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Post feedback and discussions about the OMSA website here.
A promising start although there are some flaws, speaking as a professional webhead.
The home page is too wide.
Navigation is not clear, too many things that you might come here for are tucked away at the bottom rather than in front of your nose. Whilst regular users will become accustomed to where they are, it discourages new visitors.
I like the colourscheme
I shall explore further, and comment further…
Is there a reason that all posts are now subject to censorship?
Ed,
When the website first went live, we were repeatedly attacked by spammers from Eastern Europe. To combat this, all posts were required to have moderator approval. This has been refined to only affect posts by "OMSA Forum Members" and not "OMSA Members". The latter category have access to the complete website and have no approval necessary to post. To complicate matters further, many people on the old site who were indeed OMSA members never made that clear when they initially registered. You happen to be in that category and this has been corrected. I know that you have been a member for many years but the computers never knew. That has been corrected and we will continue to correct this as people let us know their membership status.
John
The limited access and censorship is unacceptable and must be ceased to make this site usable.
The login page is a mess.
The home page has a vast blank space on the left side, meaning that you have to scroll over horizontally to see half of the content (and I have a large monitor!).
Too many ‘core’ links are at the bottom, forcing you to scroll down to find them.
The medals database is an old copy, fortunately only about 3 months out-of-date so not TOO much has been lost. Do you want me to re-upload or are you going to reload the current version?
Once these issues are addressed, this has the potential to become an even better site than the old one – provided people get involved.
Thoughts of a professional webhead…
megan wrote:
> A promising start although there are some flaws, speaking as a professional
> webhead.
>
> The home page is too wide.
>
I’m sorry to hear that, what devices are you using? We’ve tested the site on Mac/PC’s with the latest Safari/IE/Firefox and on all it looks good. Also on mobile devices like the iPhone/iPad the page adjust perfectly as it is supposed to. We are of course very interested in opinions from real-world professionals like yourself. Your own website is of course a good example of how a professional modern web-site can look.Cheers, -Peter
megan wrote:
> The limited access and censorship is unacceptable and must be ceased to
> make this site usable.
>
This was unfortunately needed yesterday to control the influx of eastern european spammers, but you would of course know all about that as a web professional. If you were an OMSA member there would be no moderation imposed. We are working on making it accessible, without moderation – even for people like yourself, who choose not to be members of the Society.Thanks, -Peter
I am using a PC with Internet Exploder, er, Explorer… and a 19" monitor. Here is a screenshot of the current home page:[attachment=0]omsa-home-page.jpg[/attachment]
As for joining societies, it is something that is impossible when out of work, even if I wanted to do so. If you wish to build a thriving online community, it would be better to cast aside such differentiation or you will find that many will be less willing to share here as opposed to elsewhere.
In other news, as none of my Armenian pictures survived the rebuild of the medals database I have just reuploaded them. A nice improvement is that the software now supports ‘funny fonts’ – so they can be given their names in Armenian as well as in English. (Ed will like that one!).
omsa-home-page.jpgWell, there certainly ARE limitations imposed on OMSA members. Or is it just me? While the odious censorship has been relaxed, I cannot send or receive PMs, cannot see attachments, etc. There are many better ways to deal with spam.
Worse problems lie in the loss or deletion of information, for example what I guess is the destruction of the past six months or so of collctive work in and on the database (and having lost moderation rights there, I can’t even start to fix it, even if I were so inclined).
The PM feature has been fixed. If there are further problems, please post so that they can be dealt with. It is not the intention to censor anyone here or reduce the quality of the website. I apologize for any difficulty or frustration.
John
What happened to all of the old stuff? Has it been retained somewhere? I am a member but do not know if I have now said so or ever did before. I am lost in the new page when I see sections that I used to visit empty now Imperial Russian for example. Where’d it all go?
Is there a section on the Convention? I just came it to write some more about the upcoming convention and can’t find any of the old stuff? Future shock is here for me at least.
Ed,
The old site is archived and we are moving content from the old to the new. The first priority has been to transfer Russian material to the new website. Doc Riley is taking on that task to start with.
You are a member (if you look under your post it will show your status).
If you look to the top menu and click on the Convention tab, it will take you to the Convention section. There is a lot of material on the upcoming Convention there as well as information on past conventions.
I know it is different but we are adding a lot of new material and making a concerted effort to keep the old. Let us know if you have any other concerns.
Best wishes,
John
I’m an OMSA member #8023 but I searched my profile and couldn’t find where to put my membership number, so I’m still censored…
I hope a recent version of the database will be uploaded as I put hundreds pictures and comments in the last few months (including the name in french language for all french medals, took me 2 days…).
Felix,
You have been updated as an OMSA member now. The database will be updated to reflect the changes during the transition.
John
Another issue, if I’m closing my navigator (Firefox) and open it again to go the OMSA forum I need to log in again (on the older forum, I didn’t need to log in each time) and when logged, I click on the forum page but I’m directed to the homepage.
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