New and Improved WebmasterWorld.com website.

Finally out of Beta, the new/improved WebmasterWorld.com is live now.

[jimsthoughts]

As many of you know we’ve been developing the exciting, new responsive design for WebmasterWorld for some time. Today, we’re officially announcing it’s out of beta, and now live.

This project has been a massive undertaking, not just because we’re switching to responsive that you can see and use on your smartphone, but for all the other changes that are under-the-hood to make it all work. In summary, we took on the new design, we’ve moved servers, and we’ve taken the site to https. All done to help you, and the community here at WebmasterWorld.

We still have many more tweaks and developments to come, many to improve under-the-hood operations to keep the site clutter-free, and to help you discuss hot news topics and issues that relate to you and your work, whether that be in-house, agency, or independent.

Thank you for your patience: The project has had it teething problems, I won’t deny, but all the time the team has worked endlessly to keep it all running. I’d like to thank Neil Marshall (Engine), Bill Atchison (IncrediBILL), Thom Craver and all those who helped participate in making the new/improved WebmasterWorld.com website.

I’m Feeling Lucky Today!
Jim Boykin

[chewy]

Love the new system - but it is really odd that the place sort of feels like a ghost town when compared with the days of yore.

Where is everybody?

Is there some sort of feature that has been blocked that kept people coming back?

[shri]

Hi Guys,

One request... can we make the "Submit" button in the quick reply a little bit more obvious. I have typed a response in the quick reply box and then ended up clicking on the post reply button right below (in dark blue), only to be taken to a new reply page. :)

[tangor]

Is it just me?

The vote function is not as intuitive as I'd like to see. There is a click to vote but that appears to be a +1 when I want to do a -1, ie. as DISLIKE.

Looking at how the voting seems to be going since the roll out in June I have a feeling it is not working as we'd like (I know a few posts have ticked off more than me!) and yet those posters seem to be hitting higher in votes in the side bar.

That said, is the side bar recording votes which are either yea or nay, or only positive votes?

As it is right now, it appears screwy and offers little value.

[topr8]

the 'forums index' page [webmasterworld.com...]

is a complete mess in opera 31.0 ... unless maybe i've disabled something that is screwing with the layout? (js is allowed for WebmasterWorld in my settings)

[topr8]

as for voting, i'm not sure about it ... taking this thread alone, at the time of writing this message there are 7 people who i consider are outstanding posters on WebmasterWorld, and yet they have 10 or less votes (that's not counting brett or jimsthoughts as they rarely post, since the voting began i mean)

(ps. before i upset anyone, there are also some outstanding members in this thread who have more than 10 votes too of course)

[Leosghost]

The voting is a disaster ( as I said it would be ) only recent and controversial threads garner votes for the participants, thus those who have contributed massively to WebmasterWorld down the years, ( but whose threads are not seen by more recent members ) in the main do not have anywhere near as many votes as those who have joined or began posting in "controversial threads" since votes were instigated..

Some people are upvoting the best "zingers", or those who agree with their pet "sujet du jour"..some admins got a flurry of votes at the beginning, because they were posting in current threads when voting began, and it appears that some wanted to be seen ( from behind the curtain as voting for admins, "being nice to teacher" ) others not a thing..despite years of great and helpful posts..

Other members and mods who have contributed massively down the years have not even got into double figures, because they are not posting in the controversial threads, the voting has become ( precisely as I said it would) a measure of "popularity at the moment" ..just like the most popular girl or guy in high school, rarely goes to the best, but usually goes to the "cutest"..

It was said that voting would allow newcomers to distinguish posters of value..it hasn't done that at all..it is in fact misleading..as are likes on facebook..

Voting on WebmasterWorld should be scrapped..we don't need votes to know whose posts are valuable..

I might add that like tangor, I'm currently in the group of the "highest number of votes", but then "cantankerous / outspoken" can also be "popular"..as are "single issue" posters..it isn't a good guide to quality though..otherwise the overall highest scores would go to trolls..

[lucy24]

I look at that "Votes:" line and think: Now that I know that, what do I do? Is there a place I can look up and find which specific posts got upvoted, and figure out what's useful or appealing about them so I can do it more often? You know: The same things you do when you find that page A gets more visits than the seemingly more useful and attractive page B, or page C shows up more often in SERPs than the seemingly more appropriate page D. Facts by themselves are pretty useless if you can't do anything with them.

Edit: There's a "highest number of votes" list? Where?

[topr8]

i've just looked at my profile page and my most recent login IP addresses.

several of which are in PL ... the last time i was in poland was 33 years ago! (it was the cheapest flight to asia, stopping of in warsaw)
perhaps they are old ip's which have now been reallocated to poland?

[Leosghost]

@incrediBill, ..William, when you get back from being "on the road", can you please ( in the name of whichever deity, if any , that you lift a glass to ) look into doing something about the ongoing ridiculous and irritating situation..

Whereby when we edit our posts, instead of the edit being accepted and us coming back to the page that the post was actually on..

We instead get bounced back to the first page of the thread..

Leaving us to scroll up or down the first page of the thread..until we get to the pagination indicators, where we have to click again to get back to the page we began the edit on..worse still, on mobile devices, the page we began the edit on, on is sometimes not visible in the page count, and we have to click to an intermediate page, just in order to get the number of the page we began the edit on to be available to us, to click on and finally get back to where we began our edit..

This particular incredibly non user friendly sequence appears to have been forgotten , despite it having been mentioned before by others..great work on the rest :) But please please, fix this ...please..TIA :)

[tangor]

Oddly enough, I'm not seeing that Leosghost. Then again I usually have a quote to whatever I am replying, paste it in the quick reply, then hit preview to get the editing tools, "quote" that section, then spew whatever I will spew, then preview again to see if it looks okay, then hit submit. Takes me directly to the message I just posted (ie, the end of the thread).

If I just quick reply and hit submit I end up at the end of the thread.

Aside: I have allowed, for this site only, the ajax.googleapis which I do not allow anywhere else. I still do not PERSONALLY care for the reliance on jquery/ajax./js but this is not my decision, or ability to change... and though I CAN make WW work without it, that is truly a PITA and we don't need to revisit that discussion again.

Just letting you know that the post/submit/end of thread is working for me (and does as well even without JS). I'm using FF 40x (whatever number it is right now), NoScript (with ajax allowed for WW ONLY), ABP+ and that's it.

[Leosghost]

No problems with the post / submit part..only when editing an already posted post..via the edit link..when I next hit "submit" it says message accepted and that I'm returning to thread..but it always sends me to the first page of the thread , never to the page I was on when I began the edit..

I rarely use "preview" and thus nor the buttons in it..I add by "hand code" the style tags from my memory..almost always did, even in the old version of the site..

Maybe it is just me, but I'm sure that others mentioned having the same thing happen to them when editing, but they might have mentioned it in other threads about the "make over"..this current one not being the only one that some of us had available to us..

[tangor]

Hold on Leosghost! Don't give up yet. I just edited a post of mine (just a moment ago!) and it did exactly what you said. First post of the the thread (a multipage thread). I can see how that would be annoying! Also note I had I left that thread, read another post, then reentered the thread before to make that edit. Don't know how that might make a difference, but providing all info for the coders is part of the game.

Additionally, I might not see as many of these jump to the first post (in multipage threads) as I have my messages displayed set at 70... few of the threads actually reach that number, and the ones that do become even larger when passions erupt. :)

[tangor]

Additional thought, and this is for everyone who's interested, I have defeated all the "pretty" stuff like awards, badges, etc. I run WW as close to text only as can be configured in the profile. I have messages set to max (need to look again, the old version allowed 100, I seem to remember the new version only goes to 70). As a "text only site", loading 70 messages is pretty quick and simple on most connections. Might try that to avoid the "jump to first post in thread" issue when editing posts.

[lucy24]

Maybe it is just me

It's not just you. This particular issue predates the software update, so it has been falling between the cracks for years.

[netmeg]

Is there still no way to link to a specific post in a thread?

[tangor]

If you right click the "collapse" button at the end of the the date and time, depending on your browser, you can bookmark, copy the link, etc FOR THAT MESSAGE.

[ken_b]

If you right click the "collapse" button...

Thanks! That is great and easy too!

[Raskon]

thank you!

Well done

[pageoneresults]

Love the new system - but it is really odd that the place sort of feels like a ghost town when compared with the days of yore.

I agree. Definitely a ghost town. I watched the "Recent Posts" over the weekend. I remember a time when a topic would post and be on page two before the end of the day.

Personally I'm really surprised the old ship is still sailing. Can't remember the last time I found a WebmasterWorld thread while searching Google for something that this forum should have appeared for. No, instead I get that frackin' Stack Exchange which is okay for the most part but not much of a "community feel", more of an answers type site.

The table on the home page needs to be made "responsive". Right now it just extends to the right of the viewport and causes you to scroll horizontally, bad webmaster, bad! Wrap the <table> in a div and then set the overflow.

[tangor]

May I ask, one more time, that the Recent posts page show more than 25? Old days I could set to 100.... and not have a page two, three or more when the "ghost town" gets active.

[tangor]

Not a broken record, legit query:

From Recent Posts page, the Unanswered Messages shows MORE than the unanswered messages... which I would suspect to be something time limited, say, over last 7 days.... This report runs into all messages without a "new" hit, but have already seen interaction from WW members.

One part of a new roll out is kicking the tires and rolling the windows up and down. This is one of those. :)

[topr8]

one kind of a bug is ... if you have email notifications turned on for a certain forum, then you receive notifications of a new thread even when that thread is not available due to administrative review - this happens obviously on Search Engine Spiders ... where i think all new threads are under review

[Hoople]

"Software error:" on right on several sub-forums. New since 2-3am last night (eastern US).

[not2easy]

I see that also, it is right at the top of the right column for me in this forum, where the PubCon banner is usually seen.

[lawman]

This is a "me too" post. Software error.

[tangor]

The result is (for me) that the nav buttons right margin are no longer visible. And it appears to be any forum, though not on the recent posts list.

[Leosghost]

me 3 "software error" at right side ( right side bar is empty apart from software error message )

[topr8]

i assume the admins can see this but:

Can't locate outer-row-v6.cgi in @INC (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.18.2 /usr/local/share/perl/5.18.2 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.18 /usr/share/perl/5.18 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at /home/deploy/webmasterworld/d-v6.cgi line 48.

For help, please send mail to the webmaster ([e-mail]), giving this error message and the time and date of the error.

[lucy24]

Oh, how hilarious. Putting it inside <h1> tags is an especially nice touch. Now, why isn't that lovely <pre> text visible?

[tangor]

It's fixed now. Thanks, Team!