GardenersCorner URL Slight Change and Reasoning

@Nudaii - can you suggest anything for @Sheal's logging in/out issue?

@Sheal, I will answer your PM over the weekend (sorry, just heading off to bed) and hope to help somewhat.

 

You are right - but, when Google (and others) are asking to see that homepage over 5 million times (actual figure provided by Webmaster), that slows down the performance of the forum for you and I whilst costing our Webmaster quite a pretty sum.

The newer style homepage giving a summary reduces the amount of data that the forum is having to provide to search engines which in turn keeps the site usable.


Nudaii is a software programmer hired by Webmaster to adjust an optimise the forum software accordingly. He may be new to many GC members, but please be assured that he is conversant in the site programming to the N'th degree, and genuinely only has the best interests of GC at heart.

 

The logging issue could be related to the backlog of queries the server had been hanging for months, very very long running queries which required restarting several processes on the server, clearing cookies and passwords, and restarting pc could fix that, also ensuring that if you wish to view forum part you are using the correct url for forums.

Code:

https://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums

As for the changes happening quickly, as from the moment the site went live a post was announced which gave directions to view the original page, followed by 3 more posts which reitterated the point, the affect on membership would be minor to almost nill, simply making a new bookmark for

Code:

https://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums

or going direct to that link and everything would be entirely same UI wise for any members, with only benefits being reaped (the server has seen growth in traffic, but kept its server load much lower that previously, even in these few days since new homepage, resulting in keeping costs down, ratings up, and helping to control over what could become rocketing exspenses)

 

And to clarify the populatity issue of the old homepage, it has a view and not return rate, known as a bounce rate of 79.44%, meaning thats basically 4 out of every 5 people that viewed the forum home page as their first stop/entry into the site found it either.

1. Uninformative
2. Extremely slow (which it is, far too many forums/categories on the main page for the server and traffic levels we have have)
3. Overwhelming/uncurated list of content that shows both active/dead on/off topic sections that to a not expieranced forum user would be baffling

And they never returned andclicked away to another gardening site, which very likely didnt even have the wealth of resources and knowledgeable members that we have here, but they were so turned off by the forum homepage they left and didnt return, at a near 80% rate.

One of the largest discussion software used for gardening related discussion online, has categories/sub sections with 193,307 members as of this moment in a single sub section, their home page is built along the exact same design concept of our new one, their slice of user demographic is a similar spectrum as our own, but on a much larger scale.

New is differant, but differant isnt bad when you can easily view the way you used to.

Jimmy loves building blocks, all the other kids want to ride bikes, Jimmy can do either bike riding or block building.

He has a few options

1. Call all bikes rubbish because he personally cant see the value in bikes
   
2. Try to have all the other children stop riding their bikes, so they and all new kids to neighbourhood forced to build blocks.
   
3. Or sit back and go "hey thats cool, your bike riding doesnt affect my block building"

Thats basically whats happening here, some are choosing to be option 3, saving the website owner money, increasing server speed for all, while not super fast due to our server is too small once again for our increased traffic since our move to the server, its 50% less load on resources than it would be without this change , others are choosing to be option 1 and 2 for various but unfounded reasons.

A common argument among those who take the 1 and 2 view is potental members prefer the old look, 79.44% of those potental members disagree with that statement based on our analytics which are the worlds most accurate for website statistics.

The only members affected by the new home page are those who are not willing to simply bookmark or type

Code:

https://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums

.

I can't afford to spend more time hashing over these points as I am a self employed web designer with 10 years (9 of those years i have been involved with GC) running at professional levels, providing technical advice to some of the largest forums/companies using this software, time to me is a very precious commedity, my friendship with webmaster and several here is all that even has me able to free any time for GC, this current job was fit into the only free slot i could spare with my other commitments, between a pre breakfast, 4:30am start slot.

Modifications were made, including the new visit our forum banner to remove the worries a few had that some members would miss the 2 navigation bar links to forum homepage, and the 25 links to forum sections/categories displayed in the posts feed.
I dont think there is anyone who could miss that forum link (i showed the site pre addition of that banner to several people who dont use forums, not very tech savvy at all, and 100% of them found the navlink to the forums (original one) within seconds of deciding they were so interested by what they saw on homepage they wanted to see more that the site offered.

 

Good morning @Nudaii my friend your time and hard work spent updating and modernising GC are always appreciated and you have answered far more questions than you needed to,thanks for helping GC to be the number 1 Gardening Forum , it will always be very much appreciated by all the members and staff,

 

I may be old, but embrace the new - and ignore what I don't like

If the front page (which I never use and don't ever remember using) brings more members and helps to stop the forum slowing down then I agree that it's necessary.

Once having been into the site it's easy enough to bookmark the 'Forums' page - although I don't see any use for doing that for 'my' entry page as I would prefer to come in on the 'Watched Threads' page. So I have bookmarked that one. From there I can navigate to any page I wish (I usually click on 'Open in new tab' for anything else so that I always have 'my' front page accessible on screen). I've no idea whether this is possible on phones as I don't possess one

I still keep the old format (forgot that there was anything else ) and make my usable screen to fully fit my screen. So I don't see any of the background (also forgotten how I did that but probably certainly had help from admin )

It's good work from Nudaii and Webmaster but obviously has caused a few problems for some with being logged out. I seem to remember that similar has occurred during every change - but it has always been sorted with the help of admin. I know that I had that problem with one of the changes so typed my posts into Word first and then copied to GC - just in case it got lost. It only lasted a few days until admin was able to help me.

 

@Anthony Rogers I don't know if you're able to open your 'alerts' in a new tab. This is what I do on my computer but don't know if it can be done on a phone. I always open everything in 'Open in new tab' and can just close that tab when I've finished - and I'm back in the old page.

 

Depends on which one has its legs tied together