New Design...Love it or hate it?

I agree. The new design is very hard to navigate and the albums are completely ruined. The old design was cheesy but very functional and easy to navigate. The albums in particular are just a disaster. I think KT should go back to a simple old-fashioned design. This has reduced usability dramatically.

I havent really browsed the new site much, but... first look... i`d say someone bought a cheap template and threw in a few basic widgets and fingers crossed that 5% of all members might like it... i mean, it`s a forum, stick with phpbb or vbulletin or such... it`s tested and it works and people are used to the design, layout and all other goodies that come with it... want something new? change the skin! make some minor alterations... not fuck it all up...

but if it does stay as it is, oh well, in time, i`ll get used to it...

just my 5 cents!

Its really bad for old users, new ones will not care. I liked more old look.

Like anything it will take some time to get used to. It’s definitely different. I find it runs a lot smoother. Overall I think it will grow on me

a thumbs down from me.
way harder to navigate.
another reason to use this site even less

would have been nice to have input from the users that actually use the site...

Not a fan. Why? Usability mostly.
For example: In the old format i wanted to go to albums and sort by number of pictures in an album. This was two clicks (one to go to Albums, one to sort). Now this is 5 clicks (one to go to Media, one to open filters, one to open sort by menu, one to select from sort by menu, one to apply filter). The new look site is demonstratably less user friendly. Want to view my own profile, used to be one click, now it's two. Want to see all my messages, was one click, now it's two. It's all less user friendly, i'm now more clicks away from basic functions.

Looks modern sure, although all the non-avatar profiles now look stupid as f*ck, and a lot of old avatars (including mine) just don't fit circles. Trophys? Why is this needed, what benefit does it add? Do likes add to the experience? Followers instead of friends?

Honestly overall i don't like the change. I help run a community forum site and we've had several dicsussions about updates and changes. #1 in the discussion, Does this make the user experience better? #2 Is it now an easier site to use? #3 Do our members really want these changes?.
#1, the new format isn't making my experience better until i make several profile changes and adjustments and overall posting and interacting havn't improved.
#2, the site is not easier to use, i am more clicks away from basic functions that before.
#3, i've not done the survey to find out but for me this wasn't the way to improve the site.
We're running the same layout and software we had in 2010! We've kept it up to date security wise and made minor changes here and there with new features out members wanted, and just fiddled a few things to make the site easier to use. Always small upgrades two or three times a year, always based on wide ranging community feedback.

Nobody enjoys change, myself included, but I think we need to give it a little time. This platform is superior to the old layout in my opinion, and I am sure they will be tweaking things to make the experience better and more user friendly.

Eloquentkingof1 said:

Nobody enjoys change, myself included, but I think we need to give it a little time. This platform is superior to the old layout in my opinion, and I am sure they will be tweaking things to make the experience better and more user friendly.

Click to expand...

Thats it in a nutshell. RIP the old site, it ain't coming back so time to start exploring the positives that come with the new, such as the chat which has been requested for years. Yes there are some rough edges but Depp is working hard behind the scenes to get those rough edges nice and smooth.

If there are features you are having trouble with please leave feedback explaining exactly what the issues are.

gutted to lose all of those lovely comments on my Old Albums,had to delete them all-heartbreaking!

So far nothing seems to be a big issue. Change will always result in unhappy people. The site for the most part is just as easily navigated as it was prior to the format change. I will say the only thing im having an issue finding is a quick way back to threads i have commented on. Maybe im just overlooking the easy way to it all. but in my profile page it currently only shows a history of threads created by me and doesnt include the ones i have commented on. Also it feels odd to be back to newbie status lol. Im sure this will all smooth out and i look forward to many more years here. Thanks for all the hard work everyone behind the scenes does.

nmv figured it out. .all good now. just took a little playing to get there

This is really a bad UX design. What was easy to use and very functional is now very difficult to navigate. Especially the albums sections. There should have been option if I want to view in listed format or in blocks like it is currently shown after the upgrade.

I can't use the new site on the desktop computer for more than some minutes, after that the light text-on-dark starts triggering my migraine. (It is easier on my tablet with its smaller screen.) There was an option to use a dark-on-white "default" style during the first day, but the option is strangely gone now.

Also: light grey on pink? light grey on slightly darker grey? dusty pink on grey? Please! I understand that new things are new, that change is inevitable, that the site was long overdue for an upgrade, that I'm just an old fart who can't accept that the world is changing, but please!

I should perhaps add that the new functionalities seem very promising indeed, and that the update/upgrade on the whole is welcome! But as was noted somewhere above: it will of course take some time for everything to get sorted out. I'm giving Depp and the update a firm thumbs-aloft .

since someone asked...

At first impression I don't love it. but mostly because I don't like change. It's actually a pretty clean design for this type of community site.

I do have some specific gripes though:

1. I don't like the way it handles pictures (now "media"), The tiling/resizing of pics based on how many are in the album feels all wrong to me, implying hierarchy where it doesn't actually exist.

2. I had always hoped that the groups would be put to better use, as for some reason they were always pretty hidden in the menus in the old design, but now they seem to be gone completely? The redesign seems like a good opportunity to make them useful and visible instead of killing them. They would have worked well here if they just weren't so hidden.

3. Recent visitors - I've found most of my friends, subs and people I talk to here either directly or indirectly through the recent visitors feature on profiles.
I would say that was the primary reason I spend more time at KinkTalk than FetLife, and sadly now that is gone.

To be honest it makes no sense to me that this site is separate from GD, since GD became 18+ many years ago.
Most active users are also using GD, and just come here to post pics since GD has moderated pics that take days (sometimes weeks) to get approved, plus the seriously inconsistent enforcement of picture rules (see my posts at GD about having dozens of pics deleted by a vindictive mod even though I strictly obeyed the rules and community standards) . I'm personally glad KT exists because I don't trust the GD mods anymore after my bad experiences there, but it probably just confuses the average user to have both.

Hopefully the redesign will feel comfortable again as I get used to it. It does feel faster which is a positive (assuming people don't give up on it because of the drastic change). I've run a number of large online communities and it's during big/drastic redesigns that communities are at the biggest risk of being abandoned by the core users.

That said, I appreciate that the admins are working on improvements instead of letting it stagnate.

I like the new design, but don't like the new structure. Especially the albums where much better in the old version. You saw who postet what and why on the first look. All that is gone :-(

I'm sort of on the fence still. It's taking me some time to find the in's and out's (like figuring out to "mark as read" all the thread I have no interest in). I would strongly advise against switching gD to this format, though.

Have more things been changed? Because i'm now noticing that when i scroll down the forums page the latests posts stick on the side meaning i've got to scroll down past all the forums to get it to move and show me recent comments and who's online. This definitely didn't happen at first after the update!

It's just another small change that is impacting on basic ease of use of the site! Seeing who's online is a great little resource for checking on which users are active and finding new people to talk to (much better than the completely unused Chat function). Used to be easily findable, and now it's more user input away.
I swear every change to this site has just made things more clicks away, or more scrolling away.

This, and my other posts on the change, do come across as really bitchy. In some ways they are, because the user experience is demonstratably worse. I don't know how easy it is to change things in the template being used but please can we get some feedback on some of these issues? Especially this side panel locking which is definitely new very recently!

Or on ways the admin/site runner team have to boost the forum beyond a coat of paint. Because right now you've painted over a crumbling wall without tackling the basic problems of user interaction and the forums unique selling point.
(well you've got me to make more posts in the last two months because of the update, so i guess the master plan is working...)