I've just visited SO and I don't like it. They seem to be too hung up on conventions and standards, or where such standards are necessary they castigate the inexperienced user without taking into consideration their inexperience. It's a breeding ground for anal retentives.

SO is for and by professionals, and doesn't like (rightly so) kids coming in and dumping their homework questions. Those get ridiculed to the point they never return. Harsh, but deliberate.
If you put in some effort, overall people are more than willing to help there.

Daniweb looks and feels more amateurish, for the hobbyist. Few times I posted a serious question here, answered it myself because after 2 weeks nobody'd even bothered to try to respond to it.
Yet homework kiddos get a flood of solutions to their assignments, despite an official policy to not help them in that way and if you try to dissuade them you get downvotes and in cases even banned here.
Caused me to stop posting here for a long time btw, and I guess others as well who'd been here for years I no longer see.

Choose your target audience, professionals or homework kiddos. But choose wisely. The one group has you compete with SO, the other with roseindia.
Choose which you'd rather be known as, a place with quality people helping each other or a place where you get crap in response to questions that are equally crap.

~s.o.s~ commented: Well put +0

Never had issues posting with IE.

Neither did I, ...in the past.
The question is "can you confirm that it still works as it did before these changes came to be made?"

-----------
p.s.:
For instance when I hover over the main menu in IE, nothing gets expanded!
Why is that?

(Of course) I have a pop-up blocker fully enabled, [and to tell you the truth: it's the only popup blocker that actually works - all other browsers fail to block certain popups, if any] but why would it affect something that it should not?!
I don't know...

Member Avatar for misi

"What is it that made vBulletin so much better?!"
vBulletin isn't better, it's a mess now, so don't look back.
Choose something better.

"Is our platform just confusing to use??"
Yes,it is confusing.
I'm not comfortable with its editor.

I'm inspired :) I'm currently starting work on a completely new redesign / facelift. I do that every couple of years, and we're pretty much due since for the most part the design / aesthetics were kept the same when we migrated the backend back in March 2012 off of vBuletin.

Member Avatar for misi

Dani, please, when you do that redesign throw out Down-Vote.
Use an editor where you can see who quoted who.

I really like your site, the staff is friendly, I can say only thank you to all of you.
I have had answers for my questions in a very short time.

The ads here are horrible.

The ads here are horrible.

You can disable ads in your member profile.

Use an editor where you can see who quoted who.

It's not the editor that's the issue. It's the fact that DaniWeb uses Markdown syntax as opposed to most other forum systems which use BBCode.

Member Avatar for misi

It's not the editor that's the issue. It's the fact that DaniWeb uses Markdown syntax as opposed to most other forum systems which use BBCode.

Throw it out before it kills you.
What is more important?

1 You and your staff like it.
2 Members like it.

Clicking on Log Out I ended up with:

Oops!

Nothing to see here, folks! We don't know who you are. Try joining our community or logging in to access this page.

Throw it out before it kills you.
What is more important?

It's a personal preference. Switching to the Markdown system has hands down been the best decision we ever made. Before, about 80% of posts were formatted incorrectly and people just didn't know how to use BBCode. Now, we have nearly no malformed posts and moderators have 99% less work.

At the most, I have to reformat only about one post a month in the vb.net forum because someone forgot to use the Code took to insert code. I certainly don't miss those posts with colour tags galore that looked like someone ate a bag of skittles then barfed on my screen. Markdown rocks. Are we moderators going to get any inside dope on the new design as you are working out the look and feel?

Throw it out before it kills you.

BBCode was far worse, and throwing out both pretty much exhausts our options if we want to be consistent with what people know and understand.

What is more important?
1 You and your staff like it.
2 Members like it.

Of the two you stated, we chose #3: members are capable of using the formatting system without screwing it up 8 times out of 10. With BBCode we often spent more time fixing people's mistakes than fighting spam, and with the huge bullseye to spammers that vBulletin is, that's saying something.

Clicking on Log Out I ended up with:

What page were you on when you clicked the Log Out link?

Member Avatar for misi

It's a personal preference. Switching to the Markdown system has hands down been the best decision we ever made.

That's good.

What page were you on when you clicked the Log Out link?

On this page.

To recap the audience problem/issue:

You have some good people here, but they're so annoyed with the flood of homework kiddos they're discouraged from posting anything of value.
And that leads to a situation where quality questions, when asked, don't get answered either.
Which is a death spiral.
You might be able to revert that, but it will mean less traffic at least initially as you're going to have to very actively work to dissuade the homework kiddos from coming here and dumping their assignments, then never returning except to look if they got a ready made answer a few days later (and maybe make a nasty comment when they got snark instead of the ready to turn in solution they were asking for).

Of course that puts you right in competition with SO unless you can find a niche besides it (maybe the serious hobbyist, rather than the die hard professional), which is so well established you're small fry.

There are several types of posts that really annoy me. Note that when I say I'd like to delete, I generally do not.

Please do my homework for me

I would be quite happy to delete these posts immediately so that they don't even appear on the thread lists. This would clean things up for people browsing for interesting threads.

Urgent help needed immediately

I get tired of seeing these meaningless titles. In spite of prominent Please Read This Before Posting type sticky threads, it seems that few people actually read them. Should we start giving infractions since nothing else seems to be effective? Reducing the number of these types of posts would raise the quality of the site.

No speak Engrish

In spite of the fact that this is clearly an English language forum (with rules stating such), we still get a lot of posts in the Engrish as she is spoke vernacular.

Insufficient Information

I'd be happy deleting these on sight as well. You know the ones I mean. The poster complains because his query takes too long to run but doesn't say what the query is, what the table looks like, how many records are in it (or them). And then repeated requests for details are ignored. In rare cases the poster whines that he is not getting any help.

Please do my homework for me

Barring an executive decision by Dani against it, I'd actually encourage deletion of obvious "do my work for me" threads, provided they don't have any replies. If they have replies, deleting the thread would be unfair to the people who replied.

Urgent help needed immediately

The joke about FAQ being the best title for top secret information is funny because it's so true. In this case, I'd say that as a moderator you should change the title to be more informative if possible, and dole out infractions for habitual uninformative titles.

No speak Engrish

Could you define "Engrish" for this thread? I see a lot of, for lack of a better term, Indian English where it's obvious that the person posting learned English in or around India. But it's still understandable, and if it's so garbled as to be intelligible or is clearly not English by any measure, that's against our rules and should be treated as such.

Insufficient Information

This one is tricky. I'd be thrilled if our rules added a clause about insufficient information when asking a question, but the likelihood of that happening is vanishingly small.

Member Avatar for misi

What is it that made vBulletin so much better?!

Which version of vBulletin was it?

Which version of vBulletin was it?

One of the later version 3 builds, I don't remember the exact version number. Due to the extreme amount of customization in place, we were unable to upgrade without significant effort.

Member Avatar for misi

Isn't it possible to convert to IPB now?
Their software is decent.
XenForo just coming up now. Relatively easy to modify.

We looked at a number of existing forum solutions and ultimately decided to write our own. Would you like to guess what a subset of existing solutions that were rejected might include? ;)

Isn't it possible to convert to IPB now?

probably, but why??? Dani already has a hefty investment in the DaniWeb software, why change horses now?

Which version of vBulletin was it?

3.8.x line. Wouldn't touch 4 with a ten foot pole, and we launched our own version before 5 came out (which I wouldn't touch with a twenty foot pole, anyways, mind you).

Not an IBP fan for some reason. I don't know why I just never got into it. Xenforo was still going through their legal battle with vBulletin when we launched our new platform, and they were on a long-term development hiatus. It was actually the #1 contender, regardless, but ultimately it just made more sense to spend less time coding exactly what we wanted/needed from scratch as opposed to taking the time to learn Xenforo backwards and fowards and then spend just as long coding exactly what we wanted into it. Ultimately we ended up with a much more scalable, robust product that best suits our needs.

probably, but why??? Dani already has a hefty investment in the DaniWeb software, why change horses now?

Because I'm quite convinced that, for some reason, our new platform isn't compatible with a large percentage of our audience. Not sure why. Haven't received any feedback from anyone saying it's broken. But just the utter decrease in posts per hour from the hour before launching to the hour after launching speaks otherwise.

Member Avatar for misi

probably, but why??? Dani already has a hefty investment in the DaniWeb software, why change horses now?

To cut the losses.
The horse is not dead but not healthy.

before 5 came out (which I wouldn't touch with a twenty foot pole, anyways, mind you).

The VB managers are very proud of 5, its development going ahead!
Few more years and it'll be half baked.

Because I'm quite convinced that, for some reason, our new platform isn't compatible with a large percentage of our audience. Not sure why.

I did try with a few sentences to let you know,why.

The VB managers are very proud of 5

I'd like to meet the first manager who wouldn't say that about their new product.

Member Avatar for misi

I'd like to meet the first manager who wouldn't say that about their new product.

Just as here.
Leaders of this community wouldn't say that about their new product.
They encourage the owner that how good it is.

I didn't wade through the entire discussion, but one thing that comes to mind is that the forum doesn't really look that great when you're not logged in. Profile pics and signatures aren't shown (for obvious anti-spammer reasons) which make Daniweb look a bit, well, boring.. Maybe that could have something to do with it? The old DW was also a lot brighter to look at with yellow accents everywhere instead of the current purple-with-grey; which made it look a bit friendlier.
All IMO etc..

[edit] Aaah, just found this thread: http://www.daniweb.com/community-center/daniweb-community-feedback/area-51/threads/460504/a-taste-of-the-new-design-to-come-/2
Look like I have a lot of catching up to do

The VB managers are very proud of 5

And Steve Ballmer is very proud of Windows 8 (just like he was of Windows Vista) and we all know how that is working out for him.

But just the utter decrease in posts per hour from the hour before launching to the hour after launching speaks otherwise.

If you reduce the raison d'etre of Daniweb to just one thing I would think that would be to provide a forum where people can ask for and receive answers to technical problems relating to computers and programming. I can't imagine how you could make the interface for doing just that any simpler. If you've tested the code under the most popular browsers (as I imagine you have) then you already know that except for the occasional minor glitch, there are no browser problems. Given that I am at a complete loss to explain why your traffic should drop off immediately on switching from vBulletin to the custom interface.

But if you are convinced that the switchover is the major factor in the reduction then the solution should be obvious. Switch back to vBulletin. If you don't want to do that (and I understand the reasons why) then the next obvious solution would be to compare the vBulletin interface to the current one and examine the differences to see if a problem can be identified.

And Steve Ballmer is very proud of Windows

Firstly, I love Vista and now 8. However, I do believe the comment about vB 5 was meant to be sarcastic.

then the next obvious solution would be to compare the vBulletin interface to the current one and examine the differences to see if a problem can be identified.

I don't think it's an interface problem, but rather something with cookies not working, or an actual inability to post.

Why do you suspect cookies or posting? My comment about Vista was because Windows 7 was pretty much Vista with the kinks worked out. Perhaps MS can do the same with Windows 8 and turn it into a product that will not arouse so much ire. It wouldn't take that much to do it for me.

Why do you suspect cookies or posting?

Cookies and server downtime have historically been the only thing that have caused such a massive decrease one minute to the next.

The only thing I can see cookies being used for on DaniWeb are to autofill my username & password when I return to the site. I thought everything else was stored on the server. What else do you use cookies for? And if the cookies were non-functional, what effect would that have on the user? As for server downtime, as far as I can tell that has been pretty minimal, hasn't it?

Jim, the username/password autofill that you're referring to is a feature of your browser, nothing to do with DaniWeb.

When you log into the site, it stores an encrypted cookie on your computer with your login credentials. The HTTP protocol has no true concept of state, which means that you need to be reauthenticated each and every time you make an HTTP request. Each time you click on any individual page of the site, the cookie information stored in your browser is transmitted in the HTTP request, you're authenticated, and then the web server knows to show you content specific to your member profile.

If, for some reason, the server was sending corrupt cookies, or unable to read the cookies that the HTTP request is sending it, that would account for people being unable to remain logged in on the site page-to-page.

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