134 replies to this topic

[Lavinia_G]

My 2 cents...
I like it alot - much better than the old site, fairly easy to navigate, clean and neat - great work.
No problems with any links/pages/finding anything so far.
cheers

LaviniaG.

[Cato]

Kev

I like the new format but I feel there is just too much information on the Home Page.
For example: 56 latest News items spanning a 2 week period. Surely it can't be "latest news" if it is 2 weeks old.
99 links to topics and 46 other miscellaneous links making a total of 201 links all on the "Home Page"
My feeling is that this is way too much information to have on a home page as normally a home page is seen as a "Road Map" to relavent information.
My tiny little brain has trouble absorbing the pletherer of information available.
Here endeth the lesson.

Cato

[CoolwalkerDavid]

Cato, on Nov 2 2007, 11:46 AM, said:

Kev

I like the new format but I feel there is just too much information on the Home Page.
For example: 56 latest News items spanning a 2 week period. Surely it can't be "latest news" if it is 2 weeks old.
99 links to topics and 46 other miscellaneous links making a total of 201 links all on the "Home Page"
My feeling is that this is way too much information to have on a home page as normally a home page is seen as a "Road Map" to relavent information.
My tiny little brain has trouble absorbing the pletherer of information available.
Here endeth the lesson.

Cato

well come back to the hijack pages Cato - not much to trouble your brain there at the moment

David

[Greg_Waite]

The short news-listing on the front page would work better if each got two lines - there aren't that many new listings over a few days that much would drop off the front screen, and one line is just too crypic. Busy users have to waste time checking links that often turn out to not be of any interest. Either that, or perhaps the "hover text" could be changed from the weblink to a fuller description, but I think the first option is best.

Edited by Greg_Waite, 09 November 2007 - 07:12 AM.

[PlodBod]

What's happened to the layout of each thread now?  When I go into a thread, I get the last page, then all the other posts are listed at the bottom of the page under a title "other posts in this thread" or something like that with a one-line intro for each post.

Is this part of the new layout or a gremlin today?  Not sure I like it....  

[blair]

PlodBod, on Nov 12 2007, 11:29 AM, said:

What's happened to the layout of each thread now?  When I go into a thread, I get the last page, then all the other posts are listed at the bottom of the page under a title "other posts in this thread" or something like that with a one-line intro for each post.

Is this part of the new layout or a gremlin today?  Not sure I like it....  

At the top of the thread click Options and choose the Standard layout

[PlodBod]

balri, on Nov 12 2007, 12:36 PM, said:

At the top of the thread click Options and choose the Standard layout

Cheers, Balri!! Not sure how that happened.  Right.  Back to Scrabulous!!  

[crazycatwoman]

PlodBod same thing happened to me the last 2 days back to normal today!

[HillsAths1]

Greg_Waite, on Nov 8 2007, 03:12 PM, said:

The short news-listing on the front page would work better if each got two lines - there aren't that many new listings over a few days that much would drop off the front screen, and one line is just too crypic. Busy users have to waste time checking links that often turn out to not be of any interest. Either that, or perhaps the "hover text" could be changed from the weblink to a fuller description, but I think the first option is best.

Sorry I posted this in the wrong section earlier and noticed that this is a better spot for it!

Hi all just wondering if the news section is news any more. There is so much crap news items been posted in there it makes it unreadable.
For example there is a news story "little A's record broken in Javelin", you go to the story thinking that this is some decent sort of throw and then you find out some u16 kid has thrown the Jav 20m!
There are a host of other similar examples of "local" news items which do not add any useful information, but are more of a propaganda item put out by schools/clubs.
If we do have to have them, lets lose them in a local news area, have Capital related news(Syd, Mel, Bris etc) as another section, National section and an international section.

[Jogger]

Hills Aths - it's a fair point - thanks for raising. really.
We filter out all the news related to athletics, running, marathons etc and obviously a bunch gets rejected. However where do you draw the line ?
A lot of coolrunners may want to see Big Name Athlete news, others want Marathon only, others want Ultras only, some want ... blah blah you get the drift. Where do we draw the line. If we post 4 or 5 items a day you could skip the ones you are not interested in. We try to cover all tastes.

Maybe we could change the title to better reflect the content eg "U8 javelin record broken in WA" rather than relay on what the journo wrote as it may not mean much in a wider context.

I am reasonably sure that we don't want to complicate by having more sections to post under. Nice and Simple usually is best.

However keen to get feedback from others.

[HillsAths1]

Kev if you are staying up til after 1.00am answering posts you need some help!

As an example there are some news items that say Sonia O Sullivan to head up coaching panel(or something similar) as she is Irish and  a sometimes Australian I was interested in the story thinking she was going to be doing some coaching clinic or something similar in Australia. It turns out she is doing it in Ireland, which is just way too far for me to get to!

It just seems like a little like that movie with the lawyers where one side send over truck loads of documents to the other side hoping that they wont find the relevant evidence as there is so much meaningless stuff to go through. I am now spending less time looking at the news as I dont think it is worth the effort.

[wombatface]

Why the change to miniature text?

 cr_tinytext.jpg   85.55K   20 downloads

[run2work]

wombatface, on May 22 2008, 03:52 PM, said:

Why the change to miniature text?

cr_tinytext.jpg

Now where were those spectacles of mine.

Regards
Run2Work

[FakePlasticTrees]

It reads better I think. It allows for better presentation on a crowded screen. I was pushing for it ages back. Not that I had anything to do with it's implementation now.

[Jogger]

just a trial .... when we move the smh/sandown boxes off the front page we might put it back.

[Vurt]

run2work, on May 22 2008, 04:39 PM, said:

Now where were those spectacles of mine.

Regards
Run2Work

I assume that this has been done on purpose to reduce the size of the special sections (<h2 style="font-size:75%">)


Like FPT (i think)-  i would like it if similar dividers were added for each day on the front page. it would make the news a lot more readable and give a point of reference.

ie:

<h2 style="margin:0; background:#CCCCCC; font-size:120%; font-weight:bold; border:1px solid #a3b0bf; text-align:left; color:#000; padding:0.2em 0.4em;">[b]Monday 19th May 2008[/b] </h2><h2 style="font-size:75%">

[Phoenix]

The Sandown/SMH sections are a little hard to read for me.  But the site as a whole looks neater.

I experimented with enlarging the font on my browser, but changed it back.

[Jogger]

Vurt's right : The font size was 95%, I made the special sections 75% and the rest of the page text at 91% or 92%. as always - you can compare versions in the page history

[sook54]

Hi Kevin,
Whatever you have done seems to have fixed the overlapping of the link ads with the various wiki tabs at the top of the page. That has to be a good thing.

I'm another who needs glasses to read this. I think the whole page is looking too cluttered.

What would be really cool would be to have a set of 'windows' to see feeds from separate news and forum pages - just a few items in reasonable sized font, with a 'more' link to open the full list in a separate window. Maybe I'm asking too much...

[mgi11a]

While where on the topic of page setup, is it possible to get a "view new posts" link at the bottom of the page as well? It probably seems a silly little thing but you have to scroll all the way to the top of the page once you read a thread and want to see if there's any new posts.

cheers

mgi11a

[FakePlasticTrees]

mgi11a, on May 22 2008, 07:46 PM, said:

While where on the topic of page setup, is it possible to get a "view new posts" link at the bottom of the page as well? It probably seems a silly little thing but you have to scroll all the way to the top of the page once you read a thread and want to see if there's any new posts.

cheers

mgi11a

The beauty of wiki is that you can do these things yourself. I've just changed the main page, see if that's to your liking.

[PlodBod]

Whoah!!! It's all different!!!!

[Phoenix]

All righty then...Let's see if we can get used to this.  There's a bit of colour out there...

Edited by Phoenix, 25 May 2008 - 07:52 PM.

[Jogger]

Quote

The beauty of wiki is that you can do these things yourself.

yep - someone just did. not me.

[Eagle]

PlodBod, on May 25 2008, 07:36 PM, said:

Whoah!!! It's all different!!!!

Sure is. Not sure if I even had time to get used to the previous set up and now it has been changed.

[plu]

Hi all,

One  question is whether the majority of readers want access to news or forums.

As the news list gets longer the forums under it  take a while to scroll down to.


cheers  Plu

[Jogger]

Plu - it's a fair point. however posting to the forum is likely biaes eg most responses on the forum will be from forum-fans (maybe?).

It  would be reasonably hard to get everything on the top half of the page ("above the fold") - most forum junkies will click or have bookmarked the "very latest topics" link (maybe?). Certainly the most recent change is cleaner and tighter. However we are always open for more feedback.

Interesting that Wombatface put up this from our About-Us page on the top-middle of the homepage:

Quote

CoolRunning Australia wishes to provide the sort of information that runners would want from an Australian website: the latest race calendar, race results, news articles, contact details for running clubs, links to other running websites, and a place to meet and talk about running with other runners.

ie emphasises that CR is not just a forum but more ... and that has always been the intent since 1997.

[chilliman]

On the "View new posts" page, is it possible to view more than 25 topics per page ?

I have set my own settings to 225 posts per page, and number of topics per forum page to 50, however can only view 25 new posts per page on this one.

Is there a not-so-hidden-option that is hidden to me ?


With the rate at which the front "new post page" changes these days I need an upgrade.

[Bellthorpe]

plu, on May 25 2008, 11:48 PM, said:

One  question is whether the majority of readers want access to news or forums.

In that case they will likely have different entry points bookmarked.

My CR bookmark is 'show new posts' in the forums. I seldom visit other sections of the site.

[Jogger]

chilliman - you and me both. I can probably do it by hacking the code, but I think there is no easy answer.

bellthorpe - yep, a website ain't linear - no need to start at the front and work your way thru. dive in to your favourite spot. however the homepage should have a smorgasbord of what is on offer. I think that's what you were getting at ?

[SpartaJen]

Well the home page is much better now than it was a couple of days ago. Any chance of getting Shoes/Footwear & Misc Other moved across so they are under the other threads rather than running off down the RHS of the page?

[chilliman]

joggerkev said:

chilliman - you and me both. I can probably do it by hacking the code, but I think there is no easy answer.

Thanks Kev, although I could have sworn last year there were at least 50 items per page on the "View New Posts" page ?

[wombatface]

JoggerKev, I nicked (modified) that intro from Teeds.

My reasons for having this layout (3-column):
I was trying to imagine myself as someone who finds the home-page of CoolRunning for the first time. The previous (4-column) layout was very text-dense and scary for a new user. You think "what's this? There's so much text... I don't know where to look. What's it all about?"

The intro at the top eases you into it a bit. The coloured backgrounds to the main headings on the right draws your eye to them. It's easier to navigate a long 3-column page than a long 4-column page. Plu, I don't think it's necessary to have "it all" above the fold on a site like CR. People will scroll to find items once they become familar with where they are.

With the "news section", you could probably keep news there for 7 or 8 days before moving it to the archives. This could bump (temporarily) "Injury/Nutrition" and "Community" below the fold, but I don't think that's a big deal.

[G.T.]

great stuff , i think it has become more user friendly and not so overwhelming for first timers ,,a bit of color always help
keep up the good work

[TRAVY]

My computer was down from last Friday to Tuesday. (where is the suicide icon)   Then I come back online to see the new home page. I thought it was my new motherboard they put into my computer that changed things until I read this.
Plu , I think this new format makes it more look like a running site and less like a chat room about running.  I like the news area.

I like it Kev