One last (maybe) comment for the night: when you have unread alerts, the little red number shows up in the header in two places if you shrink the browser width beyond a certain point. Seems redundant.
A few things: 1. You may be misunderstanding some of the habits here by thinking too much in terms of "content". I suspect most of us who hang out in specific sections are there because we like like that posting community. The discussion community is what holds our attention. We're not really looking for other "content" in the way you seem to be suggesting. 2. You need to be prepared for the possibility that the sidebar is rejected. BigSoccer has always been unusually conservative in regards to this sort of thing. I can only tell you that we had design fights in the past to keep threads full width. The posters always won those fights. 3. Again, if you want to keep the feature, I think you'll have more success moving it to the bottom than keeping it as a sidebar.
OK, so it's probably not really an issue for us posters, but the new BS logo seems remarkably dated. I'm guessing that it is a soccer ball at the top of the shield, but it certainly is hard to tell at first glance. Or even second and third glances...
Not sure if already mentioned, but darken the grey background a bit. The background and white post poxes blur in together; looks messy, and is hard to quickly scan through a page of posts
@Andy R To concur with what Knave said: 1 - the posters here tend to stick to specific fora of their interest. For example, as a Tottenham fan, I rarely venture into another EPL forum, because I have no need/interest. When I do, I am looking for something specific which I already know is there, not something new. Regarding the EPL, this is in part, the nature of EPL fans being territorial. But, second to that, this issue also increases the possibility of cross forum banter wars/trolling. For example, I have noticed that some P&CE threads show up. That forum, in general, is rather anti-Trump, This promotes a Trump supporter to come in and do a bit of trolling. The same could be for any EPL rivalries or some US v. Mexico thing, or any number of border crossings which could lead to trolling. 2 - I agree with Knave, in full, regarding the sidebar. One thing that has been tried a couple of times is to make this forum more social-media like rather than a standard message board, and it doesn't work for most posters. This is, in part, because a lot use BS at work for quick posting between spouts of work, and don't have the time to surf around. 2a - The changes you seem to be thinking about are just another version of subscribed threads/forums. 3 - Again, agreed with Knave. As for me, A - The idea of the media thing I think is good, and has the possibility of catching on. It is also possible to do an image/.gif thing as well, but disabling it in those "hot" person forums/threads? B - Can you change the color of the Women's board pronto? Thanks. C - One of the options a few generations back was to be able to change colors. This was both for the header as well as for the background. Is that a possibility? D - I'll consolidate all of the issues and your responses in a new thread in a couple of days.
Yes, changing the color of the women's forums is already a ticket to get done. As I said, we will figure out a way for users to turn off the side column. If the media stuff is disruptive to our power users we can look into also building an on/off switch to hide the thumbnails at the top of the forums. Once we have everything dialed in, then we can look into creating some additional themes that would use other color palettes. It's best this is done after other changes because some of the changes will be inherited by child themes.
Perhaps it would be helpful if there was a real example posted somewhere about what this media stuff is supposed to do. The only example I see looks like a test post by @Janet H. I guess I just have no idea what it's supposed to do to improve discussion. I mean, is the media thing supposed to be like a mini-Instagram or something? If it is, that strikes me as a pretty lousy idea -- and a serious misread of the posting culture around here. As for "thumbnails at the top of the forums". Forgive me for being so blunt, but that's insane, and not in a good way.
People are not loving the trending column but one of the things I think really was missing from old BigSoccer was "BigSoccer Live" that used to live on the home page - it really made the site seem much less insular and you had a much better sense of what was going on in places you didn't visit regularly. It may require tweaks but I'm excited about this feature - hopefully overtime we find it useful.
Thank you. Understood, and thank you. I think I have an idea of what you are talking about, and it seems like a cool idea. Understand it is not an immediate fix. Thank you for considering it. Can you give us an idea of what is high on your priority list to tweek. The previous admin, Huss, was pretty good about letting us know what was happening regarding the upgrade fixes.
I miss the yellow. I know it's silly, but that was always the BigSoccer color to me, even through various iterations of the site.
The icon for BS on my tablet and phone has changed. Part of the logo redesign, I guess, but it is too stylized. It really doesn't look much like a soccer ball.
Count another vote for the "I'm a fan of my teams and don't give two hoots about other forums" crowd. The "My Watched Forums" list needs to go back in order. It's all random right now.
I didn't read all the other posts, so sorry if this is a repeat. I read BS mostly on iphone or iPad Pro. When people quote someone, i can barely read the quotes. The font is too small and light gray is unreadable for us older adults. Is this configurable for us? I also don't like how 1/3 of the screen real estate is now taken up by a large blank area on the right side. On the iPad Pro, I read in landscape mode because I have a keyboard. There are now only 2-3 posts per page because of so much formatting for appearance's sake. This wasteful use of screen real estate just slows me down, I have to scroll a lot more.
I believe it needs a sharper contrasting colors between the background page and posts, so a slightly darker background page by 2/3 shades; it almost looks like it's one shade away of being each others color tone. The color tones are just too close to each other that it doesn't help the posts pop out more from the background & to make it more discernible between posts. Or as someone else has said maybe an option for users.
Quoted text should be black -- not gray. Gray text on a white background is too hard to read. Indeed, the way it's formatted now, it's as if you're not supposed to read what's quoted. Which is wrong. So: quotes should be black text, indented, and with a defined quote box to set the quote apart.
Sorry if this is a repeat request: Is there any way to show fully read fora titles as being shaded, or not as bright on the "Watched Forums" page? Now on the "Watched Forums" page, all the fora titles look the same, whether there are any unread threads in them or not. Thanks!
A "new, modern look" that I personally didn't feel any need of. Sometimes, someone should explain to me: why this itch to always change something that's working perfectly, just for the sake of changing???
Agree I am hesitant to slate the sidebar without knowing what the data says. I remember being amazed back in the day to discover that most enter BS from the homepage whereas I use My BS but only 2% of people did that or something? But it would be nice to turn it off if you don't want it.
Geez....I just recently upgraded from programming my desktop with punched tape to 8" floppy discs. What's next....portable phones?
Is everything pink now? I'm quoting a post with a screenshot because I wanted to use multiple computers and browsers from different locations before saying anything, but I have never had that redundant alert area in the top left. Now that I'm on a shittier monitor I can say the text and background colors are horrible. This is a message board. The messages are what is important. I care more about the messages than who writes them. Quotes are nearly unreadable, but I can see the name of the person I don't care about. What does one have to give to be able to change the themes as some can?
Agreed, the right sidebar wastes valuable real estate. I would like to see it be a user option to display the sidebar or not (I would choose the latter... I don't need to be reminded on every page of my own profile details or what threads are trending)
The display is filled with pointless stuff, while the only interesting thing (the actual posts) are squished into the center, making it too narrow. The posts need to be wider. You have too much space out near the margins: use it. Or you could remove the side column, or make it narrower, and use some of that space to widen the posts. I also don't see the point of the blue thing above that stays fixed. What's the point of that? When I am usually reading a thread and scrolling down, why is it so important for me to always know that I am on BigSoccer? Or that I can click on "blog" or "media"? Why is that useful? It again has no real use, so it shouldn't be in my eye so much.
That's a distinct IMPROVEMENT. The old disjointed nature of blog articles, and the separate login system meant that I didn't participate in them as much as I would've. THANK YOU! I shoulda read his before I made my post a few mins ago. I am 99.99% sure I will be one of the folks who use this feature, so the sooner it comes, the happier I'll be.