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[lesrhar]

Why does this feel sort of like going backwards?

There used to be a website called Digital Camera Magazine - 'twas user friendly even to those with dial-up connections, fun to use, and generally a great place to hang out.

Then it was replaced by this site - completely hostile to dial-up users (hence my absence until a few months ago), clunky to use, and with minimal input from the magazine staff.

Now this site is being replaced by yet another new one...

Could the website designer please take into account that not everyone has access to broadband? I'm in South Africa and have what they call broadband here - a 384 kbps connection. The site takes forever to load, uploading pictures takes even longer, and it is generally difficult to use.

Maybe the new site will emulate the defunct DCM site in terms of usability and interaction.

One lives in hope...

[donoreo]

Originally Posted by Amy Davies

Well that's exactly what the Community Editor will be for - so make sure you let them know when they join what you want and I'm sure they'll try their best.

It should be easier for them to manage that than it was for Marcus, as the Community Editor position is a smaller role and is directly responsible for community engagement (that must is surely a given from the job title). But it's always helpful for anyone, especially someone starting a new job, to have feedback on what you would like.

What else was Marcus doing?

[Amy Davies]

Marcus had an entire website to run, features to write/commission and co-ordinate, oversee news content, techniques, reviews, choose photo of the day, help run POTY, help with the creation of videos and oversee the social media content, among other things.

It's important to remember that this website was not just a forum.

[OldBoy]

Originally Posted by lesrhar

Why does this feel sort of like going backwards?

There used to be a website called Digital Camera Magazine - 'twas user friendly even to those with dial-up connections, fun to use, and generally a great place to hang out.

Then it was replaced by this site - completely hostile to dial-up users (hence my absence until a few months ago), clunky to use, and with minimal input from the magazine staff.

Now this site is being replaced by yet another new one...

Could the website designer please take into account that not everyone has access to broadband? I'm in South Africa and have what they call broadband here - a 384 kbps connection. The site takes forever to load, uploading pictures takes even longer, and it is generally difficult to use.

Maybe the new site will emulate the defunct DCM site in terms of usability and interaction.

One lives in hope...

Nice to see you posting again Lesrhar.

[lesrhar]

Originally Posted by OldBoy

Nice to see you posting again Lesrhar.

Thanks, Oldboy!

Have had difficulty connecting to the site... for most of the past two weeks there's been some sort of bandwidth glitch (according to my ISP, anyway), and connection speeds were only marginally faster than dial-up used to be.

It's a bit frustrating trying to load the site at 10KB/sec.

[MattUK]

Originally Posted by Amy Davies

As you know, this site will soon be replaced with Digital Camera World and the Community Manager will be in charge of interaction between the readers on the forum, through social media and so on.

What kind of engagement is it you're looking for?

It's simple: dialogue. I'm looking for dialogue with people about photography, not a monologue of articles. I can do a google search for photography articles to read. But it would be nice to discuss articles and reviews with the staff who made them, as well as tapping into what I can only assume is 90% of users who use this site to post images but don't use the forum because it's poor...

[donoreo]

Don't you have that backwards, Matt? The Forums are ok (only OK, the there are various features of vbulletin that are turned off that would be nice) and the galleries are bad.

[MattUK]

Originally Posted by donoreo

Don't you have that backwards, Matt? The Forums are ok (only OK, the there are various features of vbulletin that are turned off that would be nice) and the galleries are bad.

This forum has 150,000 users Don. I'd estimate that around 50 post anything near regularly. To me that's quite a failing.

Agreed, the galleries are poor - but that brings us to the suggestion that the discussion mechanism (the forum) and the image mechanism (the gallery) should be one and the same.

[Lurkalot]

Originally Posted by MattUK

This forum has 150,000 users Don. I'd estimate that around 50 post anything near regularly. To me that's quite a failing.

Matt, you have to remember that that figure is only because they imported the users from the old DCM site, and a lot of it was dead wood even then. They just happened to bring it all over here too. But you'll will know why they did that.

As for the galleries well who knows what we'll end up with, as far as I'm aware it's going to be a plugin for vbulletin that's going to be used, instead of a bridged stand alone gallery. Just a bit worried it might have limitations, but we'll find out when they switch the existing galleries off for good.

[MattUK]

I understand. So halve the number. 75,000 to 50 active. Look any better?

Ok, so take a tenth. 15,000 to 50.

I'm not tying to be flippant, I'm just saying that the forum is failing the user base however you cut it