Perhaps I will just stoke fires here (I mean this only for discussion's sake, not to be a troll..) but does thelocal need justification to change its website? If a media organization wants to have cohesion within its franchises, does it need to justify it to users?

Whether they should is another issue...depending on whether they are interested in promoting good will among users, or legacy users here since the forum's initial creation. Ultimately users can walk if they are unhappy, and perhaps form/join another forum devoted to similar ideals.

ToyTown users (I use/have used this forum as well, when I was in Munich) can pay a subscription fee to get ads removed, and have access to "premium" features, and I imagine those such users would have more a say in redesign issues, or functionality issues than free users.

As I say--I am not trolling, and I know this community is very personal to some users. Perhaps taking the personality out of it, and thinking of it from a cold-hearted business approach would help?

No, however this is not a traditional media organisation.
The content is created by the "users" no users no media organisation, therefore there needs to be a justification.
Or to put it another way, make changes as you like, if the changes annoy the people who provide you with your income you will go out of business.

I ceded this. My point was...yes, that is a possibility and it is considerate of you to look out for the company's business plan. Disregarding user input may not be smart, but it just may happen, and you just may walk away. Maybe that loss was seen as negligible from the company? Maybe they think the product will not diminish as much, given the high-rate of turnover in CH, and an extensive archive?

Maybe again this is moot, and all of your considerations are on a whiteboard somewhere, and you will be surprised with blessings from above.

The website is a customer of it's users, not the other way round. A traditional business has items for sale. A business website has people that have been paid to write articles for other people to read.

A bulletin board only exists because of it's userbase. Every post is a free piece of freelance work submitted by a budding writer.

In return for this unpaid labour a bulletin board owner provides the infrastructure and hopefully can gain from advertising.

So if your going to change it, change it but you would be a bit unwise if there was strong opinion against it. When you actually look at the stats there aren't actually thousands of posters on this board. thousands of visitors but actually just a few hundred regular posters. It's in your best interest not to go too far against the wishes of the site's writers or they will simply move to alternative expat sites, or build their own which is childs play technically nowadays.

I do understand that TheLocal want to make money from this, that's perfectly reasonable, but perhaps say we are bringing in a slightly new look as we need to get a little more advertising money but we hope you won't mind this, which will probably work. The phrase of aligning with other current 'thelocal' sites doesn't fit though - for what reason ? it's still different content so you cannot say it will reduce cost of staging up content or physical host cost reduction.

I'd say: more ads, fine if you need them, but keep the new posts bit prominent and not squozzed off to one side so that the core functionality of the site is the same.

The Forum is its users. The social interaction is as important to many as the factual information.

I reckon that the numbers of people using Toy Town or The Local as well as EF would be a very small percentage. You normally only live in one country at a time and therefore consistency between the three is of little relevance.

....well, it seems we have a part new look. Editor Bob, does this mean you have listened to everyones comments and decided not to go with the complete new look, or will you be changing the look bit by bit?

Given the level of feedback we have had from the OP it is difficult to tell.

Cheers,
Nick

Got my "New Look" this morning. The only thing I don't like is that the page no longer fills my screen. I have nice thick white borders now.

It looks ok apart from that tbh.

Can someone please provide me with a good reason for the "UserCP" quick link button not being at the top left of the forum where it usually is, and if ts been removed, kindly let me know where the replacement is? I'm presuming noone in their right mind would remove that feature.

EDIT - ahh "My Settings" at the top. Hmm, not sure I like the placement overly much, but minor point as long as its there I guess..

On my computer, the forum is twice as wide as my screen and there is no horizontal scrollbar, yuck

Anybody know of a good greasemonkey-script?

well that's better!

Just looking at the new-look banner section with the "logged in as..." bit in the middle of the banner and the main menu options - which don't fit on one line anymore.,

Sorry, this just looks naff - I really cannot see what advantages it brings.

Cheers,
Nick

Agree. I need to use my reading glasses now because everything is a bit smaller. Wish the forum page was as big as before.

Hold down the 'Ctrl' key and roll the mouse scroll wheel to change font size. If your browser or mouse do not support this, then View > Zoom...

This is a serious error, probably in the stylesheet that needs correcting...

Oh, i do love the "easy to see & find" search function!!

i wonder if this will reduce the number of newbie posts-per-day...?

Did you know that "quick-links, marks forums read" send you to the same place as the button "forums"?

and "quick-links, todays posts" is almost the same as "new posts"..?

do we need both?

Thanks! It works!

Is there a way to keep it that size when logging off?

Real men use keyboards

Ctrl + to increase font size
Ctrl - to decrease font size

Surprising......