DuffMan
Well-Known Member
We'll be rolling out our final redesign (which is the first significant redesign we have had since relaunching the site in October of 2009) shortly, and it will pertain to the forums.
The forum body, or the area that contains the posts and discussions, will shift from right to left. English speaking societies look to the left first as it relates to print, since we read from left to right...and while there will be an adjustment period until you get used to it, it will seem second nature in a short span of time.
We have also decreased the space between the top of the page to where the posts begin to show up on your screen...laptop screens, you should see the first four or five most recent posts, where as right now (or what we will refer to as the old layout going forward) there is just one.
The toolbar will include a forum drop down menu...after we make the change, hover your mouse over the word 'Forums' and you will have a list of the specific forums you can access. However, the landing page will be what you are used to seeing, which is the most recent posts from all of the forums combined. We will not change that, as it seems to be what most of you prefer in a landing page. Also in the toolbar will be quick links to the football, basketball and recruiting forums, which are the most visited...plus a link to our Hawkeye Buzz page which pulls in Hawkeye headlines and twitter feeds from selected locations around the web.
The ads will move to the right side of the page, but we have also brought our resource bar with us from the front page...on the front and content pages, that bar is on the left...on the message boards, it will be on the right after a little scroll. Most of the third party ads will be visible above the fold and with no scrolling, and this is by design as it increases their value which helps us pay the bills.
The forums should continue to load quickly, as we are bringing over the process we installed late last week to increase forum loading speed. If there is a hiccup in that at the start, we have the blueprint to solve the problem and will do so in short order. The content you want to see will show up quickly, which is our goal and what you want. The ads are going to remain a part of the site, but if they are not hurting your browsing experience from a page loading pace perspective, then we feel its a win-win. As was the case with the front page, we have not added any advertising slots and have in fact decreased the number of ads that will be displayed. The local fixed advertising toolbar will be along the bottom of each page, as it is on the homepage.
A forum search bar will be easily seen in the extreme upper right corner of each forum page.
In closing, this is not a 'fancy' redesign...the redesign we did on the front page was more dramatic from an aesthetic point of view. This will be some aesthetic, but mostly moving things a round a bit to maximize user experience and ad position value without hurting the end user experience from a page loading speed perspective.
Thanks for visiting the site.
So I have an HTC something or other that runs the android and after the recent changes I have had trouble viewing the forums on it.
I have set up the site to appear normal on the phone, that is it looks and acts just like it does on any computer screen, only smaller. The problem arises when I open any of the threads. There is a miller light banner ad that opens and sits in the middle of the screen running from left to right (there is also a sports bar that appears in the ad). When viewing the page from my laptop this ad constantly scrolls with the screen so it always appears at the bottom. For some reason on the smart phone it sits in the middle of the page and doesn't move.
JD fix this pronto. My smart phone is the only thing that keeps me from being a lumpen prole!
The forum body, or the area that contains the posts and discussions, will shift from right to left. English speaking societies look to the left first as it relates to print, since we read from left to right...and while there will be an adjustment period until you get used to it, it will seem second nature in a short span of time.
We have also decreased the space between the top of the page to where the posts begin to show up on your screen...laptop screens, you should see the first four or five most recent posts, where as right now (or what we will refer to as the old layout going forward) there is just one.
The toolbar will include a forum drop down menu...after we make the change, hover your mouse over the word 'Forums' and you will have a list of the specific forums you can access. However, the landing page will be what you are used to seeing, which is the most recent posts from all of the forums combined. We will not change that, as it seems to be what most of you prefer in a landing page. Also in the toolbar will be quick links to the football, basketball and recruiting forums, which are the most visited...plus a link to our Hawkeye Buzz page which pulls in Hawkeye headlines and twitter feeds from selected locations around the web.
The ads will move to the right side of the page, but we have also brought our resource bar with us from the front page...on the front and content pages, that bar is on the left...on the message boards, it will be on the right after a little scroll. Most of the third party ads will be visible above the fold and with no scrolling, and this is by design as it increases their value which helps us pay the bills.
The forums should continue to load quickly, as we are bringing over the process we installed late last week to increase forum loading speed. If there is a hiccup in that at the start, we have the blueprint to solve the problem and will do so in short order. The content you want to see will show up quickly, which is our goal and what you want. The ads are going to remain a part of the site, but if they are not hurting your browsing experience from a page loading pace perspective, then we feel its a win-win. As was the case with the front page, we have not added any advertising slots and have in fact decreased the number of ads that will be displayed. The local fixed advertising toolbar will be along the bottom of each page, as it is on the homepage.
A forum search bar will be easily seen in the extreme upper right corner of each forum page.
In closing, this is not a 'fancy' redesign...the redesign we did on the front page was more dramatic from an aesthetic point of view. This will be some aesthetic, but mostly moving things a round a bit to maximize user experience and ad position value without hurting the end user experience from a page loading speed perspective.
Thanks for visiting the site.
So I have an HTC something or other that runs the android and after the recent changes I have had trouble viewing the forums on it.
I have set up the site to appear normal on the phone, that is it looks and acts just like it does on any computer screen, only smaller. The problem arises when I open any of the threads. There is a miller light banner ad that opens and sits in the middle of the screen running from left to right (there is also a sports bar that appears in the ad). When viewing the page from my laptop this ad constantly scrolls with the screen so it always appears at the bottom. For some reason on the smart phone it sits in the middle of the page and doesn't move.
JD fix this pronto. My smart phone is the only thing that keeps me from being a lumpen prole!
