is it just me….

[opposedtwin]

Well, I have been waiting for someone to bring up this topic. This new site is just awful. The teeny tiny letters in an ocean of white is enough to make me not even bother looking at all the topics. It’s actually taxing to get through a thread. My first impression when it came on line was “well this will be the deathknell of this club”. I hope I’m wrong but I bet we lose a bunch of the older crowd. And if there was a goal of attracting the younger facebook types, I would be surprised if we’ve reached any at all. This site is essentially void of any humanity. There is zero color and contrast (white background with reply boxes of a grey so light you barely know it’s there), nearly no pictures of old outboards and very little activity of any relevance.

The users and members have been plenty patient. This was in the works for months and it should be way further along than it is. I have no idea what people wanted in the survey. Did the EC ever disclose the results?

Did we hire a service to design this new site or is it exclusively built by our volunteers? How much money did we spend to get to this point?

I could go on but I’m quite sure I’m already the black sheep of the club by this point.

I hope it gets better (and yes, we’ll continue to be patient because we really have no alternative) and in the end is everything we wanted it to be. I just hope the feedback we’ve given is taken for what it is and that efforts are made to address the shortcomings some of us see.

“Shoot if you must this old grey head…”

Scott Braaten

[h20lew]

I am in full agreement with all of the concerns voiced. I”m just sad about the whole thing.

It’s pretty obvious the posting traffic has slowed to a trickle and I’m concerned it will remain that way.

I think a lot of us would agree we should just go back to the old format. I know people with the best intentions put in hard time and effort to make things better – but by any honest measure I don’t see how this is better for anyone.

Working with this new format I’m reminded of New Coke, Microsoft Windows 8, The Ford Mustang II, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 – all examples of things that were new but not necessarily better.

[crosbyman]

Im back….if you click on our little faces on the left of the page …are we all unknowns and deleted users or is this a yet to complete feature ?? Paid dues members where in bold face characters (blue wasn’t it ?)

To whomever is building this site…. why not give us a status update of what is yet to come to at the very least make the board as easy as it was plus whatever is being …still worked on to make it GRRRRREAT!!!!

like in MAGA Make AOMCI Great Again

I want my emoticons back !!!

Joining AOMCI has priviledges 🙂

[nj-boatbuilder57]

No offense intended, but here’s a clue to the ineptitude of the coders:

There are 2 ways to get to this site: a link at the bottom of the main page and a pulldown at the top of the main page. They each resolve to different URL addresses and result in entirely different forum appearances.

Try for yourselves:

From the pulldown: https://aomci.org/resources/ask-a-member/
From the bottom of the page: https://aomci.org/forums/forum/public-forums/ask-a-member-d1/

According to the very very bottom of the page, this was designed by “Infinite Web Designs”. IMO, they have no clue how to code a BB. I would strongly suggest that AOMCI either a.) go back to the phpBB (blue board format) or set up a BB using XenForo (the modern BB forum used by just about everyone). But this mess has got to go.

Honestly, I’d prefer to just go back to iBoats & wade through the non-vintage posts.

And….for the umpteenth time: The “old” blue site still has the “new website soon” page showing. How many members & users are lost in the wilderness because they keep clicking that URL and are “waiting”, unaware that this site is now open (irrespective of the mess)

Original blue site URL: https://aomci.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=1 See for yourself! Messed up thing is this: I KNOW this new board is being monitored, because my negative comments keep getting deleted. To those that are monitoring: re-steer the old URL! You’re undoubtedly loosing people…..

• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by nj-boatbuilder57.

[Richard Paquette]

Thank you all for your comments, we are working to incorporate them as appropriate.

Bear in mind that when the YaBB forum was launched it did not have all the data form the old forum migrated, credentials and accounts were not migrated. The club had two parallel sets of user accounts and a third stand alone database to manage memberships. The end goal here is harmonise these databases and reduce the workload for the volunteers.

When the YaBB boards were launched it was a start from scratch situation, and it took months, nay years to customise it and for it to evolve to where it was. The new forums have the potential to do all the tings the old forums did, we just need to configure it that way.

As far as the roll out of this process, we could have had the forums all tested and ready to go, but not with migrated data. We were not even sure on November 1st when we shut it down if we would be able to migrate the forum to the new format, or, if like we did in the past have to start from scratch.

So while we appreciate the comments, please try to be a bit more respectful of not only us volunteers who are managing this process, but to the professionals who are trying their best to do the impossible and make you all happy.

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