These are the changes of 2 1/2 years?

[Angrygodofmilk]

As to the corner store comment - that and the following earns a warning as it is wholly uncalled for.

WHAT?!?

My corner store is a life-saver. I go there all the time. I go there when I can't find what I need anywhere else. I go there when everything else is closed. I go there when other stores are too far away. (Detecting a metaphoric parallel?) It was compliment. How the heck does equating EN World to a corner store translate as even remotely snarky? If you are going to give me a warning, knock yourself out, but don't do it when I'm praising the convenience of your (albeit former) web site.

Each click is 2 ads. This is mercenary but true - by dividing content up we serve more ads which pay for the site.

Look, it seems like this new design has come under fire. This is bound to raise dander. It can't just be me riling you guys up. You don't know me from Adam, and one lone opinion shouldn't matter even if you did. Well, rather than taking it all so personally -- don't. Don't take it personally. The boxes were added because you want more clicks to increase advertising revenue. Understood. The site is a business. Okay then, treat it like a business (rather than your personal living room).

That said, yes, more pages equals more revenue -- but not if people don't click on those links. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. Your administrators know for sure. Make no mistake, however, it is mercenary (as Michael says). How much revenue do you guys need? Aren't you already the most visited RPG site on the internet? Correct me if I am wrong. Have I overestimated your popularity?

In general, folks, it helps if you are specific about what you're using when you report a bug. Screen resolution, operating system, browser and its version...

Windows XP. Firefox 2.0.0.14 (Firefox 3 blurs resized images and when images are opened among multiple tabs, major slowdown occurs). Resolution 600x800 (as you already know).

 

[WhatGravitas]

The site is a business. Okay then, treat it like a business (rather than your personal living room).

There's a difference in being business for a living and business for keeping the site itself running. And would you go into your corner store and say "Now, this is a business, so run it like a business!"?

Plus, right now, I think it's a business for the admins... is it for you? Are you paying for some service? Yes - in form of ads.

but not if people don't click on those links. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't.

ENWorld sells impressions, i.e. how often an ad is shown. That's the reason why an extra ad is extra money - but advertisers don't accept all places - it must be a place where the ad can be seen.

And yeah, some people complained about the sidebar ad, that's true. And most people said they can accept a minor inconvenience, if this keeps the forums and the newspage running. And that's the reason why you can turn it off, if you have a CS account.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Draumr]

XP SP3. FireFox 3.

I would like to suggest that you make the article titles active links as well, for two reasons:
1. It avoids the immediate problem of the 'Read more' link being obscured by the text wrapping problems.
2. I find it more intuitive to simply click on the title of the thing I want to read, rather than hunting for the link further below. (If you can have it pop open a new tab on a browser by default, even better.)

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

You speak of this as if it is simple - in general, a layout and design suited for a laptop or desktop machine just isn't suitable for a mobile device. Even 3G hand held devices simply don't have the download speeds to handle graphics-heavy websites. So, if you want to serve those devices, you need a completely different design.

Also, I think tabbed browsing is slowly putting an end to the idea of having everything in full on the front page of... well, any site.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that websites should be designed by default for current PDA resolutions.

The thing is, these resolutions will increase in the future, so if you design for the lower end PC resolutions , you'll be preparing yourself for that.

When developing software (I am a software developer by trade), it's a good idea to bracket your target systems, testing on the lowest end model you intend to support, as well as the highest end model you can get your hands on. Resolution is pretty easy to test for; the resolution on a target computer can be changed merely by 4 mouse clicks (right click on Desktop->Properties->Settings->Resolution Slider control).

Oh, and my PC is Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2, on a Sony Vaio laptop running Firefox 2.0.0.14, 1024x768 resolution, 1.5GB RAM. I should have mentioned that when I reported the text wrap bug.

Good luck with your new website! I'll be sticking around.

Ken

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

oh, and with regards to a graphic intensive design being unsuitable for portable devices...well, I prefer a graphically minimalist design (for example, the way Google presents their ads) in any case!

Ken

 

[Umbran]

oh, and with regards to a graphic intensive design being unsuitable for portable devices...well, I prefer a graphically minimalist design (for example, the way Google presents their ads) in any case!

Yes, but Google is a very special case, in terms of what it is presenting, and the amount of traffic it gets - they can afford a less visually catchy presentation because they can 1)insert paid ads between you and what you searched for and get away with it and 2) make up in sheer volume what they lose in individual flashiness.

 

[Plane Sailing]

When I design websites now, I always like to use CSS for layout because on most PDAs my CSS is going to be ignored and they get nice semantically correct HTML which can be sensibly displayed in the PDA browser. The iPhone safari browser sees the whole thing, but I don't mind that because it does a great job of making the normal view visible in the PDA format.

ENworld is in a slightly different position from most websites because you can't get away from vBulletin using tables to lay things out (and you probably wouldn't want to in these circumstances anyway), so pure CSS based layout isn't going to be a runner.

I do find that it works fine on the iPhone/iPod touch browser though.

For other PDA browsers (such as PalmPilot) I always browsed the ENworld archive threads, because those are much more lightweight.

Cheers

 

[Deset Gled]

Aren't you already the most visited RPG site on the internet? Correct me if I am wrong. Have I overestimated your popularity?

You haven't overestimated popularity, you've just incorrectly assumed that popularity means profitability. This site is run by the donations of time from those who set it up, and the donations of members. Believe it or not, ad impressions will not fund an entire website. Even Google relies on sponsored links for part of their income.

And, in case you were wondering, you still managed to portray yourself as an ass in your last post.

 

[Dog Moon]

My corner store is a life-saver. I go there all the time. I go there when I can't find what I need anywhere else. I go there when everything else is closed. I go there when other stores are too far away. (Detecting a metaphoric parallel?) It was compliment. How the heck does equating EN World to a corner store translate as even remotely snarky?

You must be lucky then. When I used to live near a cornerstore, the place was horrendous. It was a smelly, little place that had only the bare essentials, jacked up prices, and an unpleasant foreign man who sat at the counter smoking half the day who I could barely understand enough to give correct money and whom I always had to make sure gave me correct change.

Truly, I only went there as an absolute last resort and did so only two times in the three years I lived there.

Because of this, I also would have reacted negatively towards that comment. I guess some people have good experiences with cornerstores; sadly, I wish I could say the same.

 

[Korgoth]

I'm liking the new site. Thanks, computer programming people!