- Joined
- Jun 15, 2014
- Messages
- 149
- Likes
- 481
- Degree
- 1
Introducing...
Behind the scenes I've been quietly brainstorming while collating data, constantly looking out for opportunities to improve our experience here on BuSo. There have been feature requests, stats informing me on what's being used or not, design considerations, and more.
If you've been here for a while (we're about two months out from our 4 year birthday!), you've seen people come and go. You've seen the culture shift and interests in different pursuits and monetizations wax and wane. But the one factor that has always held steady, above all others and in defiance of every other forum and communication hub for our industry, is that of professionalism. Thanks to you guys and gals, the builders, we boast the highest quality and most informative discussions online.
In our 4 years, we've watched members hire others who then pack their bags and move across the country. We've met with each other at various conferences, not only across the United States but globally. Many of our members have been speakers at these events. We continue to share information freely and engage in commerce with one another through the marketplace. It's been a wild ride, but as we all know... the ride never ends.
Special Thanks
- @Ryuzaki - for putting in a weeks worth of 14 hour days with me and especially for helping with the design work.
- @CCarter, @Bloghue, & @MetaData (yes, he's still alive & well!) - for giving me some firm Yes or No's when I couldn't decide on certain things.
- @Potatoe - for the ridiculous nickname of NuSo for the new rollout, which I can't get out of my head now.
- Every one of you - for holding down the fort while the administration team got quiet as we pounded out this update. The builders are everything.
Note:
- WHAT'S NEW -
First and foremost you'll find that a lot of the design has changed. The goal here was to minimize wasted space without a feeling of being cramped. Minimalism was our game, and even more so now. You'll find some links missing, some features removed, and useful items in new places. But at the end of the day it's way more efficient and pushes the content as the main focus even more.
I can't possibly show you everything, but I'll point out the part that you'll have already noticed and will see over and over again...
The Header:
In BuSo 2.0, we moved the logo in order to get the content a solid 55px higher (and even more in places like the homepage), since that's the reason we're here. We got rid of extraneous text where images would suffice. Even the screenshot above for 2.0 has more text and links than the live version has, because even as we neared launch and took these screen captures, we still aggressively kept hacking things down to the essentials.
Collapsible Sections
Inline Editing
Previously, when you wanted to edit your post, you had to deal with an overlay screen which had a constrained width and wasn't very convenient on mobile. Now, your post itself will become a text editor where you can make your changes live. This will better represent the way your post will look visually when you save the changes, especially on desktop.
Contained or Full Width
Note:
- WHAT'S GONE -
Following Bruce Lee's sage advice, "It is not daily increase but daily decrease, hack away the unessential," we made the call based on usage data to get rid of a lot of "stuff" that wasn't improving our experience. If anything, it was cluttering the interface and creating little places we could get lost in, removing our focus on the core content. Here's just some of what you'll find is gone:- WHAT'S GONE -
The News Feed
Not many people used this, and it had stunk of "social media" anyways, which is not why we're here. For those of you who never dealt with this, what it did was curate all of the recent posts of members you were following into one stream so you could keep up with them quickly.
But the data showed that, while people were following each other, they weren't using the News Feed. They were still navigating to that user's profile page and viewing their posts from there. You can still follow people, and your "follow list" will act like an entry point, shooting you over to each user's profile if you want to mine for gold in their posts. But the News Feed itself is toast.
Posts You've Liked
We had a member (I can't recall who) request this feature so he could use the Likes feature as a way to bookmark quality posts he wanted to return to in the future. Turned out, after we added that and announced it, not many people used it. We offer links to every individual post that can be bookmarked or posts can be pasted into a text document as well. It was a decent idea but one not widely adopted, so it's gone.
Latest Activity
This was a stream where you could see the newest posts and likes, from newest to oldest, whether you had viewed them or not. It was simply a catalogue of what was happening. Turns out nobody used it. We all use "Newest posts" to check out what we missed, where the posts are removed from that stream after we view them. Latest Activity was redundant and not useful, so it got the axe.
Profile Posts
This was another area that was too much like social media for my liking. Spammers signed up for it (but couldn't use it) and even some members who graduated out of Orientation tried to drop links in it (not indexable and nofollow). And the regular users and power users simply weren't using it much, and if they did there was hardly anything of value in there. So we deprecated that altogether. If anyone still wants to use this type of thing, consider your "user title" as an alternative spot. I'm not suggesting you put your mood and what song you're listening to in there, but maybe "Out of Office Until Saturday" if you need to broadcast anything to the builders.
- WHAT'S COMING -
Trader Rating System
This already exists, a lot of you have ratings, and your data is safe. We had a compatibility issue to sort out but it didn't warrant not going ahead and rolling out the update. We'll get the Trader Rating System live again ASAP. Maybe a matter of days, or a week or two tops.
Email Service Provider
Some of you have reported spotty email delivery. The reason for that has been our service provider indiscriminately assigns new users to random IP's who then immediately start blasting spam, getting the IP blacklisted. Apparently they'd rather spend all their time trying to clear their IP's than putting some protective measures in place. We'll be switching to another provider in the next few days which should entirely solve the problem. Thanks to our pals at SERPWoo for the recommendation.
Deals Exclusively for You
This one has been on the books for a long time, and we're going to start rolling forward on this hard. In the past, you'll remember that we've scored some exclusive coupons for the builders with some reputable companies. We want to keep doing this as a way to thank you guys, and collect them in one easy to find spot. Eventually you'll see a "Deals" tab launch at the top of the forum next to the Upgrades tab, that will contain an ever-growing list of exclusive coupons, discounts, & bonuses specifically for us. Some of these will provide us affiliate commissions and some won't, but we'll never toss something in there that we don't specifically endorse. We'll be doing the outreach for this, so it won't be willy-nilly.
- YOUR FEEDBACK -
A lot of these changes were informed by data, and we can't collect data on things that don't exist. Is there anything you feel is missing that would enhance your experience here on BuSo 2.0? Anything you particularly like or dislike with the new features or removed ones?
For instance, we had a set up arrows that would appear on the right side of the screen that you could click to magically zip to the bottom or top of the forum, but decided against using it. It got in the way on mobile and there's already a "jump to top" feature on mobile browsers, and scroll wheels on desktop cover that well too. But on tablets and laptops it might be good. Let me know!
I'm all ears and happy to entertain every idea. Just drop your thoughts in this thread and we'll discuss it with everyone.
Thanks again to every builder who posts once or regularly, every lurker validating our process, the vendors in the marketplace who help keep the lights on and give us great products and services to better our businesses, and especially to the moderators who tirelessly keep this place high quality and spam free.
