LES, what could be better, what do you like, what would you like to say, what do I need to hear?

InceptionHosting

Hello!

It has now been around 10 months since this place launched, and I am very interested to hear your thoughts.

There are no wrong answers, what you think is what you think, this is not so much a feature request post but if that is what you are thinking like "Why has he not done this yet" then fine say it and I will read it.

Happy to hear the positive and the negative, please don't hold back I won't take it personally, I might be completely missing the mark on somethings and hitting it well on others but I don't get a huge amount of feedback so it would be good to hear from you.

If you want to make a burner account to reply to this that is also fine.

I am trying my best to be as light touch as possible, the amount of moderation is actually incredibly low and consists of removing spam (thanks for the reports of spam profiles @Rahul

Just saying "it's fine don't worry about it" is also perfectly good feedback but I really would genuinely like to hear from people.

I hope to plan something a bit special for Black Friday time allowing which will happen a little after this place has been live for a year.

I know there is a small list of fixes needed I have started talks with a few people about taking on some of the dev work here as @Solaire really does not have enough time and I don't want to put on him paid or unpaid, those that reached out I know I have been slow in getting back to you but it is not forgotten.

One of the things I keep thinking is that i should probably have at least 1 mod on a different time zone but I am wary about doing that especially while so little modderation is needed.

Anyway, I am rambling now, please give me your thoughs, warts and all.

Ant.

MichaelCee

Honestly, I've not much (or anything) to say about the inner workings of the forum. Place is neat, trustworthy and full of reputable people. Question is, how are you going to get more people involved? Community outreach via Twitter and little giveaways across social platforms help spread the word and seem to work for brands like HetrixTools in increasing engagement.

Chievo

I know that it takes lot of time but it would be interesting option to create tutorials from 0 .so LES could be something like wpbeginner for servers for example. It would gain more users for basic usage which are going to need a vps hosting eventually. I guess it would be a win win win option. ( win for the beginners win for les win for the hosting companies) i could be wrong

Everything is improving so i do not feel anything bad at this moment.

InceptionHosting

@SmallWeb said: how are you going to get more people involved? Community outreach via Twitter and little giveaways across social platforms help spread the word and seem to work for brands like HetrixTools in increasing engagement.

Honestly, I am not sure, I am more of an "if you build it they will come" sort of guy, the traffic hitting the forum and main site right now is 30.1% google driven for the main site and 24.2% google driven for the forum.

Happy to hear any suggestions on how to do better outreach.

InceptionHosting

@Chievo said:
I know that it takes lot of time but it would be interesting option to create tutorials from 0 .so LES could be something like wpbeginner for servers for example. It would gain more users for basic usage which are going to need a vps hosting eventually. I guess it would be a win win win option. ( win for the beginners win for les win for the hosting companies) i could be wrong

Everything is improving so i do not feel anything bad at this moment.

So more "from scratch tutorials" I suppose I am guilty of thinking a little bit above that, I have plenty of ideas and dismiss them as "naa to basic" but I can certainly try more base-level ones, I do need to expand the easy mode series a bit.

havoc

Maybe reduce the sticky count a bit? Takes up most of the "above-the-fold" screenspace on new discussion page

MichaelCee

In that case, I'd suggest leveraging the Google traffic and seeing if any work can be done. There are more qualified SEO experts around like @vyas

The Twitter has quite a few followers and it's always nice to see a new post. I read somewhere that posts without a link seem to get more engagement so things like your question/answer, polls and such sprinkled in between will reach more people (allegedly) and you can possibly use the pinned tweet feature to highlight the latest LES post or TLES offer etc. Just quick thoughts.

Chievo

@AnthonySmith said:

@Chievo said:
I know that it takes lot of time but it would be interesting option to create tutorials from 0 .so LES could be something like wpbeginner for servers for example. It would gain more users for basic usage which are going to need a vps hosting eventually. I guess it would be a win win win option. ( win for the beginners win for les win for the hosting companies) i could be wrong

Everything is improving so i do not feel anything bad at this moment.

So more "from scratch tutorials" I suppose I am guilty of thinking a little bit above that, I have plenty of ideas and dismiss them as "naa to basic" but I can certainly try more base-level ones, I do need to expand the easy mode series a bit.

Exactly i guess for you it would look even stupid somethings or too basic but for non tech people there are not too many options. I mean tutorials done for basic level but from a quality place .Wpbeginner is great for just doing that. It is starting from 0 and after reading during lot of hours and trying you are improving and achieving something.

PHP_Backend

ummm...... CTRL+Click issue annoys me every day.

ehab

At this very moment i think its all good. I am glad i found a new home. Thank you @AnthonySmith and to all keeping this place warm.

InceptionHosting

@PHP_Backend said:
ummm...... CTRL+Click issue annoys me every day.

Remind me?

Abdullah

When clicking the inbox icon(using desktop), message list is long, 'All Messages' option is not visible, have to zoom out to access 'All Messages'

lentro

Honestly, this place is far better than said predecessor site, and for that, I am forever thankful

For moderation, I don't see trolls or spam accounts, so that is handled very well.

Not much work is needed in my opinion.

Naix

@AnthonySmith said:

@PHP_Backend said:
ummm...... CTRL+Click issue annoys me every day.

Remind me?

This, I believe.

InceptionHosting

@Abdullah said:
When clicking the inbox icon(using desktop), message list is long, 'All Messages' option is not visible, have to zoom out to access 'All Messages'

I only see the last 5 when I click that, what resolution are you running?

@lentro said: Not much work is needed in my opinion.

Still valid feedback though, appreciated

@Naix said: This, I believe.

Ah ook link targets, yeah that annoys the crap out of me too, will move that up the priority list.

Abdullah

@AnthonySmith yes I get 5 messages too, its only when I use my RDP (which I often do) at 720p.
Possiblity to move the All Messages option at top, don't know it may be hard to implement.
I just realized I can increase my resolution a bit to fix that!

InceptionHosting

@Abdullah said:
@AnthonySmith yes I get 5 messages too, its only when I use my RDP (which I often do) at 720p.
Possiblity to move the All Messages option at top, don't know it may be hard to implement.
I just realized I can increase my resolution a bit to fix that!

It is fairly chunky now I look at it, I will look into it, maybe removing the preview text or only showing 50% of it will help.

seriesn

More noob friendly tutorials + How to guides on the main blog . I am not a big content writer but if sweet simple how to instructions works, will be happy to contribute.

flips

Quite happy with current state of LES

Still miss/look forward to seeing this feature:
Selectively hide/mute threads - Plugin
(The ability as a user to hide certain threads with the option to reset hidden threads.)

beagle

@seriesn said: More noob friendly tutorials + How to guides on the main blog

+1 for noob friendly tutorials. There are a lot of outdated tutorials online, so it would be good to find a source of curated up-to-date tutorials where outdated versions are periodically removed.

Since the blog is running on Grav I was wondering if we could leverage its integration with Github and users could contribute submitting improvement or corrections to the tutorials.

Besides that, discussions have been civil so far and moderation has been working well when needed.

vpsgeek3333

Everything seems fine you're doing a great job

seriesn

@flips said:
Quite happy with current state of LES

Still miss/look forward to seeing this feature:
Selectively hide/mute threads - Plugin
(The ability as a user to hide certain threads with the option to reset hidden threads.)

I want you to view all my spam thread. Down voted.

AlwaysSkint

Hey, I return here more than 5 times a day; must be doing something right/wrong. :-D
My Firefox "Top Sites" puts you #3, after Outlook and PayPal. :-o

Generally and particularly recently, I find the mix of sanity/insanity/topics much more balanced than "the other side".

flips

@seriesn said: I want you to view all my spam thread. Down voted.

I wouldn't classify your threads as spam ... Corned beef, maybe ...
(I'll have it with eggs over easy, please.)

TigersWay

Not sure of the value of the feedback, but here since the first day I do appreciate all the differences with some others places
Less fight, less shit stuff, more friendly, more interesting!
I do really hope all that is not because less crowded!

Hopes/Features

• A way to dismiss/hide/mute threads,
• And a more useful email notification, with a "content" part.

But Thanks at least!

cybertech

just continue being awesome.

and the insert image function on mobile still doesnt work on android mobile chrome

seriesn

@cybertech said:
just continue being awesome.

and the insert image function on mobile still doesnt work on android mobile chrome

It does.

Work around : you gotta edit the last word of the extension, delete and add back.

I.e

.jpg
Remove g
Add g

Boom.

bugrakoc

Not sure how I can describe this, but I have a UI bug on mobile since I joined. The same bug isn't present on the other Vanilla forum.

When I scroll down/up the main page, unread threads scroll down normally, while the threads with no unread posts lag back, and jump into place after ~500-1000 ms or after I let go of the swipe. I also cannot scroll if I start the swipe from a read thread. I need to start swiping from an unread thread to actually scroll.

This is mostly fine, unless I have too much time and read all threads on the screen, in which case I can't scroll easily and try to use the very edges of the screen, with mixed results because of my phone case.

I wanted to find some safe and free way to record my phone screen including some visual cue about taps/gestures somehow for some time but never got around reading stuff about it. I guess this is the time I let you know.

Platform: Firefox for Android 79.0.5 (Build #2015758619) on Android 9

Sorry for holding out on that for so long. Keep up the good work, I know you work hard. Thanks, both for IH and LES.

cybertech

@seriesn said:

@cybertech said:
just continue being awesome.

and the insert image function on mobile still doesnt work on android mobile chrome

It does.

Work around : you gotta edit the last word of the extension, delete and add back.

I.e

.jpg
Remove g
Add g

Boom.

bugrakoc

On a second note, now I realised I can scroll by swiping the read threads. I guess this one fixed itself with a Firefox update or something. Usability is better now. The lagging behind part is still the same though.

poisson

If you ask me, the most logical way to expand the reach of LES is to target the noob base because that's where the numbers are. However, targeting the noob base is a catch-22 situation because to participate meaningfully in discussions on LES, you need to know some technical stuff, but at the same time, because you are so noob, you don't know how to gain sufficient information to meaningfully participate.

I am currently cooking my doctoral dissertation (I have another 50 to 60k words to go at least), so I can't contribute much until early next year, but I would say that producing content that a complete noob can understand is the best way forward to increase the user base. The big problem from my experience teaching technical stuff to complete noobs (I have been doing this for years before doing my PhD full-time) is that their starting point is so low, it is almost impossible for most technically competent people to imagine their difficulties and obstacles. I have a lot of experience in this regard, turning people who know only basic Microsoft Office into print and web designers, so I should be able to produce stuff that will go down well with a noob audience.

That said, I can't do much until next year (and even then, I have a whole bunch of non-native English speaking academic collaborators waiting on me to work on papers so that they can get published in top English journals), but I will do my best to contribute small pieces here and there if needed.

Adam1

The main distinction for me between this forum and the "other" forum is the lack of trolling and d*ck posts, the other place leaves me feeling worse off for visiting most of the time. When I visit here, it seems much friendlier and posts seem to be higher quality overall.

From a UI pov, i'd probably move "flag thanks" to below the post, along side quote. And also add some opacity to the signiture div so they are lighter vs. the post body. Oh, and some sort of styling on the username next to the avatar.

vyas

We need a swipe left/ right feature for offers or comments

InceptionHosting

@seriesn said:
More noob friendly tutorials + How to guides on the main blog . I am not a big content writer but if sweet simple how to instructions works, will be happy to contribute.

I may hold you to that!

@flips said: Still miss/look forward to seeing this feature:

Selectively hide/mute threads - Plugin

yep, it is a good feature, it is on the list

@beagle said: Since the blog is running on Grav I was wondering if we could leverage its integration with Github and users could contribute submitting improvement or corrections to the tutorials.

probably possible, worth thinking about.

@TigersWay said: A way to dismiss/hide/mute threads,

And a more useful email notification, with a "content" part.

Thread muting will be possible in the future, i just cant say when, for the email notifications you mean like a preview of the new stuff?

@cybertech said: and the insert image function on mobile still doesnt work on android mobile chrome

Yeah that's a tricky bug, when I have a paid dev I will sort that.

@bugrakoc said: Sorry for holding out on that for so long. Keep up the good work, I know you work hard. Thanks, both for IH and LES.

No worries, it is a known issue, only seems to impact firefox, i think it is theme related and have an idea what the cause is, maybe I can PM you to arrange a time to attempt a fix, I cant replicate it here.

@poisson said: I am currently cooking my doctoral dissertation (I have another 50 to 60k words to go at least), so I can't contribute much until early next year, but I would say that producing content that a complete noob can understand is the best way forward to increase the user base. The big problem from my experience teaching technical stuff to complete noobs (I have been doing this for years before doing my PhD full-time) is that their starting point is so low, it is almost impossible for most technically competent people to imagine their difficulties and obstacles. I have a lot of experience in this regard, turning people who know only basic Microsoft Office into print and web designers, so I should be able to produce stuff that will go down well with a noob audience.

That is so true, I suffer from that myself, assuming a level of knowledge.

I am actually developing a short 4-day course right now with a local charity, the charity helps people get out of poverty and learn new skills but their IT suite has been sitting dead for 6 months so I said I would help out, I am writing a course that takes people from "this is a computer, welcome to the internet" to "Well don't you have now registered a domain set up your own email and got your first website live"

I kind of volunteered thinking how had can that be... I have had to take so many steps back to cover things I have had as assumed knowledge its unreal.

I would not say I am 'expert' level in anything but I literally grew up around computers as my dad had an 8 bit computer store when I was growing up in the 80's so my ability to grasp concepts in this context is pretty high I guess.

tetech

@TigersWay said:
Not sure of the value of the feedback, but here since the first day I do appreciate all the differences with some others places
Less fight, less shit stuff, more friendly, more interesting!
I do really hope all that is not because less crowded!

Hopes/Features

• A way to dismiss/hide/mute threads,
• And a more useful email notification, with a "content" part.

I agree with this including suggested features. Plus ability to sort by last post or thread start and RSS feed.

InceptionHosting

@Adam1 said: The main distinction for me between this forum and the "other" forum is the lack of trolling and d*ck posts, the other place leaves me feeling worse off for visiting most of the time.

I think there is a core of people that do or encourage that at the other place that know that won't be allowed to happen here so they stay away.

With human nature and the somewhat toxic environment people that would not otherwise jump in on the action do join in, Jon likes it like that because it boosts the post/visit count like nothing else when people shitpost and argue, that is not a theory, it was actually discussed when I was admin there.

@Adam1 said: From a UI pov, i'd probably move "flag thanks" to below the post, along side quote. And also add some opacity to the signiture div so they are lighter vs. the post body. Oh, and some sort of styling on the username next to the avatar.

Yep, once I have a paid dev and sort the bugs out, making the place look better and improve the UI will be on the cards, just a bit slow going right now.

InceptionHosting

@vyas said: We need a swipe left/ right feature for offers or comments

Tinder offers?

vyas

@AnthonySmith said:

@vyas said: We need a swipe left/ right feature for offers or comments

Tinder offers?

LowEnd Tinder

InceptionHosting

@vyas said: LowEnd Tinder

Linda

Chievo

Another idea is to make the black friday not coinciding with the actual black friday if the hostings are interested in do it in that way obviously. I mean if is done some days previously than the black friday people are going to visit and sign up in LES for that i guess. In the spanish stores it works and people are buying in advance because usually the stock is limited in number. Who does it firstly usually wins. It is another strategy that could be viable for LES and hostings.

Rahul

@Chievo said:
Another idea is to make the black friday not coinciding with the actual black friday if the hostings are interested in do it in that way obviously. I mean if is done some days previously than the black friday people are going to visit and sign up in LES for that i guess. In the spanish stores it works and people are buying in advance because usually the stock is limited in number. Who does it firstly usually >wins. It is another strategy that could be viable for LES and hostings.

In India,

Flipkart, the Ecom website ( Even before the Walmart owned Days and even now ) does this. They start the offering at 8 PM the day before that is 4 hours earlier than Amazon India, when ever there is a sale.

I believe this makes a huge difference in terms of sales due to the sheer impulsiveness of buyers.

Chievo

@Rahul said:

@Chievo said:
Another idea is to make the black friday not coinciding with the actual black friday if the hostings are interested in do it in that way obviously. I mean if is done some days previously than the black friday people are going to visit and sign up in LES for that i guess. In the spanish stores it works and people are buying in advance because usually the stock is limited in number. Who does it firstly usually >wins. It is another strategy that could be viable for LES and hostings.

In India,

Flipkart, the Ecom website ( Even before the Walmart owned Days and even now ) does this. They start the offering at 8 PM the day before that is 4 hours earlier than Amazon India, when ever there is a sale.

I believe this makes a huge difference in terms of sales due to the sheer impulsiveness of buyers.

Well the another thing is the fact that you do not have clue about which would be the price on black friday may be the same. May be higher. Or it would be sold out. And obviously money is what it is. Budgets are X if someone grabs the money first only the rest would remain for another providers/things.when should be done_ it is up to the strategic minds.

TigersWay

@AnthonySmith said: ...for the email notifications you mean like a preview of the new stuff?

We get email notification(s) with the author only, not what he/she said :-)
While I'm glad to receive them when following a "hot" topic, I need to come back in to know what's going on!

bugrakoc

@AnthonySmith said: maybe I can PM you

Anytime.

InceptionHosting

@Rahul said:

@Chievo said:
Another idea is to make the black friday not coinciding with the actual black friday if the hostings are interested in do it in that way obviously. I mean if is done some days previously than the black friday people are going to visit and sign up in LES for that i guess. In the spanish stores it works and people are buying in advance because usually the stock is limited in number. Who does it firstly usually >wins. It is another strategy that could be viable for LES and hostings.

In India,

Flipkart, the Ecom website ( Even before the Walmart owned Days and even now ) does this. They start the offering at 8 PM the day before that is 4 hours earlier than Amazon India, when ever there is a sale.

I believe this makes a huge difference in terms of sales due to the sheer impulsiveness of buyers.

So start Black Friday just a little bit sooner then?

Chievo

@AnthonySmith said:

@Rahul said:

@Chievo said:
Another idea is to make the black friday not coinciding with the actual black friday if the hostings are interested in do it in that way obviously. I mean if is done some days previously than the black friday people are going to visit and sign up in LES for that i guess. In the spanish stores it works and people are buying in advance because usually the stock is limited in number. Who does it firstly usually >wins. It is another strategy that could be viable for LES and hostings.

In India,

Flipkart, the Ecom website ( Even before the Walmart owned Days and even now ) does this. They start the offering at 8 PM the day before that is 4 hours earlier than Amazon India, when ever there is a sale.

I believe this makes a huge difference in terms of sales due to the sheer impulsiveness of buyers.

So start Black Friday just a little bit sooner then?

Definitely it would be beneficial ( at least in theory).
Just in theory the limited number per stock would be working better. I mean if inception is offering a black friday deal only 20 vps for example a day or 2 days before black friday it means that people who are interested in buying it they would do. It because probably on BF the packs would be sold out. There is something in marketing that i am calling 3 up to 5. I mean people usually are comparing only 3 up to 5 companies before buying . so if starts firstly on LES people are not going to wait 24 hours or 48hours because the numbers for BF would be limited. That is something that we have seen on BF and Cyber Monday. There are complaints like your BF was better than CM offer. i was waiting for better offer on CM. So people must be aware that when is finished the offer could exist . be higher or just sold out

willie

It's good the way it is. I can't think of any incremental technical improvements that would make a big difference. Community growth would be nice but that's not a technical thing. LET had worse tech than this place but was livelier from having been around longer. A programming and tech subforum with a code repo (Gitea or whatever) might be nice, but no idea if that would really attract people.

InceptionHosting

@willie thanks for the feedback, growth is going to be gradual and incremental, I honestly don't know what to do to grow the forum in terms of user numbers much beyond time+content, but will listen to any suggestions and am happy to try anything, I suspect patience will be the key though

I also think that LET has a lot of white noise/background hum that is largely irrelevant to anyone actually interested in the community, lots of 1 hit wonder posts that generate a ton of crap (which I suspect may be manufactured some of the time) and general shitposting for the sake of it.

If you strip that away from LET I think you may find and this really is just a guess you may find the numbers are not dissimilar at all, this place may even edge it out now, look at this post as an example compared to LET where Jon made a similar one at around the same time, its a real community matter and look at the engagement is comparison.

Ympker

Sorry, I haven't read any of the previous comments, but it would be great if there was an option/addon for an advanced search function.

Today, I wanted to post something in @vyas thread All Things WordPress Discussions and I couldn't remember the name. So I searched for "wordpress" and "wordpress discussion" as I figured it'd be something like that and the results were not satisfying at all. I ended up reverse-tracking @vyas threads, ultimately :S

cybertech

Well, quality counts.

Case in point, AMD

InceptionHosting

@Ympker said: Sorry, I haven't read any of the previous comments, but it would be great if there was an option/addon for an advanced search function.

Something like this: https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/14-advanced-search ?