General condition of the site...

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I know I've been complaining about this for years, but the condition of the site has gone from bad to poor. I'm getting a lot of phpBB errors in addition to the layout being generally unprofessional and the software outdated.

I'm aware that sliqua-jcooter is an intelligent guy and I know that the site is not well funded. But it's at the point where honestly if I were involved in it, I would end my involvement due to not wanting my name to be associated with it (on the technical side).

Please do something.

I too am having these issues.

I'm getting " could not obtain forum information " a lot also.

Are you complaining about WrongPlanet or sliqua-jcooter's own website?

WrongPlanet. I don't know anything about his site, I just know he admins this one. I assume Alex is basically not involved at this point.

He doesn't. He owns the hosting company from which WP runs.

Totally my mistake then.

Who admins WP? Nobody? Alex can't possibly still be doing it can he, there haven't been significant changes since like the mid 2000s. I assume if he were involved or cared the site would look professional. Not that his personal site is a bastion of great design either, but maybe he's just let that one coast too.

Alex is indeed the Administrator of this site. Any critiques or suggestions may be directed to him through a PM.

Or you can start you own website, if you believe that you can do better.

I do, within guidelines determined by Alex. (who retains admin capability, of course)
But if what you mean by "admin" is "develop site software" then that would be Alex - except neither that, nor WP, is his full-time job; he has a day-job like everyone else.

So? Is adding Facebook-like functionality (as suggested elsewhere) considered "significant" these days?
I've never believed in making "significant changes" to anything unless there are sound reasons for doing so.
It seems Alex is of the same opinion.

It's been stated elsewhere: WP is about the content of posts and although you might not approve of the look-n-feel, it is clearly functional and adequate for that purpose.
Perhaps it should be "more adequate" - but this version, as you see it, never will be.

As Fnord said (and I'm sure he didn't mean it as bluntly as I'm reading it ) - you are free to go and do better.
For free...



(edit to clarify a point)

Last edited by Cornflake on 05 Oct 2013, 6:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, I'd 'softened' the post considerably! In fact, I'd really like to see at least one other website that is better-constructed and better-run than good old WrongPlanet - if such a feat can be achieved!

In spite of all of the 'bugs', Alex has set a high standard for functionality, and if anyone else thinks they can do better, then I say, "Go for it"!

I thought you might...

With that attitude, I understand why things are the way they are.

The glitches are glitches and should be fixed. Sure you don't work for me, but you can't defend those. We all know about the 3 or 4 big ones.

Last I checked, WP wasn't working properly on mobile devices. That's a glitch.

I will grant you one thing, none of the forum software out there is great (none seems to let you drag and drop images off your hard drive into the message, live feeding via WebSocket, etc). Some of it is good. Even the vBulletin demo (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/) has a cleaner design than WP, which is to be expected as we all agree WP's design dates to the mid 2000s.

It's not necessary for the survival of WP for it to look clean and be easier to use than it is, but I can't see myself not taking the time if I adminned and loved WP. Sure you are not Facebook, but people would have moved on from Facebook to something different had Facebook not done several major overhauls in the past 8 or 9 years. As a site admin, having it not be broken is only the beginning of the job. Being able to attract new users and retain the existing ones is also part of the job, and the primary reason WP has been successful with that thus far is that there is no real competing autism community online. You guys have a monopoly on that.

You're talking to people who have 0 input into what gets changed on this site.



WP works just fine on mobile devices - I regularly check posts from my mobile devices.



Alex has made a very deliberate and conscious decision *not* to host images for people. Not only are there technical reasons not to do this (keeping archived images for years of back posts would be a huge headache) - but there are liability reasons as well (dealing with DMCA takedown notices is the bane of my existence).

As for WebSockets - just no. Perpetually tying up server resources to do what can already be done with AJAX is beyond stupid - it also completely guts any attempt at caching, load balancing, or database optimization.



Alex is, and has been for quite a while, working on a replacement for the forum software.

I agree entirely, but this has nothing to do with adding "significant changes".

And that's disingenuous.
WP is just a website and like many others, it might be more fiddly to use on mobile devices simply because it's aimed at desktop devices. I also regularly access WP from my Android device with no issues. (but you don't like those either )
I know there are various add-ons etc available for more current versions of the site software to assist with access from mobile devices - but not this version.

As regards posting images I've never found copy/pasting a preformatted link to be a problem, neither with adding [img] tags by hand.
It's also considerably more efficient to leave the image where it is and simply link to it.

Personally I wouldn't be bothered if the design originated from 1800 - it's still clean and uncluttered.

I'm not going to reply inline because I'm not going to be bothered editing tags with bracket characters etc.

That you have a "desktop site" that doesn't target mobile devices and consider it good enough is demonstrative of your monopoly position in the "autism discussion forums" market, and not of the strength of your site. If you were trying to make WP be a great site, it would have great mobile support. I'm sure whatever statistics you have on mobile users for this site are artificially low because of the poor appearance and functionality on mobile devices, but mobile devices are not a niche market. You don't seem concerned with markets anyway, you seem concerned with "it's not broken, and no better site is stealing our users".

Copying and pasting preformatted links and editing tags manually is not intuitive for many users. Dragging and dropping an image inline into the message is. But again, nobody is doing that better than you are so why do it.

I'll grant you that the site isn't very cluttered, but it's a graphic design nightmare. If I were you I would turn to a professional graphic designer for feedback about the site design, rather than relying on my own opinion. I'm a coder. I have good graphic design sense for a coder, but I don't even allow myself to get involved because the professionals are better than I am.

I agree. The majority of my posting is done from an iPad, and I regularly check the site on my phone when I'm out. I'd be pretty annoyed if a mobile site were introduced. Most of them are watered-down, lacking in features, and don't share the colour scheme or UI of the desktop site. I never, ever use them even if they are available.

For users of old and/or slow devices:

http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http%3A%2 ... 8&oe=UTF-8

That you still seem to think that I or Cornflake have anything whatsoever to do with this site even when pointed out is a pretty good indicator of the merits of your point of view.