Feedback

[facefirst]

Why not just make it look and function like the old HC? Why did someone feel the need to make it ugly as shitfuck and make it complicated as fucksauce? All the work was done with the old site. How hard would it have been to duplicate it instead of someone trying to reinvent the wheel?

[triviani]

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Beck wrote:

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Edit 2:  Oh yeah, it doesn't spell check on the fly, which I just found out the hard way.  Plus when I did run the spell check it wanted to turn SSS into **bleep**, which I don't think the Nazi google censors would approve of.
 

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I agree with your whole post, but this part deserves to be quoted, Nazi Google is a precise definition.

[Let It Burn...]

I did some CSS tweaks with stylebot to make the whole forum experience a bit more friendly.

Looks a lot more useable IMO.

How to do it:

1. Download Google Chrome on www.google.com/chrome

2. Install the Stylebot Plugin: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoha

3. Go to this page and select "Install style in Stylebot" from the upper right corner http://stylebot.me/styles/2054

[Meowmi]

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nothingstock wrote:

I am still waiting for a simple amswer to the nagging questions: Where are the User Reviews, and are they more user-friendly?

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The user reviews aren't here yet, but they're being moved over. They should be here in a few weeks, so please hang tight.

What would make them more user-friendly, in your opinion?

[willhaven]

Also, the horizontal line separating the message from the signature is way too faint.

[linthat22]

I find it ironic that you get one message that says "Welcome to the new Harmony Central!" and rigth above it, it says "Harmony Centrail BETA" lol.  No s.h.i.t.

[Saturn]

So there is this new thing called a iPad. I think the thing might catch on.

Seriously no iPad support? I can work around some of the issues by using Google Chrome (which I do not like) but requiring Flash to post pictures? Really? We need iPad support ASAP!

[GCDEF]

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Meowmi wrote:

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nothingstock wrote:

I am still waiting for a simple amswer to the nagging questions: Where are the User Reviews, and are they more user-friendly?

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The user reviews aren't here yet, but they're being moved over. They should be here in a few weeks, so please hang tight.

What would make them more user-friendly, in your opinion?

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Why bother?  You're getting the same deserved reaction to this pile of poop that you got to 2.0.  You foundered for two months or so before seeing the light and  reverting.  Why not learn from that and get out early this time without wasting any more time and money?  This format isn't going to be accepted either.  Anything less than a VBulletin like interface will kill off those of us that are sticking around.  I don't get why that's so hard to understand.

[tiltsta]

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Meowmi wrote:

What would make them more user-friendly, in your opinion?

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I'll add my two cents to this, if you don't mind.

The old pre-HC2.0 format was really easy to use. It was organized like this...

electric guitars>fender>stratocaster>a million types/models to select>reviews. 

This made it very easy to quickly find a specific model/make of guitar and read reviews. All of these were links you clicked to go down to the next level. The post HC 2,0 format was not as user friendly as it had pulldown type menus and picking out individual things was very hard. Fender, for example, makes about 1000 stratocaster models/variations, so getting that on a pulldown tab was crazy hard. A simple list where you click the name of the item you want to drill down is much better. Searching for things was really hard, as you had to know the exact name, and many models have similar names. I liked to have a list so I could, for example, compare specs on two similar models. 

The HC2.0 and beyond also lost some of the original USER reviews, and it seemed to be more focused on pro reviews. While some of that is great, and guys like our admins wrote cool reviews, I think many felt like we lost some good content. In the age when every guitar magazine gives every product 5 star excellent reviews, it was cool to have a place to go to see REAL reviews from users, not advertisment "reviews". I'm not blaming any of our admin/content posters, or accusing them of anything like that, but the feel of the reviews kind of changed. 

[Zooey]

[edit:  This post is in response to the question on how to improve the User Reviews.  I clicked the "quick reply" from within the post I was responding to, which seems like a standard forum convention to me.  But whatever.]

In addition to what has already been said, how about allowing going directly to the last page of reviews. That's impossible in the current system. In fact, I don't think you can even tell how many reviews there are or how many pages of reviews.

[Meowmi]

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Zooey wrote:

In addition to what has already been said, how about allowing going directly to the last page of reviews. That's impossible in the current system. In fact, I don't think you can even tell how many reviews there are or how many pages of reviews.

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Yeah, I ran into that problem when I tried to start looking at content on the old HC.

Honestly, I'm not sure yet how user reviews will work, which is why I'm asking your opinions. Chances are that if we don't launch the way you'd like, it was some sort or limitation with the platform. I know that sounds like passing the buck, but our intention definitely isn't to make the site worse.

[tiltsta]

It is a sad thing. HC used to be THE site for gear reviews on the internet. I hear people saying the wish the reviews were back just about every day. I used to look at them all the time, but I have not even tried in at least a couple of years. I imagine the reviews generated a lot of site activity back when they popped up on google and such. I sure hope you guys can fix them someday.

As for the rest of the new place. It certainly is fast and stable. I imagine a few interface tweaks from now it will be a pretty nice forum.

[Meowmi]

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tiltsta wrote:
It is a sad thing. HC used to be THE site for gear reviews on the internet. I hear people saying the wish the reviews were back just about every day. I used to look at them all the time, but I have not even tried in at least a couple of years. I imagine the reviews generated a lot of site activity back when they popped up on google and such. I sure hope you guys can fix them someday.

As for the rest of the new place. It certainly is fast and stable. I imagine a few interface tweaks from now it will be a pretty nice forum.

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In a few weeks, we'll be bringing back user, pro and expert reviews, so keep an eye out for it.

And we're working on interface tweaks, so the site should improve over the next month or so, too. 

[blue2blue]

Anderton:

First, you have your mod powers back. I emailed all the mods asking them to let me know if they didn't have mod permissions. A ticket is in to fix the "scroll back and forth" issue. A ticket is in to find out why some people get logged out. When I post, I get returned to the place in the forum where I replied. I'll have to see if that's a preference or something. Under Preferences > Display, you can set the font size for reading and writing. i chose Large and it makes a huge difference. I believe the option to edit/amend posts is a preference change under permissions. I'll check.

Thanks, Craig! Didn't see this until just now. But I definitely saw the mod powers, although other stuff was apparently being swtiched on at around the same times so I was never sure what was what.

I think I"m going to go with Mike's suggestion to use HTML view for now. It's not elegant but at least I can see a whole line at once. = )

Oh, when I hit reply on your post  -- and then apparently forgot to hit the quote button that's now a necessary second step replying to a post deep in a thread (hence the hand-rolled quotation above) -- when I was done writing and posting my post, I was on your post way back in the middle of the thread, while my (typically) error-ridden post was way down on page one zillion at the end of the thread. = )

[Pine Apple Slim]

I dont give a rats **bleep** about user reviews. I somebody buys some **bleep** they can start a happy new **bleep** day thead and we can all jack off about it.
What I do give a **bleep** about is how this place looks. It hurst my **bleep** eyes! Fix that dammit!

[DeadNight Warr…]

I'm only a forum user here, haven't looked outside of the forum for many years. So I dunno and don't really care about any of the stuff outside the forum.

As far as the forum goes...

1. Colours are a bit rubbish, as has no doubt been said a million times already.

2. Roughly 50% of the screen being taken up by a background of some band is just plain absurd. My screen name doesn't even fit in that sidebar thing anymore. It's a ridiculous waste of space, and with everything crammed into a centred column it makes the forum look ugly and cluttered.

3. No text wrapping in the the message window.

4. Hopefully something can be done about the emoticons, coz right now they're awful.

The first three really are IMO the big ones to start with. If we can't multi-quote or whatever, I don't think it's a huge deal for now. If we can't browse the forums and post basic threads/replies without wanting to punch the screen, that's another thing entirely. Get the basic format and whatnot sorted, then the little things after. Basically, try make it look somewhat like the old vBulletin board. It's a simple, clear, easy to read and use layout.

[caeman]

1.  The design utterly wasteful of screen space.  The vbb forum contained far more USEFUL information per page.  Get rid of the side bars, the top banner, etc.

In general, I HATE the new look.  It is less efficient, less useful, less informative and shows a complete disregard for ergonomic design, knowledge-reuse smacks of having been designed by a 13-yr old that snuck into dad's liquor cabinet.  Really.  It is trash.  The old vbb had a consistent interface with the thousands of other forums on the internet.  What set HC apart was the active user base, the content they generated, and the familarity of the vbb look and feel.

The powers-that-be have thrown all that away and tried to recreate HC 2.0.  This is the new HC 2.0!  It looks just as bad, but it is fast.  Sorry, fast isn't good enough.  TGP runs fast.  TalkBass funs fast.  ILF runs fast.  Why is it that every other vbb forum could manage that task but not HC with MF's financial backing?

Return to vbb.  Please drop the pretense of trying to create a modern interface when apparently no one has a clue about usability studies, user feedback BEFORE implementation, and screen element use and placement.  Someone needs to be fired for this travesty.  And it is a travesty.  HC 2.0 is a step backwards.  

[Disgruntled]

Whoever did this should get themselves a copy of... "**bleep** Forum in a Box For Dummies"

[Zappa74]

Looks terrible.

Way too white... there's like no contrast.

Also, the forum is laughably tiny on a widescreen monitor.

[Potts]

The biggest issue I see is the lack of contrast in messages. Its all white screen now. You cant tell a quote from a post or a signature.

The "Landing" page just needs a little tweaking too. The announcements don't need to occupy a third of the page. Dump the top "taggers" and open up the space for the threads.

Other than that you guys really should be getting no sleep right now. My site crashed yesterday and I spent 10 continuous hours creating and launching a new site. Yeah it sucks but that's what needs to be done.