New WSO Theme Launched (duh)

Suggestion:

I really liked the recent post function from the old version. Though it had its quirks, like not always showing the most recent posts, it was overall a pretty useful tool. Rather than looking through all the forums, I could just click recent posts and quickly browse the newest updates/threads that interested me.

Uhh...^^ its alredy present in the scroll bar under the search

So what do you do? -I work for an investment banking firm. Oh okay; you are like my brother, he works for Edward Jones. -No, a college degree is required in my profession

You need a divider of some kind between posts on the homepage. Poll is screwed up, you can vote for more than one option. The use of small caps in various other places across the site is annoying as well, its not only in the sidebars. Also, does everyone now w/ no set avatar have that stupid monkey avatar? Please turn it off its almost as confusing as the lack of post dividers

So what do you do? -I work for an investment banking firm. Oh okay; you are like my brother, he works for Edward Jones. -No, a college degree is required in my profession

hey guys, you should be able to get to Recent Posts by using the quick link box under the Search box in the upper right corner of the site

no worries, captk - I understand. I will definitely take your comments into consideration.

I happen to agree with you on the profile picture dilemma -- trying to think through a solution.

Get rid of that unsightly add on top of the WSO logo on top of the page.

There seems to be a bug with the Poll. It says I have to log in to vote, even though I am.

Keep up the good work, Patrick! :)

I'm on IE7 at work and the site renders preposterously. Resizing the window pushes text into the blue margins. 70% of text from posts need to be highlighted just for me to see them. You really need to test the site on a couple of platforms before launch...

I will say that it is definitely, bugs aside, an improvement on the last iteration but I think you definitely need a new logo.

and also, It's really uncool trying to read WSO at work when theres 32 blue monkeys on my screen, please fix that ASAP

Hi , - I am really new to this site and have only started to visit recently to stay in touch with what's going on. There are a couple of things about the site that used to bug me earlier - one was the excruciatingly slow speed on some page loads. Since it was mentioned that this was one of the problems cured with this new design, I am not sure if anyone else is experiencing it or of its only me, but I still see the same slow speed problem. Its not even slow, I have to give up after almost more than a minute of the hour glass flippin.

I do like the new design, I do not mind the ads as much since my brother has put something on my comp that somehow blocks ads from showing and all I see is ugly white space where the ads are suppsoed to show (but that's not site's problem).

Another peculiar thing I noticed is some of the comment writings do not show unless I highlght them, its weird.

Also today I tried to log in just to post this comment (I usally browse without logging in to check out the latest comments/articles), but the login attempt was very slow, and almost hung (similar to sloow page loading) , luckily after closing my browser two times it let me in the third attempt.

It's nice to see that you are trying to make this site better . Your effort is better than doing nothing. I think my main issue on this site is the occasional slow speed (to the point unusable), which I really don't think is resolved with this new design.

Also, I hate this font. especially witht he lack of uniformity. Aside from the default theme font, theres Arial and Verdana used in a couple places and just makes everything look messy. Would be better to just stick with something more standard across the board, I don't think the visual creativity really achieves any conceivable edge. (why have recent posts in Arial and the actual thread in a completely different font?)

And in terms of post formatting, user info should definitely come first, makes more sense. Its awkward reading something and THEN finding out who wrote it.

Sorry to nitpick. Overall I'm satisfied with how the site is progressing. Keep up the good work

I like the new site - it looks great. Thanks for the hard work Patrick. I will just add my vote for a few things:

Make a link to "Recent Posts" on the front page. I know it's over by the search bar, but since that's where I think most people navigate first, it makes sense to have it easy to find.

I've also had problems with the text not appearing in posts unless I highlight it. Weird.

I like having the user info before the words.

Overall I think it is a definite improvement and that you're going in the right direction with the site. I don't really care at all about the ads beacuse I'm coming to the site for the posts.

Thank guys - the site should be moving along much better now. We had some cache settings wrong on the side blocks that was causing a full refresh every time someone posted something.

Please let me know if you continue to experience any speed issues.

Thanks, Patrick

yes speed seems better now. Hopefully it stays that way. Thanks.

not a fan of the many obnoxious ads... any way to make them more discreet?

also dont like the three column theme with the message board content on the left.... too much white space, too little content

the two columns on the right are extremely cluttered and organized in a way i cannot comprehend. why are "My Account" links way in the bottom right? they should be on top somewhere like they used to be.

search bar in top right seems bare and out of place. it looked a lot better before

fonts are a bit tacky. as is that gigantic billboard on top that overshadows the logo

directly under the "Hard Assets" ad to the right (as i am editing this post) there is a random logo that seems to have no place whatsoever. furthermore, this logo overlaps the "moo financial entertainment" banner (whatever the hell that is) the "Latest Poll" box also overlaps two ads. very awkward.

at the bottom it says "Footer Menu" ... surely thats an accident.. i hope.

i also dont like being a blank monkey. why cant i just not have an avatar at all? someone else mentioned all the blue monkeys on the site, kind of annoying. it is also indeed weird to read the message first and then see who read it... better to have the author on top of the post.

as someone who visits this site several times a day for the past couple years, im not extremely happy with this current layout... but i appreciate Patrick's continued efforts in trying to make the site better. thank you Patrick

Pedigreed - thanks for the detailed feedback. Here are my responses:

"not a fan of the many obnoxious ads... any way to make them more discreet?"

A lot of the ads that were coming through ValueClick were super obnoxious and not relevant to our userbase so I am working on getting the filter much more strict.

"also dont like the three column theme with the message board content on the left.... too much white space, too little content"

This I'm going to have to think about. There will be more features and blocks added to the right in due time, but the improved speed and cleanliness of the site was a big goal. Many areas still need clean up but I think this is a much cleaner base.

"the two columns on the right are extremely cluttered and organized in a way i cannot comprehend. why are "My Account" links way in the bottom right? they should be on top somewhere like they used to be."

The columns on the right need some work. Font bigger in the top two blocks (which will push down the ads and make them less in your face hopefully). As for the user block - this is going to disappear soon. We hope to get everything you need once you're logged in to the upper right hand corner or through the quick link pull down. I agree it doesn't work where it is now - this was only temporary.

"search bar in top right seems bare and out of place. it looked a lot better before"

It definitely needs some theming love. this is on the list. It will look much better once we theme it.

"fonts are a bit tacky. as is that gigantic billboard on top that overshadows the logo"

I agree with changing some of the fonts and improving consistency.

"directly under the "Hard Assets" ad to the right (as i am editing this post) there is a random logo that seems to have no place whatsoever. furthermore, this logo overlaps the "moo financial entertainment" banner (whatever the hell that is) the "Latest Poll" box also overlaps two ads. very awkward."

That logo is just a placeholder for now - again, we have a lot of work to do. The UMOO ad is not aligned properly - another piece of work to do. This will be fixed.

"at the bottom it says "Footer Menu" ... surely thats an accident.. i hope."

Yes, footer needs more work too.

"i also dont like being a blank monkey. why cant i just not have an avatar at all? someone else mentioned all the blue monkeys on the site, kind of annoying. it is also indeed weird to read the message first and then see who read it... better to have the author on top of the post."

Monkey will be removed and author tags: "by [author..." will be moved underneath the title of the posts. We will also make the separator line between posts on the home page a bit more noticeable.

"as someone who visits this site several times a day for the past couple years, im not extremely happy with this current layout... but i appreciate Patrick's continued efforts in trying to make the site better. thank you Patrick"

Thanks for the kind words - a lot of what you wrote here I agree with. In 2 weeks I think we can have most if not all of these adjustments made.

Thanks for your patience, Patrick

i dont know if anyone mentioned this yet - or if i'm the only one experiencing this. the "new" tag for posts is really awkward/annoying because the font color and size is the same as the rest of the post. previously there was a pic/gif/jpeg or something (as i recall) - is there a way to format this better? thanks patrick for the great site.

Patrick,

I think you've done a good job with the new theme. This skin ultimately offers you more flexibility than I think you would have been able to achieve with the old skin. That said, I will throw in my thoughts:

1 - As mentioned before, I definitely agree with the concept of centering the comments. Having two columns of "non-text" is confusing. Currently, I have an ad on the top right of my screen that stretches beyond just a single box. This mentally distracts me and my mind needs to think about where the columns are.

2 - The thing I am struggling with the most right now is distinguishing where one post ends and another begins. My computer is showing just white space between posts without a distinct header and footer. In fact, I'm often scrolling through and mistake someone's icon as the start of a post, which takes some readjusting. I'd suggest you put in some sort of definitive, unmistakable header for each post that allows users to quickly scroll through. In that header, please put the username of the individual making the post. I shouldn't find out who made the comment after I've read it, I should know before I read it.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need further clarity of my suggestions.

~~~~~~~~~~~ CompBanker

just so you guys can get a sense of how much stuff we will be changing, here is a selection from the to do list for Sean, our web developer.

REVISED TO DO LIST

* Please put "by author ...." line below the title of each thread.  Users want to know who wrote what and having the "by" line below the post is confusing a large % of the users. 

* Please make font size of Forum Topics box and Popular Content block 1 point bigger and increase vertical spacing if letters are getting cut off (ok if this pushes down the med rec ad a bit). 

* Please get a "Create New Group" button in the Group page.

* Users have been having trouble delineating between comments.  Is it possible to have a dark grey thin wireframe around each comment?  it can still be light grey background, but if this was accentuated a bit with a dark grey thin wireframe, that might help the eye.

* Along those lines, please make grey lines in between posts on the home page slightly darker to help the eye - people are getting confused when one starts and when one begins (also a result of having the profile pics below the post)

* Please make Recent Posts, named "Recent" as the first menu item in the Primary Menu list

* Please make it so that the UMOO ad below the content (and Market Club ad) is right underneath the Content column.  For some reason it looks like it is centered and not in the content area...

* Please fix the "New" tag placed on any new content for users so that it is either red or aligned properly - more distinguishable. 

* Please get Inbox link in the upper right hand corner with other user info

* Please figure out why userpoints isn't working for new users (I think this happened with upgrade to 5.10)...many are stuck at 0 banana points 

...among many more. hopefully by this weekend we will see some of these changes implemented. we are also looking into switching to 2 columns once you are in a thread so the text has more horizontal space to run and you don't have to scroll as much.

thanks for your patience, Patrick

ok, as you might have noticed we made a bunch of changes....

more thoughts / comments / suggestions?

Thanks, Patrick

one thing i noticed today is that the new/active/popular is inconsistent a lot of the time. i'll click on one thread and itll give me the active's from 3 hours ago, and then i'll click on another and it'll give me the right ones, etc

Huge improvement with the two columns vs. three. Huge.

Also reads a lot better with the new (old?) alignment of the byline and user pic.

A small suggestion - maybe some way to set off the byline so it doesn't look like part of the post text? Italics maybe? Or maybe don't indent it (put it at the same indent level as the post title).

It's definitely coming along Patrick, good work.

• Capt K