Ideally we would like it if you explored the site beyond just the Blazer forum. If that's all you want to visit for, then fine, but don't bitch about the features that other users find necessary in order to browse the whole site.
Bounce rate is about 30% with 30,000 unique visitors/mo. Obviously a lot of people find some post of interest via search engines, read what they want, and then leave. That'd be the 70% who don't bounce. Otherwise we'd have 20,000 new members per month. I don't think 20,000 new members/month is a reasonable expectation, but it would be nice to convert 10% or even 1% of them into regulars here. Over the past few years, a consistent comment we've seen from people is they don't like the look of the site, specifically the banners at the top (RipCityTwo, etc.). All of your comments about what's above the fold are legit. But only from your POV, which is fine. I happen to click on the "New Posts" link in that nav area that you don't use. It's the page I bookmark to come to the site even. I also use the Home and User CP links a ton. It's also got my PM notifications, which is pretty important. The point being (and quite obvious from posts in this thread) that peoples' usage patterns are varied and what's important to one is a waste to another... In my 15+ years of WWW site design and working with thousands of sites, it's always been a constant struggle to find ways to reduce the height of stuff at the top of pages so the content is easier to see (above the fold). When Chingy did the first banners for us to look at, I asked him to make them shorter (less tall) for this reason. As for the rest of what's above the fold, vBulletin has been around a long time, and they get feedback (like I'm doing here) from a few million sites (last time I looked, there were maybe 1.5M vb sites in total). I assume they have both studied and evolved the layout of every page vb3 generates with all due consideration. Including the banner ad placement. The only thing I've changed is to move the "currently active users" bit from the bottom to the top, which is both advertising "we have all these users!" to potential new members, and I also think it helps improve community to see other peoples' names and that your pals are on right now, and it keeps the place from feeling like an "empty room." If you read the announcements, they aren't displayed anymore. One more thought on all this before I have to go to work. We could just go hire a professional vb3 skin designer to do a pro job on the site, but it's been more important to us that even the look of the site be member contributed. Chingy deserves kudos, IMO, for taking the initiative to make a lot of banners already.
Sorry--my other posts came off crankier than I actually was. I realize my personal tastes are different from others, but that's what Google Analytics is for. What's it say when you do a site overlay? I would be pretty comfortable in betting that there are probably 3 or 4 links at the top that ever get clicked more than 2% of the time (my guess is search, user cp, the link to the home page of SportsTwo.) The rest is just clutter that never gets clicked and is wasted above-the-fold space. If it were me, I'd leave those critical links up there, and then provide access to the rest with a drop-down menu. I realize Vbulletin (and for that matter Simple Machines, which I use for my own forum) tend to clutter things up at the top. But Microsoft has done some pretty stupid things over the years repeatedly too. Just because a company is big doesn't make them right. I don't think it's very compelling to put the number of users at the top, even in attracting new users. I look at a variety of bulletin boards, and I can easily spot an active one by looking at how many posts and threads there have been today. A site developer can fake how many users are currently active. But they can't fake a high volume of quality content. Anyway, a bounce rate at 30% is really pretty good. If you use Analytics to benchmark yourself against others in similar businesses, I bet you find your are doing really well. You can always do better, but I'd focus on providing means to get posters to go to other boards on your site, if I were you. One thought I just had would be do the following: 1. Keep it fixed width. 2. Aligh it left instead of centered. 3. Use the extra space on the right to add a new column called "Hot Threads." Make Hot Threads a place where the currently most active threads or the best ones of the week from throughout the site are pointed to. People like me and BNM who run really large monitors will see far more content from across the site. People who have small monitors will only see the content they are used to seeing, unless they scroll horizontally. Maybe add a check box to hide it if you worry that it'll be annoying to those on an iPhone..... This idea would have multiple benefits: 1. It'd show new visitors that you've got a lot of great content, and not just in the Blazers forum. 2. It'd suggest to Blazers-only posters ways to explore other parts of the site. 3. It'd be a better use of monitor real estate, and quality content would be above the fold (at least for those with wider monitors).
Your post didn't come across as cranky to me. What I can do is make the top bit collapsible. But I wonder with it hidden how you're going to get back to the blazers forum when you're reading a thread. As for exploring the rest of the site, it'd be nice and appreciated if people did post all over the place, but it's in no way required.
Sorry to be late to the party, but I just wanted to say that aesthetically, the site looks much nicer ! I'm on a dell desktop with a wide-screen flat panel monitor. For me, it works great.
I preferred the usability of the old one better - but I am fine either way. Thanks for keeping this place humming and always trying to make it better.
Additional problems with the "New Look": The checkbox does not work in all forums. For example, it works here, but not in the NBA General forum. So, my page width constantly bounces around when changing forums. The layout gets screwed up when a poster has an image in their .sig that is wider than the fixed page width. BNM
I think making the Display Options/Currently Active Users/Moderators section collapsible would be a good idea. It can be visible by default, but allow users to click a little arrow to hide it if they don't care to see who's online and don't use the display options much.
No, it's certainly not. But I think my Hot Threads idea could definitely help you to that end. Getting the best content from the entire site on the home page for every sports team can only improve penetration.
The first bit is because I've been too lazy to resize all the banners as of right now, so I'll take the blame for that one.
The original S2 was custom software I wrote. The Team forums had the team roster with links to individual player stats, links at the top for full roster and team stats and schedule, etc. People complained that it made the pages look too cluttered and we ended up doing away with all those features. We'd be better off posting links to interesting threads outside the blazers' forum in posts in the blazers forum, IMO. And thanks to Chingy, I have the pieces to put together a fluid width blazers banner. I'll try to make it work tonight after work.
I remember that. It was too cluttered. And redundant--there were other places most of us already went to access that data. This idea is quite a bit different. It would neatly categorize the most popular current threads on the entire site and make them easily visible for everyone, with no maintenance involved. It wouldn't necessarily even have to be very big--just 5 or so links of the most popular threads. Digg does something similar on the right side of their home page, although they do it in a much larger style than you'd use here. I'm always following links on it: http://digg.com/
Thanks to Chingy, we now have dynamic width banners. You'll notice the Blazers and OT forums are now fluid width again, but with the nicer banner at the top and, IMO, better colors.
Is there any custom setting to allow people who prefer it to go back to the narrow column down the middle look?
This seems to work very well for me. Thanks to you and Chingy for continuing to work on improving the look and usability of the site! Ed O.
