Other Is site traffic down since the new build?

People just consume their information in other ways now-a-days. Or have simply moved on from this hobby or no longer have time for it. T'is unfortunate but true.

 

Having a single dictatorial moderator or forum editor as the dick like to called did not help that forum. Lost a lot of good contributors because of his I am right and you are wrong attitude.

 

I used to post a lot more on [H]ardforum. I hate their new site and I'm much more active here now.
Community is important, but so is site design.

 

I don't mind [H]'s forum setup, to be honest. It's not a million miles different from this one...

 

I'd say there are two main reasons sites like this struggle:

PCs became less interesting:
1: Windows XP completely trivialized their use, Windows 7 made them near perfectly stable, which massively reduced the need for troubleshooting which is bad news if you are a forum people can go to to ask for help.
2: The death of chipset variety and more and more tech getting integrated into CPUs reduced HW variety and with it reduced talking points.
3: OCing turned from a fun hobby for everyone into a professional sport for rich people.

The young ones seem to prefer Reddit (how does anyone navigate that impersonal messy landfill of information?) and whatever social media site is currently "cool".

 

It's drastically down

When bit-tech updated the forums, the individual(s) doing the job neglected to do "re-directs" to the old URLs in the forums. So, anytime somebody reads or discovers an old article referring to a project log, the visitor is given 404 NOT FOUND, http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=206494

 

I can chime in here as to why I think that is though. I've been on reddit for a good 7 years now, the place has changed a lot in that time (and mostly for the worse if you ask me) but as a mod on the watercooling sub, I get the appeal. The information you're looking for isn't presented in the forum fashion, long term info is basically pinned around, the rest is current info that's hard to reference back to. Think of reddit as just the first page of threads from a subforum. Anything after that is dead and can't be revived, so instead they ask or make the content anew each time. This has pros/cons in that it does mean info tends to be up to date as people are discussing it in the present, but also you get lots of repeat content and using older material is arduous.

That said, reddit is simple if you understand the place. Forums for the most part though, are not. I post more on reddit and facebook than here because there's a place for it. You sort of need a lot more structure in a forum else it becomes just such a mess. For instance I would be called a spammer if I made a thread for each little finished PC part I'd modded or interesting meal I've had, and quite rightly. So then you end up needing to create a thread you continually post to and so on.

I desperately don't want forums to disappear because they do some things just so well.

 

I don't design websites but...
I know I find the new design tiring to read, I've went from checking the forums a few times a day to a few times a week.

That said...has the redesign been redisigned? Text used to be grey after the update, now it's black again (much better).
Or maybe its browserdependent...

 

Same, the old userCP was my first stop and it had all the threads with new posts in that you were currently subscribed to. Just work down the list, job done. Now? The alerts thing that only shows up if you recently visited a subscribed thread? Really can't be bothered digging through everything again.

 

@MLyons, you bet... always happy to help.

 

Maybe you (or someone else) could write a little article about the "new" forums.. as in what moved where (gallerys for instance), and where do I find these settings that didn't exist before.
I mean, I understand that everything is logical to you, but if one is only used to the old forums...

 

MaxBale is a bot ladies and gents.... He's copied my entire thread from 10th July, even down to the exact wording and punctuation in the post...

https://forums.bit-tech.net/index.php?threads/is-site-traffic-down-since-the-new-build.328237/

 

Bump for MaxBale thread botting

 

Well it could be a "New!, Improved!" showing the new features. An article would make things more...General Knowledge than just an answer in the forums.

• You meep mentioning different possible styles, what is that about?
• The album has moved, the thumbs are gigantic, I suppose I can set somehow.
• What is a good way to post pictures now? (locally, not as a link)

 

I've been thinking the same thing recently; it seems a lot quieter here since the downtime/upgrade.

 

Im stunned that 301 Redirects from the Old URLs to the new URLs wasn't done for a site migration of this size. Thats the basics of SEO when updating a site and changing the url pattern! It can be done retrospectively, but the horse has already bolted. I wonder how much advertising revenue thats set you back