terrible to read forum?

Unknown

do you guys know this is a terrible form to read???

some examples of good ones...
http://www.pro-touring.com/forum/

http://www.lateral-g.net/forums/

You can only see one reply at a time? Makes no sense and horrible to read.....

couple year egger cookin a free range chicken now 350 and lots of smoke....

WMK

smoknut,

Do you know that most of our members like it just the way it is?

However, you might try "flat" view if you don't like the "classic" view which requires clicking on each message to read it.

"Good" is nonetheless a matter of opinion....

Yet another VBullitin "snob" I see. Our members, or at least the majority of them, do NOT WANT 40 different forums to check. Some, however, do prefer that sort of format. On the other hand, best I can tell, the ones that like that format, are those that wouldn't be answering many questions. They just want to drop by, find what they need, and go about their business. This is a SOCIAL forum -- it's structure is not as well suited for those what just want to drop by and get what they want w/out contributing anything.

Unknown

So it's a bad thing to make it easy to read and navigate??

Mr. Sociable .... you can have one forum and make it easy to read and have continuity in a thread.

Glad 'you' like it, most people who come and go I'm sure become frustrated by the slow and tedious way you have to click every reply to read a thread.

Thanks for your reply have fun eggin.

Unknown

oh ya flat format is much better! thanks I'll work on my social skills more now. lol

WileECoyote

In all fairness to smoknut and with sincere respect for BGE / WMK, I must agree that this forum is problematic and non-standard at best. The template changes may have introduced some bling or fixed a few issues but I believe what matters most is that the site layout and functionality are not very intuitive and it deviates from most industry-standard commercial forum packages such as vBulletin or phpBB. This is especially frustrating for people that use other forums since we know what we are missing. Even if you denounce the other packages, I could make you a list of website design standard and usability violations on this site that would be several pages long. There are reasons why Microsoft, Google, The Smoke Ring, and many, many other sites use the major packages and follow the web design standards consistently.

I can't tell you how many times I get unpredictable / undesired results on this forum. The only way to make it somewhat usable is to stumble on the magic combination of domain name, forum view, and site preferences then make sure to save that specific link and never clear your cookies or you start all over again. For a while I thought it was just me but I have seen similar posts in the forum and there are many questions / problems posted by users about selecting the right font size, not seeing the proper content, formats wrong, hiding sections, etc. Most of these issues don't exist on other forums.

I realize that this platform was chosen for certain reasons that were valid a long while back, however that doesn't make it a good decision now or a solution that should stay in place forever. phpBB is free and pretty dang good, night and day compared to this forum, and I can configure an entire phpBB forum site from scratch in just a few days at most. Sure, you have the option to divide the site up into a bunch of topic categories but you can still use the other forum packages without doing that, or you can simply limit the categories like this site does.

While some of the existing egghead forum users might not like the new software format at first, it is my experience that most will love it after a brief transition period and especially once they see all the improved features. The special "forum feedback" category and the frequent posts for forum issues will all but disappear and people will live happily ever after. Primitive man was pretty content living without fire and without the wheel but once they were introduced and man learned how to properly use them then both became invaluable tools.

And for a while I thought it was just me but then recently I have been converting friends and coworkers to the egg. Most of them can't find what they need on this forum and don't like the interface. One veteran egger and long-time forum user just asked me the other day to help him find the "search box" since he searched this forum and could not find it (only visible on certain pages). So I know that I am not alone.

Now to reiterate: I am not knocking BGE or WMK. It is great that they make a forum available and have worked so hard to maintain it all these years. The content database is priceless so it would need to be ported to the new platform and this might take a little work. I just think it should be considered and implemented, sooner than later.

Just my $0.02 worth.

Chad

Smokenut,

I asked virtually the same thing the other day.
http://www.eggheadforum.com/index.php?option=com_simpleboard&func=view&id=457936&catid=6

apparently you didn't search for it
(or couldn't find where to search)

I'm just another "VBulletin snob" apparently

I agree with what both you Smokenut and WileECoyote are saying.

I too have known people to visit then leave within 10 minutes because it is not user friendly. or "reminds them of the dial-up days."
I think this community would grow and more useful information would come out of it should it become more user friendly.

The new template is a step in the right direction.

WMK

WileECoyote,

The vast majority of the posts on Forum Feedback have to do with registration issues which have nothing whatever to do with the forum software.

The basic layout of this site is quite common from what I've seen. I.e. one consistent menu at the top, "modules" on the left and the right with things like "who's online", etc., and a "content" area in the center. I've seen a gob of sites with this same basic layout.

There are definitely some issues that remain though. E.g. I don't much care for the fact that "last25" usually goes to the "Forums" list the first time you use it each day. This is because there is some required initialization there, but our users didn't like the "extra click" to get to the forum (i.e. they didn't want to go first to a list of forums, then to "Eggheadforum"; instead, they wanted to go straight to the "main" forum index (at the time that meant "classic" view as well). So, we bypassed the initialization, which does still cause some unexpected results.

Microsoft and Google are multi-BILLION dollar companies. They have almost infinitely bigger budgets than we do. And, the SmokeRing, and, many, many, others get big bucks from advertising which we do not. If you and your friends have a couple of billion to donate, then we'll set things up just the way you like.

You're right, some of our existing users wouldn't like changing the format yet again. And, as it turns out, some of them don't like it the way it is now. Seems like either way we go, some of our users won't like it.

You're right about the search box. We need to add it to the "classic view" index. It should be already available in the other views. The new index adds a site wide search that is always visible, but the forum search is not consistently available. Plus, with 337417 messages (as of this moment), the search often returns way, way, too much. This is not a trivial problem to solve -- I'm not sure that VBullitin would do much better what that much content to search. Perhaps if they were split into categories it would help, but who's going to that for 337417 messages?

You're right also that It would require quite a bit of work to switch to VBullitin, or phpbb, w/out losing both the existing content, and, "classic" view. Since we've already done this work once, and since our budget, is very, very, very limited, we'd rather not do it again. It seems better to continue to improve what we have by addressing the individual usability issues, but that of course will take work too.

As I mentioned in previous posts, perhaps BGE should set up a VBullitin based "support" forum that would be geared purely to provide product support for new Egg owners; and/or, for those that just can't stand this forum format. This is a social place where BGE users share the experiences. If it happens to function to support the product for those that can stand it, that's an added bonus -- not the primary focus.

I don't "denounce" the other packages. They are nice. Our plans are to integrate recipes with the forum, and probably polls too. We may also allow our users to upload one or more pictures directly to the site as an alternative to photobucket. From what I've seen, this combination of features will make our forum a unique experience well suited to our members needs. Any other package would require similar extension in order to achieve similar results.

If you'd like to make us a list of all the "website design violations", we'll take a look at it. Given our budget, I cannot guarantee that we have time to fix them all, but we'd like to know what they are.

WMK

Chad,

No doubt, the search feature could be improved.

Have any of ya'll ever seen this forum. It is still using our old format, which is preserved here as "classic" view. It seems to remain plenty popular. Of course, like so many, many, others, you'll also find plenty of ads there too.

I guess it's possible to have a successful forum using a number of different formats, even ones from the "dial up days".

WMK

smoknut,

I'd like to improve the flat view so we could tell which messages were replies to which as I've seen on some other forums I've visited. Ours is perhaps a little too flat for my tastes. But I'm glad you like it better than "classic" view.

You social skills are fine -- it's just that I'm getting a bit tired of hearing about VBullitin lately. Some like what we have; and, some don't. Some would like VBullitin, and some wouldn't. It simply is not possible to please everybody. I'm not even sure it would be possible with a budget, but it would pay more .

WMK

smoknut,

I kinda like this flat like format from the apple discussions board:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5749139

We'll probably take a look at either adding another option, or, just changing flat view to look more like that one. Specifically, so you can tell which posts are replies to which while still being able to read them all at once.

Oh, welcome aboard -- I noticed that you registered a while ago.

[Deleted User]

We'll be looking forward to your two cent deposit as soon as we get the tip jar set up.

smoknut

ya sorry I did not know I was tossing wood on the coals when I posted.... I see it has been a hot topic.

Yes that format is a little easier to read. (apple discussions)

[Deleted User]

smoknut,

Looks like your registered and ready to go.... welcome aboard!

WileECoyote

WPB: I will be happy to contribute much more than $0.02 if we can move the forum to new industry standard forum software.

WMK: you are a true gentleman and your last response to me above was very thoughtful. I sincerely appreciate all that you do. I didn't mean to rant earlier but you kind of jumped all over smoknut initially which prompted me to jump in and defend him since he had valid points, most of which I agree with.

If money is the issue then I seriously think BGE should consider adding a few ads in strategic, common locations, and asking for donations or charging a small member fee for any users which want to be flagged as "subscribers". No real benefits other than a special avatar or title, or maybe some forum perks (which the other packages allow). I bet that most of the veteran members or frequent users would willingly contribute anywhere from $5 to $25 per year to have a new, robust, standard, easy to use, bug free forum. Wouldn't cost anything to implement donations / subscriptions with a standard package so it couldn't hurt.

Also, I had previously mentioned that phpBB is a robust and COMPLETELY FREE forum package which can run on almost any server so there shouldn't be any additional cost for BGE to setup a standard forum package other than the time to install and configure it. If the existing hardware isn't up to it then you can get a new server or hosting account pretty cheap. I only used Microsoft and Google as examples to show that those forum packages and design concepts are some of the best on the web; not to imply that BGE would ever be in that league for revenue or forum usage.

300,000+ records is a lot of data in this forum but it wouldn't have to be converted manually. It could be done automatically with scripts, stored procedures, or various data transformation tools which are free or cheap. So it doesn't really matter how many records are out there, it would just be a matter of setting up the conversion routine and running it once.

I am willing to volunteer my time and/or the use of one of my hosting accounts to help with the new forum installation, configuration, database migration, testing, or related tasks.

I am not willing to spend 20-40 hours of my time documenting all of the issues with this forum package and template configuration, however, as WMK has already pointed out that many of those issues couldn't or wouldn't be addressed anyway.

In lieu of a detailed analysis by a usability and design professional, you may want to check out these sites for some relevant guidelines:

UIE.com
UseIt.com
Lots of good reading materials on the subject...

WMK

WileECoyote,

I am aware of phpBB -- it is already available on our server; however, it does not integrate well with other packages (e.g. Mambo/Joomla). We tested it early on and found that it has it's own user list and even supposed "integrations" did not work well (e.g. "logout" sometimes removed on one of the two "cookies" resulting in a "twilight zone" state where half the system thought the user was logged in and the other half didn't). I.e. using such packages is not as easy as installing and pressing the "start" button.

We have already approached BGE about advertising, and, thus far, they have been, to say the least, unenthusiastic about the idea. Plus, even if they permitted it, it would require additional work to manage the advertising "business" portion of the site. We do, however, plan on a contribution page in the near future. I'm not sure how much budget this will generate, but we will soon see. We have also considered your suggestion of offering some additional benefits for "subscribers" (e.g. space to directly upload photos instead of having to use photobucket). As time permits (such things usually take way more than 20-40 hours), we'll look into these things.

I am well aware that the messages can be imported via a script. That's how they got from the original forum (Perl, based upon the ancient and venerable, "Matt's script archive") to this one.

The reason I mentioned that there are 300,000+ messages is that, w/out sophisticated, Google like, search technology, slogging through all of them is slow; and, tends to produce way too many results. Some means of prioritizing the results is needed (e.g. Googles counts links to each site and orders results based upon that). We don't have that option and would need some other means (e.g. ordered by view count perhaps).

I haven't actually used VBullitin search facilities much because I usually find my results via Google then just read whatever they find. I very, very rarely use a forum specific search; so, I'm not sure whether VBullitin's search would perform much better with so much data.

Further, none of these forums offers "classic" view. I'm assuming that you don't care about this because you must not use it. Many of our users do like it though; however, it is true, that our newer members have never seen the old forum, so moving forward, "classic" may become less and less important. But when we started this effort, nearly all of our members, the ones helping others so much, liked things they way they were. So, we didn't dare provide them a new, "improved", forum that didn't at least give them what they had while also providing some new features for those that wanted them (like yourself).

We also intend to improve the recipes section once we get the forum settled down a bit; and, to integrate it with the forum -- i.e. members would be able to post a recipe directly on the forum using a form specifically designed for recipe entry. Such posts would appear both on the forum and in the recipes section. I doubt any of the "canned" forum solutions would have such features, which would distinguish our forum from the "pack" and provide our members with facilities specific to their needs.

More generally, we'd also like to integrate the polls section with the forum is a fashion similar to the recipes idea mentioned above. I believe that some of the "canned" packages do provide features like this; so, this would merely make us more "competitive" with them I suppose.

Either way, adding features to this forum takes work; and, installing, integrating, and customizing another package would also take time.

A quick perusal of one of the "usability" links finds, "I am not a visual designer, so my graphics would look crummy anyway."; and, timing standards based upon the state of the web in 1995 (talk about non-modern). One's personal inability to produce graphics does not invalidate their usage. Many of the "mainstream" sites I see today incorporate Flash videos and lots of graphics. Perhaps this is only a temporary trend, but I do not know. I do know this guy is trying to sell his books on web design, which like any book, are just his opinion; and, clearly, there must be other opinions if all the Flash and other graphics I see on the web today are any indication.

We don't have that many graphics anyway, our members post a lot more pictures than the site incorporates; and, most of ours are small images, cheaply cached. We will, however, eventually find the time to work on making the site more friendly to iPhone users and the like. We'll probably try to reduce what graphic content we have for that effort (things like the "inline post form" -- i.e. the reply form at the bottom of each message and at the bottom of the index for posting a new thread) do increase the download time for pages. We added this to be more like the original forum, but as I said earlier, this objective will likely become less important moving forward -- this is another example of things being the way they are because of the "history" of the forum.

WileECoyote

Good response WMK.

What I don't understand is why phpBB couldn't be operated on the same server as a stand-alone package that is not integrated with Mambo/Joomla? I don't see a need to connect the forum to the BGE public site or any other sites unless I am missing some type of behind the scenes interface. If the operating system or server software causes conflicts between the packages then couldn't you just install phpBB in a virtual server environment with vmWare, on a separate server, or on a separate hosting account dedicated just for the forum?

I realize that the current BGE forum setup and environment may not be ideal for phpBB but it is indeed very easy to install and use phpBB on a standard server or hosting account. I have a lot less technical experience in this area than most full time web developers but I was able to setup a new hosting account, install phpBB, customize the logos, strengthen the account creation process to block spam bots, configure the forum topic areas, and post the initial rules / threads in less than 8 hours.

Great news that BGE is pursuing a forum donation page. I hope it will be configured as a simple automated forum member subscription model and not a disconnected or manual process. If forum members receive photo space and a few other perks and the membership dues are reasonable ($25 or less per year) then I would expect many of the veterans to sign up. I think you should also consider a dealer / vendor option where people that want to advertise their egg-related products with special threads or links can pay a bit more for the right to do so. A donation model without member perks might snare some revenue but probably not very much and it would most likely not be sustained.

The other forum packages that I have used do a much better job with search functionality. They offer context-sensitive search options so you can just search within a thread, topic area, or the entire forum. You have options to search just the titles or the entire thread contents. Results are grouped by thread title with each thread only shown once vs. showing 32 results for 32 posts that are all part of the same thread. Results are typically sorted with the most recent activity at the top however the better forums provide additional sorting and grouping options. phpBB does much of this by default right out of the box.

In my opinion (and the opinion of most major corporations such as Microsoft or Google), the classic view (as presented on this site) is indeed dead. You don't see many forums still using that format. It is terribly inefficient and would only be comfortable for veteran users that were attached to it for some odd reason. You can't make any change without a significant number of people griping so sometimes you just have to do what is right and the gripers will eventually come around. I don't know of anyone that has used vBulletin or phpBB and still yearned to go back to this type of forum package or classic view.

Recipes could be handled in a number of ways with other forum packages. A common method used by many forums would be to simply start a new thread with a title of "Recipe:", either in the main forum area or a dedicated area for recipes. If you want voting on the recipes then simply include a poll. Readers can reply to the thread to add their comments. Simple and no special customization needed. Many of the BGE forum users already do this to mark Off Topic ("OT") threads so it should be familiar to them and you could post guidelines in a sticky if needed.

The forum will always require administration no matter which way you go. Adopting a modern, industry-standard forum package that is widely used and accepted should allow you to spend more time on valuable functions such as member subscriptions or advertising and less time on correcting issues with views and basic functionality such as login and search.

I don't know which specific sites or links you visited but if you spend some time digging around on those sites you will find some very helpful, modern, and relevant information. There are links to many articles and books, some of which are better than others of course, and I am not implying that all of their content is great. I just wanted to give you a few examples of the many standards and reference materials that are out there relative to website design and usability. Say what you want about some of those authors or books, but many of them have been published internationally and have sold tens or hundreds of thousands of copies in more than 20 countries so they must contain at least a few nuggets of wisdom.

Not sure what you meant about the use of flash and graphics. I am not advocating increased usage of either for the forum. I do think the ability to upload photos directly to the site and have them attached or embedded within posts would be huge, which is something that phpBB or vBulletin can provide out of the box.

Well there is no need to keep dragging this thread out. I already said far more than my $0.02 worth and you have better things to do with your time than debate my rantings. I have offered to contribute financially if we can move towards a standard forum package and I have volunteered my time and resources to make that happen. The offer stands so just ping me if I can ever be of assistance.

WMK

WileECoyote,

When we first started the new site, it was not "eggheadforum", but "biggreenegg.com". It had a product catalog, guestbook, image gallery, and quite a bit of "static content", etc. all related to being the corporate website; and, it was important that the forum package integrate well with the CMS to allow all of this to seamlessly work together. Back then, most of our users complained bitterly about the notion of logging in at all; and, they hated categories (they called them "little rooms").

Since, BGE has redone their primary website relegating this site to the forum and other "dynamic" content (e.g. recipes); so, now we could perhaps install a different, stand-alone, forum on eggheadforum.com w/out so much concern about integration with a CMS. We'd just have to give up a recipes component (perhaps in favor of a forum category dedicated to recipes), the image gallery (which we currently have disabled), and, "classic" view (I don't know how that would fly -- but as you say, I'm sure that everyone would eventually get used to a new format if forced to do so).

Regarding "classic" view, I personally agree with you that there are not many "hold-outs" left using this format. BBQForum.com is a notable, and popular, exception. I wonder if its moderator gets so many complaints about the format of his forum? And if not, why not? Regardless, as I said, our "veteran" users are the ones answering most of the questions posed by our newer users; so, years ago, when we first began work on the new site, we felt that we could not simply ignore their objections to the new format -- which, until we added "classic" view, was very much like phpBB or VBullitin, though not as full featured.

It may be, as we move forward, that "classic" view will be of much less importance than it was four years ago when all of our members were used to that format, and like it. We did not have the option of simply saying to them, "tuff, get used to it". It is they who spend their time answering so many questions in an effort to help other; and, we just didn't feel like ignoring their preferences, or, telling them that their preferences did no align with "modern" thinking was an option -- at least not at the time.

While the current recipes component is in fact, out-of-the-box, and contains all the recipes imported from the old site formatted to look much as they did there, we've always intended to either make it better, or, replace it with a better one if available. We'd like it to be able to scale recipes for example instead of just providing free-form entry fields. There are certainly better recipe packages out there; and, I don't think many folks bother to post recipes here in our cookbook; so, maybe we should just delete it too -- then the site would pretty much just be the forum and we could consider using different software w/out losing any important integration features.

This forum does indeed support uploading an image with a post; however, it currently permits only one, and, I've disabled that feature for the time being. We wanted to integrate with the image gallery and provide a better interface for member to upload their photos in their personal gallery and then reference one or more of them from a post.

BGE is not "pursuing" a forum donations page, but they did give us permission to add one and perhaps to provide t-shirts, or the like, as donation gifts. But there always seems to be plenty to do (e.g. Eggtoberfest registrations at the moment) to keep us busy enough. And, it seemed that we should address the "complaints" before requesting donations.

I mentioned "Flash" because I see so much of it nowadays on popular sites that it seems that it cannot be all bad. I do sometimes get annoyed by it also, but not always when tastefully done. The same can be said of graphics.

Chance

I am looking for the best pork ribs to come off the egg any suggestions?

WMK

Chance,

You should post the question in the "Eggheadforum" category. Not too many of our "regulars" will see it here.