Vbulletin 4: Feedback from Users

[Nimrod]

Hello all,

As you may have noticed, Digiex has gone through some changes recently, and there's still more to come.

Some of the new features:

Facebook Intergration
Stable Backend
Article System for the Front Page
Better Intergration of Blogs and News
Improved Text Editor and Post Features

Some of the features which we will be implementing in the coming days:

We're going to alter the front page news forum into a general news forum, in which members can post up news they have found on the internet or by themselves. Any article that is news worthy and has a picture at the top like all current news articles, will be auto-promoted using the Vbulletin 4 Article system to the front page, carrying across the author of the message and opening it up to comments. This gives everyone the chance to appear on the front page.

A new visual theme, at the moment were going the default Vbulletin 4 theme with some minor changes, over the coming hours and days Insanenutter is themeing it, carrying across a lot of the old theme from the old Digiex, but also improving it where possible to give a fresh new visual look to Digiex.


At this point, we are very much open to ideas, this is a new system to us and were still working out how to best use it. Hopefully most of the settings, posts, threads and other settings were carried over from the old Digiex, however so much has changed things may not be working as expected. If you have any feedback you wish to share, please do so now while we are still working on the system so your ideas can be integrated into the full design. If you have any questions on how to do tasks in this new system, again please ask and we can all learn together as a lot of things appear to have changed!

As always, thanks for being a member, please speak your mind in this thread even if its negative feedback as we will learn from it!

 

[Flamzorz]

I personally hate the new look. I find it harder to navigate for some reason. I just hate it. I would much rather have the old site back.
Thanks
-Ryan

 

[Nimrod]

I personally hate the new look. I find it harder to navigate for some reason. I just hate it. I would much rather have the old site back.
Thanks
-Ryan

Trust me, theres nothing I'd myself like right now and thats to have the old theme back. The problem is, that theme was built for Vbulletin 3 and won't work in Vbulletin 4, there is no easy way to port it over and involves building a new theme and making it as similar as possible to the old one.

I have uploaded a picture of the old Digiex, and the current state (just as I posted this) of the Vbulletin 4 Forum.



We're not quite there, the header needs a little bit more work. But besides maybe the font size I think were getting close to the original look. Is there anything in particular you find annoying and worth looking it, or any other comments as to what you miss most from the old one. If you can put a finger to the problem, we can try to address it. We don't want to upset any of our current users.

Believe me, if Vbulletin didnt release version 4 and offered to support the current version 3 for years to come, we would continue to use it. However the latest release of Vbulletin 3 is the last one they will support as its being phased it out a few months later. While we could have held off for another 3 or so months, we would have been forced to upgrade to Vbulletin 4 eventually as a lack of support or updates or security fixes. We have been working flat out since yesterday to try and get it back to its glory, and we appreicate feedback where possible.

 

[Flamzorz]

I think the problem I'm having is the new posts. It lists all the new posts instead of just the thread. For Example if there were 3 new posts in a thread in V4 it lists them separate where as in V3 it grouped them together and just showed the one thread. I really prefer it like that. I don't know about anyone else...

 

[Nimrod]

I think the problem I'm having is the new posts. It lists all the new posts instead of just the thread. For Example if there were 3 new posts in a thread in V4 it lists them separate where as in V3 it grouped them together and just showed the one thread. I really prefer it like that. I don't know about anyone else...

Do you mean the block on the very front home page? If so we can alter that for sure.

 

[Flamzorz]

Yeah I mean that. Thanks for trying to fix things. These forums are the only ones I'v been on where the Mods and Owners give a crap
Thanks

 

[Andami]

Other than the layout, which I despise with all my heart, and the fact that the Xbox Live Leaderboards are down, I like the new features. This upgrade wouldn't have anything to do with the problem that happened, would it?

 

[InsaneNutter]

I know what you see at the moment is pretty rubbish, however looking at the screenshots I have attached is that still the case?

Were trying to re create the old Digiex look a closely as possible in VB4 with a few tweaks here and there.

All comments are welcome, good or bad. Digiex is your website too so we want you to like it as much as possible.

The Xbox Live Leaderboard has some major problems with VB4 at the moment, we hope to restore that when the author releases a patch.

 

[MasterChief]

I love the pics nutter has posted up, Digiex looks very web 2.0 now... the faacebook integration is great! I think you guys have got the best bits of VB4 and the old digiex combined.

I dont think you will ever please everybody... I would be more than happy if the forum looks like it does in the screen shots, its not that different to the old version... a nice improvement in my eyes.

The adverts at the top of the page are quite annoying at the moment, I hope something can be done about them? although I don't see any in the screenshots so that's a good sign.

Hope everything is back to normal soon, keep it up!

 

[Nimrod]

The adverts at the top of the page are quite annoying at the moment, I hope something can be done about them? although I don't see any in the screenshots so that's a good sign.

With regard to the adverts, at the moment they are only temporary. The original advert script we used which only showed them to guests and basic members was part of the old theme, which we couldn't port across. They will be worked on in the near future and will most likely appear in the same format they did before Vbulletin 4 (Guests and Basic Members Only, 1 after first post and 1 at the end of the page). In the mean time, we couldn't afford to run Digiex without adverts while we worked on the system (as we barely break even most months) so I had to enable the built in Ad-Management built into Vbulletin which only has the option of "on" or "off" so they are indeed only temporary and will be sorted out. (However, they are done seperetly of the theme now in Vbulletin 4, so may not be done in time for when Insanenutter is ready to show off the new theme).

Yeah I mean that. Thanks for trying to fix things. These forums are the only ones I'v been on where the Mods and Owners give a crap
Thanks

We will work on that Widget on the homepage and make it only show new threads, and not new posts. However in the mean time if you look at the top navbar, and click the "Whats New?" button, it should show you any new threads since your last visit if you are logged in, otherwise it will just show the last 24 hours. I hope that solves the problem until the Widget on the homepage is fixed.

 

[Flamzorz]

Many thanks!

 

[xzKinGzxBuRnzx]

I've personally been waiting for this update forever myself, seeing how I paid for it long ago! I love it, it's shaping up nicely. Those of you who don't like it, let me remind you that the theme isn't finished yet.

 

[Safinn]

Is this the default theme?

 

[Nimrod]

Is this the default theme?

When you posted this, if you read the very first post in this thread you would know the answer to this. Yes it was just the default theme.

However as of now, everyone is moved over to the new Digiex VB4 Theme. Does anyone have any feedback or suggestions to improve it? If its not changed for you, you may need to refresh your cache (Press F5 in your browser). I hope this works to improve the visual look and make it more like the original Digiex theme people loved.

 

[Trebor]

Finding it much easier to look at and navigate the forums now. Don't mind the new icons and what not as it's easy to see where there are new posts etc. Good job so far I think. The only thing I've come across that's a little annoying is sometimes on a section of the forum the new posts aren't at the top and when I try to see the last post it puts the earliest ones up first instead of the latest ones.

 

[BlackTitan666]

looks good so far no problems yet

 

[Nimrod]

Based on your feedback about Ads, I have changed the Ad system setup.

First of all, the big point. Members will not see ANY adverts at the top of the page now. (This is even better than the old Digiex in which we only allowed power users and staff to avoid seeing adverts). I thought, Digiex wouldn't be here without its dedicated members, so as a thank you, you will not see any adverts at all on the forum pages except for the one in the footer, which no one scrolls down to. The reason for this one is it allows us to keep our ad views up, but they aren't in any way of a members viewing of the page (even staff members see them).

How does that sound?

For guests however, adverts will be shown to help cover bandwidth costs and to keep Digiex alive.

I hope this kind of addresses the balance between our need to cover our bandwidth and licensing costs and at the same time, providing a clean and stylish theme for our users to browse in. Just a side note for anybody wondering, we haven't yet taken a single cent of profit out of Digiex, everything we have ever earnt on Advertising has gone to pay bills, and the rest covered by staff members own money.