Hits per day down by how much

And I'm getting annoyed with these ads for inter-racial dating service and finding rich guys. 

I admire Jude for his willingness to take Head-Fi a step further, but I believe this is a step too far. I've posted my list of complaints below in the Members' Lounge, but it seems more appropriate here. I've added suggestions on how to possibly fix my gripes. But then again, they're just that: my gripes.

• I think a forum should be very basic. It's not about the graphical layout, it's all about the content. The content is definitely playing second violin now. It would be great if the side bar and ads would be less present. The side bar used to be unobtrusive, but not anymore. It's constantly yelling at me now.
• I don't like how big the default font is. This should be an easy fix.
• I don't like the fact that the reply button underneath each post triggers a general reply. That's just counter-intuitive; it should trigger a quote reply for that specific post. I'm sure such behavior is trivial to re-implement.
• Where are the groups? Seriously, where are they? Is there no option for groups in this new forum format? I miss them, just as I miss the stickies. Of course, the latter will all, at some point, be remade as wiki entries. I like the wiki feature! A definite positive aspect of this new forum.
• The secondary navigation drowns in the totally scattered site layout. Please make it more focused. For example, put the navigational controls inside a box that's slightly differently colored than the surrounding area.
• I don't like how both the site's header and footer take up such ungodly amounts of vertical space. Is there a way to make them more compact? It would be great if the footer would be collapsable. It would be even greater if the forum would remember such a setting.
• Also, I don't like how the subscribe box is ticked by default. Sure, you can change that behavior in the forum settings, but I think the box should be unticked by default.
• I don't like how editing a post happens in the text box at the bottom of the page. Why can't it be right in the post, like it always was?
• The old forum had the feature that when you edited a message, you had a certain time frame within which the edit would be invisible. Not anymore. Any edit is visible, even an immediate one. I don't like that. Please, can a consequence-less edit time frame be re-implemented?
• Also, why don't the edit time and date correspond with the user's time zone setting? Is that something that's easily customizable? Or is this a hard coded feature that's present to overcome the fact that this is an international forum where people from many different time zones are posting?
• It was really helpful that you could provide a reason for editing in the old forum. Can this feature be brought back, please?
• The old BBCode tags don't work anymore. Okay, so in this new forum all messages are posted in HTML. Fine, but HTML tags don't work either. That's quite unintuitive.
• Again, I do very much like the idea of an in-site wiki, though.
• It was a great thing that you could easily see how many pages long a thread was. Sure, you can look at the post count and do the maths, but it's definitely a regression that you can't easily see a thread's length anymore.

Yep, the jury's still out in my mind as well.

I don't mind adjusting to something new but when so much basic functionality is either not here (yet? maybe there's still background processes to complete?) or hard to find I'm not here as often.

I mean I'm not even getting email reminders any more for any thread updates - which was a prime way I visited a few times a day.

Sorry, Jude, but I'm yet to be convinced this new site is going to meet the needs of users.  Well at least users like me (and I was going to add a smiley here but once again the javascript is failing on a mobile connection and I no longer have the option of directly adding the appropriate code :rollseyes: ).

And how can I NOT have my old signature appear with my post?  Where can I edit that? :eek:

Even learning how to navigate the threads through unorthodox methods, I find myself visiting less and less often. It's just too complicated now.

Maybe it'll end up as something better than we had in the long run. It's not like vBulletin didn't have any quirks...

well, the good deals in the FS section are easier to work out now that everyone's gone

Quote:

Originally Posted by regal 

I see fewer and fewer threads and posts since the new format,  how much business are you losing?

I've been very curious about this as well.  Views in general seem to be at a decent level at the moment, but hits must be down overall.  Headphone-related hits, that is.  The forum change is generating its own unique traffic.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry 

well, the good deals in the FS section are easier to work out now that everyone's gone

No kidding.  I imagine it's the worst time to try to sell something on these boards in HF's history (aside from outages of course).  At any given time I've been seeing 1-3 people browsing the entire FS section.

I have noticed the same thing. Or perhaps because I spend less time around here myself, as I can not stand the current layout and (missing) features.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superpredator 

....I imagine it's the worst time to try to sell something on these boards in HF's history (aside from outages of course).  At any given time I've been seeing 1-3 people browsing the entire FS section.

Actually, that's not true at all, though I can see why it appears that way.  If you actually click on the link (http://www.head-fi.org/forum/list/109), you can see how many are in each subforum.  (I'm going to put a request in to see if the number of the main forum can reflect the sum of all of its sub-forums.)

As of this moment, there are:

78 people viewing Headphones FS/T

46 people viewing Headphone Amps FS/T

26 people viewing Source Components FS/T

27 people viewing Cables, Etc. FS/T

1 person viewing Music/Videos FS/T

10 people viewing Buyer/Seller Feedback

Quote:

Originally Posted by jude 

 

Actually, that's not true at all, though I can see why it appears that way.  If you actually click on the link (http://www.head-fi.org/forum/list/109), you can see how many are in each subforum.  (I'm going to put a request in to see if the number of the main forum can reflect the sum of all of its sub-forums.)

 

As of this moment, there are:

 

78 people viewing Headphones FS/T

46 people viewing Headphone Amps FS/T

26 people viewing Source Components FS/T

27 people viewing Cables, Etc. FS/T

1 person viewing Music/Videos FS/T

10 people viewing Buyer/Seller Feedback

Ah ha, that explains it.  Those numbers look much better.

It's finally slowly growing on me. If only you can change the color theme.

Quote:

Originally Posted by regal 

I see fewer and fewer threads and posts since the new format,  how much business are you losing?

Since 4/30/2010 (not including the day of the transition, or the day after the transition, which had higher numbers, which is normal after a long outage):

Threads per day

4/30/2010  175

5/01/2010  157

5/02/2010  181

5/03/2010  188

5/04/2010  173

--

--

5/07/2010  195

5/08/2010  173

5/09/2010  183

5/10/2010  171

Posts per day

4/30/2010  2563

5/01/2010  2445

5/02/2010  2398

5/03/2010  2509

5/04/2010  2412

--

--

5/07/2010  2440

5/08/2010  2469

5/09/2010  2505

5/10/2010  2567

Actually, this isn't too bad, especially considering the e-mail notification thread subscription system hasn't been working (which we should have mostly fixed very soon), and the subscription-generated visits generally number in the thousands per day.

Also, regarding the "Active Users" online count, it doesn't appear they're exactly the same, in terms of vBulletin's and this system.

Like many other users, the new forum is starting to grow on me. Many of my points I posted earlier still stand, but that doesn't mean I don't still enjoy Head-Fi.

Overall a very good job, Jude!