GRM site redesign coming--with a brief outage

neat new board. it will take some getting used to as all changes.

my one gripe.... can we shrink down the left side info bar thingy? its a third of the screen. can it only be a quarter? less?

otherwise, nice. good work GRM

OK, time for me to chime in with what is intended to be constructive criticism. I've waited a couple of days to see if the problems I'm experiencing go away as the system is developed, but they haven't. I'm not a computer geek, so I expect the transition from the old website to the new one to be pretty much transparent. It isn't. The old site worked fine on my Acer laptop running Windows 7. The new one is quite literally unusable for me. Everything above the buttons for forum, etc. is black, with just a couple of white boxes with one or two words in them, and the list of features to click on over on the left side of the screen is in faint red letters that are almost unreadable (unless I get within 2 inches of the screen - literally). Everything below this is really spread out vertically, about 3 or 4 screens worth to scroll down to the bottom, and there is tons of wasted white space. Not a luddite, but the old website worked just fine for me, but for now I'm accessing the boards totally through the Classic site, which works just fine. Also the display of each post takes up way more room than before, which again, I perceive as wasted space.

From the other comments posted, it sounds like the site is currently displayed differently in many ways on different platforms. My setup isn't wierd in any way - it's an undoctored, standard laptop running the usual operating system, with internet via IE. It should just work without any changes to my computer. It doesn't.

That's probably an issue with your browser's cache. Have you tried clearing it?

Happy new year, guys.

I'm compiling a list of the problems you're fighting with and submitting them for repairs. Thanks for sticking around and for your feedback on the site. We'll address as many of these things as we can as quickly as we can.

First thing off the top of my head, we're aware that the click-to-open-in-new-window feature isn't working. It may take a bit of time to fix. Until then, you can hold control+shift (or command+shift) when you click and it'll do the same thing.

I'll cover the rest of this in more detail in a bit.

Caveat: My wife and I are new iPhone users. We don't have much experience with touch interfaces. (Also, no experience with the previous mobile site.)

My only real issue with the design for mobile users is that it's hard to jump to a page accurately. The numbers and arrows are too small on the screen to make sure that I hit one page number instead of the one next to it. We're using iPhone 5c w/ iOS 7, if that makes any difference.

stuart in mn wrote: Ahh...looks much better now than it did this morning. Thanks! (I'm on a Mac using Safari 5.06 by the way.)

The site looks pretty good for the most part from my work computer as well(PC with IE8.) As mentioned by others, the signatures are still showing up even though I have that feature is turned off.

Site looks fine from my laptop (Asus 17", win7 FF...something) and my phone (Nexus 4, KitKat, Chrome) though it compresses a little strange on my phone sometimes. Loads just fine though. Now if I could just get my latest topics button back in the threads.....

Those of you for whom the left-hand sidebar had moved to the way bottom of the page: Are you still having this issue?

Thanks, Tom - works now.

Alan Cesar wrote: Those of you for whom the left-hand sidebar had moved to the way bottom of the page: Are you still having this issue?

Yep, on Firefox at home on the W7 laptop, and on Firefox, Chrome, and IE at work on the XP PC.

The 'open in new window' is just a bit of JS that's either missing or needs a selector adjustment. Either way, that should be an easy fix.

Signatures should be checking the profile setting before output. Sounds like they are not.

I'm wondering if the sidebar shooting right is because of floating and needs a clearfix and/or is caused by text being enlarged. For those having that problem, try hitting command-0 (or the windows equivalent, whatever that is) and see if it goes away.

There used to be a button on each topic that would bring me to the first new post in the thread. I don't see one any more. Without that, the site is worthless. Please fix that!

+1 on the left sidebar being crazy aesthetically annoying. Maybe the photos accompanying the articles could be centered on top of the text, instead of on the side, and sponsor ads could go on the right? It's really annoying to have to look at the right hand side of the screen when typing rather than the center. I know it sounds nit-picky. Other than that, it looks good!

Alan Cesar wrote: Those of you for whom the left-hand sidebar had moved to the way bottom of the page: Are you still having this issue? Yes. No improvement.

Tim Baxter wrote: try hitting command-0 and see if it goes away.

Nope. That made it worse (stretched it skinnier).

poopshovel wrote: +1 on the left sidebar being crazy aesthetically annoying. Maybe the photos accompanying the articles could be centered on top of the text, instead of on the side, and sponsor ads could go on the right? It's really annoying to have to look at the right hand side of the screen when typing rather than the center. I know it sounds nit-picky. Other than that, it looks good!

My wife has a similar layout on her website.

The left hand side bar shows for her home page and parent directories, but when you click on a sub directory,the sidebar is gone and the text fills the screen with no white bar.

OK, this lack of "latest topics" button in the threads is just ridiculous. TERRIBLE. The other misc stuff sucks, but that part is just flat out frustrating. Seriously. Whomever you paid to do this redesign, you should get a refund.

Bobzilla wrote: OK, this lack of "latest topics" button in the threads is just ridiculous. TERRIBLE. The other misc stuff sucks, but that part is just flat out frustrating. Seriously. Whomever you paid to do this redesign, you should get a refund.

There is a Latest Topics button. It's at the top of this page:
http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/

I'll add my annoyance at the massive left bar as well. I'd rather the ads be in between thread replies than sucking up 1/3 of the window. They never change so the 2nd time someone visits - they are sick of those big ass buttons telling them to go digital and get newsletters.

Also... the fonts are HUGE in the reply box. I'm in my 40's... but I'm not blind fer crissakes!

Can haz "TOP" button back Mr.Wizard? Mother may I pretty Plz.

Alan Cesar wrote:

Bobzilla wrote: OK, this lack of "latest topics" button in the threads is just ridiculous. TERRIBLE. The other misc stuff sucks, but that part is just flat out frustrating. Seriously. Whomever you paid to do this redesign, you should get a refund.

There is a Latest Topics button. It's at the top of this page: http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/

I believe he is referring to the button in each thread, which takes you to the posts not yet read. It's the the only complaint I have and it's major.

Hasbro wrote:

Alan Cesar wrote:

Bobzilla wrote: OK, this lack of "latest topics" button in the threads is just ridiculous. TERRIBLE. The other misc stuff sucks, but that part is just flat out frustrating. Seriously. Whomever you paid to do this redesign, you should get a refund.

There is a Latest Topics button. It's at the top of this page: http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/

I believe he is referring to the button in each thread, which takes you to the posts not yet read. It's the the only complaint I have and it's major.

Yep. And I've seen almost 2 dozen people complaining about it as well. The lack of link buttons in the threads makes browsing the site very difficult. To the point where I am not coming in nearly as much as I did before because I find the layout makes me more frustrated than reading the threads relaxes me.

EvanR wrote: There used to be a button on each topic that would bring me to the first new post in the thread. I don't see one any more. Without that, the site is worthless. Please fix that!

Same thing as Bobzilla mentioned.

I had no idea there was such a button.

My biggest gripe is having to scroll all the way back up to the top to change threads. At the minimum a button that takes you back to the top of the thread would be nice. I'm sure it'll be fixed soon.

Also Mr. Wizard something entertaining on the 404 page would be helpful,I have been visiting there a lot. Keystone cops, Car on fire, anything.Pretty plz.