Slag Off This Site Please

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Wow Darren! Excellent work as usual! Smile

Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2003 5:13 pm (20 years, 12 months ago)

Can't take too much credit here I only stuck an existing icon on to a button shape and added the label Wink

but thank-you!

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

Thats absloutley brilliant Darren, Only problem is, I have no idea where to put it, it doesn't seem to fit in anywhere Sad

Although if you have any ideas of where I could put that, or where we could put something similar, it would be helpful

Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2003 5:53 pm (20 years, 12 months ago)

well I thought you was going to put it above the search box but I guess it might be a bit cramped up there.

Also now that you have a link up the top to the forums it would be a little inconsitent to use an icon without doing the same for chat, mailing list etc

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

Yeah, thats what I tried, got a bit too cramped Sad

At the moment this is the only idea I can think of :
http://www.freedom2support.net/mailinglist.php

I toyed with the idea of using icons up there, but I worked out that it wouldn't really work for 800x600 users, fine on 1024x768 that I run here, but gets a little bit cramped at 800x600

Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2003 6:10 pm (20 years, 12 months ago)

Yeah thats not bad - although it seems a little out of place - I guess it might help drive people to the forums who hadn't noticed the link at the top.

I guess you could put it on the product indexes - but again the other options would then be crying out for similar treatment.

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

Yeah, that's the problem Sad

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

Just read something really funny, I've used up 1.75GB Bandwidth already this month on that site, I used to use about 600MB a month max a few months ago, averaging 15,000 hits a day!

Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2003 11:10 am (20 years, 12 months ago)

Its probably all the testing you have been doing. Laughing

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

Nah, it isn't, most of the testing was done on beta.freedom2support.net, and not on the main domain, wasn't until yesterday stuff was moved over, and that has seperate stats from the www. Smile

Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2003 1:06 pm (20 years, 12 months ago)

True! In that case congratulations on the high traffic, you must be doing something right Very Happy

Junior WebHelper Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 2

Firstly this is a free community self help group. As a user of this site (and F2S subscriber) I really really appreciate all you efforts. Please note that my negative comments are meant to help you improve, not slag you off for trying to help people like me. Keep up the great work.

My main criticism isn't about the minutiae of HTML & XML but simply that too often I get service update emails. The sort of thing that says "The hard-drive on the server is defective, the site will be down for 1 hour" type thing. I didn't give my email to learn about your problems, but I want to hear news and info about F2S related matters. Anyway chances are I wouldn't know anyway as I probably wouldn't have been on the site. These are well intentioned, but they are counter productive. Put all these service updates into the forum and don't email users about these.

I agree that having news on the home page is the wrong way of doing things (and I am a user). Since this change was made, navigation is harder. It is harder to visualise what is where. There is no standard navigation bar on every page, no site map. I'd suggest a proportion (25% max) of the front page is set aside for news. Use a few hyperlinked headline words for the most recent pieces of news.

Also the links are inconsistent, someplaces bold light blue (no underline) and others dark blue not bold not underlined and in the forum a very dark grey that is underlined - aaaaaaghhh!

I suggest a common page layout (maybe a standard header with consistent links and footer) and nest the forum and other pages in these. Where nesting is technically difficult, launch a new instance of the browser.

Good luck

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

stuckagain wrote:

My main criticism isn't about the minutiae of HTML & XML but simply that too often I get service update emails. The sort of thing that says "The hard-drive on the server is defective, the site will be down for 1 hour" type thing. I didn't give my email to learn about your problems, but I want to hear news and info about F2S related matters.

Anyway chances are I wouldn't know anyway as I probably wouldn't have been on the site. These are well intentioned, but they are counter productive. Put all these service updates into the forum and don't email users about these.

Only time you will get site status updates is when they are critical, we have sent out 9 in the last 6 months, we have not sent any out in the last 2 months, this has had to be done, as we have been on several occasions been accused of having "Suspicious Motives" for the downtime, and have been attacked several times on ADSLGuide for it, so because of this, we have made announcements like this to stop the rumours.

Quote:

I agree that having news on the home page is the wrong way of doing things (and I am a user).

Well, we had a vote about it 6 months ago, and 85% of the visitors voted for it, rather than having just the headlines.

Quote:

Since this change was made, navigation is harder. It is harder to visualise what is where.

The site is divided into product sections, if you want anything to do with ADSL, you vist the ADSL Section, and that gives you one click to everything, the purpose of doing this believe it or not, was so we could give you easier access to pages that we couldn't before, and was again done on the limited feedback that people bothered to send us.

Quote:

There is no standard navigation bar on every page

There is, all the navigation you need is at the top of the page, the old navigation limited us, and didn't work, we couldn't expand on it, in the old style, where would you put such pages as Webspace T&C's, Webspace Upgrades, ADSL Product Info? You can't put them in the old Nav Bar, because they would take 2-3 lines each, due to this, we had to change the navigation style, if you have any better ideas of how to fit everything in and make it look better, I would be pleased to hear them.

Quote:

No site map.

There will be soon, as it's something that I'm going to have done within the next 2-3 days, when I get the chance, I always planned for a site map to be there, and there will be one. Under the old structure this would not have worked.

Quote:

I'd suggest a proportion (25% max) of the front page is set aside for news. Use a few hyperlinked headline words for the most recent pieces of news.

This was how it used to be, until it was axed because 85% of visitors didn't like it.

Quote:

Also the links are inconsistent, someplaces bold light blue (no underline) and others dark blue not bold not underlined and in the forum a very dark grey that is underlined - aaaaaaghhh!

Yes, because it fits the colour scheme well, I didn't think the navigation was too bad myself, I considered it an improvement. Forums are different because I'm not going to bother to skin a forum that will be upgraded in a few weeks time and have to skin it all over again, if I got paid for it, then fine I would, but no way am I going to skin it for the sake of a few weeks

Quote:

I suggest a common page layout (maybe a standard header with consistent links and footer) and nest the forum and other pages in these.

There already is some :
http://www.freedom2support.net/includes/footer.php
http://www.freedom2support.net/includes/footer.php

Forums don't nest well in them.

Quote:

Where nesting is technically difficult, launch a new instance of the browser.

But why? Surely, like you say about we want a constant look?

I don't mean to be rude, but I find it very offensive for someone to come on ANOTHER site and not our own to slag Freedom2Support off, we have asked MANY times, in many ways for people to give us feedback, no-one bothered to, and then they moan when they don't like the new design I have done on another site, they don't tell us directly, they go moaning off somewhere else.

I welcome constructive critcism, but am just not happy about the way you have gone about it.

Junior WebHelper Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 2

Hi Justin

Sorry that you found my email offensive. Remember my opening remark was ...

Quote:

Firstly this is a free community self help group. As a user of this site (and F2S subscriber) I really really appreciate all you efforts. Please note that my negative comments are meant to help you improve, not slag you off for trying to help people like me. Keep up the great work.

Why did I post here? Well because you asked for feedback here! I will not enter into an argument, because I have no argument with you. I appreciate and support your site, and responding to your request for feedback was my way of providing you with my support.

I accept that you can't keep everyone happy, as we all have different views. I am happy to accept that I wasn't around when you asked for feedback on your site and I am also happy to accept that my view is in the minority. I equally accept that you are free to take on board the comments that fit in with your ideas and plans and decline any other suggestions (that is exactly what I do on my site). But come on Justin. You asked for comments here. I politely and supportively gave comments here after an intro saying what a great job you have done. I think you have over reacted.

By the way, I agree that launching a new version of the browser isn't the best solution but I found on my site that nesting PHPBB in my navigation elements is hard work (which will have to be repeated when PHPBB update the script) so my rough and ready solution is to launch the forum in a new browser window, so users can go back to my main site pages when they are done. A little messy but I, like you, haven't got time for a perfect solution.

Any way can we kiss and make up? Keep up the good work.

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

Sorry, don't worry about it, we're going to revert back to the old design, less content, pages not linked to from anywhere, people asking same questions over and over in the forums,and being as I don't have time until July to do anything else about it, thats the way it will stay until then.

I'm not being nasty, that's simply the way it is, as it is either that, or what we have now.