Frustration With New Site

I have been a PN subscriber for 10 years, although the new site only credits me with nine, I suggest you listen to the frustration of your membership with this clumsy and difficult to negotiate site. The old site was user friendly. It was easy to communicate with PN peers. This site seems to be all glitz and no practical functionality. I have waited a while to complain, giving the site a chance with no avail. I have asked a few times for help in how to create new gallery folders and never got a response. I requested feed back for my comments, but not feedback for each of my PN colleagues that I follow. You clutter up my inbox. This site appears to have been set up for the PN administration to sell images, not with adequate attention and respect for the needs of your subscribers who keep the site in business. For now, I am sticking with PN because I value the connections I have made and expand with other photographers. To me PN is a learning and sharing opportunity. Unless you take measures to make the site user friendly as it was before, you will lose many of us. I suggest you read and heed the other negative responses from subscribers also. I'd like to know what you are planning to do to make the site more usable. Thanks.

I have asked a few times for help in how to create new gallery folders and never got a response.

Hi, Larry - Both of your questions about creating gallery folders were answered as quickly as we members could get to them--check out the responses in the threads you started (link) (link). I guess those of us members who have been trying to answer others' questions assumed that since we didn't hear back from you, you'd seen the responses and used them. --Leslie

Like Larry, I've waited to make unfavorable comments on the site. <br><br>

 

I appreciate that Photonet's handmade code was virtually unsupportable and a jump to something more modern had to be done sooner or later. But I fear that the Photonet that I knew from its earlier days will soon just be a memory. But "that" Photonet didn't (to my understanding) have to support itself as a business. So perhaps it has to be displaced. <br><br>

 

My interest in Photonet has mainly been in just the forums - mostly to answer technical questions (and to amuse myself, I guess). I had near 30 years of full-time pro photography experience when Photonet was new, and while doing mostly technical work for a large chain operation I always had access to better (industry) sources than Photonet. Always. Not to say I didn't LEARN anything here - I learned plenty; but it was mostly a result of research when answering questions here.<br><br>

 

Anyway, over the years I think that much of the technical expertise (and interest) has left here. And as an entity, Photonet didn't blink an eye. I made my thoughts known in the thread, "Geeks not wanted..." see -

https://www.photo.net/discuss/threads/geeks-not-wanted-go-away-take-pictures-bah-humbug.488450/ <br><br>

 

Anyway, here are some of the current details that I don't like: when I answr a tech question I like to know how to slant my answer. With some people I sort of knew them by their names - these (the former names) are largely gone now. (Even some of the moderators now have names I don't recognize.) <br><br>

 

Previously I could click on a name and see a bio, if they had left one. I don't see ANY bios anymore. <br><br>

 

The next thing I'd do is to look through their posting history, where I could see single line lists of threads they had posted in. I could often gage their level of know-how by clicking into these. If need be I could easily scroll through thousands of posts, even back to their first post, and see if this was their introduction to photography. Looking into past history is now a tedious process, currently limited (at least for me) of 10 "pages" of listings. Anyway,- it's now harder to know who I'm writing a response to, so my tendency will be to do it less.<br><br>

 

I also miss the "Unifed" view that allowed me to select the forum lists that I wanted to view. When I scan through the current list, I have to visually screen out those I don't want to see, such as "no words" and "philosophy." I appreciate that many members here WANT to look at pictures - I came from a place where I could stand in front of a processor for 10 minutes and watch nearly a thousand feet of ten-inch wide paper, full of beautiful portraits, come rolling out (3 lanes of 10 inch paper at 28 feet per minute). I don't WANT to have photos pushed in front of me here, except by my own choice.

<br><br>

 

One last thing - I personally think that Photonet should jump through hoops to retain the technical "experts" who are still here (and the experts are not always who the typical member/administration thinks they are). But perhaps it's too late, and perhaps this is not very important in the new scheme; it is a business, after all, and the business has to decide which customers to chase.

Edited March 4, 2017 by Bill C

You keep saying that you respond to my questions, but I either don't get your responses or you refer me to some thread I can't find. There doesn't seem to be a place to search threads.

You keep saying that you respond to my questions, but I either don't get your responses or you refer me to some thread I can't find. There doesn't seem to be a place to search threads.

Hi, Larry - Both the responses were in the threads you'd started, and the links I included in my last response (#2 above) should have taken you directly to them. The How-to thread is one of the 6 threads pinned to the top of the Site Help Forum (where you posted this thread), and there's a categorized table of contents in the first post in that thread. There's an entry in that for how to create a new gallery, and there are a number of other topics there that might be useful.

<p> @Bill C: Our original bio's are intact--but unfortunately the new design schema is fragmented and compartmentalized. To see your bio, you must go to the "front end" profile, and not the "forum side" profile. Confusing? Of course it is... :confused: </p>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<p>Other Xenforo sites add a link to the front end profile in both the avatar dropdown menu and the forum header menu. There seems to be no such thing here. I get to mine (and others) via entering their user name, e.g., http://photo.net/papatango . </p>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<p>If you want to see how all of this should properly be done, surf over to http://qrz.com . That's the largest amateur radio site in the world, and managed to take a community many times larger than this (appx. 680K) and take many components along with Xenforo and make them all work together--smoothly. Our developers could benefit by talking with Fred Lloyd and his team on how to do all of this without any disruption to members. They did it, from a custom coded front end sort of like the old PN and an ageing vBulletin forum... :p </p>

I grant you this is not v1 and there are many differences but not being able to find information on forum users is easy to find - click on avatar, or "papaTango" in this example and the information you are seeking is right there.

 

 

While I suppose that for some people it is handy to be able to follow or ignore or converse with other members via the red circled menu which Glenn posted above, this is a photography site and what I as a photographer want is quick and obvious access to a members photos. If I see an image on this site from a photographer and want to see what that persons work looks like I first have to click on their name or avatar, since their is no link to their portfolio on that page, I have to click again on their profile page, still no photos to see. I now have to deduce ( and it is far from obvious) that I have to click on the tiny font titled 'Home Page' tucked away in the bottom corner of the page and finally I can see the persons photos. C'mon this is a photo site, the first thing I should see when I click on the persons avatar is a link to their photos.

the first thing I should see when I click on the persons avatar is a link to their photos.

I suppose it is too much to ask to add that link into the first pop-up Glenn posted above? Home Page seems to be referring to "profile" (so why use two different terms?) even though I would consider that "portfolio" was a better word for it. And vice versa, what's called "portfolio" to me would be more appropriately named "profile". Maybe it's just me, but I am always confused which one to select from the drop down menu.

Congratulations Glenn, you have completely and startlingly made my point. If I want to find out about a member and their work coming from an interest developed in the forum, I SHOULD NOT have to make THREE clicks to get there--finally via a small and nondescript link posted in a cold (someone there does understand page 'heatmaps" don't they?) corner of a popup? Take a look at innumerable other sites running this same XF platform and see how they clearly handle navigation to such things through buttons and labels that state "Bio" or "About Me." Maybe we should just forget about this conversation and the frustration of long-time paying members--and close it to further discussion like the "Chaos" thread... :( How about putting that link over to the left below our avatars--where we would expect and conveniently find it?

I have been a PN subscriber for 10 years, although the new site only credits me with nine, I suggest you listen to the frustration of your membership with this clumsy and difficult to negotiate site. The old site was user friendly. It was easy to communicate with PN peers. This site seems to be all glitz and no practical functionality. I have waited a while to complain, giving the site a chance with no avail. I have asked a few times for help in how to create new gallery folders and never got a response. I requested feed back for my comments, but not feedback for each of my PN colleagues that I follow. You clutter up my inbox. This site appears to have been set up for the PN administration to sell images, not with adequate attention and respect for the needs of your subscribers who keep the site in business. For now, I am sticking with PN because I value the connections I have made and expand with other photographers. To me PN is a learning and sharing opportunity. Unless you take measures to make the site user friendly as it was before, you will lose many of us. I suggest you read and heed the other negative responses from subscribers also. I'd like to know what you are planning to do to make the site more usable. Thanks.

I could not agree more. You have literally voices my frustration. The site has become cumbersome, much less user friendly, and has lost it's "club"-like, cozy neighborhood. And yes... no one seems to be paying any attention. To me it appears as if PN sold out to 500 px.....I have become totally disillusioned with the site. I am not "invited" to post, as I don't know who is looking at my image, nor the comment they are making. PN has made a total mess.... I guess it will be to costly and burdensome to un-do all the new "improvements" (???????????????) and go back to the good old, proven much better format. Fed up! Frustrated!!!!!

I suppose it is too much to ask to add that link into the first pop-up Glenn posted above? Home Page seems to be referring to "profile" (so why use two different terms?) even though I would consider that "portfolio" was a better word for it. And vice versa, what's called "portfolio" to me would be more appropriately named "profile". Maybe it's just me, but I am always confused which one to select from the drop down menu.

 

 

Not too much to ask. We will see how we can update this to be more consistent from portfolio to forum.

I could not agree more. You have literally voices my frustration. The site has become cumbersome, much less user friendly, and has lost it's "club"-like, cozy neighborhood. And yes... no one seems to be paying any attention. To me it appears as if PN sold out to 500 px.....I have become totally disillusioned with the site. I am not "invited" to post, as I don't know who is looking at my image, nor the comment they are making. PN has made a total mess.... I guess it will be to costly and burdensome to un-do all the new "improvements" (???????????????) and go back to the good old, proven much better format. Fed up! Frustrated!!!!!

 

We are not reverting to v1. I've provided a number of responses, but this one (here) days after we launched seemed to resonate - at least in terms of an explanation.

Not too much to ask. We will see how we can update this to be more consistent from portfolio to forum.

Glad to hear that, thanks. And since there is so much info on that pop-up already, how about adding the "number of photos" that member has uploaded. If it is "0", then it saves the trouble to do all the other clicks to find out that there is nothing to see there?

+1 on user frustration. After watching other posters identify bugs and various issues, I'll throw my 2 cents in. The top two peeves I have are (and I am attempting to format using blank lines here):

 

1) login takes my to my home page instead of retaining the context of what I wanted to accomplish such as replying to this thread.

 

2) removal of empty lines inserted and paragraph breaks by the author - reading posts of any length is getting tedious.

 

There are a large number of complaints regarding the formatting issue with some posters recommending kludges such as inserting HTML formatting codes or using bullets. IMHO, the formatting issue should have been an immediate fix, but it persists ...

 

Every time I go into my portfolios, I quickly exit out as the performance continues to be frustratingly slow, there is no "contact sheet" display of portfolio contents, and I get 404 errors navigating through images.

 

Even the site's home page is a huge disappointment. Instead of a slide show of recent images, a static image is used as background. Scrolling down several times is necessary to find links that used to be clearly presented on a single home page screen of the old site. I think "diffused" is a word that describes how the site's content is presented. Very frustrating to navigate.

Ah Ha !!! another kludge to preserve blank lines used as paragraph breaks: Post the reply and immediately edit+save the reply. Now the blank lines are preserved!. My previous posting had paragraph breaks ignored until I edited it to correct a typo. BUT ... the change was not preserved when I exited and re-entered the thread. Oh well... Edited March 9, 2017 by john_harper|9

paragraph break has been a thorn in our side as well - but this is expected to be fixed today

I could not agree more. You have literally voices my frustration. The site has become cumbersome, much less user friendly, and has lost it's "club"-like, cozy neighborhood. And yes... no one seems to be paying any attention. To me it appears as if PN sold out to 500 px.....I have become totally disillusioned with the site. I am not "invited" to post, as I don't know who is looking at my image, nor the comment they are making. PN has made a total mess.... I guess it will be to costly and burdensome to un-do all the new "improvements" (???????????????) and go back to the good old, proven much better format. Fed up! Frustrated!!!!!

 

Thank you for your feedback, it is important to let us know how you feel. We are listening, just because we don't reply to all - doesn't mean they are not read.

 

We're a relatively small team trying to build something for us all that is much more sustainable. To users that were very familiar with photo.net yes - clearly this is quite a change. There were many reasons for the change - as always there is never just one reason, but starting with the explanation here - which in and of itself is an important piece to remember - but then look beyond that - new users were not taken with v1 (ie the old photo.net) they were not uploading at the rate they were between 2000-2010, what we had was (as you described) a club like atmosphere for users that were used to the way things were done - but new users more and more were not taking to v1, leaving us with a trend we had to reverse.

 

Now of course - we can have our differing opinions on this, but with v2 we have upgraded the photography presentation (kind of important to a photography site) and upgraded the forums to something that will have regular updates and upgrades. We have upgraded our CMS ( content management system) and have new fresh content being loaded in which we will be integrating throughout the site. Both CMS and Forum updates and upgrades won't be custom build every time these upgrades and updates are done. This new platform allows us many more possibilities the old platform did not.

 

Yes - mobile presentation is important - look around everyone is (sadly) on their phones and as of now it is 1/3 of our traffic. The old site was not mobile friendly at all.

 

In the end the community is the people within it and much less so the platform they operate within - but we will continue to keep improving on this new platform - we could not continue to build on the old platform - it was not sustainable given it was early 90s tech - AOL server programmed in TCL. Custom build, 1 mechanic, no parts available - no owner of photo.net would continue to invest there.

Edited March 9, 2017 by G-P

paragraph break has been a thorn in our side as well - but this is expected to be fixed today

 

That's very good news, George. Not that I hugely mind typing in HTML on a PC (it gives me more control anyway), but getting at < and > is awkward on my phone.<br />

<br />

I second the irritation about not being returned to where I left when I have to log back in, but I'm actually going to re-bump the request to at least have an option for the site not to log me out at all. (Can I work around this by editing a local cookie? I've not checked.)<br />

<br />

After a few weeks of this, I've concluded that in a typical day I browse the site from a work PC, a home PC and my phone. It's not unusual to use my home Mac (where I have images to upload) and a secondary work PC, too; I did all of the above as part of this week's Nikon Wednesday upload process, for example. I've usually used at least three of those within the last 24 hours, but still get logged out. Logging in five times on a daily basis is getting old. I can't use password auto-fill, partly because I personally think it's a security risk, partly because work will absolutely not allow it for security reasons (what if someone else uses my computer and gets to work sites?)<br />

<br />

I understand that there's a potential security issue of using a public computer and failing to log out. But if it's going to take 24 hours to do so anyway, it's not really a security advantage. Many web sites give you a check box for "is this a public computer", which determines whether the cookie has an infinite lifetime or times out in a few minutes. The sooner that gets implemented the better. Most web sites also update the cookie whenever you load a new page so that you're only logged out a fixed time after you last interacted with the site, not after you last logged in. For the 24-hour log-out, that would actually solve my problems as well - but I think a 24-hour log-out is a useless compromise anyway.<br />

<br />

Fingers crossed it gets on the list. Mostly the site seems to be improving, or I'm getting used to it, otherwise I'd be hanging around here rather than the Nikon forum more!

That's very good news, George.

Good news indeed. But who is George?

Paragraph breaks have been an issue on the old site already; at least there hitting the Return key twice gave you what you wanted. Paragraph breaks had been an issue on the first rollout so it really is incomprehensible and inexcusable that it hadn't been fixed prior to the second rollout. After all, it SEEMS to work and only screws up when saving the reply (something which it has in common with the behavior on the old site). Even the < br > fix only works AFTER reloading the page.<br><br> IF this indeed gets fixed today, you may want to make a HUUUUUGE announcement about it, otherwise those in the "know now, not in the know then" will continue to use the workarounds. Another problem with not having fixed it in the first place.<br><br> Still haven't heard an explanation behind the 24-hour logout thing; Andrew makes some very good point as to its uselessness and also on how to improve upon.

Good news indeed. But who is George?

 

*Facepalm*. Sorry Glenn. It's been a long day. I don't know where that came from.

Incidentally, my previous post, written with <br /> line breaks, is now showing them explicitly rather than showing the HTML. Does that mean a fix is being rolled out?<br />

<br />

I'm now worried that all my posts with <br /> in them will show the formatting... (And so is this one, even after a refresh. Curious.)

Sorry, I've just seen the new thread/announcement about the change to formatting. I've commented on the issue over there.

*Facepalm*. Sorry Glenn. It's been a long day. I don't know where that came from.

No worries, I've been called worse than George.