After about 3 weeks of operation ...

Or at least I think it's 3 weeks ... maybe a month.

Sorry guys. I know you've put in a lot of work, and most appreciated, which goes without saying.

But ... this vBulletin board is just too fussy by a number of furlongs, too overloaded with features which seem to me just plain unnecessary.
I'm still not able to log in without being tossed into my PM feature first [no matter that I attempted to follow Moses' convoluted instructions] ... a feature I do not use frequently.
Ten different icons to tell me what I've seen, looked at, shaken my head at, fondled lately -- I exaggerate but you get the drift.
The million-photo entrance page screams out for some reasonable sense of minimalism, as frankly, does the rest of the board. The PM feature has weirdly worded 'things-going-on'. The 'Like' feature is simply creepy without it's missing partner 'Not Like' ... why would I give a tinker's damn whether someone else 'likes' - or 'not likes' - what I/we write anyway. A 'Gay Cambodia' Forum ... huh, huh.
What is 'What's New'. What is the 'Main Page'. What is the 'Gallery'. Why would members 'Rate This Thread' ... isn't 'Liking' it good enough.

[My brain is exploding, although that could easily be that I just finished watching the entire 2 hours of the so-called Republican Fox News debate.]

Bottom line; the joint is just really hard to navigate man ... on a whole number of levels.

Sorry folks, there ain't no 'Not Like' button ... :cool: :rolleyes:

Smiles, it's a message forum. It's not like we're "NASA control center" complex here. Here, do this.

Next time you login, click that "Remember me" checkbox. That way you're simply always logged in, and don't have to worry about where you get redirected upon logging in.

Then bookmark the URL: http://sawatdeenetwork.com/v4/activity.php

Check out that page once in a while, and it'll let you know any new activity. That's all you need to carry on conversations. Then for the rest of the bells & whistles, just pretend they don't exist.

Or you could always get some duct tape, and cover up the portions of your monitor that are causing you grief. :)

Smiles, I can understand your frustrations, but we can't to stop progress. At past phones had only one rotating disc with 10 holes for finger and button for to hang microphone tube, now smartphones drive me crazy with their complicated menu. The same with forum - we moved from outdated software to more modern - it is question of forum's security. We all should adopt it.

"What's new" - it is integrated page where all events are posted (for now only from forum and from event-calendar, late - from forum, calendar, gallery, news and members blogs if members will want to have one here).

"Gallery" is... forum's gallery. I'm working with it now - it will show photos from forum's history: they are now under thousands of topics and nobody can find them and watch what members have been posted here years ago: pictures of Thaialnd, photos from travels, photos of boys. It is locked now while I'm making design and coding.

The login works fine. I go straight to the forum, with everything remembered.

What I've not managed to do is set the Bookmark to go directly to a window showing all the new posts. Which is the only way I prefer to view forums.

I expected the very same posts as above. Perhaps we need an I-Anticipated-That-Response button.
No denigration of the 'security' upgrades necessity was meant ... I get that. No ignorance of a "It's A New World babe" from my end ... I get that as well.
My criticism is purely about simplicity and what the real deal is all about on this kind of message board. Just look at Gaybutton: it's horribly moderated (as Sawatdee is not, arguably why Sawatdee has always outdone Gaybutton on volume and edginess), but that aside, it's just plain simple in terms of starting topics or answering posts. It's clean, it's uncluttered, it knows what it wants to be, it does not throw in the kitchen sink when addressing the only thing a member really wants to do is read, respond, go home.
One can, I guess, do that here as well here, but it's wildly top heavy in my opinion.

I think as we turn things on and load more into the site it is going to get clunky and so there will be an opportunity to move some things around or to redesign to keep the look and functionality streamlined, in combination with member's personal settings.

The key though, is the feedback. We need specifics to what aspects could use adjusting. You mentioned edit time in another post. How long do you think it should be set at?

If we tackle the issues one by one, as we did when we were getting people over here...we'll be a lot more sucessful in building this to be what the members expect of technology today.

Surfcrest

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Originally Posted by cdnmatt

Smiles, it's a message forum. It's not like we're "NASA control center" complex here. Here, do this......

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it is I think very telling that the only two users to "Like" this post (which does not really address any of Smiles' issues) were the two board owners!

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Originally Posted by Moses

The same with forum - we moved from outdated software to more modern - it is question of forum's security. We all should adopt it.

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rubbish, all you have done is swap one set of security issues for another - or haven't you read the vbulletin security patches?

it is interesting to note that you claim on the main site home page that you still need to maintain different login and passwords for the main site and for the forum - for security reasons! no, you just don't know how to implement it

web sites can be "modern" and they can be "secure" but it takes skill and good software and good design and vbulletin is not a universal panacea even if you are committed to it because Surfcrest purchased it a few years ago - and this site is not a shining example of a good implementation of vbulletin as part of web site so stop trying to pass it off as we the end users needing to suck it up and adopt to "modern" web sites!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Smiles

My criticism is purely about simplicity and what the real deal is all about on this kind of message board. Just look at Gaybutton: ... it's just plain simple in terms of starting topics or answering posts. It's clean, it's uncluttered, it knows what it wants to be, it does not throw in the kitchen sink when addressing the only thing a member really wants to do is read, respond, go home.One can, I guess, do that here as well here, but it's wildly top heavy in my opinion.

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I would add "needlessly" to throwing in the kitchen sink, but also it does not throw out the baby with the bathwater ... yes the site owners here need to attract new site visitors but there is no reason why you need to alienate existing users, particularly regular and power users

however you don't seem to understand how to do this and instead are just obsessed with adding features, with making the site look more "social networking", more "newsy", more "modern" but you don't understand how to attract and keep new visitors so you don't know how to present and organize third party news content so you don't understand how to structure the site and hence structure the navigation, you don't understand page design for responsive templates so you page layouts don't work well, you don't understand how to evaluate forum features to select ones that will add most benefit for both new and existing users so you clutter up the interface and confuse people ... etc, etc, etc

as much as I disagree with some of the editorial and moderation policies here, like Smiles I find it more acceptable than some of the other gay thailand forums, unlike Smiles I have years of experience in navigating badly implemented vbulletin and other forum software on various sites so I find it fairly easy to do basic navigation and just ignore all the obstacles you seem determined to put in my way but other visitors, both new and existing, may not be as forgiving

bkkguy

Oh, yes... tell me... teach me... it is so easy to issue advises... sure, for me now is most valuable and priceless advise is what color should be painted door's knob while I'm still buildup walls and make base stronger... don't stop please: "your call is very important to us"...

lol, exactly. I sure love people who complain, but never offer solutions, don't you? :)

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Originally Posted by Moses

"your call is very important to us"...

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where is Smiles' I-Anticipated-That-Response button when you need it?

bkkguy

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Originally Posted by cdnmatt

lol, exactly. I sure love people who complain, but never offer solutions, don't you? :)

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I have spent the last 15 years doing web sites for a living, and while I don't consider myself an expert it is still easy to spot fundamental problems with a site. I am now retired and not really interested in spending the next few years trying to teach someone who is patently not interested about the fundamentals of web site design - even for 50% of this web site!

there are any number of courses and training materials available and some very well designed web sites to use as inspiration if Moses wants to improve some of the useless walls and foundations that he is currently building but first he may need to get over his opinion that he is already an expert.

but I certainly won't be bothering to offer any more comments on the design of the web site so you and he can rest easy

bkkguy

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Originally Posted by cdnmatt

lol, exactly. I sure love people who complain, but never offer solutions, don't you? :)

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I take easy when person hasn't solution: not everyone is expert. But when person has no idea what he wants - that is really "your call is very important to us" situation.

Quote:

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- This is bad, that is bad
- So, what do you want instead?
- ...

fin.

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I have some more to say, but I forgot what is right word in English" glueless" or "clueless", sorry...

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Originally Posted by bkkguy

I have spent the last 15 years doing web sites for a living, but I still don't consider myself an expert, but I am now retired and not really interested in spending the next few years trying to teach someone who is patently not interested about the fundamentals of web site design - even for 50% of this web site!

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should I offer to you ruler at this moment? will be 3" enough or you prefer 3.5"?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bkkguy

there are any number of courses and training materials available and some very well designed web sites to use as inspiration if Moses wants to improve some of the useless walls and foundations that he is currently building but first he may need to get over his opinion that he is already an expert.

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yaaawnnn... did you check who is author of this theme? just scroll down, then.

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Originally Posted by bkkguy

but I certainly won't be bothering to offer any more comments on the design of the web site so you and he can rest easy

bkkguy

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do you promise it?

bkkguy, if your behavior everywhere is the same like here, you will die from liver intoxication: unhappy acid people die from that - liver just can't recycle so big volume of toxins...

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Originally Posted by bkkguy

but I certainly won't be bothering to offer any more comments on the design of the web site so you and he can rest easy

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Well, if you don't like the current setup, then show us how it's done, big boy. Develop your own forum software, and show InfoPop how it's done while you're at it.

It's easy to bitch, but tough to come up with concrete solutions, eh?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bkkguy

it is interesting to note that you claim on the main site home page that you still need to maintain different login and passwords for the main site and for the forum - for security reasons! no, you just don't know how to implement it

web sites can be "modern" and they can be "secure" but it takes skill and good software and good design and vbulletin is not a universal panacea even if you are committed to it because Surfcrest purchased it a few years ago - and this site is not a shining example of a good implementation of vbulletin as part of web site so stop trying to pass it off as we the end users needing to suck it up and adopt to "modern" web sites!

I would add "needlessly" to throwing in the kitchen sink, but also it does not throw out the baby with the bathwater ... yes the site owners here need to attract new site visitors but there is no reason why you need to alienate existing users, particularly regular and power users

however you don't seem to understand how to do this and instead are just obsessed with adding features, with making the site look more "social networking", more "newsy", more "modern" but you don't understand how to attract and keep new visitors so you don't know how to present and organize third party news content so you don't understand how to structure the site and hence structure the navigation, you don't understand page design for responsive templates so you page layouts don't work well, you don't understand how to evaluate forum features to select ones that will add most benefit for both new and existing users so you clutter up the interface and confuse people ... etc, etc, etc

as much as I disagree with some of the editorial and moderation policies here, like Smiles I find it more acceptable than some of the other gay thailand forums, unlike Smiles I have years of experience in navigating badly implemented vbulletin and other forum software on various sites so I find it fairly easy to do basic navigation and just ignore all the obstacles you seem determined to put in my way but other visitors, both new and existing, may not be as forgiving

bkkguy

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There are a few variables missing in your narrative that would bring this into context.

While it may seem to you that we are obsessed with adding social networking and integrating the news / article promotion format, the reality is that this is where we are currently in this long drawn out conversion process. The buttons that you see on the pages, are just the tip of the iceberg with respect to the Analytics background a good site has to the major traffic corridors, to where the World is online...and that's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google...

While there may be an abundance of vBulletin sites out there, how many of these sites were created from scratch...rather than were conversions from something else? Should we have perhaps shut down for a few weeks to a few months while we go through this process, or did it make more sense to do what we did...and that's to keep both the Old Board and site semi-functioning at the Old URL, while we turn the lights on here, in a "becoming ready" site?

This site is far from being completed in the set up process. It's still, for the most functioning and it's a good time for the membership and us the Administrators to get familiarized more with the controls. This is neither Moses or my personal full time job. You have our full attention while we continue the set up and salvage as much good stuff as we can from this server and the Old Network that was, while these old files are still accessible. The Old Site was layers of history, one Old site built on another...a Hoarder's nightmare...much larger than it needed to be, to run optimally and to be managed by the server more efficiently. A great deal of the work you are seeing from Moses, is with respect to the work he is doing with our server...not vBulletin. Perhaps when we start making more significant adjustments to the vBulletin portion of the site, you could share some of those years of experience you have with a little bit of feedback...that is what we are looking for, I think I've put that out there on more than a few occasions. Of course if you've done any salvage work on a server, you could give us some tips on that...while we're working in this area.

It's really the same as whatever disagreements you've had with the moderation / editorial policies here bkkguy. I can't read your mind, I don't think you've raised these disagreements with me ever before, so I haven't the slightest idea to what you are referencing today...unless it's something recent?

No one is trying to alienate the existing membership. There is a lot we can do with the new platform we are on, versus the Old Board. We are still in the "construction phase" until we move off this server. Once the server work is done and we either move back to the old URL sawatdeenetwork.com or not, we can disconnect the other sites somewhere other than connected to sawatdeenetwork.com directly and figure out where to park them and the old Archive files. Once that is done, we can focus more on paint and format and where this is going to be on the page vs that. We're not there yet!

Let us continue to work on the set up, the server, the front page and pages we haven't even started developing yet. If we keep the WP format on the front page, then we'll link up the registration to encompass both. For now though, as it was with the Old Site...if you want the feed from the front page articles (Which focus on what to know if you are in Thailand now) you need to register there to subscribe. If not, you can stop by or skip it altogether. The reality though, from our traffic stats...is that our visitors find our front page more than do our members, who usually go right to the Forum.

Again....same with the social media layer above that. These Articles are directed more towards Gay Travelers in the World thinking of traveling to or moving to Thailand or South East Asia. Our Twitter feed talks about things you might want to know "now" as you are in Thailand (What's happening) and our Facebook page focuses on the, "What to do in Thailand" when you get there. These are the layers of Analytics that I am laying down now with those two pages, to help us bring in new members or people interested in what we are. This is what modern traffic that lands on these pages expect to see, or they click away. These sites are both very handy tools for out membership, wherther they want to use them or whether they simply want to be lurkers to the great information we publish that could be helpful for trip planning. It's all "Up 2 U!"

I know we keep telling you that we are working on it...but we are working on it. We want to get this done and get a completed "everybody likes it" version out there "Now" so we can get back to the other things in life that Moses and I actually do to support ourselves. I build factories guys, I don't run websites...this is something I do for you the membership, as does Moses with what he does.

So, all I'm saying...is give us a little time. Please give us your feedback...not just complaints, but suggestions too :)

Surfcrest