Discussion on New Layout: What Needs to be Brought Back, What to Dump

[Errol]

While I can't promise any or all things you suggest in this topic will take effect, I can see about making as many necessary changes as possible to make this new layout more accommodating for you all. Therefore, I am asking everyone to please provide us with fair and balanced (not FOX News style...no offense intended to those that like that network) responses on how we can improve the SON Community.

To be clear, nothing is off the table including changes to forums, design changes and or whatever you may think of. Just make your comments clean and we'll take what you say into account. This topic should not be where you discuss your frustrations with others, or complaints about matters unrelated to the re-designed Community and its subsequent attributes.

Please Note: Other than the logo, the re-designed boards is all due to changes made by our software provider. We have not had a hand in designing anything else.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to us.

Errol

[alexisfan07]

Birthday info! I'm also not particularly fond of the square format on the front page but if that's what you were going for, then keep it lol

[AllMyDaysatGH]

-I 2nd the birthday info. I thought it was nice that it used to be at the bottom of the page, I liked saying Happy Bday to people in the status updates!! ;-)

-Could there possibly be a way to add different themes to this board format? Like, different color schemes to choose from?

-This is probably for a reason I don't know, but now when your just a guest reading the board, you can't see poster's avatars anymore. That's not even serious but it kinda makes me feel bad for the guests in a weird way. LOL

-It's kinda annoying how the avatars are in a fixed position now & you can't adjust them to the way you want. Also sucks that we can't use .GIF avatars anymore

Overall it's a nice change though & I find it to be a lot sleeker & faster

[dragonflies]

BIGGER avatar pics, and being able to use animated ones again

Birthday's, maybe be a bit more flexible with the size of banners that can be used in signatures

[SFK]

Wow, I didn't even realize that my avatar was no longer animated. It's definitely time to switch it out since it's no longer moving and so tiny. Which brings me to my only real issue with the new board... everything is so tiny, it's hard on my eyes. And I mostly use a netbook so it's particularly small for me. When I try to blow up the page, it becomes awkward to navigate. Otherwise, I'm getting used to minor differences in button placement and the like. For instance, when trying to reply to a post, I keep accidentally REPORTING the post instead.

Oh, and how does one go about posting embedded YouTube videos now?

[AllMyDaysatGH]

Oh yeah that's another thing!! I wish we had that media button back in the text editor so it's easier to post YT videos

But what you have to do now is get the videos embed code & copy/paste it onto here. You have to make sure you turn HTML on though (on the right side of the page where it says "post options").

[SFK]

Thank you AMD@GH! Ha, when I abbreviate your name it goes all email linky.

[Shawn]

It would be nice to have a choice of color schemes for the board, and ilke it's previously been said, the ability to have animated avatars and such.

Overall I don't mind the board's new layout, but the color is very whitewashed and bland, IMO.

[Toups]

I'm sorry but I'm not gong to budge on the size of banners. 600x200 is just fine. If you can't find a banner or picture that's within those limits, you shouldn't be using it at all. Also, everyone should know how to resize an image by now.

[Mr. Vixen]

For the love of the soap gods, please let us have bigger avatars. And please let them be GIFs again. I do not like the avatars now at all. Like AMD@GH said, the guests can't even see them!

The birthday thing: Please bring it back. It makes it much simpler to keep track of people's birthdays.

Allow us to make status updates on the main boards page again. That would be great because I keep thinking I'm not logged in because the status box is gone.

I think I'm in the minority, but I do not like the "read/unread" topic identifier in the individual sections. I don't like how topics you haven't read are blue with a dot, and topics you have are white. I think that's more just because I have mild OCD and need everything to be the same color.

I also think it would be nice to have bigger signatures/banners. I honestly don't understand why it really matters what size it is, but oh well. 600x200 is fine.

I might be wrong, but I think the chat feature is gone. I know nobody used it, but I would like to. I think you all should do some sort of planned discussions in there. Make a board announcement such as: "Want to discuss today's SHOCKING episode of Days? Head to the chatroom at 5/4c!" etc. etc. so that we can actually get that up and running.

I love the way people's individual profiles look now, but I HATE that the photo on your profile and the avatar are now the same thing. Can we please go back to Profile Photo/Avatar being separate things?

Also, this is just a side note: The mobile version of this site does not work on iPod touch. It says all kinds of error messges, then you scroll down and can see the different areas (Discuss The Soaps, DTS: Spoiler Island, etc), but you can't open topics. I tried it on my iTouch and on a friends to no avail. However, the site works marvelously on my Android phone, so maybe it's a glitch with this systems compatibility with Apple?

[aMLCproduction]

That's my main issue. It seems like a personal choice for Toups. If it's technical that's fine but to make it personal, come on

[dragonflies]

I don't see why it can't be something like 500X250, that's not that big. It's not like I'm asking for the banner size to be ginormous. I don't have a way to resize banners, I used too on my old computer, but on my new one I don't. You point me to a banner resize program and I'll use it.

[Toups]

Most computers come with an image program. For windows, it's Paint (then under image tab, click on attributes). I'm sure Mac has one too.

Making the height to 250px is worse. It's not going to happen.

[Mr. Vixen]

Angie,

You can sign up for a photobucket account. Go to photobucket.com and sign up. Then just upload whatever your signature image is, click "edit". Then click "resize" and type in the dimensions you use. That's what I do.

I still don't see the problem with large signatures. Who made that rule?

[Cheap21]

I wish there was a way to use the image icon and have the image show up as

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image link[/ img] instead of the picture. Its okay when posting 1 or 2, but when I make a post filled with pictures, it really takes up most of the text box and makes it hard to edit/write

I also want to be able to post animated gifs as my avatar and be able to link to outside pics as my avatar

Cosign on larger banner size.