Tamebay maintenance and upgrade tweaks
It’s been three months since we launched the new site design for Tamebay, although it feels like a lot longer – I can hardly remember what the old site looked like now.
We’re still working on a few ideas and tweaks to the site some of which will be visible and others which hopefully will enhance your use of Tamebay but that you may not even notice…. Although when I say “We’re still working”, what I actually mean is that our fantastic dev team at We Are JH are doing all the actual work!
Most talked about on Tamebay
Today one of the new features has gone live. In the right hand side bar of the home page you’ll find a new design for the “Most Talked About” stories on Tamebay. It will display the articles that have had the most comments over the past 30 days and the intention is to make it easy for you to find topics which you may still want to comment on, but aren’t necessarily still featured with an image on the home page.
Next to the title of the article you’ll also find the number of comments that the story attracted in brackets.
Following comments on Tamebay
Another feature we put live since the site launch is the ability to receive an email when someone replies to your comments on Tamebay. Beneath the comments box is a check box which if you tick will notify you of follow-up comments via the email address you enter when commenting.
Things we find interesting
We’ve added a completely new section at the bottom of the right hand side bar of the home page. This is where we’ll share things we read on the net that we find interesting, but aren’t necessarily things that we’ll blog about.
Dan and I read a wide range of articles on all sorts of topics so sometimes you might find something loosely related to Ecommerce, at other times it could be something totally off the wall that one or other of us just find interesting.
Minor Fixes
We’ve put a few minor fixes in place in recently, such as some of the Archives Page links weren’t working correctly (they are now).
Please do let us know if you see something not quite working as it should do and we’ll do our best to get it fixed. Also if you have any great ideas for other tweaks we could add to Tamebay we’re always interested to hear. Even if your ideas are not technically feasible or within our current development budget we may be able to consider them for next year.
goodrockingtonight says
12:36 pm on 16/08/2012
When tamebay annouced that it was having a re-vamp i was a little reserved about what was to come but the new fresh look is appealing to me and definitely would not want you guys to go back to the old format.
The ‘most talked about’ links are a great idea it certainly saves some scrolling
Chris Dawson says
2:05 pm on August 16th, 2012
Don’t worry we can’t go back to the old site…. we kinda destroyed it forever when the new one was installed
Glad you like the new links
ebuyerfb says
1:33 am on August 17th, 2012
One thing that needs to be fixed is how replies to replies are displayed. As it is there is no way to see more than two levels of comments. You see the rest of the comments but except for context or posting order it isn’t obvious who the reply was meant for. On the old site comments were indented so it was obvious. I’d hate to go back to the way it was 4 years ago when everybody was saying “@ #3″ or “@ Chris Dawson” at the top of their posts.
See this post? It looks like I’m talking to goodrockingtonight but I’m not.
goodrockingtonight says
2:44 pm on August 17th, 2012
You can talk to me if you wish, i’m not shy, honest
Dan Wilson says
3:19 pm on August 18th, 2012
@ebuyerfb We’re considering a few different ideas wih comments. If you have a good example of someone who does it well, we’d love to see it. So many are very complex and unattractive.
ebuyerfb says
6:55 pm on August 18th, 2012
TameBay did it well several months ago. Reddit does it extremely well. You just need an indentation like before. If you think it indents too far then just reduce how much it indents. As long as the text of every comment doesn’t all line up you should be good.
Chris Dawson says
9:30 pm on August 19th, 2012
We still have replies to replies to comments.
Previously we had replies to replies to replies to comments. However the big question is how many levels are really needed? 3? 4? more?
There has to be a limit somewhere and indents can only be made so much smaller.
Cambridge_BLue says
6:18 pm on 16/08/2012
Whilst overall I like many of the changes and the ‘fresh’ approach I do not like the mixing of adverts in the main information sections at all which I find intrusive to my enjoyment of the site overall and very distracting.
Whilst the ‘white space’ looks nice there is far too much of it and it requires unnecessary scrolling down to check on new updates.
pip pip
Dan Wilson says
3:22 pm on August 18th, 2012
@cambridge_blue
Not sure I agree re the white space. Think it’s crisp and clean.
As for ads, we need to cover costs. Simple as. Sorry.
Dan
Chris says
4:44 pm on August 18th, 2012
Re White Space.I think that the question is not White Space or No White Space rather it is how much is appropriate.
I have worked with Publishers and Sold Books both Wholesale and Retail for over 30 years. Publishers differ in the amounts of “White Space” they put around their pages of print and photographs. As I look at books I find that some the “White Space” is “over the top”. In other words there is far too much of it. In other Books I look at them and I think that there is too little. Some other Books it appears to be about right.
I know that it is subjective but too much or too little detracts from the visual impact while the right amount makes the whole impression much more acceptable. But it is always hard to get agreement on how much or hom little. That is why I suggested a trial adjusting the amounts of white space and allowing us your regular contributors to comment.
As I said previously I think that at present there is just too much “White Space” but others might for very good reasons have differant points of view. So why not have a trial and see what everybody thinks?
Dan Wilson says
6:07 pm on August 18th, 2012
@Chris
I think the reason why we’ll stay as we are right now and not have a test is that a) we’re not sure it is a pressing issue and b) there are other things that need attention, time and money before that.
I appreciate that some people don’t like the amount of white space but equally I don’t suppose it will harm anyone too much.
Dan
ebuyerfb says
7:32 pm on August 18th, 2012
I can’t help but think that you’re approaching this the wrong way.
I doubt this is just about covering costs. I have more costs than you do for hosting and based on how much you charge for ads you should be making more than enough to cover even my own costs. This is about profit. TameBay should be (and I really hope it is) a profitable venture and I doubt any of us have a problem with that.
In my opinion you have too many ads. I don’t even bother looking at them anymore. The only one that ever catches my eye is the Linn Works one and that is simply because it is animated and right here next to the comments I’m filling out. In fact it is kind of distracting.
As a potential advertiser this concerns me because I don’t think anyone would see my ads because there are just too many of them on the page. So far you’ve already possibly lost a few months of ads I may have purchased since June if I didn’t have this concern. But it may also be the case that I’m not the only one that has sat on the sidelines either. My recommendation would be decrease the number of ads and increase the costs to offset. Keep in mind this is coming from a potential advertiser and reader and not from someone who has ever run a successful website that had ads plastered all over it.
There is another potential pitfall to having so many ads. I doubt it would affect you or your bottom line directly but it does affect your advertisers. People eventually reach a point where they’ve seen too many ads and just block them completely. A good example would be a Chrome extension I wrote in response to this article ( http://tamebay.com/2012/06/buzzdock-inserts-amazon-listings-onto-ebay.html ) about eBay needing to prevent code insertion on its pages. The extension I wrote was sort of a proof that website owners have no control of these things and eBay shouldn’t be blamed for allowing this happen. My extension simply replaced every single ad on TameBay with that article’s author’s face. I was going to offer this extension to make my point about code injection but ultimately decided against it. I have not published or used it out of respect and as a potential advertiser this is not in my own best interest. You can probably do this with AdBlock already but I don’t use such products. Most people I talk to who regularly use AdBlock claim to turn it off on sites that don’t have obtrusive ads and that they want to support.
Chris says
8:33 am on 17/08/2012
I also wondered about the effects of the revamp before it happened. Obviously we had all become very fond of the previous layout. But I for one am very happy with the new layout with just one or two possible exceptions.
The White space between postings is just a shade too large. It would certainly help if it could be reduced by perhaps a third.
Other White Space could also be reduced. Is it perhaps possible to run an item with differant percentages of White Space. So that one posting and its comments the White Space was reduced by say 10% another the White Space by say 25% another with a reduction of perhaps 33% etc and let us all comment on which looks best?
As far as the adverts mentioned by Cambridge_BLue I think that as this is the means by which the site is funded that we just have to get to like them. As in so much these days there are adverts and after a while we just accept that they are there. I must admit that I barely notice them.
Certainly if I was asked I would tend to give the new site layout a score in the middle to high 90′s out of a 100.
Jimbo says
10:35 am on 18/08/2012
I would love to see a more mobile freindly site. I have problems with the drop down menus when browsing on my android phone.
Dan Wilson says
6:04 pm on August 18th, 2012
@jimbo
Chris and I use the site on our mobiles daily and we think it works pretty well, although I’d agree that some of the drop down lists can be a bit fiddly. It also works very well on tablets such as the iPad.
The question is one of expense, inevitably. When we commissioned the redesign we investigated getting a fully optimised and mobile responsive site and it just proved too pricey to afford alongside the redesign.
That said. It will be something we do in the future. Mobile usage is increasing dramatically so we’ll have to invest some time. We’re just holding back for now.
Dan
Cambridge_Blue says
2:58 pm on 26/08/2012
Well we are all entitled to our opinions but I remain of the view that there is simply to much ‘white space’ and it detracts from my use and enjoyment of this site which I greatly value.
Of much more importance and irritation however is the ‘spattering’ of all these paid for ads amongst screen space that should be reserved for editorial content.
They both clutter the main content of the site, degrade the usability and are simply bad practice and greatly annoy many users.
Content goes in one place and ads are placed in suitable ‘reservations’ on the screen and there should be no possibility of mixing them up – period.
If you want to see a good example of how to do this check out the channel site of the register which can be found here:
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/
Take that as an example and find a way to work more ads into it where you don’t mix them up (too much) with the real content of the site.
pip pip