Suby Club

I know, I know, this is Subyclub, not Ozlib... But we seem to get more of a reponse about Ozlib issues from this site than we do from the Ozlib site at the moment. Go figure.

Anyway, I posted this in Ozlib in an attempt to try and highlight someof the issues with the site... Feel free to agree/disagree with what I wrote.

Hi Admin,

I've got to say that I am really not a fan of the new site layout. The functionality of the site itself is passable, but the layout is really bad. Sorry...

I don't know what happened to the title of this thread, it just disappeared... It was supposed to be called "New Site Feedback". Perhaps a mod or admin could place it in there for me? How does it even let you post or edit a thread without a title being in there? Nice work Beta Testers...

I don't want any of this to be seen as a b*tch session or to be bagging out the work you've done, but to be seen as an accurate overview or critique from someone that has working in the IT and online industry for many many years.

The layout is not intuative at all. Was any UI done on this thing at all? Were the Beata testers all smoking crack or did they literally have no idea what to point out as an issue?

A big concern is the title screens, they are way too big and force the user to scroll down considerably to find any information. They take up all of the screen on most monitors! See sample picture:



The colours also make it difficult to differentiate between quoted and replied to posts. Yes, I've tried the other colour options, but they are just as ordinary.

I know a lot of development has gone into the site, but has much thought gone into layout and how it will actually effect the users?
I hate to bag this thing given the amount of hours that have gone into its deployment, but seriously, after a year of working on it, you'd think that it would be a pretty amazing user experience for us all and would be a remarkable improvement over the old forum layout.

I know some of you are just going to say that I am having a whine and that I don't like change and that I'll get used to it, well those situations in this case are just not accurate. I have built many websites and worked for two of Australia's biggest online businesses so I know how a site should operate and the simple fact of it is that this one is a very clunky, busy, hard to navigate and hard to read.
What ever happened to the old K.I.S.S. theory?

I know that his site was supposed to be a big jump ahead in technology and benefits to the users, but we cannot see any of this and in all honesty, this 'upgrade' has taken you two steps back. Reverting back to the old forum would be considered by many internet experts as an upgrade compared to this.

Mods, Admin, feel free to argue my points if you so choose, I'm sure that you you have a substantial investment to protect. However, I think you will find that the majority of users will agree with me on this one.

Hm. I thought I noticed it setting anchor points when I was viewing topics / replying so I didn't have to scroll down past the huge banners up the top of the site. I think the new site does bring something new to the table, but it's been moved away from just a forum to a full on content management system, and I am not a fan of Joomla (the CMS they are using). All in all, there are some good things that have come out of it but I do agree Chris, the KISS method is often totally forgotten about and often it will be quite a viable solution to any problems. As a user of the site, I find the ads and the navigation really detract from the entire experience. To be honest though, you're never going to be able to design a website / theme that EVERYBODY likes, you will always have users that are not happy with certain aspects. It will be interesting to see how the new Ozliberty performs over time.

Were you involved in the Beta testing at all? Did you offer any assistance before it coming online? Not having a go.......................but? It's all good to say this stuff now, but helpful advise during development might have been the go. I'm not a massive fan of the new layout either, believe me, but it may just take a while to sort some of these things out. To me it's hard to navigate(just takes time to get used to), slow(really, really slow page load times), and quite difficult to read. But with all things it should get fixed with time.....................Luke??????????????????????????

Were you involved in the Beta testing at all?
Did you offer any assistance before it coming online? Not having a go.......................but?


It's all good to say this stuff now, but helpful advise during development might have been the go.


I'm not a massive fan of the new layout either, believe me, but it may just take a while to sort some of these things out.
To me it's hard to navigate(just takes time to get used to), slow(really, really slow page load times), and quite difficult to read. But with all things it should get fixed with time.....................Luke??????????????????????????

I was kicked off the beta team when someone over there decided to ban me for speaking my mind to some other tosser that was posting garbage.
I've only just been actively participating on the site for the last few months, so in answer to your question, no I didn't participate in Beta testing because I wasn't allowed...

I was kicked off the beta team when someone over there decided to ban me for speaking my mind to some other tosser that was posting garbage.
I've only just been actively participating on the site for the last few months, so in answer to your question, no I didn't participate in Beta testing because I wasn't allowed...

Hahahahah, were you being naughty?
Who banned you?
It's all good, I wasn't having a go at all. I just find it funny that alot of the people now putting in their 2c didn't have much to say when it was being built, even on the forum itself..
Whether or not the Site Admin would have listened or not, or were able to listen(with so many things going on), the site was built by them in a way they thought was the way to go.
Lets just give them a chance to get it settled now that migration is complete and it is working.
My web site builder quoted an interesting statistic to me once. If you can't get the pages to load in a matter of a 1-2 seconds people tend to lose interest.
ATM it's taking at least 3-4sec for some pages to load, but it seems to be getting a little quicker.

I don't think I was being naughty... It was just a case that someone had a whine about me and one of the mods got their knickers in a kot and pulled out the banning stick. I can't even remember who did the banning! I would have liked to be involved in the whole UI side of the process and acted as an advisor of sorts, but that might have been jumping the gun as I think they were trying to migrate everything across and get it functioning and then worry about the asthetics later. Moving forward I would like to have more involvement in getting the site functioning in a more intuative fashion. Will see what Like and Foz (is that Richard?) have to say...

Firstly, I already replied to your thread on OzLib so you can see part of my reply there. Rick takes the path of a need-to-know basis, which I don't totally agree with. IMO over-communication is better than under, but ultimately it's his site and I'm not going to step on his toes there. As Frank said, a lot of this sort of feedback is suddenly coming out of the works now that we've launched, which is pretty typical really but pretty disappointing. People will whinge and moan once its changed, but provide little to no constructive feedback when you actually ask for it. Not that this is the case for your particular situation, I know you were banned a while back for a pretty trivial reason a while ago which probably affected your ability to contribute. I do wonder though why everybody has the impression that suddenly development will suddenly stop on the site just because it's been launched? We're not going to suddenly stick our heads in the sand and tell you all to put up with it. Now, the problem with speed. As I'm sure you can appreciate if you've been involved in building large-scale websites, performance is something that you can't accurately gauge without heavy usage, which you can't get when only 6 people from the beta group actually do anything. The impression we got from the traffic we were seeing was that speed was fine - as it's turning out, speed is a little less than we were expecting. There are a few things I have in mind for this area which will be addressed time-permitting.

Moving forward...

Uhhhrg....I hate that wanky manager speak...

Oh, and if you (or anyone for that matter) have any specific feedback on what can be improved UI-wise Chris, I would be more than happy to hear you out.

XoN, Can you please check my post in the general thread Sorry dude, I didn't see this thread.. It involves stuff like.. I don't rike it.. can't change password... not mod? etc..

I don't rike it.. can't change password... not mod? etc..

Unfortunately I can't rename it OzHondaVtacYo.com so I can't address you not liking it but...
You can change your password by clicking the User CP tab up the top, hover over the + next to Profile Settings and then click Edit My Profile. When the page loads, go to the Contact Info tab and you can change your password there. It sounds more complicated than it is, trust me
I've fixed up your mod status.

Oh, and if you (or anyone for that matter) have any specific feedback on what can be improved UI-wise Chris, I would be more than happy to hear you out.

No worries mate. If you're keen, and when I've got some spare time, I can sit down and run through the site. While doing so I can create and action log of what I believe would benefit from an improvement.
I'd probably be looking at Sunday or something like that...

I still cant access it. Is there a trick to it?

I still can't sign in

Have you both reset your passwords?

its got bumphlegmsmegmaAIDS.

Have you both reset your passwords?

Yeh i had to locate the email to do it. I spent 5 mins on the new site and left through sheer frustration.

That website is giving me the absolute shits. I actually liked it before they stuffed it up! I'm just stumped as to how they could have gotten it sooo wrong after such a long period of time and e-people power went into it! Good points: - I like the Reviews, Classifieds and Technical section - Chat function is good and will be better once activity on it starts to increase (totally owns our beloved FAILBOX haha) Bad points: - Very slow (apparently will quicken) - Horrible navigation - ie; when viewing New Posts - the forum section of the threads is no longer displayed in its own column. I prefered it the old way, that way I could filter out what I didn't want to read more easily by the forum section they're in. Now its just hard to read as its all bunched together with the user name etc - Lost PM's - I want my old PM's back as there were people I promised I'd PM when I was ready to sell the odd item or two. Now I can't remember who they were! Other forum transitions are able to transfer PM's, avatars, sigs etc - Some old OzLib hyperlinks no longer work. Furthermore, in viewing old threads, images don't always display properly. - SD and HD = what a ****... - Too many more to mention. Thats my rant over. I'm all for OzLib improving their once decent site and will try my best in assisting with that. But I think they gotta use a different forum system or something because this one is too gimiky and probably as a result, too slow! The forum section should be completely seperate from the fancy site. It should be a quick and effective way of people communicating. Much love, Shiv

Have you both reset your passwords?

No, I'd say the email was sent to my other email address (the 1 i can't access)
I need it sent to moisty87@live.com.au

yeah what is the go there, I had a guy asking for postage for some parts worth a lot fop money, and now i cant access the forums or my Pm box, It wont let me log onto the new one either..