What ever happened to a straightforward user interface?

SpitAndDirt

Petty Officer 2nd Class
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
103
To whom it may concern,

I don't have very many posts, but the ones I do have I have always tried to put quality into them. In a few of those posts are many pictures with a lot of detail. Some of those pictures are stored on the servers, others hosted on photobucket.

My problems today arise from the fact that this forum used to be much easier to navigate and upload content to. I don't know the technical aspects of running a forum of this size and therefore it's completely outside my expertise to tell any of the Admins or Mods how to run it. But I know one thing is for certain and that is that using Iboats forum never used to be this difficult or infuriating.

All I wanted to do today was answer a member's question about a NLA fuel pump for his 5.0L OMC. But every time I tried to manage my uploaded photos or album I could not find a single method except to hit the camera icon at the bottom of the post, then "Select photo from album," only to find that I could not SCROLL through my album! I tried looking everywhere for a "Manage Photo Album" tab or something of the sort but found nothing. I tried searching through this sub-forum for help but even trying to search threads is harder than it needs to be. In addition to this issue, the banner at the top of the page never scrolls up which effectively blocks about 20% of the viewable area on the screen. It feels as though the entire forum network took a backseat to the storefront. I don't need the six oversized drop box tabs hovering over the screen i.e "Shop","Photos","Find pros","Forums","Boats for sale", and of course "Sale."

What gives? I'm a member of at least 10 other forums and they don't have the technical issues that this one has. Not only that, most of the other forums interface with the mobile app Tapatalk. For example, pwctoday.com has never given me these kinds of issues when uploading content. The basic forum architecture hasn't changed. A few years ago when iboats upgraded(or downgraded?) to this new forum hosting software, I stopped visiting as much. The site just feels slower and clunkier now.

Please fix these problems or migrate the entire forum to better designed software. I understand that hosting a forum isn't free and that income has to be made somewhere, but the layout of this website can be better, much better. Again, I refer to Pwctoday. They have ads and aren't shy about stating that the forum is owned by SBT. I started checking the other forums that I visit and most of them use vBulletin. If I'm not mistaken, I think Iboats may have used that software at one time.

I do hope you guys take my suggestions and make some needed changes. I like the community and the information that is available, but what good is any of it if you can't effectively communicate?
 

Attachments

  • photo295034.png
    photo295034.png
    162.5 KB · Views: 0

Kiter007

iboats.com employee
Joined
Dec 19, 2017
Messages
186
Great suggestions. We're certainly working on improving some of the concerns you mentioned.

iBoats still uses vBulletin. iBoats recently upgraded to the newest version of vBulletin and is fixing some of the bugs with the new version of Bulletin.

Thank you for reporting the bug with the photo album scroll not working. We've reported this to our software developers and will have it fixed soon.
 

tpenfield

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jul 18, 2011
Messages
17,620
The new interface does take a bit to get used to, but after a while it becomes second nature. I have noticed that some other web forums stayed on the older versions of the vBulletin software.

Anyway, I find that using the 'paper clip' icon for picture posting is pretty straight forward, rather than the 'camera' icon or linking from photoshop, etc. 800 x 600 seems to be a decent image re-sizing, so that they will upload properly.
 

WIMUSKY

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Sep 26, 2009
Messages
19,789
Most forums auto resize the pic for you when posting. It would be nice if this forum did the same so it isn't a hassle to post pix....
 

roscoe

Supreme Mariner
Joined
Oct 30, 2002
Messages
21,657
I upload my photos here, sometimes as attachments, sometimes not.
Most of them were taken with my camera set to 5MP.
I have never had a photo rejected for size.
They must resize automatically, maybe depending on source or type, or maybe browser software.
I use Safari most of the time, sometimes Chrome.

Really makes me happy to know that something in my life works properly.
 

WIMUSKY

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Sep 26, 2009
Messages
19,789
I know with my phone I can forget about uploading w/o resizing. Other forums I have no problem...
 

SpitAndDirt

Petty Officer 2nd Class
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
103
I just tried again to scroll through my photo album with no luck. Any idea on when that functionality will be repaired?
 

southkogs

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jul 7, 2010
Messages
14,785
In your profile you should be able to see "POSTED PHOTOS" at the bottom of the "ideabooks" page. Those should be the photos from your old photo album. The idea books are now the new photo album. You can make them private or public.
 

SpitAndDirt

Petty Officer 2nd Class
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
103
In your profile you should be able to see "POSTED PHOTOS" at the bottom of the "ideabooks" page. Those should be the photos from your old photo album. The idea books are now the new photo album. You can make them private or public.

Just tried this. Found the link for "Posted Photos" and tried clicking it. It responded with "No photos found" even though the link initially said I had 11 photos.

The scroll bar function I talked about above still isn't fixed either.

Does any other software have to be updated to a certain version? DirectX? Java? Runtime? Flash? Does Iboats favor one browser over another? I use Chrome 99% of the time.
 

southkogs

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jul 7, 2010
Messages
14,785
You're fine with Chrome. The albums issue where I directed you too is still a "to do" item on the fix list. Apparently there was/is some kind of conflict with the server.

Hang with us.
 
Top