A few comments on the wider format...
My view of the Zone appears to have widened - it is now taking up the full width of my screen, rather than a band down the middle. I seem to remember owners talking about wanting to do this some time ago, but have not seen any great announcement about it, so I'm wondering is it just me?
Hi SS,
The new look forum
No it's not you. We finally implemented the new change on Friday since all but a few users were seeing the band you've described down the middle rather than a full wide page. The new wider format now fits with the rest of the SZ website and improves the integration between the two. More importantly, it gives us an opportunity to bring some revenue into the Zone to pay the bills without negatively impacting our user base.
Reasons for the change
The main driver for the recent change is to generate an income for ShrimperZone to pay for the site tools and hosting. While we intend to remain a non-profit set-up, the owners have been funding the website for a considerable amount of time and it seems only fair that we should now try to reduce/eliminate the financial burden from our shoulders.
The price of success
With our user base continually increasing (nearly 900 active members now), the size of our database continually expanding (we'll hit 50,000 threads and 1,000,000 posts this year!), and a greater need for uninterupted provision of service (there's always SOMEONE on the website at any time day or night now), the costs are far from insignificant.
What we're planning
Our intention has therefore been to add the side-bar to carry a small number of adverts that are (hopefully) well-targeted and relevant to our members. By implementing a side-bar and increasing the width of the Zone, we can sensitively display adverts without impacting the actual FORUM size and without disrupting the threads and posts themselves the way so many other forums do.
Obviously there are no adverts on the sidebar yet but that will change very soon.
Whilst the wider aspect looks good, I'm getting a bit annoyed when reading threads, because there is a links menu appearing on the right-hand side (which in my personal opinion is unnecessary as there are links at the top of each page), and when scrolling down the links disappear, leaving a large empty blue background with all the posts uncentered on the left-hand side.
Point noted but please bear with us.
Step changes
One of the challenges we have is the live nature of the forum and its software. Because of the way it is set up, the setting up of a staging area for developing the 'forum look and feel' off-line places far too much of a burden on us in terms of time. We can do it, but the process is too long, drawn out and complex when you consider we all have jobs to do and provide the website free of charge. Out of necessity, our testing has to be done in a live environment and, to a large degree, we need to make changes as we go.
The Blue Area --->
We appreciate that the blue area at the bottom is not ideal but as adverts are added to the column over time, the unused blue area should all but disappear. As for the links, we also appreciate that there is a duplication along the top and down the side but we hope, also over time, that the two will complement each other better.
Is this a website thing, or is there any way I can alter my view of the screen to take away the links/blue screen on the right-hand side of every thread?
For the reasons above, this won't be something you can alter. As with all the changes we've made to the Zone recently, things might seem a little odd at first but in a short-time, it should hopefully start to feel like home again.
Message sent on behalf of all of the ShrimperZone owners.
