Hi there,

Kinda new member....used to the vbulletin boards and I just wanted to see what useful options we could pull from vbulletin and incorporate into this board if you folk are interested. Just my opinions....obviously just take them for what they are. This is a wonderful site and as a web designer I just have a few things I'd like to point out. I really do like the setup overall though. You guys have done a great job.

1. after submitting a post, refreshing to your post instead of the first post in a thread.

this is useful because you get to see your post immediately and if you happen to see something you need to quickly edit, you can.

2. increasing the font size in the post message body window

now i'm probably one of the few running 1280x1024 resolution, but just a point size or two larger for the font would help tremendously for all users I think.

3. changing the table width on the entire page layout to 100% rather than roughly 780 pixels.

wasted space for a lot of content that you have on the site........posts, navigation to the left. a lot of people post images that are larger in size than the recommended table dimensions. this causes imperfecttions in the design layout because of lack of consistency. what i mean is, the main table width isn't always the same. if it was 100% of any screen size, it would be noticed.

4. if i make a post, my signature appears. if i edit my post, my signature appears in the message body window as the HTML that I coded. when i repost the message, the signature then does NOT work and all you see is HTML. is that a bug?

5. increasing the character limit on sigs. i like to use clean (and closed off) HTML in my sigs but I can't really do much because I run out of characters to type in code. An extra hundred characters would be great.

6. when you click the BBCode link in a page where you post a message, you get an "invalid theme" error on the opening window

7. allow the option to not post a signature when posting a specific message.

handy if you're posting many messages within one thread but people have already seen your sig once...they don't want to see it right after each other 20 times.

8. location of user next to their post count.

very handy IMO. i just love to know where people write from. makes an impact of the makeup of users on this board too I think.

9. an immediate link to "new" posts since last visit.

for people who frequent the board, they'd just click that and could see all the updated threads since their last visit.

10. when replying to a quote, indenting the original quote so that it stands out better than the awful formatting you currently get making it sometimes hard to decipher what was the original quote and what is the new message.

11. when searching and pulling up search results, it would be nice to just see the title of the thread that has the keywords that match your search.

instead, what you see is repeated search results from the same thread for each entry that matches. that's a little confusing. it would be nice to just choose what thread you want to read from your search results and see the highlighted text of the keywords your originally searched for.

12. titles on pages.

right now, every single page has the same title - "MINI COOPER Online: offers new....etc, etc." can we change that so that the title shows the title of the thread and the "search results" if we were to click a "new posts" link? This is handy for people who post a lot and the the "selective back button" (the pull down menu of the back button in IE) so they can immediately go back to the page they were looking for. this becomes easy because you will see the title of the page displayed or search results, or the original thread title or the homepage - basically wherever you visited within the website will be distinguished. all you see now is a long list of pages with the same title.

it's quicker than pressing the links and it puts less calls on the database to pull up newer information.

13. how about a random ride photo on the main page that would appear every time you visit the site?

members could show off their gorgeous mini's and it would change the somewhat static content and make it a bit more dynamic.

okay, that's enough for now.........i'm curious as to your thoughts. please don't be offended by my long list. just trying to help out. i look forward to spending a lot of time here.

thanks and best of luck with MCO!!

haf :smile:

 

I want to add also that I may have suggested some things that are already present in the site and I've not delved into it deep enough yet (but I will!!)....so sorry for asking for something that's already possible.

Thanks!

 

haf,
Thanks for the feedback. I've been working on migrating the forum functionality of the site to a vBulletin-based system so many of your items should be covered. Unfortunately the migration path has necessitated some custom development as MCO's current software wasn't a version that had a direct upgrade path. That said I have made good progress in the last couple of weeks.

>>2. increasing the font size in the post message body window
>>
>>now i'm probably one of the few running 1280x1024 resolution, but just a point size or two larger for the font would help tremendously for all users I think.

This will be something that we will be doing across the entire site.

>>
>>3. changing the table width on the entire page layout to 100% rather than roughly 780 pixels.

This is something that we'll be incorporating into the new site design.
>>
>>4. if i make a post, my signature appears. if i edit my post, my signature appears in the message body window as the HTML that I coded. when i repost the message, the signature then does NOT work and all you see is HTML. is that a bug?

This is due to the forum software not handling HTML signatures. This will be something that vBulletin handles. In the mean time be sure use bbCode in your signature as the forums will handle this correctly when editing.

>>
>>5. increasing the character limit on sigs. i like to use clean (and closed off) HTML in my sigs but I can't really do much because I run out of characters to type in code. An extra hundred characters would be great.

vBulletin will support this

>>
>>6. when you click the BBCode link in a page where you post a message, you get an "invalid theme" error on the opening window

Hmmm....I'm not able to reproduce this under Mozilla 1.0.1 on OSX. What browser and OS are you using?

>>
>>7. allow the option to not post a signature when posting a specific message.

Support with vBulletin

>>
>>8. location of user next to their post count.

We'll be doing this and then some with the new site design

>>
>>9. an immediate link to "new" posts since last visit.

Supported with vBulletin

>>10. when replying to a quote, indenting the original quote so that it stands out better than the awful formatting you currently get making it sometimes hard to decipher what was the original quote and what is the new message.
>>11. when searching and pulling up search results, it would be nice to just see the title of the thread that has the keywords that match your search.

vBulletin will provide improvements on both of these fronts

>>
>>12. titles on pages.
>>
Good point and I will keep this in mind for the new design.

>>13. how about a random ride photo on the main page that would appear every time you visit the site?

This will be supported as well with the new site design.

>>okay, that's enough for now.........i'm curious as to your thoughts. please don't be offended by my long list. just trying to help out. i look forward to spending a lot of time here.

No offense at all. My background is software development along with 10 years of product marketing and corporate strategy so I am a firm believer in constructive criticism. Feel free to keep your feedback coming!

Thanks again!

Mark

>>
>>thanks and best of luck with MCO!!
>>
>>haf :smile:
>>
>>

 

Glad to hear about the font size change. I have a new computer with a flat screen and the font is hard to read. Quite a contrast to the font on the MINI2 site--that is much clearer and easier on the eyes. Perhaps it's an age thing...

 

>>haf,
>> Thanks for the feedback. I've been working on migrating the forum functionality of the site to a vBulletin-based system so many of your items should be covered. Unfortunately the migration path has necessitated some custom development as MCO's current software wasn't a version that had a direct upgrade path. That said I have made good progress in the last couple of weeks.
>>

Hey GREAT news! I'm happy to hear about that. It's popularity with the car forums is astounding and since many car enthusiasts visit multiple forums, if they see the same message board software it makes this site easier to use.

>>>>
>>>>6. when you click the BBCode link in a page where you post a message, you get an "invalid theme" error on the opening window
>>
>>Hmmm....I'm not able to reproduce this under Mozilla 1.0.1 on OSX. What browser and OS are you using?

Okay, IE 6 SP1 with XP Pro.....it does work on a different machine with the same setup...I have not checked the other machine as I am out of town. Perhaps it was temporary?


>>No offense at all. My background is software development along with 10 years of product marketing and corporate strategy so I am a firm believer in constructive criticism. Feel free to keep your feedback coming!
>>
>>Thanks again!
>>
>>Mark
>>

That's the perfect background to run a site like this! I'm happy to see you handle constructive criticism very well.

Thanks for taking the time to go through all that. If I can think of more things, I'll let you know. I appreciate the explanations...I'll make the corrections I need to as necessary.

Oh, will our accounts be migrated over to vbulletin?

Thanks!
haf :smile:

 

>>>>now i'm probably one of the few running 1280x1024 resolution, but just a point size or two larger for the font would help tremendously for all users I think.
>>
>>This will be something that we will be doing across the entire site.


Mark, a suggestion: If you plan to do this before the migration to the new software, please do it as an option. Many people like the smaller font and current color scheme. I, however, am not one of them. So that way, people like myself can change to the skin when you release it and the others that are happy with it can stay unchanged.

 

>>Oh, will our accounts be migrated over to vbulletin?

Yes. Based on the work I've been doing I hope to have this a relatively transparent migration to the users. There will be new functions and options to explore but your logins should be the same, post counts will be preserved, etc.

Stay tuned...

Mark

 

>>Mark, a suggestion: If you plan to do this before the migration to the new software, please do it as an option. Many people like the smaller font and current color scheme. I, however, am not one of them. So that way, people like myself can change to the skin when you release it and the others that are happy with it can stay unchanged.

There won't be any changes to the current site prior to the migration (I don't want to throw away work)
Actually, I will likely be implementing a much easier on the eyes look and feel. Most of the feedback I've recevied is that many people would welcome a font size/color and general site color change.

Mark