GardenersCorner URL Slight Change and Reasoning

Actually 80% GC traffic comes from people landing into threads from google searching the old homepage had a very poor converstion rate almost equal to the dismal conversation rate of people landing onto a profile page.

as for mobile friendly you are misunderstanding the term, it refers to the way the software adapts to the mobile screen/interface, regular users normally avoid both forum and home pages and build their own routine of watched threads/forums, new users are now presented with just another avenue to view GC content.

No one expects established users to stop using the /forums, its never been implied even once, the new home page has no ability to create content it instead presents to users/ guests both old and new to view a stream of the latest and most viewed/replied/liked content that the forum has to offer, and to present that data also to google in a format it better index.

unsure how a list of threads pulled purely from the gardening only sections have little to do with gardening? all off topic related feeds are excluded from that homepage not to mention that the original homepage is linked in the navbar and still exists as its own url as always Gardeners Corner - The Friendly Gardening Forum, having the forum exist at basically the same url it always has isnt burying it, its using a former barron patch of ground for a crop (the root domain previously was a traffic damging redirect without value)

The points can be rehased over and over, I however understand, the average member doesnt have the traffic data i have availible from working with GC since 2008 in a technical capiciity, the long and short of it go to Gardeners Corner - The Friendly Gardening Forum and nothing changes for you, except the lighter load on server as the massive forum index is no longer being pulled with every single casual guest/bot visit, putting obscene pressure on the server.

 

one point i missed to address from an earlier post is the colours, the software flags threads 3 ways.

Standard Threads > just your normal every day thread
Hot threads > threads with replies over the limit set by admins show as hot threads, and have a star after the title, this number by default i believe is 250-300 replies but can be modified by any member of admin staff to a better suited number if too many or too few threads become hot due to trends in posting/traffic.
Orange title threads > these threads are stickies, same as normal threads except they have been set to stick/pinned by staff and normally mean they deserve slightly more attention than a standard thread, hence their colour.

 

Good afternoon I'm all for progress and thank you @Nudaii for all your excellent work always in the background,very much appreciated my friend.as you say member's still have the choice to use the old style or can remain Dinosaurs (only joking)

 

Exactly this was planned out to make sure that in no way members would be forced to swap to a new look for their forum use, the forum powers the new page, if people stopped using the old way (forum) there would be nothing for the new second option to show, as it can only show whats happening on the forum, think of it as a constantly updating flyer for the site allowing people to at a glance see what people are talking about right then.

GC has over the years aqquired a long list of forums which is great for organistion, but is murder to the server, our load time for google for forum page is horrific in their eyes (consideirng google classes a 0.2 second differance as a red alert level of lag/slow) our google traffic has suffered under progressive roll out of new requirements google imposes for speed, mobile friendly layout, and presenting content, this change allows the old and the new to co exist, without having to severely cut back the forums/categories by a huge margin (50-70%), this method allowed 100% of the sites normal categories to remain, allowing the past to flurish and welcome the future is the only way that sites can keep competitive in a market where 0.1 seconds longer load time is enough to knock you off the main page for some terms.

One of the major misunderstandings about google traffic is the amount of people who search anything related to "gardeners corner" is very small and mostly returning members who use the /forums anyway, the vast majority of traffic comes on terms like "how to grow roses" "best seeds for planting in spring" and other such question related terms, in that market we are competing with dozens if not thousands of sites,blogs, facebook groups, reddits, if we lag even 0.1ms behind them, even if we outclassed them and provided a far better source of info they would get a better share of traffic, those people will now have 2 ways of finding us, threads they land on (which will remain the majority share of traffic most likely) and now the second way, through the new homepage which displays titles of threads.

I appreciate all concerns, but as life for a "forum user" remains the same this is not an actual issue that is affecting anyone who isnt choosing to let it affect them (by not using the updated url for forums or the forum link on maine page and in breadcrumb).

Pending any bugs in the software, which due to exhaustive testing on other sites is unlikely, this is my last post in the thread as this post and my previous ones address every related point.

Spring is coming, looking for some sunny days.

Nudaii
Developer

as an added note, the new homepage loads in 928 ms which is Faster than 91% of sites tested by the leading speed test used to rate websites, while the forum takes betwen 1.8-4 seconds to load.

To us thats peanuts, 3 seconds differance, to google thats like a lifetime, when even 0.1ms over their guideline incurs big penalties

 

It makes absolutely no difference to me. I have bookmarked 'Watched Threads' and always start there. That hasn't changed.

The only other heading I, mainly, go for is 'New Posts' and that hasn't changed either.

The minor ones that I use very occasionally are:-
'Forums' when I've want to go to a thread that I know I want, but doesn't appear in 'Watched Threads' (because nobody has posted since I last looked) or when I want a topic I'm not normally on;
'Search' if I'm looking for something specific that I know the parameters for.

I don't think that I've used 'Home' since the day I joined.

So, for me, nothing has changed - apart for 'Forums' being underlined (makes it a fraction of a second faster for me to find it).

 

Haven't the faintest!!!

I just poodle along the same as always.

 

It's called evolution, Anthony. We all want GC improve in what it offers, the way that it operates. It's not actually going to affect the way we use GC that much as Nudaii has said. Sit back and enjoy the ride.