Update rant

For those who wish to know how NOT to update a forum, take this as an example. First, if you put up any advanced notice at all, make it so subtle as to be missed by your average user. Next, when your posters see their watchlist is missing, and there's only a sign in page, be sure not to post a notice on that page about why there's a sign in page. Then, with the notice missing, ensure several minutes of anger, frustration, and aggravation when they can't sign in. Then when the poster complains about not being able to sign in, be sure not to send a prompt email explaining the situation. And finally, when your posters eventually come across the notice, no thanks to you, be sure to say it will only be a couple hours, when it's actually more than eight. Eight hours is not a few. And for an added bonus, make it hard to find the watchlist again.

Edited by atimnie on Jun 26th 2018 at 6:53:09 AM

I... kind of have to agree... while I don't mind the new layout (it's somewhat unintuitive and weird, but I can get used to it) the update itself was not well handled. It took me trying several times to make a new account and then accidentally clicking on the "Random Trope" button to understand what was going on. This could have easily been taken care of if a message had been sent to every user a few days before the update.

I didn't see the notice, I just tried to get to the forums and thought the site was down. Then I came back to find the site was revamped. It'll only take a little getting used to, but some notice for the downtime would have been nice.

Also, I keep randomly getting logged out.

I understand that you can't catch everything no matter how much you test a program, web site, or whatnot, but with all the bugs (many of them breaking the usefulness of the site, not just aesthetic annoyances) I can't help but wonder if there was any testing of this new format.

Edited by Nohbody on Jun 27th 2018 at 9:22:33 AM

I've had one or two bugs, but nothing particularly bad until now. What I am finding is that I'm disliking the new layout more and more. Not just because I find it aesthetically bland, but because I'm having issues finding all sorts of stuff.

When this update finally completed, I was getting / alongside my '. And I was logged out a few times, and signed in as someone else. How does that even happen? But they do seem to have (most of) the bugs worked out... finally.

Except now it keeps logging me out when I leave the site in spite of having the stay logged in box checked, and have to have the mouse cursor over the "Login" link to log in before the anti-adblock kicks in.

Yes, I've noticed the logout thing as well.

I have noticed a part of the issue seems to be based around which version of windows and/or browser you are using. For example on the machine I am using now with Windows 7 and IE 11 I get a number of bugs. However my personal machine is Windows 10 with Firefox and I have almost no issues at all.

Honestly it won't matter what sort of testing you do in a limited setting once it goes live everything gets exposed to a huge variety of set ups, plugins, browsers, updated or not updated programs, and even operating systems.

I seem to recall the site being a fairly huge pain the ass update to begin with because of how coding was handled originally. With that in mind any large sudden changes being applied I fully expect them to generate a ton of bugs and problems. However I also expect them to consider reverting it after they have collected enough feed back to help them fix as many as possible and get as stable as possible before they go with a series of patches from there.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jun 27th 2018 at 10:41:35 AM

I keep seeing profile pics being moved about and stuff.

Also, why is the post count no longer at the top of the page anymore? It was kinda convenient before when I jumped to the page via a bookmark, so I could tell if anything new was posted.

Everything looks so blocky now. We need some more rounded edges. Like before.

I'm using Slimjet, a Chrome based browser, (highly recommended, not a paid ad) and there's very few problems on this.