Site Suggestions

I don't know if I'm speaking out of term here but my suggestions are:

i) I first started visiting this site a few months ago to use the 'Power Selecting' tutorial by Timothy Boronczyk. I thought I would print this tutorial as it was a great writeup so I did. The tutorial printed in a really nice format, with a front page with the title and the author on it and the following pages were all beautifully presented with the CodeWalkers header and footer.

When I visit these pages now, I don't see the nice presentation i once could regalrdless of whether I choose PDF Version or Print Version. I reliase the site has changed hands but does that mean the helpful and professional look of the tutorials has to stop? Which kind of leads me onto my next point...

ii) Fair enough, the site has been taken over by a commercial company but is there REALLY any need to have so much flashy advertising on the site? Codewalkers has gone from a straight to the point website aimed at helping people to a commercial mess. Is there any chance of smaller advertising being put on pages and preferably not in the middle of tutorials or writeups. It's off-putting when you're trying to learn or read something...

**Steps off soapbox**

Hi dead_earthworm, thanks for posting your thoughts!

I'll reply to them individually:

i) Yes, I know our PDF and PRINT versions dont have a fancy splash page, or a nice logo at the top and bottom of the screen. But they are formatted nicely for thier perspective purposes.

ii) Agreed, we do have a number of ads on our pages, as our whole network is ad-supported. We pay full-time employees to keep the whole network (now including codewalkers) running, and we pay contributing authors for each article they write. All of these costs are covered by the ads on our site, and let us keep this premium content free for everyone.

I see youve only got 2 posts, I hope to see you more active in our forums as we continue to grow

all respect but wat you paying them for?
messing up the site?
or fitting it up in the same layout as your page?
or making it even vaguer with a free search engine (wich i guess) not even made by them .

if Ii search for tutorials i need to use my ayes instead of a search engine... (*EDIT* Yes I see sorry for that the search engine is working not fine...)
I would really like to point this out and sorry for me repeating myself over and over but it really bugs me...

The search facility should be working fine if you select "codewalkers site" from the drop down.....

I actually agree with this. Codewalkers has a lot of content, and in order to be able to find the content they need, people want to have a decent search engine.

The forum search that comes with vBulletin is awesome, no problem there. But the site search is clumsy. It definitely needs a separate search for tutorials, reviews and code.

If the URLs for those different sections were different enough, people who know their Google could do more powerful searches. That'd be a start at least. It wouldn't replace a powerful site search, though.

IMHO the igrep idea is stupid. Why? Because as stated above, the vB search is great. I've been searching for forum posts with the igrep one and to be honnest...its rubbish, why the hell would you want to use it? Whats wrong with the vB one? Why have a totally separate domain JUST for searching the site?

I have to agree with the OP regarding the adverts...its not just a few to many, its like advert city...you've ruined what codewalkers was about...simplicity and help...now all I see is adverts, adverts and more adverts....plus broken articles...content missing, screwed up formatting...and more.

Why was codewalkers ported to your extremely dated and limited CMS? I just don't understand what you think its going to accomplish...please could you explain.

I hope you don't think I'm here to rant, because I can assure you, I'm not. I just feel that you have no idea about your audience...remember, codewalkers users are the total opposite of your standard devshed users...hence the reason codewalkers existed, and hence why it survived on almost no advert spots...I can understand you need to make money from the site, but turning it into an ad fest isn't the way to do it...think premium membership...think services...thats how you fund the site.

Man, I leave for a few months and the site gets ruined? I got a headache in a matter of seconds from all the ads and stupid graphics. Whoever decided to have a fixed width header but the content at 100% needs to be shot. I don't think I'll be coming back. Awful... really awful.

^ See what I mean....you've turned it into something that it was never meant to be.

I suggest that you make useful suggestions, just saying "its rubbish" does nobody any favour's and just wastes space. Suggest how the site can improve and if it is feasible the website people are likely to take it on board, constructive criticism is welcome I am sure.

Soon enough this site will be populated with a slightly different membership and most of the old-school codewalkers will be considered nuisance-whiners. It's happened at the other sites which Dev has bought and taken over.

You guys have several options-- you can block the ads, thus cleaning your screen a tad. You could leave, if it upsets you that much-- there are plenty of competing sites (and not a few offshoots trying to be anti-dev).

Of course, you could stay, make the best of what you have available to you here and build up the new community. Make useful suggestions, constructive criticism, and such. Dev's default format might be ugly, but it has been successful... otherwise they wouldn't have been able to afford to buy out Codewalkers and numerous other sites.

Im closing this thread because it seems to have outlived its purpose, if you have suggestions please post them as a new thread.