Hi everyone,
It has been a while since I visited this forum. Reason for my lack of involvement on the GT forum is that I find the current forum has so many omissions and lack of features it makes it not user-friendly. In short: the forum sucks. I hate to be ranting since I'm not usually the type of person to do this. Along with others I already made clear my opinion and gave some feedback regarding the lack of features in another post. But that has been over [u]8 months and no additional improvements or features have been implemented since.[/u]
For those who don't know: Last year GuitarTricks "upgraded" their forum from the old forum. GT was forced to replace the old forum with the current one due to out of date software. Although perfectly understandable, I think GT made the wrong decision to release the new forum that has A LOT less features and capabilities. In my opinion they should have prioritized maintaining all the features the old forum had, and making sure they were present in the new forum, instead of making everything look nice.
I want to use this forum thread to suggest some serious improvements, point GT at where features are lacking and how it can transform in a functional and user-friendly forum again. So anyone is free to jump in and suggest additional improvements.
IMPORTANT IMPROVEMENTS[br]
- Basic indicators and icons: This is an absolute must! The old forum, and ANY general forum has indicators and icons that show which forum sections and threads have new posts, which forum threads are considered "hot" and even the ones I'm subscribed to / replied to. Additionally it also needs to show which posts are sticky and which threads are locked. The current forum looks clean, with this it will be possible with the blink of an eye to see this. The "Show new posts" feature is too basic and does not suffice.
- Messaging system: According to Ben Martin this feature should have been still present with the new forum but it got removed for some reason. Again, ANY general forum has this feature to send private messages to other members. I've used this feature several times with the old forum to discuss some things with other members, such as my experiences using GT in combination with a private guitar teacher. This also is an absolute must!
- Reputation system: Most forums have a reputation system in which people can give reputation to other peoples posts. This works both ways: Users can see which members and posts are considered useful, but also for GT staff, since they will be able to see if people agree with a suggestion or idea, or even when there is grounded criticism and feedback.
- Ability to generate polls: Polls are a nice way to involve the community and get a discussion going. Again, ANY general forum has this feature. This should also be implemented!
- More text options when posting a reply or creating a thread: The current option are incredibly basic. Things that could be improved are the ability to outline text right, center or left. Furthermore it should be possible to insert ordered and unordered lists. Unordered last use bullets, and ordered lists use numbers from 1 to... You get the idea. Most forums also have a message icon / emoticon that can be selected when creating a thread.
LESS IMPORTANT IMPROVEMENTS
- See users online and birthdays: Usually at the bottom of the main forum page it can sometimes be fun to track how many people are online, and whilst looking at a post which user is reading a thread. Most forums also have an indicator next to a persons name in a post to show if they are online. Additionally, in past years I have send several happy birthdays to other forum members.
- Preview posts: Always helpful to preview your posts to show how they will look like once posted, and additionally to check for any spelling mistakes.
- A "help" icon: To help new forum members or others with basic information on how to use the forum and a legend which shows the meaning of all indicators and icons once implemented. The latter should also be present at the bottom of each forum section.
These are my suggested improvements so far. Again I do not like to rant and rage but it baffles me how GT argues they keep the forum under development but there has not been a single improvement or added feature for the last 8 months. As someone who also has some IT experience it has frustrated me immensly! I do not hope GuitarTricks did this to save cost because in my opinion a vivid and user-friendly forum is incredibly important! For me it is reason enough to not re-activate my subscribtion, because I felt that after my previous remarks GT did nothing with my or other peoples feedback. And I do not wish to bash GuitarTricks. [u]The only reason I post this is that I want the forum to be good.[/u]
Again, others are free to join in and provide additional feedback. Additionally, I would also like to know from GT staff what they plan on doing with the forum development. If it remains as basic and featureless as it is now I will not be returning here, nor will I subscribe to GT again since there are alternatives.
Hope you guys appreciate this long post.
JJ
