Welcome To The New Site!

[thepupil]

agreed. 

posts take up so much space and 80% of my desktop is just grey or white blank space. 

i am generally quite appreciative of this site and how it's run and try not to be a negative nancy, but the space efficiency is awful. 

Condensing on the activity stream mitigates this a little, but not fully. 

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by thepupil

[Rod]

3 hours ago, thepupil said:

agreed. 

posts take up so much space and 80% of my desktop is just grey or white blank space. 

i am generally quite appreciative of this site and how it's run and try not to be a negative nancy, but the space efficiency is awful. 

Condensing on the activity stream mitigates this a little, but not fully. 

 

Same for me. I can only get 8(!) posts on my laptop screen even in condensed mode. Why can't there be one line for a post anymore? I much prefer the old site even though it was more primitive. Being able to see what's new at a glance on one screen beats all the slick improvements unfortunately.

[Charlie]

"Prior site looked old and boring but was much quicker to scroll and read."

"i am generally quite appreciative of this site and how it's run and try not to be a negative nancy, but the space efficiency is awful. 

Condensing on the activity stream mitigates this a little, but not fully."

+1

"Being able to see what's new at a glance on one screen beats all the slick improvements unfortunately."

+10

I like old and boring like the Berkshire website. The old site was much better to read.

I also thought that I get old, so I don't like any kind of change anymore. 

Edited April 9, 2021 by Charlie

[DooDiligence]

The "unread posts bar" that appears when you drill into a thread is useful.

The infrequent, but useful, pop up notifications are handy.

The WYSIWYG improvements alone are worth having to adjust to a new interface.

Overall, I have no problem with readability on a 2013 MacBook Air or my 2020 iPad Pro. Looking forward to post / user voting.

Tweaks to module positions & re-slicking with different templates can probably be expected.

My only complaint is that the $4000 watermelon disappeared from the shop before I got a chance to buy one.

Edited April 9, 2021 by DooDiligence

[LC]

I echo the sentiments on readability. I attached two screenshots here to show.

The first is DD's comment above, in this thread. So much wasted space on the screen.

The second is opening the first page of a forum topic. To actually read the thread's content, we find the first post by muscleman finally occurs at the bottom 3% of the screen. 

[KCLarkin]

Congrats on the new site Parsad! It is much better than the old site. I especially like that I can quickly go through new activity without going into individual threads.

I disagree with the above comments about space efficiency. There are a few minor tweaks I might make to get the content above the fold but I generally find the new site more calming and much easier to use on my iphone.

 

[DooDiligence]

1 hour ago, LC said:

I echo the sentiments on readability. I attached two screenshots here to show.

The first is DD's comment above, in this thread. So much wasted space on the screen.

The second is opening the first page of a forum topic. To actually read the thread's content, we find the first post by muscleman finally occurs at the bottom 3% of the screen. 

The user stats box which is taking up space on the right side can be turned off or repositioned to another location in the template (the footer maybe). If it's like Joomla, an admin would have to click on the module (in the back end) and then choose what menu options would generate this module. You can choose to present it on some pages and not on others & you can create multiple instances of the same module (I'd name each according to positioning) where one instance would allow it to show up in the right column & another would put it in the footer (for example).

There's definitely a steep learning curve for how to admin a CMS. Fortunately, most admin clicks that result in broken pages can be quickly reversed. All in all, it's a very flexible & extensible way to run a site and I'm sure the bugs will be worked out over the coming weeks.

Edited April 9, 2021 by DooDiligence

[bizaro86]

I'd love it if when opening a new thread it went to the first unread post.

[DooDiligence]

51 minutes ago, bizaro86 said:

I'd love it if when opening a new thread it went to the first unread post.

It does for me. I'm using Safari.

When I click into an unread thread, it opens scrolled to the bottom of the page as in the image below.

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by DooDiligence

[LC]

There is a setting in your account settings you can select for how to navigate topics.

[CanadianMunger]

18 hours ago, bizaro86 said:

I'd love it if when opening a new thread it went to the first unread post.

Clicking the blue dot located to the left of a topic should take you to the first unread post.

Edited April 10, 2021 by CanadianMunger

[bizaro86]

16 hours ago, LC said:

There is a setting in your account settings you can select for how to navigate topics.

I checked and this setting was the default. Looks like I was clicking on the number for the last page out of habit as opposed to the thread title. So this did fix it. 

51 minutes ago, CanadianMunger said:

Clicking the blue dot located to the left of a topic should take you to the first unread post.

This works too. 

 

So basically user error - although I'm glad I said something as having it graciously corrected for me makes the site a lot more useable. 

[Jurgis]

Is there a way to make/mark the thread unread? This was available in the old site, but I don't see it in the new site.

[dcollon]

Sanjeev, I apologize if this has already been asked, but could we do a pay option to get rid of the ads?  I would be happy to participate. 

[Pelagic]

New site seems good and I appreciate some of the new features. I did however enjoy the color palette of the old site - something minor.

In the investment ideas forum I see the pinned thread (Investment Ideas Board) then an ad and below the ad the rest of the threads on that board.

However, since the general discussion doesn't have a pinned thread, the thread with the most recent post rises to a single line above the ad. Maybe creating a pinned thread (this particular thread would be a good candidate) as a placeholder for that low visibility above the ad spot would be a good idea and then the rest of the general boards content would be below the ad.

[Munger_Disciple]

I am still getting used to the new site. Have we lost the ability to modify/edit a previously posted message?

[DooDiligence]

1 hour ago, Munger_Disciple said:

I am still getting used to the new site. Have we lost the ability to modify/edit a previously posted message?

Edit by clicking the 3 dots (up & to the right), of your post (as shown in the image below).

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by DooDiligence

[Munger_Disciple]

Thanks DooDiligence!

[John Hjorth]

Sanjeev,

Again, is it OK with you to open/start a new topic in the General Discussion forum, alone for the purpose of testing and playing around with things on the new software platform? [With the purpose of us all, getting better quicker of handling the new platform, by sharing experiences?] [The alternative to me personally would be to open a temporary "sandbox" forum, to play/mess around with things here at CoBF, with the intent of constructive feedback to you].

[Lakesider]

Been having login issues same as other have described. Dev page saying im temporarly blocked. 

[DooDiligence]

I'd like to make a few suggestions with regards to the site navigation menus.

The top menu dropdown / flyover system is clunky for users & won't SEO well. A single line of menu options would be better:

(Home - Berkshire - Fairfax - Investment Ideas - Financial Strategies - Personal Finance - Events - Books - General)

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Not only would this make it easier for users to navigate, it would help search engines to index the site better (indexing on the word "Browse" does nothing for the sites visibility to search engines. For more info, search the words "click here".

Additional, lesser links, can be placed in the bottom nav (calendar - staff - online users - leaderboard - contact - help).

You may also want to consider a link to the sitemap in the footer.

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These are easy fixes and if you don't have a complete understanding of CMS menu systems, I'd be happy to advise by DM.

Edited April 19, 2021 by DooDiligence

[no_free_lunch]

On 4/3/2021 at 12:26 AM, Parsad said:

I'm checking out different plug-ins that will allow members to modify their view to their liking, including colors, themes, etc.  So everyone will be able to change their view that makes it easiest to read for them.  Cheers!

Appreciate it.

I think I just needed to get used to the change.  I am getting older now..  I find I like the new site more and more as I use it.

[Sunrider]

I would suggest you try and open the site on an iPad hold it horizontal and measure how efficient you can scan topics and read them. On my 12 inch it’s basically all irrelevant stuff and a huge add taking ca 25% of space before I even see a single topic.

 

my efficiency in perusing these boards has dropped significantly and I actually find myself browsing here less

 

thanks

Edit screenshots attached first two full screens. I understand having a server costs money but do the adds need to take 25 - 30 pct of the real estate? Looks more like one of these clickbait sites these days

Edited April 22, 2021 by Sunrider

[Castanza]

Is it just me or does the search function for tickers not work? 

[DooDiligence]

The new ad slider at the bottom of the page was a bit jarring at first, but I got used to it quickly and now find it less obtrusive than inline ads.

 

AJAX page updating is significantly better than having to refresh when back-paging, as on the old site.

 

Maybe it's just me, but I still find the menu system to be inefficient from a standpoint of usability & SEO.

 

Starting at this page,

 

https://thecobf.com/forum/

 

The link "Investment Forum" offers a Javascript dropdown for "Politics".

 

Crawlers are going to expect to see investment related material but will be lead to something completely different and subsequently the pages will get a downvote from them, which means they'll be indexed significantly lower (if at all), than competing sites.

 

 

 

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A site should have a menu system with descriptive top level links in order to SEO well, and also to provide "don't make me think" usability. This menu system isn't even in the ballpark unless you're selling calendars, staffs & lumber.

 

 

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A huge portion of crawler upvotes come from inbound links. A site should have simple methods of allowing other webmasters to create links for inclusion in their content. The more inbound links with similar content, the better.

 

A solid menu system that describes site content helps achieve this.

 

Just my banged up and tarnished 2 cents towards improving user experience & site visibility to search engine(s).