-
Posts
-
-
Hi everyone!
Some of you gave us some great feedback on how to improve the homepage in our last member survey. We’re planning on changing up how we handle the older articles, user photos and trail info on the homepage. And I also wanted to make sure we considered everyone’s input to make it better, so if you have any other ideas of how you could best find and keep up with our content on the homepage please comment here. Or as always, you can reach us via email using first name at singletracks.com or [email protected].Let us know what you think of the homepage feed below – go ahead with the good, the bad, and the ugly – and we’ll do our best to make it happen for 2019! Thanks!
-
Please eliminate the login requirement when using forums or commenting. I can never remember my password or where I wrote it down. I don’t enjoy having to hunt it down on my email when I have to use “forgot password”. Many bike websites don’t use login. Please look at other bike websites? Login discourages comments and forums but that is a big part of why I use your website.
-
Thanks for your feedback, Plusbike Nerd. We’ll definitely take it into consideration, although having users create a login cuts down on a significant amount of spam so we can spend our time creating great content instead of moderating junk. I understand though, many times I’m too impatient to wait for a forgot password notification for other websites!
If you have suggestions for the homepage specifically, we’ll be able to get to those first before the login concern. thanks again!
-
-
You know I really hate web designers that insist on making a website phone centric such that on my big monitor your website becomes a tiny band formatted for phone.
I bought a big monitor for a reason:)
You waste a lot of screen space. Look at your webpage compared to bikepacking.com. How much more impact their home page has. There site is not a perfect example of clean navigation but it has a lot more snap.
Cheers
-
+1 on mikekelly’s comment regarding not “making a website phone centric”. These days, you get less usable information on a web page with a 24″ monitor that you used to get with a 13″ monitor years ago. Web design is going in the wrong direction.
-
-
I know this is not a homepage consideration, but imo sometime in the not-so-distant future, ST probably needs to step into a better map application. I know it is a big change (and probably expensive), but I’m guessing that sometime in the future a fancy map app like mtbproject’s is going to be a necessary norm to stay in business for a trails-focused site like ST. I, like many, absolutely love ST and its community. I even once posted a forum “Why do you love Singletracks?”. The responses were great. The only reason I go over to a trail site like mtbproject is to use their map app, and I do this frequently.
The biggest concern I can think of in converting over to a new map system (besides time and expense) is what to do with all the old map data. I’m guessing that much of what has been done in the past on the current maps in ST may not convert over to a new system. And the information you have on the current system is valuable. I don’t think you would want to cull that information. A solution might be to place all the old map data under a link called something like “Archive Maps”, and thus, it would still be available to everyone. And then the new map system would be something akin to mtbproject’s system or an even better one than that.
-
Good feedback here. As you can imagine, it’s a tricky balance to create a good user experience for desktop users and mobile users that’s why we’re back re-assessing how and if we can make it better for the majority of users, starting with the homepage. We don’t want to do a major redesign since we have other projects in the works (don’t worry, mongwolf, trail map improvements are on that list!) but it helps to know what kinds of features our committed members like.
Thanks for your support guys!
-
Regarding the balance between mobile and desktop users… I’ve long since stopped web development (been there, done that, got the t-shirt, not looking back), and even then, it was more for curiosity and making a few bucks on the side (which was pretty lucrative way back then). About the time I got away from it, mobile access to sites was just taking off (yeah, it’s been a few years). I’m not saying anything everyone already knows, but at that time, the standard seemed to be to develop two distinct instances for sites, both drawing data from the same back end… one for desktops, the other for mobile. It was easy enough to point users to the appropriate instance. Again, nothing new or unknown, but it seems to be more common these days that sites aren’t doing this anymore, and just develop more for mobile/tablet than desktop, or a compromise between them. Nothing attractive about going to a site on a 24″ monitor just to see text that is 2″ tall. 🙂 Yeah, it’s a little extra work, but I think it’s worth it. Just my opinion.
-
-
Totally agree with Mongwolf, I feel the same way that they need to get a legitimate map program if the site hopes to compete. Love the website otherwise!
-
Hey Leah. Thrilled to hear that a new map system is on the radar, even if it may take awhile. No matter what, Singletracks has my loyalty. You and Jeff have created such an awesome and friendly culture within the community. Other staff in the past have been huge contributors to that also. It’s cool how the ST community can share honestly, even disagree, but nobody gets slammed in the process … well rarely does someone get slammed. =) And that is a rare thing in this day and age as we all know all too well.
-
Thanks for checking in and for keeping a tidy house!
-
My wish is a fix for the forum. Whenever I try to add a link to a post my Samsung tablet goes nuts. The keyboard pops in and out of view until I back out with the browser’s (Chrome) back button. This has been going on for months…
-
I wouldn’t mind a better UI for the forum. I think many more would be willing to post/spend more time on the site if you branched the forum into general topic subsections. Heck, at the very least I’d like to see the forums broken up by locale.
On that topic, you guys should update the app to include the option to show other users local to you and a way to contact them through the app.
-
I like the simplicity and community orientation of this site. You really do not try and ‘sell’ anything have comparable reviews of products. It is easy to navigate from a handheld device.
The map navigation seems cumbersome when accessing from the trails. I am more inclined to use my own GPS, local weather stations and Googlemaps. However, the map feature is good for determining future destinations. It is a bit unclear as to what the overall intention of this feature is currently.
-
Why is there no search feature in the forums?
-
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.