You sure are some impatient motherfnckers.

 

:disagree:

Update was done Feb 28th, it's now March 22nd. If it had been done properly in the first place (or not at all) this wouldn't be occurring over the entire site. The amount of money Erik has made from this site over the years absolutely could have made for a smooth transition, but from his responses in the Site and Announcement forums, he doesn't give a rats ass.

 

Yep, I agree.

The new format is not only ugly, but slower and harder to use. There is way too much wasted space.

 

I don't disagree that it's taking some time, and perhaps longer than it could have. But I don't know how many people worked on the upgrade or how many people it takes to maintain the site behind the scenes. And Hell, you may even be right about CThree and Co. not giving a rat's ass... I doubt it, but anything is possible.

I just think people need to get over themselves. The site's been up and running well for the last decade without major issues. This is the first REAL change I recall in that much time, and most of the gripes now are about aesthetic appeal anyway. The powers that be did say that once the site was stable and the real issues were fixed, they'd be changing the look/feel to a more traditional S2KI look. I believe I remember him saying something to the effect that by end of March or April, this would all be behind us.

That may or may not come, but in the end, it's a car forum. Sure people make money off of it, and some learn a lot from it, and others collaborate, etc. etc. But it's still just a car forum and hardly worth getting bent out of shape over. Unless this site is your one and only source of income to feed yourself and provide shelter for your 40 kids, I think a lot of the reactions are a little overboard.

And regarding gripes about the site being "hard to use." I think that's a load of crap. The site functionality is marginally different and will simply take time to adjust to. It's not like the old site was like playing "Chutes and Ladders" and the new site is "Trivial Pursuit: FnCK YOU IN THE ASS EDITION"

Give it all a little more time and have some perspective people. And if after another 30 days, it still blows goats, stop using it and find an alternative. Problem solved.

 

Rahul, your post falls upon deaf ears. The site has been up for over a decade with no major issues, so why change it to a site that has almost no way to navigate except to scroll through a long list of choices and is SOOOOOOO much slower then the old site. I dont know Erik or whoever designed this site but the new update is a fail of epic proportions. And you, apparently a member since 2000, should be used to all the bitching on these boards about various topics and threads. "Giving it time" will do nothing unless they change it, it will be a PITA then as it is right now.

 

I think your thought process just strengthens my call for patience. The evolution of the site is natural like, for example, the automotive industry. If people didn't try new shit, we'd all still be driving a steam powered design from the 1700's. Sure, sometimes a step forward feels like two steps back, but that's generally how progress works. Case in point, the first generation iPhone released without basic functionality like copy/paste. It took Apple some time, but now it's there.

As for my call to "give it time," the point is that "giving it time" will "give them time" to make the changes you and the rest of the lynch mob are crying for. But if you'd simply read the updates, it's quite clear that the site's aesthetics and some of the functionality is temporary. Further, the previous software was tweaked over the course of 8 years with a gradually growing membership. This new software has nearly 100,000 members and 20,000,000 posts to manage on day 1 for starters. It will require time to adjust to, both from a user and administrator perspective.

And yes, I'm used to all the bitching from the topics/threads on this forum. People are also used to getting shot at in ghetto communities, but that doesn't make it any less annoying or unnecessary.

Plus, you must admit that the added functionality is quite good. Among other things, I'm a big fan of the new PM system that allows for 50 members to participate in a "private thread" of sorts.

But if that logic still escapes you...

Haters gon' hate...

 

Again, I think the new software isn't the problem so much as the way it went through. I've seen forums that used custom themes (built up during the testing phase) so that the day the gates are opened to the masses, it looks unique. The speed issue may be unavoidable, but I do wish they would have had the theme ready to go as well.

 

We'll see

 

--Aging hardware
--Aging software
--Change in scale of use
--Change is amount of content to manage
--Change in infrastructrue to manage login and content per user
--Changes in functionality to manage users and their content that were too extensive to develop vs. buying a package that has the functions built in
--Cost of maintaining aging software
....and so much more

Better this, than continuing on with something that could fail without having a backup forum. Better to get in front of anything major by releasing something new than waiting for the old to fail.

I've been a member since the beginning as well. There have been at least two major changes that I know of, suspect there was another major one that I can't recall. Over the years, after a major change, there were a lot of incremental improvements on functionality. It wasn't like we got all the stuff we had in the previous version in one outing...it came through continual development. There was also functionality that was originally turned on that was taken away over time.

This new site won't be anything different, as it isn't with business applications for major companies. No organization puts out their final version of a new release on the first try. User adoption on a new major release is always low and slow...unless of course your company is Apple and your product is iPhone or iPad (but then again, one could argue that it's more of a hardware upgrade than it is a software and User Interface upgrade when it comes to Apple products).

In the meanwhile, while the site gets 'going' use it for what it is....share, search, and read S2000-related content. Use Facebook, Twitter, etc. for a social site. BTW, have you tried the search feature as of yet? That was one of the most bitched about feature on the last version of S2Ki; it's now upgraded and works wonderfully and fast.

 

The bottom line is this: The community at large is upset. It's a small community, and it's not really going to be growing given that the car is no longer being produced. There has already been at least one attempt to start a new S2000 related forum. Anything that fragments S2000 owners across multiple sites is bad. Mix into this a "devil-may-care" attitude from the site owners and it's a recipe for disaster.

I remember people being upset from some of the earlier upgrades, but I don't remember the response being THIS bad before. Perhaps I'm just mis-remembering the past. But I certainly don't remember the PM functionality being broken, the Gallery being broken, the roll-back of a MAJOR feature of the site (MyS2ki) on top of the "lacking" aesthetics and slow performance all at once.