We’re pleased to report some further improvements to BMG 3.0. Much of the most recent work is on the back end, so you won’t actually see it, but we’re certain you’ll be pleased to learn how much better your editors’ lives will be as a result of the upgrades to the promotion system. 😉
What you will see is a substantially improved “Recommend” function. The Recommender now keeps a running tally of how many recommends each post has received, and will identify the recommenders when you open up the post. We’ve also made the “Unrecommend” option more obvious. Here’s an example of how the appearance of the Recommender changes when I click it to register my recommendation (using this post as an example) – it goes from this:
to this:
Also, we’ve fiddled with the algorithm that determines how long posts stay on the “Recommended” list, so that should be working better.
Additional fixes are on the way, including a better “there’s more” system and an improvement to the commenting system that will make it easier to get comments to nest properly. Stay tuned.
Also, if there’s anything you’d really like to see, let us know. We’re now at the wish-list stage – go beyond “what we used to have on Soapblox” to “what would make BMG really awesome.”
And thank you, as always, for your participation and support of BMG!
Jasiu says
I tried to give a thumbs-up on a comment and while I could click on it, it didn’t record the fact that I did (it stayed at zero). I tried with both Firefox and Safari.
JimC says
Through dreaded IE.
Trickle up says
It was working fine before, too.
Many other stuf was supposed to have been fixed is not fixed for me either–the site is still slow, I have to log myself in all the time, and so forth.
Sorry to sound like a broken record but how else will ye editors know?
David says
Login problem should have been fixed – it is for me. Also, as I mentioned elsewhere on this thread, the site now loads very fast for me.
Have you tried clearing out browser caches and cookies, and starting from scratch? That might resolve these problems, which I’m pretty sure should have been solved for everyone.
Trickle up says
My working assumption is that you have changed the technology you use to track log-in from something straightforward like a site cookie to something exotic like a flash cookie. Many people block these by default because the technology is ripe for abuse.
A web developer can always say, it’s my users’ choice what technologies to block, I can’t code for everyone. But I’m not going to change my privacy defaults for BMG (sorry), and anyway, I used to be always logged in with these same defaults and now I am not.
I hope that states the problem clearly; I really do not feel all that grumpy about it.
David says
I’ve alerted our tech guru to the problem. I think you will find that if you click (which seems to do nothing) and then refresh, your thumbs up/down will be recorded. So something has happened to the instant feedback, but it does still work.
AmberPaw says
I will check firefox next.
skewl-zombie says
I think a spellcheck and a shoutbox would be totally cool.
“It’s over for the progressive vision, folks — at least through peaceful democratic means.” – somervilletom http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2011/05/mckibben-dont-connect-the-dots-dont-worry/
HR's Kevin says
Don’t most browsers do spell check these days?
jconway says
While I still think this site is a lot less visually interesting than the previous one, it is a lot more user friendly once you get used to it. I also like that the My Comments tab has come back, and I prefer thumbs up and thumbs down to the ranking system of old, makes it a lot simpler to see which comments are good and seems a lot less prone to abuse. But I would change up the color scheme, far too much white and its actually harder to see sometimes. Thats just nit picking though, nit picking that likely annoys the three of you who spent days of man hours on this new site.
Bob Neer says
Keep ’em coming!
Jasiu says
If you have the time, play around with the sans-serif font (some suggestions here. Maybe it’s just a personal preference, but I really dislike how Arial looks. The old site’s Verdana looked better and was “presentable” in a smaller font (which allowed for more content in a screen shot).
stomv says
When the cursor hovers over the thumb it gets bigger. Not cool, because it throws off the things around it — moves too much. If you want visual feedback that I’m hovering my mouse over the thumb up (or down), make it flash or change colors or something. Don’t resize it.
centralmassdad says
I just have white space
stomv says
when I hover over the thumb, it gets bigger — which moves everything below it a half dozen pixels or so. It’s not a fatal flaw, but it’s not ‘right’ either. There’s no need to make the thumb bigger, but if they insist, make enough padded whitespace [well, clearspace] around it so that the bigger thumb doesn’t need to move anything else on the page.
centralmassdad says
Yes, does that on Chrome as well.
stomv says
The site still feels slow. Slow to load, slow to load the margin, slow to preview and submit. Continuing to improve on this will improve the user experience substantially.
David says
For me, the site now loads at least as fast as the old site did, and doesn’t hang up the way Soapblox not-infrequently did. So … not sure why you’d be having a different experience.
stomv says
just that it’s not as fast as it ought be.
stomv says
The header for recent comments:
Oo. Recent Comments
Should be text, not an image. It’s slightly faster to load, but it also renders better under people’s browsers if they fiddle with font size. Naturally, it also translates if they’re using translating software. It would make the font itself consistent with the rest of the page, and allow for more easily changing it.
It should be text, not png.
stomv says
and I don’t know exactly why… I’m sure folks with a training in print design or web design might.
I’d love for BMG to find somebody who is an expert on usability — not just prettiness — to poke around on the layout and design scheme. Relative to other blogs, I find BMG’s harder to actually read than most others. I’m not complaining about the content nor the ease in posting or whatever… just the actual reading of it.
SomervilleTom says
I click the “Reply” button under a comment, get a reasonable input box, type, save — and my reply goes at the top level (rather than nested).
Also, I still can’t edit my comments. The “edit” button answers a screen that says “Oops, no comment with this ID. Go back!”
I’m using Firefox v3.6.17 on Windows 7.
David says
see below. “Edit” has been disabled for users because of some privacy problems it created, though the great and powerful editors can now edit comments. 😉
HR's Kevin says
It is disorienting to have to comment at the bottom of the page without easily being able to see what you are replying to. Quite frankly it makes absolutely no sense at all and I have to wonder what the developers were smoking that this is even an option.
I also would much rather that the contents be put into frames that could be scrolled separately…
David says
What you see now is standard-issue WordPress (in use by an awful lot of people). We are working toward a custom solution.
HR's Kevin says
It may be in use by a lot of people but it is still a crappy UI design. You would have thought that someone would have fixed it by now…
David says
Thanks for your patience.
JimC says
I clicked thumb up, realized I wasn’t logged in, then logged in … and my thumb up was there.