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?
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?
