LONGECITY

I slightly clench my teeth whenever change something at the site, because experience shows that there will be no shortage of outrage and disgust. People get used to what has been here before and those who don’t like a change sometimes seem to think it has just been done to annoy them.
Moreover, experience also shows something puzzling: if people realise that certain parameters are flexible, they get *really* annoyed. Much better to present an out-of-the-box solution with no rough edges and no changes.

That’s not how it works at LongeCity. This website has always been a work in progress, under construction, unpolished and unfinished. This reflects the fact that this is a volunteer effort not a slick marketing operation. Also, our mission is certainly not finished and we don’t have a clear roadmap that leads us to the finishing line. We want to live forever, and living means to learn and change and try things out.

So the site will remain a building site, certainly this year while we slowly transition from ‘ImmInst’ to LongeCity and all that this entails. The current technical changes are just one aspect of that, and they don’t exist in isolation but need to integrate with our evolving brand (such as the new design) and strategic objectives (such as the science initiative).


Well then, if after this preamble, you are still reading, we could really use your help:

1) Bugs: what is broken?

2) Feedback: what works well?

3) Speed: we were quite concerned about site speed recently – has this improved?

4) Keywords: the new system allows for member-generated keywords. This should finally allow for better linking of content. The system is a ‘fee for all’ at this point, but it might work better with a set of intelligent pre-defined keywords- anyone who wants to work on that is very welcome

5) Design: We are still thinking about the general navigation interface to incorporate a stronger ‘city’ theme. Any suggestions gratefully received.

Thanks.

Bug: Well obviously the warning here was for naught. No matter what the conversion software promised, it would only work one way, and not very well at that. So everyone: please get a new avatar!

My subjective experience is that the performance did not improve.

What I did hear about another forum software implementation is that there are database tables that kind of store user activity. These tables can become to big, after which queries on these tables that are execute by almost any forum action cause reaction time to deteriorate and server load to increase. I don't know if this is the case with our forum software, but maybe someone is able to check? If this is the case with our software, we could delete the contents of this table or check any known issues at the manufacturer site? Myabe I have some time tomorrow to start doing that.

Another point seems to be that Firefox (on iMac) does not work anymore. If I use that browser, I'm able to get one page after start-up, but any subsequent page takes forever (literally). Clearing all the history does not help one bit. After switching to Safari results in reasonable performance, but not great at all. Edit: Not bad actually after some more experience....
Edited by Brainbox, 28 August 2011 - 12:48 AM.

2) Feedback: what works well?

3) Speed: we were quite concerned about site speed recently – has this improved?

Recent topics filtering is wonderful!

Speed is hugely improved. (BB, I'm not sure what's going on with your experience.) It would be nice if we knew why it got faster, so we could take steps to correct the slowness should it occur again.

Previously, clicking on a topic title would take you to the oldest unread post. With the upgrade, getting to the oldest unread post, which is what the vast majority want 99% of the time, we have to click on a tiny icon, which is not that easy on some devices. If it's possible to easily have the earlier behavior, I think people would like it.

Does IPB provide release notes? If so, it would be great to see them. I'd expect they would have a list of new features.

Speed seems better to me. Who viewed a post doesnt seem to be on, and the recent topics was not clickable from certain areas previously, it seems to be working more now though. I see the banner still has the pixelated lettering. The icons bring a refreshing life to the forum, and the further design additions, along with the whole new package, it seems, should help us attract and keep increasing percents of lurkers and registrants.

That illegible security check required for sign in is awful. Took me about 10 attempts to get signed in.

Howard

There seemed to be some bugs. Making it harder to sign in is not good. Sometimes it is faster. Thanks for working on the site.

It would be nice if we knew why it got faster, so we could take steps to correct the slowness should it occur again.

This probably has for a smaller part to do with the new software release, but I think that after conversion of the database also a lot of clutter is removed, which possibly / probably could be the major reason. But Invision should be able to explain that.

Feature list: http://www.invisionp...board/features/
Edited by Brainbox, 28 August 2011 - 09:20 AM.

Thanks for the feedback so far. Keep it coming.

That illegible security check required for sign in is awful. Took me about 10 attempts to get signed in.

Yes that was rather cumbersome. I have taken it out.

My subjective experience is that the performance did not improve.

.........<cut>

Another point seems to be that Firefox (on iMac) does not work anymore. If I use that browser, I'm able to get one page after start-up, but any subsequent page takes forever (literally). Clearing all the history does not help one bit. After switching to Safari results in reasonable performance, but not great at all. Edit: Not bad actually after some more experience....

To avoid confusion resulting from my somewhat chaotic post: After switching to Safari, everything works fast, fresh and fruity! The firefox issue was also observed (on Windows) by another member as reported in another tread (here)