Granted, at first glance this place looked pretty rough. But over the past week I have seen a lot of improvements, and I'm beginning to think that if the developers keep on adding features and removing hurdles we may end up with a better forum than we ever had before... and one that doesn't give up 404 error pages on most attempts to view a thread.
Here is my list of compliments to the developers:
1. Redirects on Old Web Pages
From what I have gathered, all of the old page URLs from HC forums and reviews have a 301 redirect that sends the visitor to the appropriate page on the new domain. That is an amazing feat! Even my old profile URL redirects to my new one. WELL DONE!!! This is a very important part of this project, because if you didn't create the redirects, Google and the other major search engines would have eventually dumped thousands of high-ranking forum posts from their search results that many musicians and sound professionals rely on for information and reviews.
2. Rich Text, HTML, and Preview
Nice layout and functionality. Great placement of tabs. Sweet! Not to mention useful.
3. Uploadable Images
This is genius. Hotlinking images is a joke. Some of the old threads have nearly every image missing from them. Somebody had their thinking caps on!
4. Most Features That Old Forum Had & More
I can add videos; bold text, italics, strikethrough and underline; link to URL; change font name, color, and size; add numbering or bullets, quotes, or indenting; insert code or paste from Word; spellcheck and autosave; private messaging, forum searching, configure user settings; FAQ help desk; and more. Great job!
5. Functionality and Speed
So far so good. I haven't seen any lag at all on my end.... definitely at least 100 times faster than the old version. You have obviously allocated enough web server and database resources to the project, which the old version was sorely lacking.
Conclusion
The HC database is probably one of the largest on the Web of any forum, and it needed a customized, scalable solution. You provided one. So far so good.
If there are more improvements needed, I would say (based on user feedback) that they are more in the graphic design and layout categories more than the functionality and new features categories. For example, it is hard for newcomers to find the quote button. Put one where they used to be and you will have 10,000 less complaints instantly. Then widen the forum format so it spans the entire width of the screen and you drop another 30,000 complaints. Get the old smilies back and drop another 10,000 gripes, and so on.
Overall, excellent job in my opinion. At the rate you are making changes, this thing will look much different 30 days from now. Just keep listening to the users and when 100 of them say the same thing, put it on the to-do list. I know it's probably hard to read the "WTF" threads, but if you can tolerate them you will find some useful feedback in between the swear words.
Thanks HC, thanks to Craig Anderton, thanks to all the forum mods, thanks to all the developers, and mostly... thanks to the users who made this place what it is.
Help Desk