New Look... again?

Hi guys,

I'd like to offer some extended updates for you about this situation and the site improvements in general so you understand what's going on. I know the process has been stressful and we've been bad about communicating. You can blame that on me as it's my responsibility; in the spirit of apology, here's a birds-eye-view of what's been going on and, more importantly, why:

THE STORY SO FAR

You'll all recall that we've had a grand vision of an integrated system for years now. The first implementation of it via the "Network" was more ambitious than successful. We were attempting to mash together several technologies and then smooth out the resultant technical conflicts. Behind the scenes, an obscene amount of effort went into making that functional and while I know that it was not obvious, everyone on the staff was doing their best to make both the transition and the end result as amazing as possible for you. If we'd had more time and expertise to help out, it would have worked out fine, but luckily for us a new avenue opened up that we could not resist taking advantage of.

As you may be aware of, we run on a technology called IP.Board. The board is only one of many modules that interconnect and can be used to build complex communities. The most recent switch for us was away from our custom Frankenstein network to a completely integrated content module made by the same people responsible for the forum technology. They are, in other words, designed to work together seamlessly right out of the box, which means that our focus has been only on customizing that integration to suit our needs. You may have noticed that we now have some very cool features for music submissions as a consequence, including an embedded PDF viewer (so you no longer have to download score files if you don't want to) and an embedded music player. These are the kinds of things we can focus on implementing now, and we will continue to explore more options for improving these systems.

So when we talk about everything being "integrated" now, that's what we mean. The site now runs 100% on designed-to-work-together, heavily supported modules that we simply adapt to our community's needs. This means much less worry about fundamental functionality problems and more concern with basic usability ones. And if something doesn't work, there's a gigantic support network in place to help us sort things out.

FINE, BUT WHY?

So now the golden question: "Yes, Marius, but why and why should I care? Everything used to be amazing 5/3/10 years ago and I want it back!"

First of all: everything was not better however many number of years ago, it was merely different and familiar. Maybe you knew more people. Maybe the forum technology was one you grew up being used to. If we never moved anything forward, there would be no progress and that's not how life — and certainly not how technology — works. Admittedly, our improvements were not consistently as stable, accessible, and functional as we may have hoped, but as frustrating as all those issues were, it's not constructive to complain about them idly. Especially since I trust that everyone on this board knows, at least on some level, that all the staff actually wants is to make YC the absolute best destination for learning and sharing music on the internet. Nothing we do is ever motivated by the desire to frustrate or impede your ability to use the site. It seems obvious, but I mention it because sometimes we receive complaints from people who appear to be under that impression.

So why this particular update? Because it's a sustainable and expandable foundation on which we can continue to build without fear of compatibility and fundamental technical problems. Because it makes the site run far more efficiently so we can worry about usability and the experience of interacting with the site instead of tech support. Because, more than any other update, this one brings a gigantic set of improvements — both major and minor — to the architecture of the forum itself, which you'll notice in the small details of posting, reading, and navigating from any platform, browser, or mobile device you care to visit with.

To address the topic of this thread more specifically, the sudden switch to blue was not a major aesthetic shift on our part; rather, it is the consequence of the IP.Board having been updated to its latest and greatest version, which ensures that we take full advantage of its capabilities. This technology is literally brand new and has significant changes under the hood that make our previous skin options incompatible. The blue skin is the forum default and is in place while we establish new skin options that are fully compatible. We're doing this to prevent the previous issue of some skins being fully functional and others not allowing you full access to the site's features. That's not going to happen anymore, but while we work on making sure that consistency is in place and that you have skin options to choose from, you'll have to bear with us and deal with this sterile little default theme for a bit longer.

COMMUNICATION

What's most important to me, and is in fact the core of my responsibility here, is how all this stuff affects the end user. In case there was any confusion over this, all of your complaints, thoughts, suggestions — constructive or otherwise — and assorted reactions do not escape my attention. I listen, I make notes (pages and pages worth), and I consider how best to bring these issues to the attention of those who can solve them. No matter how robust the system, most problems do not have a simple one-switch solution. So while it may seem as though we're not listening, we are, and all your suggestions for improvement are under advisement and in most cases are being actively worked on for implementation. I have probably not been transparent enough in the past with this, so henceforth I'll do my best to respond more individually to all your thoughts so that you at least know that we've made note of them. I apologize for not having done so before and hope you will forgive me.

To give you some examples of things that you'll see implemented in the very near future (perhaps even by the time you read this message):

• The upload forums will now be categorized as they used to be, and accessible from the forum so submissions are no longer lumped together in one messy forum
  
• Despite what I said above, we have nevertheless made it a priority to provide you with at least an alternate colour scheme for this skin while we work on getting the rest in place
  
• Forums that are redundant are in the process of being merged (not archived or deleted) and re-organized to keep things streamlined and encourage activity by getting rid of ambiguous post destinations
  
• Music can now be very easily submitted from wherever on the site you are using the header widget that you'll notice beside your messages icon in the top right of your browser
  
• We're communicating with support regarding the chat bar and its annoying behaviour and errors and will endeavour to either fix it or provide a more functional replacement ASAP
  

Those are things you can expect to see happening immediately. The list extends from there and includes many other usability concerns and extended features that we hope you will be patient enough to appreciate as we make them available. Having learned our lesson from previous updates, whatever new functionality comes, it will be rolled out gently, with plenty of communication and beta mentality, so that we ensure that your response is taken into account.

MOVING FORWARD

That being said, please realize that we cannot please everyone, and sometimes we need to make judgement calls that include changes to the way you interact with the site — for instance uploading via the submissions instead of the forum, which some people were very upset about — but these changes are necessary to ensure that we can keep moving forward, and even though they may seem initially unfamiliar, we hope that you'll give them a sincere chance before coming forth proclaiming that we've loosed catastrophic horrors onto the site.

Hopefully that clarifies some of what's been going on for everyone and helps you rest assured that there is method to this perceived madness. If, despite all of this, you continue to be repulsed and wish to leave the site, then you are of course welcome to do so and we will miss your contributions. I only ask, respectfully, that you go with the admission that your departure is the result of a personal disagreement with the site's evolution and not the result of a sweeping generalization about the site being irreparably damaged.

Thanks for reading through and please continue making suggestions and comments, either here on the forums or privately to me via PM if you want to save me the trouble of hunting things down. :happy:

Love,

Thank you Marius and your large font. It's helpful to us distressed members to know what is being accomplished. I suppose we were thinking it was another "lame transitional period" between crappy technologies.

Let's get back to the point were we have too many people arguing on the shoutbox again, eh? :P

Thanks Marius. Does the new software allow custom skins? Maybe we should find a member who is willing to make a better look for this forum.

You're very welcome. Large font was used because there was a lot of writing and it's easier to read that way. :P

Smiley, we're always open to members contributing but IP.Board skins are fairly complicated and even the pros are still adjusting to the new version's quirks, so it'll take some time but we're happy to include totally custom skins if we can get them made.

Thank you Marius for helping me explain to the community our goals here. Moving forward, YC is going to be much cleaner and organized with development. I think a system that works well is by having Marius come to me with a list of "problems" that I can personally address. I can address problems very quickly now because I know how the IPB suite works, and I can custom code efficiently now. This helps because I no longer have to contract work, and I can address things on the spot without having to communicate with developers my vision. This equals better, and faster development.

So I would like to encourage you all to contact Marius if there is an annoyance, or you wish to see certain things changed to increase your user experience. Any functionality you wish to see, again, contact Marius, and him and I will discuss changes that must be made. As you can see, it works well because he communicated a major complaint to me today, and I was able to address it in about half an hour (Just see the forum home!)

We are very close to being at a position to market the site on a monthly basis using newsletters, and once we start with this procedure, we should then have a nice and active group here. I also want to stress that although in 2005 and 2006 we were a very active community, we weren't as focused. I feel that today we are much more focused with our direction.

Great explanation Marius. You should really be a customer relations or human relations person amongst everything else you are good at.

Chopin, it all sounds great. I agree that we are more focused. People tend to use the fact that we have less members and less posts per day in the forum as a piece of evidence that the forum has fallen apart *cough - tokke* or that you have destroyed the organization and the flow of the forum. What they fail to remember is all the problems that the old forum had in its past state. We had rampant trolling/spam. We had lots of no response or review music threads. The off topic accounted for soooo much more of the forum than anything else. The focus of this forum was not music even though it was supposed to be. There were also a lot of people on here that sort of kept that from happening. Those people were not really interested in having an active music environment where the main focus was constructive criticism, learning, discussing music, etc. We have diminished but I think it is for the better.

I am glad we are almost to the point that we have a great foundation to build on. If you did not have a solid start and you went after gaining members and building the size of the forum then it would all eventually get out of control and go into chaos or at least be a bit of an anarchical forum. I, unlike a few of the complainers here, really like the organization of this version a lot better than the previous version. I think it is more seamless. It conects everything together much better.

And guys, even if you don't like something there is no reason to throw a fit about it. There are a lot of forums on the internet whether it is imdb or another music forum where the owners basically create the forum and then leave it. The problems those forums have don't ever have any intention of being fixed. You know you at least have Mike and Marius working for you to create the best possible forum they can. You know that when you don't like something they pay attention and try their best to fix it. So appreciate that.

What is the point in even bringing up our arguments if they are just blown off? Why even bother?

What is the point in even bringing up our arguments if they are just blown off? Why even bother?

My sentiments exactly.

Jason, having not understood what exactly you're upset about, it's hard for me to give you a useful response to that. If you read my (admittedly long) post and continue to feel that your arguments are being blown off then either we have very differing definitions of what it means to acknowledge an argument, or else I'm simply unaware of what you're actually arguing.

I'd like to work it out either way, so help me out here: what arguments of yours were blown off?

Not meaning to speak for Jason, but I think it has to do with how in the past fixes and suggestions fell on deaf ears. If this is changing, great! But show us some actionable results to prove you're listening to the (admittedly small) user base.

Since I know 1500 words is a lot to read, I'll extract the bit that pertains to your request:

To give you some examples of things that you'll see implemented in the very near future (perhaps even by the time you read this message):

• The upload forums will now be categorized as they used to be, and accessible from the forum so submissions are no longer lumped together in one messy forum
  
• Despite what I said above, we have nevertheless made it a priority to provide you with at least an alternate colour scheme for this skin while we work on getting the rest in place
  
• Forums that are redundant are in the process of being merged (not archived or deleted) and re-organized to keep things streamlined and encourage activity by getting rid of ambiguous post destinations
  
• Music can now be very easily submitted from wherever on the site you are using the header widget that you'll notice beside your messages icon in the top right of your browser
  
• We're communicating with support regarding the chat bar and its annoying behaviour and errors and will endeavour to either fix it or provide a more functional replacement ASAP
  

Those are all the result of specific user requests and feedback.

I think the new site performs well (for example I didn't have to use an annoying html function to italicize "performs" :toothygrin: ), but as Jaws said the look is very sterile, and IMO boring. I understand that you're still changing things, just wanted to say that once it's all done, I think the "dark red/brown" theme we had before this blue version was excellent, and should be used once you're done making changes Chopin.

Well... I think it's great! Haha. I love the integration! Who cares how it looks now as long as it's the community I've always know since 2006? I enjoy the family here and you all should stop being so accusatory. If I remember correctly, we VOTED on a website that was fully integrated. Well, three someodd years later, we've GOT one. :D I call that a win! We'll get the skins back. These things take time.

I actually prefer this slick, clean look to the old brown one. Yes it could be seen as "cold" but I like its simplicity.

I haven't been continuously active on this site for a long time (due to being busy and trying to take time away from cyber world). However, I have signed from time to time to check out pieces, see how the site is doing and where it is going. Although I have appreciated the "look and feel" of some of the older style forums I am pleased, appreciated and understand why Chopin must continue to try and move the forum forward in such a way even if it seems like constant changes and upgrades. I will admit though, when I have signed on and would see the changes I was thinking "hmmm...again?" but f thought "must be something he's trying to work out or finalize".

Sloppy programming doesn't let me use my arrow keys to scroll up and down the site! They only move stuff in the silly module thing that I don't use. You have to make sure highlighting priority is applied within pages Chopin! If I don't highlight the module, I don't want my keys to do anything to it.

For the record, the arrow keys work fine on any page without said module.

Skins are pointless. If you really care, use a f***ing user stylesheet -- that way, you get exactly what you want, regardless of changes we make.

Who in the real world uses a user stylesheet? Really?

Sloppy programming doesn't let me use my arrow keys to scroll up and down the site! They only move stuff in the silly module thing that I don't use. You have to make sure highlighting priority is applied within pages Chopin! If I don't highlight the module, I don't want my keys to do anything to it.

I didn't realize people used their arrow keys anymore to navigate a web page, so admittedly that is not something I thought about. I could of course disable the arrow key functionality if it is that much of a pain. Does anyone else use the arrow keys to scroll up and down the forum page?

Yes.

Who in the real world uses a user stylesheet? Really?

True.

I didn't realize people used their arrow keys anymore to navigate a web page, so admittedly that is not something I thought about. I could of course disable the arrow key functionality if it is that much of a pain. Does anyone else use the arrow keys to scroll up and down the forum page?

Well when I'm on a laptop I have no scroll wheel to scroll with. So my alternative is the arrow keys and page keys. Even with the scroll wheel I sometimes use them for convenience.