Forum activity declining !!!!
Is it just me – or is the forum activity declining since Blurb "hid" the handy-dandy Forum link button! I think it should go back to the header bar… Lee
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I agree Lee, perhaps not for existing users of the forums who would make a point of looking for the menu item, but I’m not sure that new customers of Blurb would even spot that there are forums. .........Tony
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I absolutely agree as well. Blurb should immediately restore the Forums link to the header bar. Aside from the fact that new users may overlook the existence of the forums, as Tony mentions, it is just a squidge more inconvenient to navigate to the forums for experienced users. I wonder why they moved it in the first place?
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I wonder too…...The forums are one of the really interesting features of the Blurb site. I’ve had so many of my questions answered- just by keeping in touch with forum contributers’ comments. It’s been incredibly helpfull to me.
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My guess is the Forums have been hidden away on purpose because they’re overwhelmingly whiny. Would not surprise me if the next step were to eliminate them altogether.
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I’d like to add my two cents in.. I’m new to all this but have been in the book business 45 years, and never had a place like forum to let all that knowledge,but also we don,t need whiners either,bring on the Forums, we,s have a good time among friends.Sorry needen mean to get on my soapbox..
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Also (and I don’t know if this is the appropriate place to mention this or not), I also find that the forums, in the short time I have been using Blurb, are incredibly redundant. It really seems as though users, before posting their own questions, don’t take the time to search previous threads and FAQs for answers to questions that have certainly been answered before. I have really enjoyed tossing in my two cents where I can to help people out. What bothers me is to, a few days later, find almost the identical question posted by another user. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this trend, and whether it could relate to Blurb relocating the Forum link?
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I find the same thing hooloovoos. Maybe Blurb could change the Forum home page to offer advice on searching the threads and FAQs before posting, and have a search field very prominently displayed above the list of forums ( fora?) I don’t think relocating the Forum link is a key strategy to inhibit postings, more some web designer looking at the aesthetics of the web design rather than considering the ergonomics of customer usage. I managed a web development team for a few years and I constantly had to review web site changes and focus my teams attention on useability rather than graphic design. ........Tony
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Yep, Tony, I bet you’re right about it being more of an aesthetic issue, although it seems like it was the only change, and so minor, why bother. I also agree that Blurb needs to promote the "search before posting" method and perhaps offer a FAQ on FAQ and forum use (does that sounds silly – :) ), perhaps located in the announcement section that heads each forum subsection and the forum home page itself.
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Hi Guys; MANY thanks for your added support for a return to a handy-dandy FORUM link... I agree about the whining; much of it has proven to be unfounded (the pre-Xmas histeria about book delivery etc…), but there are clearly SOME justified complaints… I think we should give all credit to Blurb for having the courage to provide an open user-forum that allows these negative posts… Anyhow, hooloovoos, you’re quite right about "redundancy"; but that’s easily taken care of. All it needs is a set of "Stickies" at the head of each forum section that deals with the "common" questions that get asked time and time again, alongside some clearly published "Forum Guidelines" prminently displayed at the head of each forum page, to prevent the continual repetition. Yes, some of it might be a duplication of the FAQs, but Blurb could just link to them if that was the best way of dealing with an issue… There’s nothing in web-design which says you can’t have multiple routes to the same destination! Cheers; Lee
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I for one did not know Blurb had forums until I saw an off-hand mention of them in the Blurb group on Flickr. At that point I even had to Google for "blurb forums" to find my way to forums.blurb.com. It’s not very intuitive! The forums have been extremely helpful, btw. I’ve learned a lot…
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