Cool, new look
 

Love it! :thumbup:

Well done Grant & Susan.

I agree! Looks and feels great! Congratulations!

Good one!
Very nicely done.

Being a bit dense it took a few clicks to find the latest posts. Thankfully traveling has helped me adapt to change.

And it's not written in Hindi, so quite easy to figure out.

Cheers,
John Downs

Had the same problems finding my way around...Gps didn't work so I actually had to THINK! Great looking new format! Well done guys!

Thanks, great to hear you guys like it! It's always a worry when you do something so new and different. Lots more to come now that we have a solid base to build on. :)

We've had a couple of minor bugs to swat, but nothing fatal, so it's looking good!

huge sigh of relief....

I'm neutral on the new look: appears fine, previous experience suggests caution. But....is it just me, or has it suddenly become a real pain to post long private messages? Sometimes I want to communicate something that can't be conveyed in a mere 1000 characters.

Mark

Very impressive, much more inviting in general and I would assume it will appear more user friendly for newcomers to the site.

Must be just you, sorry! Or was it a VISITOR message you wanted to leave?

Private Messages have a limit of 7000 characters - that's a lot!

Visitor Messages had the default limit of 1000 - now bumped to 2000. No one has commented on it before, so kudos to you! :)

We last had a new look about 7 or 8 years ago, and there were a lot who complained - but they came around eventually. I hope you end up liking the new look!

Another positive vote, great, thanks! :)

Looks terrific Grant, just a few more weeks to let everyone adjust and then it's all over. I'll bet you will be glad to get back on the bike ;)

Funny, I never noticed the distinction. I've had two "visitor" messages, both from members. I doubt they noticed the difference either. I've also had scores of private messages.

Now here's something weird for you to contemplate: when I go to the list of my two visitor messages and click on the username for one of those two, I get his visitor messages, i.e., messages addressed to him, not me. When I click instead on the username of the other member, I get the message he sent to me (and my replies), as it should be.

I know you love chasing down these weird little anomalies. Right?

I'm a slow adopter of anything new. I'm sure I'll adjust in time, and I'll come to view the old layout as antiquated, quaint and/or ridiculously inefficient. I'll post here when that happens--give me two weeks.

Mark

I like it :thumbup1:

nice and clean and very easy to navigate... and I managed to log on straight away.

Congrats to all the hard work that goes into a major re-design

Cheers
Geordie aka Will

:thumbup1:

Hi Grant,

It looks good and a major upgrade to the old one. But don't let your developers off the hook just yet. The site needs to be heavily optimized as your front page alone is 1.16MB in size and it has 61 unnecessary http requests. This means extremely slow performance on not-so-great connections and ultimately hurting you in the long run by losing visitors and advertisers.

The next very important thing that they should do is to enable gzip compression to reduce static file transfer size. That alone would knock down the page size by 150kb.

If you need help relaying this stuff to your guys, let me know.

I have to say i really like the new look-for want of a better description-it feels 'warmer'!
Good job.
:thumbup1:

Scus my possible blondness, but where's the search function on the HUBB?

I can see the "whole HU search" function at the top right of the page. It looks very similar to the old one... Sorry if I'm casting aspersions. If it is the same, I'll continue to use Google.

Also I'm told I have 22 notifications in my "Welcome Chris" box. Actually I have NO notifications. The "22" seems to be the number of "Likes" I've received to my posts.


PS. Just clicked on the 22, got a list of where I've been liked, and now it says "0 Unread Private Messages" as it should do = This issue is solved.

PS2. Found a "search this forum" function, but it only searches the sub forum, in this case the HU-Bar (as that's where I am), not the whole HUBB

PS3. Found the HUBB search. Nicely hidden at the bottom of the "posts in the last xxx hours" page as a drop down option within "Forum Jump". Is there a button anywhere near the top of the page that I haven't spotted? If there isn't, I think there should be.

PS4. Did a bit of testing on the "search whole HU site" function at the top right and it really doesn't give many meaningful results. I will continue to use the Google criteria site:horizonsunlimited.com word1 word2 word3

PS5. The layout of what's displayed when you click "New to HU" from the Home page at Introduction - 4 easy steps to motorcycle travel | Horizons Unlimited needs fixing. The text/images are aren't where they should be (using W7 and latest IE)

PS6. The links to the travellers meets pages then produce pages using the old layout/menu bars. I presume some of the site is still work in progress? The Greece meeting link is a 404.

like it.
Well done

All looks pretty good. Nice to have a change of appearance.
And looks less cluttered now.

Can certainly imagine the huge sigh of relief - maybe I even heard it early that morning the other day - the faint sigh in the westerly wind.......

:thumbup:

The front page looks much more navigation-friendly!

I was surprised when I saw it, but I will love it soon! Thanks for the hard work - we will appreciate your efforts! :thumbup1:

Wonderful, I like this new version a lot!! bier

Thank You Grant and Susan
 

It was May 3, 2007 that I joined Horizons Unlimited - 5 years ago.

I have learned a lot about motorcycles and about riding motorcycles internationally. I have made friends, promoted our business and have become more of an overland survivor than I ever believed possible. All this because of Horizons Unlimited. I have been trail blazing to new Horizons ever since joining.

This new format is terrific. I am sure it will encourage others to join and be of benefit to those of us already on board.

xfiltrate

Thanks! They're not nearly off the hook, optimizartion is the next stage. We wanted to make sure it WORKED when it's simple before we got into serious optimizing. Caching is already on and working well, and yeah the 612 unnecessary calls is annoying.

Sounds like you're a serious techie in this area. Please contact me off line and perhaps we can use your expertise! :) We never turn down experts!

Thanks!

but faint? really? more like that storm that went through at about 1 am...

but the basics are there, so we're very happy with it. LOTS left to do, we'll be busy all summer on it.

I must be a curmudgeon - I hate change. Ah well, it does look a bit nicer.

yup! :)
same as always so far as I know - we never moved it, template is the same. When you click the Search This Forum link at the top right of each forum, click the "Advanced Search" at the bottom of the popup box - that takes you to the whole forum search.

The whole site has to be recrawled - and then it should be a LITTLE better, though it needs some tweaking to finish the job. It's hugely complex to get it right, and has been a low priority. But I've been getting my head wrapped around it, and have a new version in progress, so with any luck it will be much better soon.


yup, we know. eventually... :(

Greece Fixed, ta.

LOTS to do yet. There are a lot of old static pages that haven't been updated, and 250 blogs are still on the old design. We'll be working on all of it and eventually we'll get it done. We actually got our own trip into the new design - it was still on the previous one to the one we just dumped! - but it was a half day work to do it, and it needs work yet.)

Thanks for the feedback - we're still working! :)

Email sent :)

With honors...
 

First impression: what happened? HUBB now looks like all those typical forums. But, second thought: I LIKE IT!

Easier to navigate than the thousand links to sections on the side making (sections sound like the DVDs, I just miss Ladies and Tyres sections then!). Much more appealing for newcomers (and I like it to be an open space!). And I guess that the (initially looking typical) format may be a well tested one... and now I find it has its own style/touch, feel at home already.

I only Hope the research works more efficiently.

Conclusion: congrats for the upgrade...

If I recall your signature, you may like some changes though, the EX-500 looks a nice upgrade for a beautiful bike. :clap:Love it since so long ago, actually I'm considering getting one! Congratulations (only if I'm not just wrong doh).

Looks good but I only seem to be able to post using the Quick Reply window

Magnon, thanks for letting me know! But that's weird - anyone else? I'm using the main Post Reply with quote window for this and it works.

Tip for any issue while we transition - login, then logout, then log back in again. Should sort cookies etc.

Thanks! Good to hear. :)

I will be doing a little additional styling and some things may change slightly as we go forward. My main plan was to get it up and working as simply as possible. Any issues are easier to sort when it's simple! :) And I have a completely default installation I can test and compare on too.

Well done
 

Wow Grant and Susan
What a great job you've done. It looks fantastic, I'm very impressed and can't beging to imagine how many thousands of hours you have put into this:D
HU is such an amazing resource for all of us who read it, either on the road or at home we're lucky to have you.

Huge thanks from us all. Now take a well-deserved break and if you can wait that long, I'll be round your house next month, armed with my PG Tips to make you both a cup of tea.

Last 24 hour posts?
 

Hola,
Looks fresh!Looks nice!


Where can i find the last 24 hour posts?

Thanks

There's a tool bar just below your signin. "new posts".

The new layout is excellent. Good job.:D

Once you guys get the beta testing all sorted. I'd like to see the Tapatalk mobile plugin enabled.
Thanks

yes, Tapatalk or Forum Runner.

I use Tapatalk quite a bit over on advrider. I like the speed and efficiency of the app.
As these mobile devices get better and better we will see more and more people using them.
I was down in Singapore a few weeks ago and easily 8 out of 10 people on the skytrain were using a handheld device. Definitely a sign of things to come.
Again cheers on the tastefully effective and tidy redesign.

Hi Tiff, we're hugely relieved that the feedback on the design is good, we have had a lot of input from our volunteer design team so that's made a big difference!

Looking forward to a couple of days off, then there's a long-overdue newsletter to get out!

See you soon,
S&G

I'm not someone who usually takes changes of layouts etc. well. This one has been so smooth and easy I think the team should really be congratulated. :thumbup1:

Would you like to redesign my banks website, this weeks version is the worst yet :rofl:

Andy

However, if using Google Chrome browser, I can't edit or delete posts.

Smiley's also don't work...

I'm not deleting my data for the 8th time....

Works fine in IE though.

Grant, I tried posting a couple of times using the 'post reply' button. (once before logging out and then on logging back in), both times when I clicked the 'submit reply' button my text (about 50 words) disappeared and an error message came up saying that the message was too short please enter a minimum of at least 5 characters. May have been just one of those things as it seems to be working fine now.

Thanks Bush Pilot ,i thought "new posts" was to post something new:oops2:

Hi,

I miss the link to the "Posts last 24 hours"

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...daily&hours=24

and i would love if the page with the new posts would finaly be able to be updated using F5. I allready told you a few years ago you could simply ad a script or forward using PHP insted of giving out the error message

"Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms. "

<script language="javascript">
<!--
function weiterleitung() {
window.location.replace("http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/search.php?do=getdaily&hours=24");
}
setTimeout("weiterleitung()", 1000);
// -->
</script>

No change on the page needet just give out the script insted the error message or both...
Greetings, Tobi

Likes
 

Grant, An easy one I hope.....

When you're at the top of a thread which has 'Likes', the horizontal bar that displays the number of Likes breaks the drop-down lists from the 'New Posts' and 'Quick Links' buttons. (On IE9 here).

Hope that doesn't lead to hours of searching and more sighs in the wind!

(That sigh I heard in the wind the other morning had travelled right across the Atlantic - so yep, it must have been a real storm at your end!)

New look
 

Love it! :thumbup:

Well done Grant & Susan.

It has been 3 days i think?, and i can't remember how it used to be!

That's a good thing!!

Good to know that IE works for you - that does say it's a Chrome issue at least - but just checked with my Chrome 18.0.1025.156 m and it's fine.

Try forcing a refresh in Chrome. Shift - F5 and see how that goes. It IS the contents of your cache that's the issue, but I fully understand your pain and reluctance. Forced refresh should sort it, maybe check you have the latest version. My Chrome is always updating it seems... OR maybe it's opera, or safari - I think I have too many browsers aaaaggghhhh. and thats on this computer - I have the same issue on ourt test Mac, and test XP, and test Vista. This is on Win 7. I haven't tested Chrome on all of them, so let me know what operating system you're on if it's not Win 7 and it's still not working and I'll test it.

I live in FF though. All the add-ons save me hours.

ANY idea what happened in between? I'd LOVE to know - you're about the 5th person to say they had that error message and I'd love to know when it stopped or what happened. I did change the minimum from 5 to 1 (the real minimum) at about 10am Pacific Time - 6pm GMT. BUT I see that's after it fixed itself for you.

thanks for letting me know - I'd hate to be chasing nothing for days!

sigh... oh yes, 3 am too many times, long hard hours and money, but it's worth it! :)

Likes: really? I see the pic below, what do you see?

thanks, Grant

Hi Grant, I see this:

http://i1263.photobucket.com/albums/...paga/Like2.jpg
And this:


http://i1263.photobucket.com/albums/...paga/Like1.jpg

Don't stay up tooooo late! :yawn:

Good job!!
 

:thumbup1:

It is a great look. Now for a phone friendly app to complete the new outfit. When my wife buys a new dress she always buys new shoes as well. I am told that OBVIOUSLY she needs new shoes.

Thanks Nigel!

Re phones, please see this thread and poll - we need your opinion! :)

Sorry to be the awkward one.....but I hate it. A newbie would find it hard to navigate to the forum. I know that the "HUBB" is at the bottom of all those drop down menu's. But how about a quick link on the front page.

As requested, HUBB is now the left-most menu item.
 

A link to the HUBB home page is now the left-most menu item on all pages except in the HUBB itself, where the far left item links to the Home page.

There is already a HUBB description and link on the Home Page, halfway down on the left.

A HUBB link is also on every Quick Links menu - that's the top line of the mega-menu, and the menu that displays for mobile users.

And of course, each mega-menu has the entire middle section devoted to HUBB topics.

I'd like to hear from the newbies to the site - are you having difficulty finding the HUBB?

Cheers
Susan