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New site look and software upgrade Feedback Thread

12K views 139 replies 22 participants last post by  Admin 
#1 ·
Hello Everyone,

We're proud to announce that the new site look and feel has been completed for ImpalaForums.com! Our designers and software engineers have been hard at work on this for several months. It's designed to modernize the site, make it easier to use, and to make it more attractive to new members and guests that visit .

The forum software we use, vBulletin, by default is not designed to be friendly to the eyes or to look modern. We went down to the nuts and bolts of the forum software and templates, and have done a ground up approach. There are several things you will notice now that the new design is live.

1) The site should be significantly faster.

We have applied every modern technique to speed up page load and tested with all modern browsers. We want the forum to be extremely fast and easy to use.

2) The site will work much better in mobile and tablet views

We've started applying responsive design, and have designed and tested against android and iPhone devices, Android tablets, and iPads. If you are sitting at your desk or on your couch, or just on your phone, the site will work much better than it did before, and load fast. We are still working on improving the experience even further in the months to come, but we wanted to launch this as quickly as we could.

3) The homepage is bright, crisp and clean.

We wanted the first page users saw to look beautiful, so that when a new guest arrives and is debating whether to join ImpalaForums.com, they see a beautiful doorway, and they walk right in.

As a forum member you can choose to use the new design (which is on by default) or you can go back to the old design. We ask that you give it a chance and see if you like it. Like anything new, it will be unfamiliar at first, but we suspect that the speed difference will make you want to use this new one. If you do decide to switch back, the link is at the bottom left of each forum page, you pull down and select the theme called "ImpalaForums.com Classic".

4) Garages will be featured on the site

You can show off your Impala, You can post pictures in your garage and share it with others. Make sure you post up some images to share with the community at the link below.

http://www.impalaforums.com/garage.php?do=editgarage

5) Users will be able to register with Facebook

6) The side bar can be hidden in your user options.

Click on my profile / user cp at the top right.

- click on edit your details on the left.
- Look for Show Sidebar on Forum Pages under Additional Information.
- Click disable and save.

7) Another new great feature is the @Mention user plugin. You can tag members by simply using the @ symbol.

8) Drag and Drop image uploader

We hope you enjoy it, and if you have any questions on the design, please let us know, feedback is appreciated.

If there are any issues you see. Post them up here and we will get them worked out.

Thanks,
-Your ImpalaForums.com Team.
 
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#2 ·
Hyundai forums? Check #4 url
 
#4 ·
Updated, sorry bad cut and paste..

Not to be that guy, but I personally hate it so far...
Note we are still working on it, will be done in a few hours so it will act buggy. You can revert to classic view for now and I will bump this thread once done.

Jeff M
 
#5 ·
Hmmm - I don't appear to be seeing the site as expected... I'm still seeing the old "banners" and the site in general seems VERY "basic" - looks the same on my android tablet browser and my Windows Chrome browser:



Is this right??

Sent from my HP SlateBook 10 x2 PC using Tapatalk
 
#9 ·
Is it my settings or are the fonts larger? It's easier to read so hoping it stays this way. Looking good so far and only took a minute to sort out the new navigation.
 
#11 ·
Wow it looks great!
 
#14 ·
All I see for skins is default, Full, Classic and Mobile.
 
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#17 ·
Ahh ok that makes sense, and yea that looks like Beagle poop.
 
#19 ·
One problem I've noticed is that on mobile (Galaxy S5, Chrome) when I click the "Forums" tab, instead of bringing me to the main forums page, it just opens the drop down menu to choose which forum I want. Very annoying, as I like to go to the main forum page to see where there are threads that I haven't seen yet (instead of going through section by section to see).

Just got on with the laptop, I'm not a huge fan of this new setup, but I'm gunna keep using it to see if it grows on me
 
#20 ·
Also, here is the banner I'm seeing on my screen:



What happened to the one with the two other cars facing the other way? Just curious, I thought it looked a lot better than the random gray blotches.
 
#21 ·
I still see them up top BUT if I resize the window they disappear and reappear depending on size of the open window. Check your resolution setting or go full screen and see if they are there.
 
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#23 ·
I never saw Old Bones and someone elses cars until the page went live. I see them right now on the top banner on the right hand side. Weird how some can't see them.
If I resize my Microsoft Edge window to be smaller they do disappear. If I maximize them on my 23" 1920x1080 screen then I see them again.
 
#24 · (Edited)
It's strange - my Android tablet is 1920x1200 and I still don't see the cars on the right hand side... THere is definitely plenty of space there for them though. I'm sure they'll get it fixed up though.

EDIT: Actually, I take that back - there is NOT enough room for the cars on the right-hand side on my Android tablet - even though it's higher resolution than the Edge browser mentioned above, which does show them all. I get the exact same results with the old stock Android Browser and the Android version of Chrome (I actually still prefer the old Android Browser over Chrome on Android).

I *do* see all of the cars on my desktop, which is 1680x1050 though - at lease while I have the browser at full screen. As soon as I make it a window, the cars on the right get cut off even though there *is* still plenty of room on the PC browser (Chrome).

Anyway, hope that helps in some way. Normally, I don't see any of this stuff since I use Tapatalk though (which I actually prefer - it's just so much faster).

Sent from my HP SlateBook 10 x2 PC using Tapatalk
 
#25 ·
A suggestion about the banner that IMO, would improve it greatly. The scale of the cars is off for the perspective you're trying to achieve. The black one is so much larger it looks like an SUV sitting up so high. If the sizes can't be changed I'd reorder them so it goes black, white, blue and red and put Bones' Caprice to the front on the right side. That would work better from a depth perspective, larger to smaller. And the background merge between the two lines of cars is really noticeable too, color and texture both. I don't like being a critic since I have zero photoshop skills but something you may wish to consider if you redo the banner in the future. The concept it solid, I think it just needs a tiny tweak to make it pop.
 
#33 ·
When I go full-screen (1920x1200, Firefox 46 on Xubuntu 16.04) I see the two on the right, and I also see it windowed if I use Ctrl-Minus to downsize text one step from normal.
 
#39 ·
I'm missing the last 10 new member sign-ups where we weed out the spammers.
 
#41 ·
#42 ·
I get that, but theres PLENTY of space on my monitor. There's no reason it should auto-size to cut those out like that in this case IMO.
You can toggle the sidebar in the User CP, details in first post.

http://www.impalaforums.com/profile.php?do=editprofile

Toggle right sidebar:

This allows you to turn off the sidebar on forum threadview pages.
For Premium Members, this turns off the sidebar on all forum pages.

Enable Disable


Jeff M
 
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