Afternoon all
Hope you all manged to get a knock in over the weekend. My golfing was limited to 27 holes of pitch and putt on a stag do but it least felt good to get bat on ball and not be rained on!
I had a meeting this morning with my publishing director and the group head of digital development to discuss the new forum layout and the feedback from forumers.
As I said last week we were very concerned to see all the negative comments to the new format and agreed that the user experience was far from ideal
To recap we made the changes to allow us to serve an MPU ad slot on the forum (currently the Cobra, Seve Day ad campaigns etc) as ever since the switch from the old forum to the new one we haven't had an MPU slot and the lack of it has been costing us lost revenue
Had this been an issue on a less popular section of the site it wouldn't have been such a problem but the forum section delivers the single biggest slice of site traffic so losing the potential to serve an MPU and therefore revenue from that was becoming a major issue.
Not a good state of affairs as the site relies on advertising and its single source of revenue.
To allow us to serve the MPU we copied the format of one of the big IPC sites (goodtoknow.co.uk) that uses vbulletin and has to serve an MPU.
We did that as development time/resource for GM is precious and the team who carry out that work are seriously stretched (they work across a wide number of brands) so being able to use code already being used on another site on the GM site required the least amount of development time to implement.
There were two key issues we have that seem unique to GM among other IPC brands
1. Pretty much every forumer has a signature with many running to multiple lines which with the new narrower width of the forum was making threads look particularly ugly and making everyone having to scroll lots to read longer threads
2. Many forumers are heavy users of the PM system so the fact that was sent haywire has understandably caused inconvenience and annoyance.
Anyway, the upshot of our meeting this morning is that we have made the decision to redesign the forum so we can return to having the forum displaying full width but still allowing us to serve an MPU ad slot
We have got a prototype design sketched out that will feature the top navigation bar (GM logo site links etc) where it currently is but with an MPU (and the GM video channel alongside it) below that
Below those two would be the forum in its old full width incarnation. It will mean a wee bit of scrolling to get below the top section and into 'the forum' but at least it should take it back to the 'good old days" in terms of posting and viewing.
However that style is not set in stone.
I obviously took on board comments form forumers who use other forums about 'better layouts' so if anyone has examples of other forums you use that feature an MPU and work well from a user perspective then please email me a link and I will review with the developers and publishing director.
The one to flag up at this stage is that I'm afraid this won't be fixed overnight.
As I said further up this post the developers work across many brands and are stretched at the best of times.
The pulls on their time are even greater than usual at the moment as they have team members off on annual leave and they have to build us our Open Championship microsite.
I did email Peter Dawson at the R&A if they'd mind moving the Open back a couple of weeks in order for us to get the forum sorted sooner but haven't had a reply yet.
Assuming its a no from Peter then the revamp of the forum will be done as soon as the Open microsite has been built.
Given that I don't expect any new look to be live until after the Open so please do bear with us until that point.
I hope you are reassured that we are taking the feedback very seriously and that a solution is on the way.
Thanks to all those who have left constructive feedback on the situation and please keep letting us know of any issues you have.
As ever good rule of thumb is to clear your browser cache (usually ctrl + F5 or ctrl + R will force a complete cache clear and refresh) and if the problem persists them get in touch
Please do feel free to mail me direct (email below) as that's the fastest way of getting something looked at
If you can give me as much detail of the problem (including info on what browser and browser version you are using) plus screen grab images of the forum not displaying as it should, then I'll have more info to pass on to the developers
Thanks
Hope you all manged to get a knock in over the weekend. My golfing was limited to 27 holes of pitch and putt on a stag do but it least felt good to get bat on ball and not be rained on!
I had a meeting this morning with my publishing director and the group head of digital development to discuss the new forum layout and the feedback from forumers.
As I said last week we were very concerned to see all the negative comments to the new format and agreed that the user experience was far from ideal
To recap we made the changes to allow us to serve an MPU ad slot on the forum (currently the Cobra, Seve Day ad campaigns etc) as ever since the switch from the old forum to the new one we haven't had an MPU slot and the lack of it has been costing us lost revenue
Had this been an issue on a less popular section of the site it wouldn't have been such a problem but the forum section delivers the single biggest slice of site traffic so losing the potential to serve an MPU and therefore revenue from that was becoming a major issue.
Not a good state of affairs as the site relies on advertising and its single source of revenue.
To allow us to serve the MPU we copied the format of one of the big IPC sites (goodtoknow.co.uk) that uses vbulletin and has to serve an MPU.
We did that as development time/resource for GM is precious and the team who carry out that work are seriously stretched (they work across a wide number of brands) so being able to use code already being used on another site on the GM site required the least amount of development time to implement.
There were two key issues we have that seem unique to GM among other IPC brands
1. Pretty much every forumer has a signature with many running to multiple lines which with the new narrower width of the forum was making threads look particularly ugly and making everyone having to scroll lots to read longer threads
2. Many forumers are heavy users of the PM system so the fact that was sent haywire has understandably caused inconvenience and annoyance.
Anyway, the upshot of our meeting this morning is that we have made the decision to redesign the forum so we can return to having the forum displaying full width but still allowing us to serve an MPU ad slot
We have got a prototype design sketched out that will feature the top navigation bar (GM logo site links etc) where it currently is but with an MPU (and the GM video channel alongside it) below that
Below those two would be the forum in its old full width incarnation. It will mean a wee bit of scrolling to get below the top section and into 'the forum' but at least it should take it back to the 'good old days" in terms of posting and viewing.
However that style is not set in stone.
I obviously took on board comments form forumers who use other forums about 'better layouts' so if anyone has examples of other forums you use that feature an MPU and work well from a user perspective then please email me a link and I will review with the developers and publishing director.
The one to flag up at this stage is that I'm afraid this won't be fixed overnight.
As I said further up this post the developers work across many brands and are stretched at the best of times.
The pulls on their time are even greater than usual at the moment as they have team members off on annual leave and they have to build us our Open Championship microsite.
I did email Peter Dawson at the R&A if they'd mind moving the Open back a couple of weeks in order for us to get the forum sorted sooner but haven't had a reply yet.
Assuming its a no from Peter then the revamp of the forum will be done as soon as the Open microsite has been built.
Given that I don't expect any new look to be live until after the Open so please do bear with us until that point.
I hope you are reassured that we are taking the feedback very seriously and that a solution is on the way.
Thanks to all those who have left constructive feedback on the situation and please keep letting us know of any issues you have.
As ever good rule of thumb is to clear your browser cache (usually ctrl + F5 or ctrl + R will force a complete cache clear and refresh) and if the problem persists them get in touch
Please do feel free to mail me direct (email below) as that's the fastest way of getting something looked at
If you can give me as much detail of the problem (including info on what browser and browser version you are using) plus screen grab images of the forum not displaying as it should, then I'll have more info to pass on to the developers
Thanks
