Forum Issues Since Relaunch (Jan 20, 2010)

Needed to find a way to get a big box ad on the top right. This was the only solution. Hopefully it works as I'm no longer planning any more changes to design. Now editorial work takes over.

Now everything is below the fold.

the images/ad in Chrome doesn't work. you can see them for a couple of seconds, then they become black white square

I'm using Chrome, and they don't become black/white squares for me

Absolutely hate that huge header being on every page. It doesn't need to be on the forum, only the home page.

Causing unnecessary scrolling is bad web design.

waterloowarrior said:

the images/ad in Chrome doesn't work. you can see them for a couple of seconds, then they become black white square

Click to expand...

Do you have Adblock installed? I had to turn it off to see them.

^yep, that fixed it by exempting anything from urbantoronto.ca. Must be related to automatically blocking OpenX.

I've found that all pages tend to take a bit longer to load now since the addition of the large block header.

Im stuck in the mobile version. Every time I log into my account, I end up on the mobile version. I deleted my cache, history, and cookies and still cant get back to the normal version. You need a button to get back to normal from the mobile version.

Also, selecting the mobile version from a blackberry isn't possible. The page does not refresh when you pick mobile from the drop down. An ok button should be able to solve that problem if possible.

For now, I just want to be able to use the normal version again

khristopher said:

Causing unnecessary scrolling is bad web design.

Click to expand...

Totally agree. I actually like the use of it on the home page, although I'm not sure your advertisers would love the fact that the big box ad space is only visible by scrolling right in a lot of browsers at standard.

But when you click on "Forum" and see it again, then have to scroll down to see what you actually wanted to see, it's annoying. Then you click a subsection and once again see the big block header. Scroll down. Pick the thread you want to see. Scroll down past the giant header. Change the page? Big block header you need to scroll down past to see the page you navigated to again.

Essentially, it's making every user view what is essentially the home page EVERY single time they look at any page on the site. It makes it almost feel like those interstitial ads that sites put in ... "You will be directed to your page in 15 seconds." Obviously not that bad, but it does get frustrating when many people probably browse hundreds of pages over dozens of threads in a day.

How about just having the block header on the home page and losing it on the internal pages? Need that big box? Why not re-organize that top urbantoronto.ca header to incorporate space for it? Then you can bring it in to a more visible area as wel ...

Just my thoughts. I love this site but some of these usability issues are making it tough to spend as much time here and come back as often.

im also stuck in the mobile version. any fix for this yet?

dcaley said:

im also stuck in the mobile version. any fix for this yet?

Click to expand...

Have you guys tried going to your User Control Panel (http://urbantoronto.ca/usercp.php), then "Forum Settings", and changing your Default Skin there?

yea, i've tried that but that option does not exist.

only available things to choose are:
Private Messages
Groups
Subscribed Threads
Edit Signature

Yes, there is no option on the mobile version to switch back to the VBulletin version. I've searched everywhere.

And while on the topic of the mobile version, the link to 'Forums' on the mobile version doesn't go anywhere. The only way to see posts is to see recent posts.

ok so i figured out a way to get out of the mobile theme. browse to http://urbantoronto.ca/forum.php and add ?styleid=7 to the end. so you're at http://urbantoronto.ca/forum.php?styleid=7

go into your user cp and forum settings and finally change your theme back to whatever it should be.