The site is absolutely dying. It’s a damn shame. There was no reason for this to happen. Just extreme mismanagement. I really miss coming here information. It was a one stop shop for just about any gun related opinion and information. Has anyone found another forum other than TOS? I just don’t know if I can go back there.
Heavyweight
I hear ya! I would come here and scroll, look, search and as much as I hate to admit it, I would spend too much time here. Now I go, look around a couple of times a day and if I’m here more than 10 minutes, that’s a lot. I’m in and out and it’s just a struggle to look around. Maybe it’s me but it’s not fun anymore.
This new format is horrible. I’m lucky if i get on once a week or so…
My first post since the change… could not get logged in nor contact the site for help until last night. Yeah it’s way different, seems non intuitive and right now I don’t have time to try and re-tool my mind to it. I hope when I have time it’s still here and picking up speed again.
It’s pretty intuitive, better than before once used to it. I’m not crazy about the dark look of it, not found a way to change that.
When the site was down for a week, I tried Snipershide for a while. That site was a friggin snooze.
There’s really no alternative to this sight for the M4/AR platform.
The new layout and navigation really is not a great user experience. I know the platform the site is running on and have seen it done well in other places, like T Nation (https://t-nation.com), but it’s not been executed well here.
Having to scroll past the big block of eight 728x90 banner ads at the top of every page is off-putting, especially on a mobile device. Then there’s another block of twenty-four smaller banner ads on the left navigation pane.
The general time scale navigation of a thread rather than paging is also awkward, and I’ve had a lot of incidents of an errant click resulting in shooting my viewing way back or forward in time.
Lastly, the post authoring is less intuitive. I’m fine with learning new things, but at least give me the tools to do it. Like…where’s the guide for posting links or pictures? All I see is a </> button for adding code- but then where’s the guide for what code to use?
Then there’s the colors. More options would be nicer. The theming here is too dark overall and lacks contrast, making it difficult to read.
I’m not into it. It looks and feels clunky and there’s just not enough going on to make dealing with learning to work around the annoying new software worth the effort.
Half the time I can’t tell who is responding to what because quoting is weird. Also, when I reply to threads, they just disappear. The only way I can figure out how to see them again is to go find them in “My Posts”, but that’s stupid, annoying, and again, not really worth the effort. Yeah, it probably has something to do with a setting somewhere, but meh.
The only other forum I look at is Cast Boolits, but I’m getting annoyed with those boomers as well. And I’m not joining TOS or going back to the Gunplumber Ego Show over at FalFiles. That site can get fucked.
Anyway, I see my involvement here continuing to dwindle down to zero over the coming weeks. Who cares though, right. Not like I even shoot anything anymore besides my mouth. I have a lot of other things I can do that would be a better use of my time than rotting on the internet arguing about shit I have no control over.
So maybe, in the end, it’s all for the best.
As a continued side note to the staff…
If possible, you really need to fix the image link issues. You have over a decade of pic threads and stuff where people have shared a wealth of information about different configurations of weapons and gear. Now a lot of those threads just look like endless seas of image URLs. That’s going to kill a lot of your search traffic, because a lot of people find sites like this through image searches. If there aren’t actual images shown on the pages, then there’s nothing to show up in search.
Also, I suggest adding descriptions to every category and subcategory. Then add actual pictures to make it visually appealing. Peoples’ eyes skim right past the “Pr” heading on the “Precision Bolt Action Rifle” subforum, but they might linger on a nice photo of a rifle or target.
Lastly…consider deleting some of the old subforums that don’t have much going on? Or at least merge their contents into another area. The new navigation system using large tiles for subcategories takes up a lot of space. That’s not bad if it’s minimal, but it has to make sense. Scrolling past the eight ad banners, then a huge block of generic subcategories, before you actually get to any posts is…not a good user experience.
Here’s what I’m seeing on the “general firearms” category.
You could simplify that down a lot with better naming conventions, merging some topics together (i.e. put all precision rifles under one category), move the first aid & training someplace else, etc.
I’m sorry if this is coming across as nit picky, but I want this site to succeed. This is the place that I got the majority of my “education” when I first got interested back in the day, and I hate to see it die due to a poorly implemented user experience.
I am sure they do not care.
Yeah this format sucks. I used to check in 3-4 times a week but with this crap navigation and formatting it’s just too cumbersome. In fact, this may very well be my last post. I sincerely hope the mods or whoever is left running this place changes to a more standard format.
Until then, so long and thanks for all the fish!
Yep, not a fan at all of the new look and feel. I was hoping it would grow on me but it hasn’t. Seems like traffic or posting is way less than it used to be.
AlphaRomeo15 has a decent enough layout but has very little gun activity. Plenty of gun “categories” though. Mostly a social site these days with former AR15Armory members.
I can’t find the specific posts, but a couple of people have mentioned or speculated that the reason the site changed was due to Vbulletin ending support.
Vbulletin absolutely still has supported software. What they did was they end of lifed a prior version (5) and there’s people complaining about having to pay for an upgrade to get the supported version (6).
There may be other pros and cons, and maybe Vbulletin was difficult to deal with. I won’t speculate.
But from what I see they were not forced to make this move due to Vbulletin being abandoned or going out of business.
My general sense is we should try to make this thing work. It’s here and worth trying to save.
I see some positives but also some big negatives that the site admins / owners need to address or they’re going to be disappointed with the results.
Biggest issues:
The first time login issue needs to be improved so folks don’t lose their usernames. And there should be a process that long time users can get back their usernames and status if something went wrong with the initial login.
formatting still needs tuning. There are some major usability issues depending on which device you use, and definitely suboptimal for others.
missing images in the past articles needs to be addressed over time.
Surprisingly, the phone experience from my perspective has improved. With no tap-a-talk support I would not have used the old forum at all. But the adaptive formatting when used on my phone is actually pretty usable.
But also surprisingly my tablet from the same exact manufacturer the site formatting chops off about the last 15% of the text block for articles making them unreadable. No amount of zooming or scrolling will change that. And if I put the browser in desktop mode then there’s tons of wasted space in the articles are very hard to read.
Weirdly, on the phone or tablet I get three advertising blocks at the top of the page that blink buy so rapidly you can barely read them but they also carry largely the same ads. This seems to be some kind of an error or they’re taking rotating ads that on a desktop or spread around the page and they’re stacking them all at the top. I’ll post a pic of this one.
These are tuning issues that could/should be addressed if people can work with the developers to address. That assumes there are developers who can do this. Most site admins are not. But something is up with the CSS.
I have set up, modified, and operated forum / shoutbox software in the past. I have no desire to do that now, but I do understand what’s involved. And also understand that with the large number of users (bots or real), there are additional challenges with keeping a site like this up and running.
So I’m going to try to slog along and make things work. I’m going to post some examples of problems I’m seeing and if the site owners are serious about this they can work with their developer/admins to try to address some of these things. I would invite others to do similar.
The AR general and technical sub forums have almost no traffic. It’s been days since the last post. That was the site bread and butter. The general firearms categories have virtually nothing. Seems like the general discussion has all of the posts and that ain’t good. The owners clearly don’t care which I don’t get. They must have paid SOMETHING for it. And they put time, effort and money into the reformatting. It sucks but must have cost something. But it’s almost like they are trying to kill it. They aren’t paying attention to any feedback and are still hiding behind the scenes. I wish they would consider selling it to someone who gives a shit. These guys are assholes.
Heavyweight
Sorry…Heavyweight1 because I can’t use my original account I set up back in 2006.
Well, all good things must come to an end at some point…
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve seen such a terrible forum setup since the really early days. I feel like the “new ownership” intentionally is trying to kill the forum, but I’m probably being too paranoid.
Of course in spite of many well meaning suggestions, etc, the layout totally sucks for most people. They obviously don’t give a rat if they read these reviews. Or they could simply grab other templates. Probably even easier to do than years ago.
Second post since the change. I hardy ever visit anymore. Just dont like the format. But pretty much quit all social media anyway.
