So, a reply I made to a different post got me thinking that I should just share all of my thoughts about the new site. Hopefully this can be considered when making changes to the site going forward. If anyone else has feelings about it they wish to share, I’d love to hear them either here or in your own post. Anyways, here you are:
Things I Like:
I really like the new layout. The design really appeals to me and I think its a great improvement over the old one in terms of navigation and, usability, and aesthetic.
I like the public display of a gender neutral section to discuss the fetish for all users regardless of orientation. I know the old forum had this too, but in my 8ish years of being on there, I didn’t know it existed until tonight when I went looking for it. On this site it was the first thing I noticed. I think that’s important to have and advertise.
I like the simplified topics. As much as I appreciated the organisation of the old site, we really didn’t need so many specific sections under both male and female media. What we have here is more than adequate of encompassing all of those other categories.
Tags. Not much to say, its just a nice feature…
Things I Don’t Like:
Its been mentioned before, but I’ll reiterate. Site visibility. Even knowing the link I still have trouble finding this site without visiting the old one first. The old site was easy enough to find that I came across it accidentally when looking for something else, and had that not happened I might not even know about this fetish at all. Maybe it was done on purpose to keep its users more private or maybe its just a side effect of starting a new site, but I think it will negatively impact our ability to be a community for those who are just coming into an understanding of the fetish.
I don’t like the latest feed. This is the thing that made me want to make this post. I tend to reply to all the new or recently updated topics that interest me when I visit. Maybe its just a me thing, but seeing my name in the latest feed 8 times in a row makes me really self conscious and makes me consider not posting as often or to as many topics, despite my desire to contribute to the conversation. If this isn’t a common issue or if its not even possible to change, don’t bother trying to adjust it just for me, but changing the way this works to a system where your latest feed only shows topics from categories you are interested in and/or making it something you have to click on to view might help provide a solution to the next problem I have.
I don’t like not having an “Other Fetishes” category. It was a nice option on the other site to be able to discuss other fetishes framed by how it works along with burps. It was out of the way, didn’t take away from the purpose of the site, and gave an outlet to discuss things with people you were already open with about another aspect of your interests. We’re all here for burps, but how we balance that with our other interests seems like something that should have its own category to be discussed in. I saw the argument that it would fill up the latest feed with things that people didn’t want to see and so again, my solution would be (if possible) to only display the feed for selected categories.
Thank you to anyone who took the time to read this. Again I’d love to hear your thoughts and mods/site owners, feel free to tell me why my opinions are trash (by which I mean I’d be really interested to know what your decisions behind these choices were if you don’t mind ). I think this site has the potential to be a huge improvement over the old one and in many ways it already is. I just believe it needs a little push in some areas to get it all the way there.
I agree with all the posts you’ve said, but I’d like to add something to it. I really like the fact that you need to have an account to even view the site. On the old site I didn’t have an account for like 3 years. I think it’s easier to identify and chat with others this way!
Oh my god I knew I was missing one of my likes. I thought about my points for this post for a long time before making it and that was definitely one of them at the time. I was a long time lurker before joining originally (like I want to say 5 or so years) and I think that this way is much more effective at bringing people into the community.
First off, thank you for giving such detailed feedback. This is really helpful.
I agree. I wasn’t involved in the setup of those categories (I wasn’t even a moderator back then) so I just had to kind of go with it. Now that the the bulk of the admin work has been passed to me, I really wanted to modernise and simplify things for new and old users alike.
There are a few parts to this.
First off: habits. The new link is just unfamiliar for now. When the old domain no longer directs to the old site, this one will become normal and I imagine many people will even bookmark it. You may remember when the old forums’ TLD was .org, not .com. That changeover was pretty confusing too, but now it’s been normalised.
Secondly, the old site goes down in October 2019 and when that happens, the domain theburpfetishforums.com will redirect to this site. So returning users won’t need to know the new URL - they will have no choice but to visit it.
Yeah, definitely on purpose. This site isn’t indexed by search engines. In the future, there is the possibility of creating a public landing page with some keywords for search engines to grab onto, but for now, the URL just goes directly to the forums which are private to non-registered visitors.
There are a few possible layouts to have on the front page of the site. I figured that categories on the left and new posts on the right would be convenient, but this layout is not fixed and I can change it at any time. I’m going to make a new post soon with screenshots of the different options, and maybe as a community we can come to a favourite.
I don’t believe this is possible. Edit: there is a user preference available to mute topics in certain categories. This is a nice solution.
It is possible to not show the Latest topics by default, but this would hamper quick navigation from the front page quite a bit. See what I said above about changing the front page layout.
As I’ve said before, the categories are not fixed. It is trivial to create new ones. The delay comes from making sure that each category is going to be both useful to the site and used. There are plenty of other communities online for all manner of kinks/fetishes - there is no specific reason for this forum to cater to any or all of them (besides burps), just as there is no specific reason for a foot forum to cater to fans of long necks.
I have a feeling I’m going to have to make the category eventually, but for now it’s been interesting to hear what opinions are held about it.
So yeah, hope I was able to clear up a few things and you’ve definitely given me ideas for the future.
I really appreciate the feedback! It is super special that us average users are able to have such a direct feed to the people in charge and it means the world to me! As for the things directly addressed in your response, it is incredibly helpful to know what is actually afforded to you by this new site and it goes a long way in helping the average user know what can be expected. It is good to know that the old site will remain as a beacon to guide new comers to the new site. This was one of my biggest worries with it and its good to know that it is only a matter of waiting for the old site to become this one’s landing page. That said, I’m still not fully clear on whether or not the old site will remain as visible to newcomers as it used to be. Any clarification would be appreciated!
As for the visibility of the new site on its own, I look forward to learning what you decide and what the reasons are behind those decisions if you are willing to share!
I’m not sure if you mean that the layouts are available to us all to change, or just that they can be changed by the people in charge. I don’t see any options for the general users, but I may be mistaken. In any case, I’m completely for gathering a general consensus before making a change, as everyone’s feelings on this are important!
For the next two points, I again say that I appreciate the feedback on what is possible given the limitations of the platform!!
Finally, I know its been talked about before and my intentions weren’t to bring up old issues, I was only presenting my case as a longtime user that this was the only place that was active and well moderated enough that I could share other fetishes in. I absolutely understand that there is no reason that this has to be the site to cater to other fetishes, and if it is not popular opinion that this should be the case, than I will completely accept the shift to a solely burp fetish medium (although I still may request lenience in the fictional stories as long as they cater to a mostly burp oriented audience). I only seek to offer my voice to the people who hope for an outlet to express their other desires, and to communicate the idea that this has always been one of the best maintained and active communities that is opened to outside interests. As always, I respect the moderators’ desires and only post this as an opportunity to present the opinion of a long time member of the forum. Whatever your choice for the future of the community, I will respect it.
As I’ve announced on the old forums a couple of times, the old site is being deleted. Or to be more specific, the hosting for it will stop being paid, and eventually GoDaddy will cancel the hosting. The old domain name (theburpfetishforums.com) will take visitors to a new page, informing them that the site has moved and providing them with a link to discourse.bfforums.com as well as redirecting them automatically after a few seconds if they don’t click on it.
This has been talked about to death on the old site, but basically it’s a measure to reduce the amount of inappropriate comments some people (my experience is with girls because I don’t watch male burpers) receive from lurkers. Streamers like KatContii can find links to posts on the forums just by Googling their name! That means they feel uncomfortable burping in a public setting and as a result, the respectful people who enjoy content without creeping others out lose majorly.
It’s not perfect, but if it can reduce events like that, then I’m much happier. The community has been largely in favour of this change, which is good.
So the user preferences are a bit different (and more limited) when it comes to the front page. You can change the default home page from Categories to one of these options: Latest/New/Unread/Top.
What I’m talking about is the way everything is arranged on the front page. Instead of a list of categories on the left and a list of latest posts on the right, admins can change it to be a series of boxes containing posts, or featured topics, and so on. The screenshots will make this much more obvious.
Now regarding the Other Fetishes issue, there is a user preference which would solve all of the problems I have brought up previously. In the Preferences > Notifications > Categories, there is a box called “Muted” which can be modified to include any categories the user does not wish to see on the categories or latest pages. So it’s kind of an inverse of your idea, which was a way to only see categories the user is interested in. I think the Muted option is even better, because chances are, users are only going to want to mute a couple of categories and view the rest (as an example, maybe a straight male user wants to mute any Male categories and Other Fetishes). This makes me much more open to creating the category, and users can just tag the posts inside with farts or domination or whatever they fancy.
Thank you for the detailed replies! That really helps clear things up. Sorry if some of it had been discussed quite a bit before, I had been a little absent before coming back to the old site just a few weeks ago and seeing the change so I probably missed out on a lot of the announcements for it. This also puts a lot of the rules I saw into perspective. Thanks for your time!
). I think this site has the potential to be a huge improvement over the old one and in many ways it already is. I just believe it needs a little push in some areas to get it all the way there.