We're working on some enhancement to the site, and before we get too deep, I wanted to ask you guys what you want to see from Tested. This is very early, and we don't have an ETA yet, but I wanted to solicit feedback before we start working, to make sure we don't miss anything big or miss the opportunity to include some awesome new feature.
To recap, since March, we've reinstated the RSS feeds, rolled out the new notification system, reinstated PMs, rolled out a new gallery design, improved site search (it prioritizes articles and videos over forum posts now), and restored a bunch of basic functionality.
Obviously the stuff that's been on the to-add list since March will be addressed. Here's the short list of that stuff. It's off the top of my head though, so I may have forgotten something.
Podcast page - Direct link to file, direct link to iTunes, direct link to RSS, embedded video (when available), notification on site nav, etc
Number of posts per page of forums/number of comments per post page in forums
Browse content by category - We've been quietly categorizing everything for the last few months, but we don't expose those categories in the design. We realize that this is a mistake.
Further search improvements (more granular search options)
Image/Video embeds in comments
A bunch of moderator stuff that you guys probably don't care about...
Ability to promote great forum posts and user blogs to the homepage
What else would you like to see? What would make Tested a more awesome place for you to come and post?
EDIT: NEW ADDITIONS FROM YOU GUYS - Adding to the list doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be added, just that I wanted to keep track of it
Attach articles/videos/user blog posts to forums
Pin threads to top of boards
Pin thread to top of all boards
Reorganize boards
Polls in Forums
Address spam (email confirmation, slow rollout of new features, etc)
Jump to last page for multi-page forum threads
Will + Norm faces on the header
usernames are truncated in header (conmused becomes conmus...). Alternately, use more of the characters instead of ellipses
Maybe bring back deleting posts? It's kind of dumb to not have deleting, if we allow edits, right?
Darker theme for site...
iPad compatible text editor (paragraphs, relies, quotes
Or, if for some reason you don't want to do that, having a way to easily browse blogs at least (and search them). Right now blogs are kind of meaningless because you can't index them at all.
A bunch of moderator stuff that you guys probably don't care about...
@will: Great to see all the cool features coming back.
Maybe I have missed it but Do we have Polls back yet? If not i wouldn't mind seeing that again despite the fact it will be used and abused for the stupidest of things.
Aside from that an option to tweak the contrast or theme of the website would be great and maybe a formal knowledge of being able to request access to the more advanced editing tools for articles or blogs (with a bit of a primer on using them)
@CrippleCaptain: I'm not a huge fan of polls, but I will put them on the list.
@LtSquigs: This is a good catch. What's the feeling on attaching all news posts to one forum, all videos to one forum, and all user blogs to one forum?
@will: I think for articles/videos that works fine, because that would also double as a nice short indexed list of all the recent articles.
For blogs, I think that would work in the short term, but if you wanted to really grow blogs as a big thing you would want to be able to separate them into subject areas like forum posts.
Crazy thought time, mayhaps for blogs you can have them attach to the forum categories like they used to, except at the top of the forum you can select whether you want to see forum threads or blogs? That way you make it easy to separate the two while also keeping the nice categorization. Not the best solution and can certainly be improved, but an idea.
This is a common one, If I didn't miss it above or posted while I write it.
This is in regards to viewing the main list of threads page in any section, with threads that contain more than one page of post. It would be nice to have a jump to "x" page link placed after/under the title of the thread as apposed to selecting the thread and landing on page 1, then selecting to jump to last page.
I really liked how articles automatically turned into a thread on the forums. That way discussions could carry on even after the news was deemed as being "old news" :)
Will and Norm's faces up on the header! Not trolling, I'm serious. I still feel like it's selling you guys short by having J&A up there, what with all the damn content you guys produce. I know it's a business decision that's bigger than me and my petty opinions, and you and Norm probably had/have no say in it, but it still bums me out. So there. As for actual site stuff, the recent improvements are great, and everything else that's still missing is up in your post, so that's encouraging. I really like this site more now than in the Whiskey days actually, but... the faces... those damn smirks!
I really liked how articles automatically turned into a thread on the forums. That way discussions could carry on even after the news was deemed as being "old news" :)
In that same vein i would like to see a forum of all the article comments coupled with the option to not display it contents and the option to only show its latest 10 or so active threads in the big mixed forum.
Will and Norm's faces up on the header! Not trolling, I'm serious. I still feel like it's selling you guys short by having J&A up there, what with all the damn content you guys produce. I know it's a business decision that's bigger than me and my petty opinions, and you and Norm probably had/have no say in it, but it still bums me out. So there. As for actual site stuff, the recent improvements are great, and everything else that's still missing is up in your post, so that's encouraging. I really like this site more now than in the Whiskey days actually, but... the faces... those damn smirks!
Hehe, I know what you mean. Will and Norm should be on the other side of the logo just to even things out :)
I wouldn't mind seeing my whole username in the header, not just "conmus...-". If there's room for 4 punctuation characters, then put the last two letters in.
You're using Numbus Sans Condensed Bold, so most characters are pretty narrow. Maybe add an exception for M or W or other, wider characters.
Less fraudulent ads would be nice, right now in Canada we see two ads on how to fraud the Canadian government for grant money (or Gorvernment has its written in the ad) titled: “How I got a $ 12, 000 Check From The Canadian Gorvernment.” and “His Life Will Never Be the Same”. There are a good number of really awful and misleading ads.
I don’t know just how much of a say the tested crew has on advertisement but with Adam and Jamie attached to the site you guys should have no problems getting legit ads.
Other than that you guys rock, keep up the good work.
Some sort of narrower version of the forum that still has the navigation bars would be nice. I feel like my window on my desktop isn't that small but the navigation bar is all the way at the bottom like in the mobile version.
For all that is holy, do something about the Facebook and Twitter tabs at the top of the page. Almost every time I come to the site after clicking on it from my bookmarks bar, I roll over the twitter tab when moving my mouse to the forums. That's insanely annoying. Also, that might be bad design? A roll over covering up other (more important) buttons? But I'm no expert. I also know you guys have ideas for better working in your guys' twitter feeds into the site, so maybe that'll solve my problem when implemented.
To echo Squigs, I think how the articles and blogs posted to the forum before was fine. If you like his idea of being able to sort by forum posts and blog posts, be sure there is an "All" option and that it's the default.
Also, don't allow forum/blog post titles to be longer than what's actually displayed on the forum. Although that's more of me being OCD.
@LtSquigs: Yeah, but it's cooler when users can do it, because then it's like you never said something so then I won't make an ass of myself as much users can delete things they think are pointless in retrospect.
I'm updating the original post with suggestions, thanks guys.
@HeadNodShy: I don't exactly understand what you're asking for. Can you elaborate?
@SmilingPig: When you see a scummy ad, take a screengrab and email it to me. I'll get our ad trafficers to pull it. We don't see Canadian ads, so have no way to police them (yes, I know it's a bad system.
@will: Um, well my windows is currently over 1000 pixels wide but the navigation bar (where the sections like general discussion, coffee, PC and Mac live) ant the top posters are all at the bottom of the screen like so:
http://i46.tinypic.com/20sbtqs.png
It's more of an annoyance than some new feature but it's always bothered me that I needed to either expand the window larger than I wanted or scroll all the way down to see those options.
Most of my suggestions have already been made, but I do have one: an iPad-compatible text editor so that we can make more substantial comments from iPads and some of the other devices which aren't compatible with the current text editor. Even just adding support for the replies system and paragraphing would be absolutely terrific.
@HeadNodShy: Oh, that's because of the way the site automatically shifts to work with different browser resolutions. I'll bring it up with the design team, but I'm not sure we can do anything to fix it, and still support tablet resolutions properly.
Oh yeah, maybe someone mentioned it already, but what about email notifications for replies? I miss those quite a bit since I almost always have an email tab open, but not always a Tested tab.
Wow, never mind. I didn't realize that was already available in settings. Didn't have the box checked... ;P
@will: Yeah, I figured as much. Something like how GMail shrinks could be a good intermediary. It reduces the space margin between letting the bar stay to the left the inbox. An idea any way.
Not sure if this has been addressed, but is an in-house video player coming? Youtube loads really poorly for me for some reason, and I have had a hell of a time trying to watch videos for the last few months. Trying to get caught up on some Adam's Workshop and Modernist Cuisine videos, and it's a constant battle of starting and stopping and buffering in fits and spurts and dropping the resolution and generally unpleasant. By contrast, an HTML5 player just works... would really love to see something like that come back.
We're working on some enhancement to the site, and before we get too deep, I wanted to ask you guys what you want to see from Tested. This is very early, and we don't have an ETA yet, but I wanted to solicit feedback before we start working, to make sure we don't miss anything big or miss the opportunity to include some awesome new feature.
To recap, since March, we've reinstated the RSS feeds, rolled out the new notification system, reinstated PMs, rolled out a new gallery design, improved site search (it prioritizes articles and videos over forum posts now), and restored a bunch of basic functionality.
Obviously the stuff that's been on the to-add list since March will be addressed. Here's the short list of that stuff. It's off the top of my head though, so I may have forgotten something.
What else would you like to see? What would make Tested a more awesome place for you to come and post?
EDIT: NEW ADDITIONS FROM YOU GUYS - Adding to the list doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be added, just that I wanted to keep track of it
Well a fairly big one you missed:
Attaching news/blogs to the forums.
Or, if for some reason you don't want to do that, having a way to easily browse blogs at least (and search them). Right now blogs are kind of meaningless because you can't index them at all.
ಥ_ಥ
When I think of more stuff ill post some more.
@will: Great to see all the cool features coming back.
Maybe I have missed it but Do we have Polls back yet? If not i wouldn't mind seeing that again despite the fact it will be used and abused for the stupidest of things.
Aside from that an option to tweak the contrast or theme of the website would be great and maybe a formal knowledge of being able to request access to the more advanced editing tools for articles or blogs (with a bit of a primer on using them)
Other then that keep up the good work man.
After the recent spate of forum spam...
Require email confirmation for new accounts? Some other security/I-am-human measure to make account creation slightly more challenging?
@frytup: That's on the list.
@CrippleCaptain: I'm not a huge fan of polls, but I will put them on the list.
@LtSquigs: This is a good catch. What's the feeling on attaching all news posts to one forum, all videos to one forum, and all user blogs to one forum?
@will: I think for articles/videos that works fine, because that would also double as a nice short indexed list of all the recent articles.
For blogs, I think that would work in the short term, but if you wanted to really grow blogs as a big thing you would want to be able to separate them into subject areas like forum posts.
Crazy thought time, mayhaps for blogs you can have them attach to the forum categories like they used to, except at the top of the forum you can select whether you want to see forum threads or blogs? That way you make it easy to separate the two while also keeping the nice categorization. Not the best solution and can certainly be improved, but an idea.
This is a common one, If I didn't miss it above or posted while I write it.
This is in regards to viewing the main list of threads page in any section, with threads that contain more than one page of post. It would be nice to have a jump to "x" page link placed after/under the title of the thread as apposed to selecting the thread and landing on page 1, then selecting to jump to last page.
Example: My Thread Topic(1 2 3 ... Last Page)
@Dracono: we used to have that yeah. it was a > after the thread title I believe. It's return would do much good.
Consider consolidating some of these forums into one.
Add a section for
Include
I really liked how articles automatically turned into a thread on the forums. That way discussions could carry on even after the news was deemed as being "old news" :)
Will and Norm's faces up on the header! Not trolling, I'm serious. I still feel like it's selling you guys short by having J&A up there, what with all the damn content you guys produce. I know it's a business decision that's bigger than me and my petty opinions, and you and Norm probably had/have no say in it, but it still bums me out. So there. As for actual site stuff, the recent improvements are great, and everything else that's still missing is up in your post, so that's encouraging. I really like this site more now than in the Whiskey days actually, but... the faces... those damn smirks!
@Vetterli said:
In that same vein i would like to see a forum of all the article comments coupled with the option to not display it contents and the option to only show its latest 10 or so active threads in the big mixed forum.
@PillClinton said:
Hehe, I know what you mean. Will and Norm should be on the other side of the logo just to even things out :)
I wouldn't mind seeing my whole username in the header, not just "conmus...-". If there's room for 4 punctuation characters, then put the last two letters in.
You're using Numbus Sans Condensed Bold, so most characters are pretty narrow. Maybe add an exception for M or W or other, wider characters.
Less fraudulent ads would be nice, right now in Canada we see two ads on how to fraud the Canadian government for grant money (or Gorvernment has its written in the ad) titled: “How I got a $ 12, 000 Check From The Canadian Gorvernment.” and “His Life Will Never Be the Same”. There are a good number of really awful and misleading ads.
I don’t know just how much of a say the tested crew has on advertisement but with Adam and Jamie attached to the site you guys should have no problems getting legit ads.
Other than that you guys rock, keep up the good work.
Most points have been hit already that I would like to see.
Would like to see Pinning threads back again also.
Some sort of narrower version of the forum that still has the navigation bars would be nice. I feel like my window on my desktop isn't that small but the navigation bar is all the way at the bottom like in the mobile version.
For all that is holy, do something about the Facebook and Twitter tabs at the top of the page. Almost every time I come to the site after clicking on it from my bookmarks bar, I roll over the twitter tab when moving my mouse to the forums. That's insanely annoying. Also, that might be bad design? A roll over covering up other (more important) buttons? But I'm no expert. I also know you guys have ideas for better working in your guys' twitter feeds into the site, so maybe that'll solve my problem when implemented.
To echo Squigs, I think how the articles and blogs posted to the forum before was fine. If you like his idea of being able to sort by forum posts and blog posts, be sure there is an "All" option and that it's the default.
Also, don't allow forum/blog post titles to be longer than what's actually displayed on the forum. Although that's more of me being OCD.
Also also, bring back post deleting.
@Falcon said:
Mods can delete posts.
@LtSquigs: Yeah, but it's cooler when users can do it, because then it's like you never said something so then
I won't make an ass of myself as muchusers can delete things they think are pointless in retrospect.I would like the option of a darker background theme for the site. The all white burns my eyes.
I'm updating the original post with suggestions, thanks guys.
@HeadNodShy: I don't exactly understand what you're asking for. Can you elaborate?
@SmilingPig: When you see a scummy ad, take a screengrab and email it to me. I'll get our ad trafficers to pull it. We don't see Canadian ads, so have no way to police them (yes, I know it's a bad system.
I feel silly not having suggested this before: hats.
On a more serious note, compacter forums. By that i mean smaller text that shows more letters. A bit more like Screened used (Is?) to be.
@will: Um, well my windows is currently over 1000 pixels wide but the navigation bar (where the sections like general discussion, coffee, PC and Mac live) ant the top posters are all at the bottom of the screen like so:
http://i46.tinypic.com/20sbtqs.png
It's more of an annoyance than some new feature but it's always bothered me that I needed to either expand the window larger than I wanted or scroll all the way down to see those options.
Most of my suggestions have already been made, but I do have one: an iPad-compatible text editor so that we can make more substantial comments from iPads and some of the other devices which aren't compatible with the current text editor. Even just adding support for the replies system and paragraphing would be absolutely terrific.
@Jensonb: Oh yeah, that's been on the list for ages. Added though.
@HeadNodShy: Oh, that's because of the way the site automatically shifts to work with different browser resolutions. I'll bring it up with the design team, but I'm not sure we can do anything to fix it, and still support tablet resolutions properly.
Oh yeah, maybe someone mentioned it already, but what about email notifications for replies? I miss those quite a bit since I almost always have an email tab open, but not always a Tested tab.
Wow, never mind. I didn't realize that was already available in settings. Didn't have the box checked... ;P
@will: Yeah, I figured as much. Something like how GMail shrinks could be a good intermediary. It reduces the space margin between letting the bar stay to the left the inbox. An idea any way.
Thanks Mr. Smith.
Not sure if this has been addressed, but is an in-house video player coming? Youtube loads really poorly for me for some reason, and I have had a hell of a time trying to watch videos for the last few months. Trying to get caught up on some Adam's Workshop and Modernist Cuisine videos, and it's a constant battle of starting and stopping and buffering in fits and spurts and dropping the resolution and generally unpleasant. By contrast, an HTML5 player just works... would really love to see something like that come back.