New forum model

[mrbottles]

Hello admins, You can turn this off as soon as you read it. Not trying to bag on this resource it is still great. I can't see a contact email so this is the only way I see that I can try to help. The forum is not as active as it was. I believe I see opportunity to bring back the good old days. I know when this version went live a lot of questions were answered about the why. While I stop in every now and again the commercial-ness makes it feel a lot less like a home away from home... Like it used to feel. That and the archives that are now gone make it feel cold. There were times when I just flitted through old posts seeing what was out there. Rereading about this or that. Now a forum like pontils only has one item. There used to be new posts popping every minute. You could reply to find your reply rendered irrelevant by posts made when you were typing your reply. The last three times I checked in the posts are all hours or days old. Not bagging on the incredible vision and work it took to create or keep this going,,, trying to help. Knowing it is expensive to produce or host or create or keep anything updated and going if you want to bring back the good old days of this forum I would try to immediately fix simple things like; Get rid of the ads if people are logged in or not. They are a MAJOR turn off. No one uses them anyway and the second you arrive it gives the impression of commercial enterprise NOT open sharing of information.A better logo. The folded paper serifed font is not good enough for a world class resource. tighten everything up, up top. I have huge monitors and I see two topic threads on the home page. Too many frames and borders. Like the grey line saying forums is completely of no value and pushes the content people come for down. Should be able to see every forum on monitors like mine. Get rid of the image scroll at the top. People are here for the information. Yes images are info but detached from the story is not what this forum used to be about and no one cares. Unless that is the only way to keep them around after posts are archived? Again, don't understand why all the old posts are gone unless it is to save space. Delete all posts about other resources, simply eliminate the category. GOOGLE is how you get other resources. There are people posting about other bottle forums. Make the site look and feel like antique bottles.Get rid of all the web wiki tools and features. Bottle collectors don't care about subscribed forums or marking folders read or forum filters. I wish I could just do it for you. It is really sad to see something so powerful in the antique bottle world losing steam... And it feels like it can be fixed. People still want and need the information. I don't want to take anything from this forum that is to say don't want to be hired to do it. I have a marketing firm with many designers. If you do it yourself maybe I could just have one of my guys lay out a front page and you can have your guy stytle it. Maybe there is a lot more to it that I can't see. My sincerest regards in hope of a AB.NET full revival. All the best, Steven

 

[Robby Raccoon]

I think that some features on here are pretty good, and I assume that this was a template-- hence why we have other features that either don't work or are not of much use. The design could be better in some ways, including the logo, but I like this site's design and set-up better than I like most forums. There is only one forum that I like the set-up of better. This forum is user-friendly and easy-to-read. It is also full of organization and sections, albeit some sections could be added and some should now just be removed. The real issue is that the hobby of bottles is deteriorating. Old glass is all that this is to most people. Good for us, they may think. Why would they really care? I personally like the images banner at the top of the main screen. I've commented on a lot of them, often asking questions. Issue is, no one gets the message that someone commented. It also sounds like the last time the forum changed, many people left. Change is a bad thing to most people. They won't have it, and if they must have it, they'll shun it. That's my 2 cents to your 20. I think it would be best to hear what the users think. Perhaps send an email to all of them so those who don't come back may now just to feel included in this idea.

 

[Johnnysoda]

I personally like the idea of the read/unread feature. It helps me see what is new and what is not.

 

[mrbottles]

mrbottles.com does about the same and all i have is slightly changing content from Wisconsin. You are right though those are great numbers. Yes, it is fine the way it is. I was hopeful it could be the same raging river of information it used to be. Why are there are so many fewer posts?... I just don't get it. Maybe it is that so many people have moved off to create their own resources? I'll do what i can to get in and participate more... Maybe it just takes a little momentum... Thanks for the consideration! Steven

 

[Robby Raccoon]

Looks like you updated the site in design and animation since I was last on.I've used it for help with Wisconsin bottles. I dig them occasionally on the other side of the best Lake on Earth. Popular Social Media is moving away from forums and such and into more far-reaching things like Facebook. I don't have an FB, but others talk about it even here all the time. Some give a more live chat than do postings like this, which we can walk away from and come back to whenever we want. I typically respond ASAP to things. Sometimes I'm responding and someone else posts a message before I do. Forums for information are now mainly living databases, for that is mainly the function. There is still a new thread daily. Sometimes there are a dozen new threads. I think that slowing down is a good thing for the forum, though, for it's less hectic to keep up with. I also wonder if admins have to read everything posted and click on every link to analyze content for safety. Giving them a break might be rather beneficial for them. Maybe if we all click on ads we help the forum out? Just don't get viruses. lol. On this page, though, even signed-in members have ads.

 

[cowseatmaize]

I honestly don't understand most of what you were talking about. I will say that it's the first time I ever heard about the site being strange because a monitor is too big....

I have huge monitors and I see two topic threads on the home page. Too many frames and borders. Like the grey line saying forums is completely of no value and pushes the content people come for down. Should be able to see every forum on monitors like mine.

...the majority of problems I hear about is reading on a regular size monitor, laptop or phone.

 

[2find4me]

For most monitors it seems to work fine for me, but for the smart phones and tablets that is a different story. The last time I tried to view the forum on my iPhone, I couldn't click on any of the forum categories to access them.