and I think this turned off many existing users. I know it annoyed the crap out of me and I almost quit because it was such a pain to post, it took the fun out. This started a wave of negativity that snowballed with some users as time went on. It also created a lot of tension between many members and the forum staff on how things should be. While it is good to get buy-in on projects, especially from your customers, it is not always good to ask everyone's opinion. Many feel that just because you asked, you will implement what they say. I think the best way this should have been handled was to have a "beta" site to get all the input from users and get the bugs worked out. I am not saying this to criticize how the change was made, but to give advise to the OP before he changes his site. As far as the forum format is now, I find many things much easier and all in all I like it better.

Now on the loss of community, I am visiting far less often. My theater is complete and there is not money in the budget to replace equipment that is less than 2 years old. So I started hanging out more in the AHL and some movie reviews. I had noticed continuing drop off in interesting posts in the AHL and I lost interest and stopped looking. There was a thread about it being a ghost town long before the format change though. I do "feel" that some of the "quitters" contributed more to this although I can not back that up with any type of data.

All in all the new format Is as good as any other format that I use. I too miss being able to see avatars and the pics in the sigs. These give a forum more of the personality of it's users and definitely add to the community. With out them it is more business like.

On the subject of the avatars I just realized I must have seen DRobbin's birds for months without realizing they are from the Pixar short.  Too small to recognize =(

And just wanted to say hi to WARKRIEG!!!!!!  =p  Heya Holdy!

I post less and it's all to the forum change.  I don't like the clean look, it's too clean and sanitized.  I  liked coming on here, and finding that someone tweaked a bit of something.  It was more personal.  Maybe not as professional, but I preferred it.  I don't enjoy posting on here as much.  Many times the advertising slows things to a crawl. I don't like that this is the only forum I've been on, on the entire internet (  ;)  ) that my Firefox extension spell check wont work on.  I don't like that when I click on the links in the email updates, instead of going to the ass end of the thread I want to respond to, I go to page one.  I don't like the general response to complaints being one of "this isn't our problem, it's yours!" which is certainly the vibe that's mostly gone out whether it was intended or not.

So I chose to very selectively post since it's simply a bother, and you'll see by my posting history it's basically one thread where I post solely due to liking the people in it and genuinely being interested in them, as opposed to the hobby and the site in general.  I used to actively keep track of most of the sections, and participated in many of the threads, but the fun's gone out of it, so I maybe skim them once a week now as time permits.

1.)  Hi Holadem!  Don't be a stranger (or, at least, any stranger than you've ever been!). 

2.)  For the OP:  I agree with a lot of the  sentiment expressed by Dave.  I personally think the toughest part of this transition was that the switchover caught a lot of us long-timers by surprise in that many of the features we were used-to ceased to exist.  A longer beta testing period would have gone a long way towards a smoother experience for everyone. 

Change is hard enough for a many of us to embrace...but when you couple change with software that doesn't fit the purpose it makes it that much harder.  And that situation further exacerbates the negative vibes as people start to confuse which is software-that-doesn't-work and which is just "different."

I was trying to keep a low profile on this one, after all who likes seeing the problem in the mirror .  While its crying over spilled milk now, Dave is right.  We should have done the transition a lot differently.  We shot ourselves in the foot with the way we did it. I don't think it cost us members, but it did cost us a lot of member goodwill and generated a lot of negativity that we could have avoided.  Bottom line is this:  we needed to make a change, and our partnership with Huddler made and still makes the most sense for the long term viability and growth of the forum.  Having said that the transition would have gone a lot smoother if we had done it differently. 

Does your avatar mean you are giving up on Win7 and going back to Vista Adam?  Is there some symbolism in that you aren't telling us?  =p (Just kidding, actually that last post was well said and very gracious!)

Holadem, I wish I could join you and discuss the situation over a beer, like at the old Scooterfests.

I am much the same.  I haven't upgraded or even been interested in hardware or software for years.  Sure I'll watch and/or buy the occasional movie from a director or series I follow  ("Drag Me To Hell" is waiting for me), but I got tired of the upgrade cycle, sold off my late technology stuff, and went with luddite style gear.  My projector is an old X1 which I love and plan to replace the bulb when it breaks.  I went to 7.1 and decided the complication and distracting sound field wasn't worth it, and have gone back to 5.1 audio.  I have zero interest in Blu-Ray and had only passing interest in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars.  I don't have any interest in upgrading any of my speakers or hardware until and unless something breaks.

I've probably bought a dozen DVDs in the last year or two, half of which are concert DVDs.  I just don't have the interest in the hobby any more that I once had.  I occasionally watch movies and really enjoy my system when I do, but all my gear is old and well seasoned.

I've had more fun making the stereo in my office sound better and buying lots of used vinyl records, sometimes hilariously cheap.

Home theater has moved from a niche to something everyone has.  My brother has an all-in-one DVD/sound system with a projector in a dedicated room - and you know it works great!

I'd love to host another DC area GTG at my house, I would love to see the whole crowd that used to come out back in the day.  I don't know that anyone would care about any of my outdated gear though.  It would definitely be a good time.

Man.  I actually had serious discussions with my wife about trying to attend a Scooterfest a few years ago--which, sadly, turned out to be the last Scooterfest ever. 

I guess Scooter has officially hit the road now.  I hope Christie Brinkley shows up in a convertible wherever he is. 

I would have really liked to have made one of those bad boys.  They must've been a good time.

Thanks.  No happy with win7, just decided to focus on Media Center which is what I use for a whole house HD DVR.  I have 4 FIOS HD cable card tuners hooked up to my PC and it streams recorded and live TV to all my TVs.  Some day I'll have to do a write up in the forum.  While I don't get on demand, I have a better DVR and don't have to pay $15 per TV for it.

Scooter is still around.  We have talked about trying to do a few regional "Scooterfests" a while ago.  Its either that or we are talking about trying to replace EMA with Comic Con (for 2011).  I could host one in the Seattle area, we would need some volunteers for a few other locations.  I'll start making some inquiries to see if we can dig up some fun stuff.  I think regional meets would have the opportunity to get more local people together which would be a good thing.

I think Phil is touching on the reason why people were dropping out even before the Huddler conversion -- there isn't all that much to be really excited about in HT.  After DVD, which basically built this forum, and HDTV, which was a huge time suck, what with all the researching and etc, there really hasn't been anything to get people excited.  Bluray and HDDVD never really took off, and SED displays never really took over the world .

I myself spend almost all my HTF time in the TV Show forum, and that's because of the posters I've grown familiar with.  I do post in other discussion forums, but they're so large and the posters so prolific that, depending on the show, the post you spent an hour writing ends up buried five pages ago almost immediately after it posts.  One of the virtues of the lower post counts is that if I do write something like that, I know at least a couple of people on the HTF will read it before a new page relegates it to yesterday's news.

I would be happy to host a home theater get-together in my house, but all my tech is old and there's not much to get excited about in my home theater technically other than my incredibly mega-awesome infinite baffle sub.

My only problem with the new forum is that sometimes it will not let me log in to my account. This only happens at my work but that is the place that I do most of my posting. LOL I can come back the next day and everything works just fine again.

Matt-
Next time that happens can you let us know by filling out a feedback form so we can take a look?  This is the first I have heard of anyone having this issue: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/feedback 

Thanks,
Adam

The biggest remaining problems for me are the same.. but a new one needs to be added: the search function is rubbish.  By default it should put the newest thread/info at the top. I can't figure out how it does it, but I searched for star trek yesterday and the top threads it was showing me were years old, meanwhile more recent threads weren't even in the first two pages of search returned material.  No wonder we see so many threads brought back from the great beyond.

CSI?  Etc..

I haven't gone anywhere, though it is nice to hear it may have been a negative if I did.  I post something here almost every day.  Just check my history.  My interest in film isn't likely to ever go away, or my interest in equipment either.  I'm just not obsessed with it and I have also changed careers.  Where I used to be self employed and spend a lot of time working in my office at home, I'm now running an online retailer (one of my former clients) and spending my days in a real office.  I just don't have as much spare time and I virtually never check in here during the day.  There simply is no way I can spend the time doing screen shot contests and those things anymore.

I will say that as the forum has grown, the discussion of independent film and the type of things I like to discuss definitely seem to have diminished.  I don't think this this is HTFs fault because that seems to be a common phenomena.  It doesn't seem to make sense that the more members there are, the less variety of subjects are discussed, but I've seen it happen elsewhere more than once before.  As far as all the extra stuff on the sides, I honestly don't look at it and maybe the fact I have (2) 23" widescreen monitors and plenty of real estate to open up browser windows so the part I am actually interested in is decent size has something to do with it.

I won't say that I agree with everything that has been done here, particularly regarding the amount of advertising, but it is better than the forum going away and all the basic stuff is still here.

I do miss being able to have a pic in my signature, but I also realize a lot of people were going WAY overboard with them.

Now we just need to hear a "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated" from Bryan X.

Gents,

I don't get the opportunity to get personally involved in the
feedback threads as often as I wish, though I do read them daily.

Your opinions are of the utmost importance to us and we
appreciate, good or bad, your continued feedback.

Let me start off by responding to the comment that the
wants and needs of HTF and members do not come before
those of the Huddler team.

That is completely, utterly false.

It is your feedback here that has resulted in many platform
enhancements over the past 6 months, and with the next
update, you will see even more enhancements including
the return of larger avatars and a few other things I am not
certain I should be discussing yet.

As I type this response to all of you I am sitting here in
San Francisco where I have spent a day with the Huddler
team.  This was my first opportunity to meet with everyone
face-to-face and after several hours of discussion with them,
I went from being sceptical to extremely confident in the team,
platform and the direction we are heading moving forward.

Listen, I know it was a huge bummer to everyone to 
suddenly be tossed from a full-featured vBulletin over to
the Huddler platform which 6 months ago was totally bare
of familiar features.

We really owe all of our members an apology. In hindsight,
perhaps we should have waited for Huddler to come out of
the beta stage of their software before converting and forcing
our members to conform to a platform that (at the time)
wasn't very "user friendly."

We made the move rather quickly because Huddler did
an exceptional job of selling us on a game plan that we
knew would take time to develop, but felt we needed to
get into on the ground floor.  

Six months later this platform has improved in leaps 
and bounds.  Members who have been posting here 
finally are feeling comfortable in their new surroundings.
Despite a few requested navigational features that are
still on the roadmap, posting to this forum is not a difficult
nor cumbersome process.  Some may say that it still
lacks personality.  I personally fell that the layout and 
look gives us a more streamlined, professional feel.  In
fact, studios and manufacturers who strayed away from
vBulletin forums in the past are now giving us a second
look thanks to the fact that we don't look like everything
else that is out there.

You need to trust me when I say that in the 12 years
Parker and I (and now Adam) have been running HTF,
we have never received so many compliments from
within the industry about the look of this forum.

I can tell all of you that the long-term roadmap for this
forum calls for us to come up to parity with vBulletin.
It is essential that if Huddler is to sell this platform to
other communities that it be as functional and easy-to-use
as vBulletin.  However, the one thing that will not be
done is to copy that software pixel for pixel.

I realize that many of you continue to complain that
feature requests you have been asking for have yet to
be implemented.  Please rest assured that most of
them are coming.  There is a pecking order of what
items are prioritized.  Huddler needs to implement first
what they feel is most important to selling their platform
to other forum communities.

It surprises me that members feel that this platform is
less organized than others or that it lacks personality.
I was always under the impression that HTF offered
members something that no other forum could -- a
well-moderated professional, friendly atmosphere with
far less signal-to-noise ratio.   The people that are here
have been members since day one and have been loyal
to us not because of the software platform, but the 
quality of discussion.   Isn't that what is most important?

As far as the layout, you must admit, we have come
a long way in the past 6 months.  Thanks to your
feedback we have addressed forum width, avatar size
(next update), navigation enhancements (with more
on the way) and color scheme.    This platform has
a powerful tagging system, product search and Facebook
integration that wasn't offered to any of you under vBulletin.
I can tell you that as early as January you are going to see
some major new additions to this forum.

Our revenue and readership has increased since the Huddler
transition with many members now finding us and registering
through Facebook.  Our relationship with social networking will
also continue to expand to other services.

I have never been dishonest with our members.  In fact, I
have kept relatively silent for the past 6 months about my
opinion of Huddler and this platform because I didn't want 
to say things I didn't feel were true.  I wasn't going to give
any of you a phony sell that I didn't believe in.

However, after a long and difficult 6 month start and my
recent visit with the Huddler team, I can confidently tell
all of you that we are partnered with a company that is
going to revolutionize forum communities.  

vBulletin is run by ordinary individuals with or without
a business background.  You pay a fee to license the
software and for a few dollars more get software support.
That is all you get for your money.   

What Huddler is offering is a complete package. We
not only get a platform that is ever-expanding but we
also receive personalized support (you see their team
interacting here daily), as well as a dedicated marketing
force that promotes us and goes after advertising revenue.  
Revenue has doubled within six short months of the conversion.  
That alone should tell you we are working with a very
strong team.

Furthermore, Huddler is already in the process of converting over
other vBulletin sites who will soon be joining a community that will
continue to grow and prosper.  

For anyone indicating that we went from being their first
to second choice of forum to visit -- I ask you to give us a little
more time.  As this platform continues to mature over the next
few months I think you will find yourself visiting this forum more
often to the point that it will become your first stop once again.

Huddler, the owners and Moderators will continue to monitor 
all your concerns and suggestions.  Your opinions will continue
to be a priority for all of us.  All we ask in return is for your
continued patience and recognition of the vast improvements
that have been made around here in the few short months of
our conversion.

The best is yet to come.  I promise all of you that.

 

 

Thanks for the kind words fellas. :-)

--
H

[Dr. Frankenstein]He's alive![/Dr. Frankenstein]

The reports of my death have been somewhat overstated.   This is my first post since September, I think.  I've spent most of my time over at RebelScum nurturing the "other" hobby of mine.  I have lurked a couple times at HTF to see who's still around how things are going with the new forum software.

I must agree, a lot of improvement has been made over the past few months.  Most importantly the speed and responsiveness of the site seems to be much improved.  However there are still a few things I'd still like to see changed (like duplicating the navigation at the bottom of the page ex: "Home Theater Forum  ›  Forums  ›  Other Diversions  ›  After Hours Lounge  ›  HTF of new vs. the old layout / style / board / software, etc").  Seems like an easy and logical thing.  It's such a pain now to navigate from the bottom of the page. And the search is still pretty much a mess with the lack of thread search.

When I would occasionally pop in, I also hoped to see the posting area fill the "white space" once it got below all the ads and stuff at the top.  But that I can probably deal with since I plan on switching to a 24" widescreen monitor in the next couple weeks.  I'm hoping the extra horizontal width will allow the posting area to expand a bit.

But anyway, it's nice to be back and nice to know my absence wasn't completely unnoticed. 

Now, enough of this, I need to see what I've been missing in the "brunettes" thread....... 

EDIT: Oh, and dang, I need to replace my avatar.  What a difference a few months can make.
Edited by Bryan X - 12/16/09 at 4:53pm

Bryan, welcome back! 

I still don't get why the actual useable area is so small. On my screen (16 X 9) the actual posting area consists of only half the screen. The amount of unused screen space is almost a third of the total screen area. All it consists of is two large, grey, vertical stripes. The forum area is a vertical, white space in the middle of the screen. It is like looking at a 4:3 aspect ration on a 16:9 set. If you add in the unused white space, almost half the screen is just blank space. Why can't this software at least use up the whole screen so that the posting area would occupy 3/4 or more of the area?

Edit: I should have pointed out that the sea of grey and white space is what makes this particular forum layout look boring, austere, and uninviting. Consider this in terms of a magazine layout. Would anyone call it professional looking if it consisted of one column of type in the middle of an empty page? I doubt it.

Thanks Ron.  

I was looking at the old animeondvd site (now called Mania). That site is powered by vBulletin and the layout, with the active text area in the middle of the screen, is much like HTF's new setup. Lots of unused screen space. In their case, they have filled that space with a lot of graphics, thereby creating a colourful, but busy, static background over which the text area scrolls. There is a band of white on the right side for the placing of ads, much like HTF now has. It looks like this type of layout for bulletin boards is going to increasingly be the norm, so HTF is really just getting in on the ground floor. Obviously, this type of setup is designed more for the needs of advertisers than for end users. C'est la vie. It was bound to happen. Eventually, the internet as a whole will become no better than cable and satellite TV when it comes to ad pollution.

Edwin's already talked about this, but it really won't change things.  I have a widescreen monitor (I think it's 23", but I'm not sure) and though I run my browser in a resized 4x3 window, if I open it to full screen, this forum's content stays in the middle.  That's really no different from most websites--Yahoo does the same.  I found I didn't like widescreen for my browser, which is why I resize.  It does make it easy to have my desktop available right under it.

I've linked to this information about fixed vs. liquid layout before, but I think it's worth sharing again: 

http://webdesign.about.com/od/layout/i/aa060506.htm

The main issue is ultimately readability or the ease at which one scans or reads text. With text stretching across the screen - especially a widescreen display - it's going to be harder for most people to track and scan through content, especially if there's a lot of it. Though the thinking around ideal line length has gotten more flexible over the years (i.e. that when it's online, there can be more characters per line than once believed), there is still a limit. Personally I find the width of the main content area just right (my screen res. is 1920x1080 and my browser window fills the screen). The complaints about the extra space are kind of funny to me, as they seem very similar to complaints we've heard about certain black bars in DVDs.


Well, that's just it, we're not dealing with a fixed or constant area like a magazine page. If everyone had the same size monitor and screen resolution setting then the sizing would be simple. It would be one size, end of story. But the challenge is to accommodate everyone from 1024x768 to 2560x1440 (the new 27" iMac). The simplest approach is to do a fixed width layout for the lowest screen resolution used by your audience, which results in the ever narrowing column down the center for everyone with larger resolutions. The more sophisticated layouts will, as the article linked to explains, determine your screen res. and adjust to an ideal. But again you get into the issue of line length and readability.

My point is really that there is no simple answer when it comes to layout size and there are many issues to consider beyond just being able to "fill up the empty space."