Quick Start Guide to the New Platform - Page 8

You mean this forum?

http://www.avsforum.com/f/187/avs-blu-ray-disc-reviews

Right where it has been. (Granted, the REVIEWS list at the top can surely mislead in this case and we are working on it for sure as Ralph's reviews are great!.)

One way to show some respect for the Community would have been sending an Email to all registered users explaining the change, the time of the change and a link to a document explaining how to use the new interface.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I did not receive anything about a change. I first learned about the change when the iOS APP just sat there spinning trying to connect. I then tried to access via a browser and saw the making changes screen.

The new platform, in spite of some navigation issues, may be better than the old one. I am not completely convinced now, but I think that I may be if Tapatalk can be made to work at least as well as the previous iOS APP.

Keeping your users in the dark about your plans is not a good way to let them know you respect them!

^^^

a forum announcement about the new platform was posted 2+ weeks in advance of the move: and we invited scores of AVS members to test the new platform: several tests to import data were run

we also ran a new AVS logo thread for several weeks

if you missed it, we are sorry

I notice was posted on the site for over two week ago and even listed on the top of the site on every page. Even giving screen shots and info in the post. Here is the post...

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1411959/sneak-peek-at-the-new-avsforum

Over 300 members that had been active over the last 30 days were randomly selected and invited in to help us find issues and give suggestions and this was over a month of time. Not just days before. (Some not so random as I respected their long time commitment to AVS.) Some of the people in this thread with some gripes were invited. It was their choice to help shape the site or not.

Then we posted a BIG NOTE that the site was going down with info in that.

I tried to personally call everyone, but I did not have everyone phone number. (Sorry, just having fun.)

On the plus side ... at least the changes might cut down on the number of folks trying to cruise the AVS while driving home on the 405.

But seriously, is there no way to disable user images? I realize that's probably as much a relic from the dial-up days as anything else, but still ... I get really annoyed after being ignored numerous times over several days ...

Since my access to the forum was via the iOS APP there was no notification to me or anyone else using the APP exclusively. I suspect that most of your most disappointed users fall into this group that, essentially, got no notification.

If you mean hid the user Avatars...At the top of the thread click PREFERENCES and you will find what you are looking for.

Fair point as the Mobile app is just for quick use and thus would not show the front page notices. Not way to get to everyone and an email blast to over 1M registered people would not be a good thing. (And doing it via PM would have also sent out the mail notice to most. So same issue.)

I think, hope, you will like the HTML5 mobile version when we get it out the door. Needs more time as it is a big project. But it is getting their.

Actually I don't need a mobile version for my iPad. The new web interface is superior to the old one on my iPad, but not as convenient for me as the old iOS APP.

There are a couple of interface problems using Safari on the iPad. When tapping quote or reply at the bottom of a post all that happens is the appearance of a message describing the function. This is not a normal link. To make it act like a link you must tap and hold until Safari pops up a dialog box asking whether you want to open, open in a new window, etc. This is a real pain. same thing with the choice at the bottom of a thread to return to your subscription list.

Some perspective is in order here.

Considering switching to a new platform like this is like trying to rebuild an aircraft engine while in level flight, I think the process is going better than I would have expected for a project of this magnitude.

User interface tweaks and presentation aspects of site navigation can be incrementally improved as time goes along.

From my perspective the amazing thing to me is the massive database transfer and hop skip and a jump for user thread and historical information that is still there and ready for business after the overnight refueling stop to switch platforms.

All my posts for more than five years back are right there as are the posts I did the day before the switch. All my historical data tables and weekly sales graphs and updates are there as well as years of conversation. Some formatting is twitchy but the data is still there.

Color me impressed.

That's the one thing that needed to be done well to keep the community history alive and well. Although its not perfect by any stretch of the imagination its probably better what could have been reasonably expected and that's a credit to the AVS staff and the Huddler support team on the back end.

I'm sure David Bott and the rest of the staff and support team at AVS are welcoming of any suggestions and comments for the move but lets put things into perspective here as well. The sky is not falling and the sun will rise tomorrow and AVS is now on a platform that has vastly more support behind it than it had before with room to grow in the future as well.

I will have to admit, that would of been quite a task with well over 1 million members the last count I saw.

BTW, what is the current count?

From the Home Page (where the stats are on the right)

Members: 1,026,593 total

It's kind of a cool status IMHO... Mileage may vary...

Ahh give me my retro back

Members might be doing just that now, but just wait - over the next several months and years there will be a gradual shift in the quality of members and contributions - just as what happened over at HTF.

There's a reason AVS attracted so many technical and knowledgable people. I can't explain what it is exactly - consider it somewhat of an "x factor" but it was there and it worked. Changing that will have some long-term consequences that I think will be detrimental to the community.

David could have risen to the rank of spam king by all the worldwide antivirus companies overnight!

I've seen this question several times, In fact I've asked about it too. For some of us, the font size, both in text boxes and in thread posts, is small. I haven't been able to locate a way to increase the default font size to a more comfortable level. Can anyone help?

I need to say this...WE ARE NOT HTF. We never were and are still not. There is a lot more to the story of HTF than just the platform switch. I like those guys. Parker was a good virtual friend of mine to the point we shared site idea and helped each other with site code. Ron is passionate about software and the movie experience. And Adam is, well, I do not know a lot about him other than I like him when we talk. Parker is no longer involved as you may or may not know. I miss him being involved. But their is a lot more to it.

They were also the 2nd site, correct me if I am wrong, to go with Huddler why back when. We were approached also in the past but could not take the risk. Too early. Fast forward...Huddler is now at 45 +/- employees (I think that's the close number) with most of the staff dedicated to coding vs the 6 they had back then. They have select sites on the platform and are NOT LOOKING to be a boxed platform you can buy and setup. Yes, they are young, but the platform is evolving and they are backed by some very powerful firms. They are not setting themselves up to fail. And yes, before you ask, we can move all the data back if anything were to happen. But that is far from my mind as I need to look to the future. No good comes from thinking about failure.

All in all, we are not HTF. I like the HTF team. And now that we are involved with the same company, I hope that the HTF team can benefit from not only our influence in helping to push the platform, but also on the revenue side. Yes, I said the bad word...REVENUE! This site nor HTF would not be able to stand without income. Now with the combined sales team I hope we both can do well.

BTW...Huddler also handles Overclock.net and AppleInsider.com and backyardchickens.com (no I did not make that up) for example. Not small sites. And this is only a few.

All in all...I thought I should say a little something. Thank you kindly for listening. (Reading) I now need to get back to a movie.

Font size is the same as it was on the other site. That did not change. What I have been finding is that people did not know they had set their browser to either show a larger or smaller size (Zoom). In Firefox for example, it is under VIEW and ZOOM. Not sure in IE. Sometimes people did this without knowing with key sequence or mouse action.

Hope this helps.

I think most of the complaints are for the edit box when posting/replying, it's definitely harder to navigate text there (BB Code editor.) Could be using a different font - size is only one variable. The issue for me is the space between letters, and therefore words as well, is too small to manage. A different font might make a difference.

No found that. What I mean is the image you included in the body of the post above. The old software had a switch for that. Although I can't remember exactly how it was worded now, if you enabled the option it would "hide" the image and display a label a/o link which you could then open if you wanted to view the image. ... like the way attachments are handled.

LOL ... Apparently I must be in the 1% of people that actually used the option, because everyone seems to think I speaking in Greek this week.

Ah....the post typing box. Got ya. Not sure on that one. But I KNOW the font size and even the FONT are the same as they were on the other site. I need to see if I can find that side by side. But I know they are.


Ah...I think that was hide thumbnails maybe? I know you could not hid when someone posted a image using the [img ]tag calling it some somewhere. At list I do not recall such a feature. (I could be wrong as I did not use all the features.) Here they are using the img call and storing all the images locally on the server for speed via needing to have someone call it from another site. Not sure this helps...But I wanted to try to answer. But it sounds like an interesting future add on maybe,

Either there is a difference or an unintended side effect of the conversion was sudden blindness.

I'm using Opera for AVS because I can manage my AVS email in one tab, and everything else at AVS in other tabs. I even have an email address that's dedicated to AVS.

It's possible that Opera sees the new AVS as different and no longer enlarges the font size. As someone who both reads and posts way too much, I need to find a solution quick. I'll take a look in Opera. Thanks for the suggestion.

Heh, lol at the new third most active thread

- 2B

Right on. I had forgotten that I probably configured Opera to make the font changes that are most comfortable for me. I changed the minimum font size and changed the font for pages without specific styles.

By the way, I'm very happy in the new AVS site even if I don't know were everything is located. The ones who are most unhappy with the changes are not necessarily the oldest members. I'm well on my way to 79. They might mostly be the "dual thumbers" walking down the street staring at their credit card sized displays.

Is there a way to show current stats like the old site? Such as currently active members and guests?

That is the real telling number for me down the road out of the over 1 million members.

On the day before the changeover we had more members......did you fire some David?

1,034,464 on the 4th (Monday night at 10.00 pm.)

Currently active users: 352 members, 2,035 guests.

Most users ever online: 7,465 on 12-27-10 at 12:58 PM

Bottom of any page...




People need to look around more. Click the number to see the members etc.

BTW...It's also important to note that we also count "viewers" quite a bit differently than vB did. vB shows a significantly inflated number in all cases. It counts all of the crawlers (Google, Bing, Ask, VigLink etc.) in that number, it counts any bot, any scraper, basically anything that accesses the server. We only count actual web browsers...real people. It's different, but it's more representative and useful.

Thanks David,

I don't really look at the bottom of the pages while reading around, so I'll be sure to take a longer look next time. I did find it on the main page, above the stats you provided earlier.

But it was on the bottom of the other site. (Sorry, just a long day. )

Thank you for this.