[jahvice]

First off, i need to say kudos to whole community to pick up this site as fast as it happened. That said, i have few gripes i want to voice - mainly they are opinions so take them with a grain of salt =)

First off, website is overly "complicated". Im not computer illiterate so i know how to get things done so im not really put of by this but i have a feeling that average joe might not feel the same. File uploads for example, there are way too many options. While most of them are useful and there's no need to take them, it would make sense to have them as "advanced" options than to have all the options in one single page. This is more like usability feature than "bug". If thats not possible, atleast make the ajax help popup for all the fields, not just "toggle buttons".. For example, i dont have a clue what "song images" does .. And document the upload procedure - yesterday i uploaded a tune which didnt end up showing anywhere, because i didnt attach a picture to it. Also, it would make sense to have picture upload possibility in the same page or atleast a link to picture admin if user wants to upload a new picture with new tune.

Next issue is with forums:

While the same user/account already works with forums and the main site, would make sense to share the same login with both.. Most likely its just a matter of creating a forum login cookie when user logs into mainsite..

Also about forums, im kinda geared towards "less is more". There are *tons* of forums but most of them have only few messages. My personal opinion would be that first start with less forum categories and increase if the traffic gets bigger. While i can understand that some might prefer the way they are set up now, personally i just dont feel like going thru 30 different topics/subtopics just to see if there's anything interesting going on and thus i've skipped the forums allmost totally.

And last item about forums, template is quite nice but very generic. Would be nicer if it would use same kinda template than the main site.


Next, featured artists and singles.

Header says "todays" but seems that both are randomly selected on each pageload. While i dont mind the randomness, it would make sense to actually make it sticky so that when someone is actually a "featured artist", it would be so for a whole day.

Inbox.

When you get a mail, you see your inbox, clicking on small thumbnail image of a poster, it leads to profile page and name leads to new mail. Usability wise it would more sense to have both links lead to profile page and have a reply button.

Also, regarding mails, when someone reviews a tune, you get email notification saying that "you have received a new private note" - its a review, not a private note

Main page.

main dropdown menu goes *behind* the flashplayer object thats below the dropdown. Its is propably either problem in dropdown*menu's stylesheet or in the flash object's properties. Im not expert in this field so cant say for sure but afaik floating objects have ordering level which defines if they should be shown on top or in below certain items and this is propably not set or set incorrectly ?

Also that same topbar menu has problem with few of the menu entries missing right side of their container. Only All Music and Community entries seem to have that right side shown correctly.

Artist profile page has a box with header "members". Below the artist name there's a text link which says "Login to send message" but i've already logged in

Search page has multiple text input fields and multiple comboboxes and even worse, they are in very small column. I dont know what would be the optimal way but i dont feel its very usable this way.

And last the template this used in the website is not valid html in any standard. While fixing all the "bugs" is pointless, having over 650 issues in a single page is abit too much. Browsers can only do their best to make things look pretty but there would be still a need for improvements =)

Ok, thats all for now. And remember, im not complaining about how crappy this site is but trying to help you guys out to make things even better.

And i do know that this site is based on JamRoom software so things might not be very straight forward to fix but still, try to please your users ok ?

The website is complicated? Man, you cannot get all the stuff into a site without it getting complicated. The more functionality you have on a website, the more complicated it gets. Still I do not find this place very complicated.

Tell me a website of that size and with all the features that is less complicated and we talk again ;-)

[jahvice]

Maybe the word complicated was misused, so i'll replace it with "useable".

Im not referring to having this and that option removed or anything but having them in their places that would feel "natural". I've done my share of professional useability testing for various projects, i do think i know a mess when i see one.

PS. I just realized that i missed one point, Forum has seperate "private messages" section and other stuff..

[Meef Chaloin]

Originally Posted by jahvice

Forum has seperate "private messages" section

yeah this one's always confused me as well

You have to keep in mind, that this site runs on a content management system, that has not been written by the owners of the site. And one cannot change a content management systems behaviour, look and feel on the fly.

I saw many sites built on top of Jamroom (the CMS) and they all have the same look & feel more or less. And people have the same issues everywhere Jamroom is used.

I do not really know something about the internals of Jamroom as I never set up or administrated a Jamroom site. But I think most of the stuff you talk about is a Jamroom issue.

Each content management system has it's limitations and flaws. I think we have a great site here. Allways space for improvements for sure. But I don't think it is really possible to get an "uncomplicated site" doine with all the features in a READYMADE CMS-SOLUTION. And who wants to code this site in a custom solution? This would take VERY much time and nobody throws in that ammount of work for free. As a softwaredeveloper and webdesigner, I wouldn't do this for free, how much ever I love this community.

Useability? From my point of view, this site is more than useable. It works for most things and the things that are great are larger in numer than the few flaws.

Allways place for improvements, everywhere. Nothing is 100% perfect.

[ali]

Jahvice,
seems like you have pinpointed just about every little fault that has annoyed me too since I registered - but the site works pretty well as it is - and most of these things you list are minor points. It will be great when they are fixed.
You made a useful list for Rob to work thru in time but don't expect him to drop everything to tweak the code - (I'm sure he has already explained somewhere on here why some of these things are the way they are)
cheers
ali

[Lion of the Tribe]

I was wondering if we could implament the adding of where the poster is from somewhere in their text box in the forums. Used to be there on the old V site and was cool to see where the poster lived. Kind of added to the insite of their post.

Thanks for listening.

Originally Posted by Lion of the Tribe

I was wondering if we could implament the adding of where the poster is from somewhere in their text box in the forums. Used to be there on the old V site and was cool to see where the poster lived. Kind of added to the insite of their post.

Thanks for listening.

Yes, that would be cool. Good post!

[pancho]

would be a good idea to have a separate section for radio shows and interviews.logged in the other day and hardly any full tunes on the front page,just radio shows ,interviews and clips.

[jahvice]

Sonnyboy, you havent changed abit .. good things never change eh ? =)

And One More Issue:

When you get a a note from your the website itself saying that you got a review or note of some sort, the link to the note you have received is shown as text, not a proper link.. which you need to copy/paste into new tab or just find it manually.. kinda annoying too.