NASASpaceFlight.com Forum

NSF Landing Page (Site Rules, Overviews Development, Feedback) => NASASpaceflight.com and NSF Forum Site Rules/News => Topic started by: Chris Bergin on 12/20/2017 06:16 pm

Title: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com News Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/20/2017 06:16 pm
Now live! (May be a bit slow for the first 10-15 mins as the DNS catches up).

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/

Many thanks to Mark and his team for the work on this.

Old articles ported over. New articles will fully use the upgrades.
First new article is this one:


Upgrades include:
New image display - larger images, captions, options, etc.
Twitter/Youtube etc embedding into articles. Handy for where videos do a better job than an image (such as launch videos in launch articles).
Faster loading.
Mobile friendly (auto resizes).
Better navigation.
Better sectioning.
Cleaner multi-scrolling - keeping important things in view, rather than scrolling into large white/blank areas.
Updated logo (old one served us well, but needed a refresh).

We'll add more cowbell as we go, but content is everything, so this is all about access to content and the forum picks up the dirty work of discussion and additional resources.

Feedback welcome below. Screenshot how it looks to you, as we'd like to see how it looks on various devices and browsers.

Another upgrade to the servers will follow.
Forum upgrade will be 2018.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: RocketLover0119 on 12/20/2017 06:24 pm
holy moly!! What a lookover! I LOVE it! i can tell chris and everyone else has worked hard to this day! CONGRATS!!!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Eagandale4114 on 12/20/2017 06:44 pm
Looking great on an iPhone X/Safari on iOS 11.2.1.

It’s buttery smooth and everything looks great on reader too.

Any chance of a dark mode? It would make it much easier on the eyes!

Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: WylieC on 12/20/2017 06:49 pm
Beautiful! Congratulations, you guys have done an awesome job.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: mtakala24 on 12/20/2017 06:54 pm
Its beautiful. Slightly darker background color could be used on the left/right unused areas on wide displays, but other than that, congratulations!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Flying Beaver on 12/20/2017 06:55 pm
Just some small issues with graphics and image resolution.

Edit: And now calling up www.nasaspaceflight.com doesnt go to the site but brings up a download for a GZip Archive.





Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Lar on 12/20/2017 06:57 pm
GREAT article and it really looks good in the new style. A possible bug is that when I tried to use the Post to FB  button I got the below error (520)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/20/2017 07:05 pm
Mark's fixing that gz issue.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: BradyKenniston on 12/20/2017 07:08 pm
Looking great on a 27" 5K iMac on Chrome!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Darkseraph on 12/20/2017 07:11 pm
Love it so far. It feels really modern and fresh. :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Michael Baylor on 12/20/2017 07:12 pm
99% perfect. Huge improvement compared to the old site.

Here are some things that could be improved:
- The logo on the new site is low resolution (the new logo is high resolution on the old site though).
- The hyperlinks in the articles aren't that useful. They search for tags rather than directing me to the exact article. In some cases the tags are not showing me the correct information. I have attached an image as an example. If I click the link about SpaceX's Mars plans, I expect to see info regarding that. Instead, I am sent to the Mars tag which shows me the latest article about Mars (which in this case is about the Mars InSight mission). It would have been much better if that link took me straight to the SpaceX BFR announcement article.
- The multiple pages are confusing. I didn't even notice the article was two pages when I first read it. I only saw the page 2 button when I was scanning over the site to see what I thought of the new look.  Now I see that Chris tweeted a reminder that there were two pages. He shouldn't have to do this. The user should figure it out on their own without a problem. Not sure if this is going to be a normal thing or if it was because this particular article was long? My preferable fix would be to make it one long page. But, if you are worried about loading speeds, then make the next page button stand out a bit more.
- It would be nice if I could expand all the images in the article, not just the lead image.

Congrats to all involved! The criticism is very nit-picky because that's all I could find. Like I said, 99% perfect.

Edit: The multipage problem was made worse by the first page ending with a YouTube video. My eyes never looked under the video, because I thought that was it. If it was text maybe I would have seen it? Still, I think it should pop out more or be a single page.

Edit 2: The logo issue was fixed.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: ulm_atms on 12/20/2017 07:16 pm
My $0.02

1.  Too much white area...hard on eyes.

2.  The "sections" could use some more boardering which would make each section's start/stop clearer and also help break up all that white space.  Best example I can come up with quick is www.space.com  It's a lot like this format but easier on the eyes with all the grey boardering for the "sections"

Other then that...  GOOD JOB!!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Michael Baylor on 12/20/2017 07:28 pm
One more thing I just found. Captions are not showing on my phone. I tried tapping the images too, that didn't help.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: TrueBlueWitt on 12/20/2017 07:28 pm
Like the new mobile design(chrome beta on Android), but taking forever to load right now.. not sure what's up with that?
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/20/2017 07:30 pm
Like the new mobile design(chrome beta on Android), but taking forever to load right now.. not sure what's up with that?

Mark's on it. Not everyone, but there's a caching element being worked on by Mark.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Lars-J on 12/20/2017 07:40 pm
MUCH nicer, great job!  8)    (although the first load took a long time - Chrome on Windows 10)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/20/2017 07:46 pm
Articles that are more than one page in length!

That can (and should) be put to use in the future.

I agree that there seems to be a lot of extra white space on my desktop browser version - it's probably OK for the mobile browser version (using Safari for both).

Nice upgrade.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: kcrick on 12/20/2017 07:47 pm

The new site looks GREAT!
Oh, and it looked pretty good on my smartphone too!
And it did take me a few tries to bring it up on my laptop.

One thing I'm unsure on - what's the purpose of the 'Popular Posts' section?
Is this the top 5 articles in terms of forum posts?

I was scrolling looking for the top posts section and when I found this, I clicked on one of them and was redirected to an article. I scrolled further down and then found it - 'Active Discussions' section.

Kevin
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 12/20/2017 07:48 pm
Yes, looks fantastic on both my phone and iPad (image attached).

I can see an enormous amount of work has gone into it. Thank you; I think the results have definitely been worth it. Really fiting that the first new style article is a 12 year retrospective of SpaceX. Nice symmetry there with the 12 years of NSF. How far both have come in that time and both really coming into their own now!

One minor suggestion for a future enhancement: it would be great if there was an indication, under the article images at the top of the home page, of how many ‘pages’ of article images there are to click through.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: catdlr on 12/20/2017 07:48 pm
What a great B-Day present.  Looks wonderful.  Thanks, Chris.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/20/2017 07:49 pm
Are the "active discussions" on the front page equivalent to the "most recent" forum posts on the old site? I used those quite frequently.

Yup :)


Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: RocketLover0119 on 12/20/2017 07:56 pm
I had seen you said you will also in 2018 update the forums, im supposing to make them look apart of the new website?

EDIT: I also love the new logo!  :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: ejb749 on 12/20/2017 08:04 pm
Party Thread!  Congrats Chris!  Looks great.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: JasonAW3 on 12/20/2017 08:04 pm
WOAH!  This caught me by surprise!

      New layout to get used to I suppose...
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: RotoSequence on 12/20/2017 08:05 pm
I was one of those weirdo's who would go to the homepage just to see what the most recently updated forum posts were - something that the new front page isn't quite as optimized for.  :-[

I really should just get with the times and use the Unread Topics button, shouldn't I  :o
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: freda on 12/20/2017 08:08 pm
The new design is a tremendous positive step.  As one who has done similar things in a previous life, I certainly recognize and commend the effort.  Good job!
NSF has a true nugget-of-gold asset: the Forum.  This key aspect compels and draws in viewers, resulting in good contribution and participation.  Strengthen/simplify/streamline visibility and access to the Forum, and NSF is in turn strengthened.  Rather than relegating the opening-page “window” into this key NSF asset to a small-small part at the far bottom/right (forcing all users to scroll), I respectfully suggest eliminating the “Popular Posts” section (possibly duplicate and redundant content that is already displayed in the main section) in favor of the “Active Discussions” section.  That will put this key asset (the Forum) directly in the eyeballs of your audience.  Then, as further strengthening, provide a 0-click way a visitor can visually scan and see the most recent 5 (or X) posts in each of the major Forum sections (you know, L2, SLS, SpaceX, etc).  Yes, I know there is a "Forum" menu at the top, but that's not what I'm suggesting.  Finally, I wouldn’t even mind if you monetized the Forum a bit more than you currently do.
And yes… the new logo image is a great outcome too!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/20/2017 08:11 pm
Thanks for the great comments and suggestions so far! We will digest them a bit later or tomorrow.

So far :

- Logo is/should be replaced with a SVG file so, now you lucky guys with 4K+ monitors can also enjoy a sharp logo ;-)
- Hyperlink and page navigation is on the todo-list
- "Night"  theme is being investigated, no promises yet


Mark
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/20/2017 08:19 pm

The new site looks GREAT!
Oh, and it looked pretty good on my smartphone too!
And it did take me a few tries to bring it up on my laptop.

One thing I'm unsure on - what's the purpose of the 'Popular Posts' section?
Is this the top 5 articles in terms of forum posts?

I was scrolling looking for the top posts section and when I found this, I clicked on one of them and was redirected to an article. I scrolled further down and then found it - 'Active Discussions' section.

Kevin

The thing about the placement of active discussions is two fold.

1) Most people enter the news site to read an article (direct link or otherwise). The placement means the active discussions are in the prime position when scrolling down, as opposed to scrolling out of view as soon as you move down the article.

2) Any new people entering the news site (front of house) the first time need to be "exposed" to content, as in the news articles. Putting the forum discussion links right at the top of the fold view means they may never scroll down.

Or something ;)

But yeah, having spent time on the beta site playing around, that worked out best overall.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Eric Hedman on 12/20/2017 08:22 pm
No complaints from me.  This looks good.  Very modern look.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: kcrick on 12/20/2017 08:26 pm

The new site looks GREAT!
Oh, and it looked pretty good on my smartphone too!
And it did take me a few tries to bring it up on my laptop.

One thing I'm unsure on - what's the purpose of the 'Popular Posts' section?
Is this the top 5 articles in terms of forum posts?

I was scrolling looking for the top posts section and when I found this, I clicked on one of them and was redirected to an article. I scrolled further down and then found it - 'Active Discussions' section.

Kevin

The thing about the placement of active discussions is two fold.

1) Most people enter the news site to read an article (direct link or otherwise). The placement means the active discussions are in the prime position when scrolling down, as opposed to scrolling out of view as soon as you move down the article.

2) Any new people entering the news site (front of house) the first time need to be "exposed" to content, as in the news articles. Putting the forum discussion links right at the top of the fold view means they may never scroll down.

Or something ;)

But yeah, having spent time on the beta site playing around, that worked out best overall.

Ok, I'm just unsure on the 'Popular Posts' section, that's all.
Now that I think about it, is this the top 5 articles that users click on?

And one thing I noticed is that when you scroll down (especially on a smartphone) is that the 'active discussions' section' stays in place - really cool!

Thanks,
Kevin
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Michael Baylor on 12/20/2017 08:34 pm
Thanks for the great comments and suggestions so far! We will digest them a bit later or tomorrow.

So far :

- Logo is/should be replaced with a SVG file so, now you lucky guys with 4K+ monitors can also enjoy a sharp logo ;-)
- Hyperlink and page navigation is on the todo-list
- "Night"  theme is being investigated, no promises yet


Mark
One easy (I think) change you could make to satisfy the people who hate whiteness is just to make the background color of the extra space to the left and right of the page darker.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: IanThePineapple on 12/20/2017 08:38 pm
I like it, but I think the recent forum posts section on the main page should be moved up to within sight of the top of the page to be easily accessible.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Star One on 12/20/2017 08:48 pm
Looking good on my iPhone X just a shame the  look of the forums now lags behind design wise the main page. Agree with those saying the white theme is rather hard on the eyes.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Khadgars on 12/20/2017 08:48 pm
Nicely done gentlemen, nicely done  ;)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: vapour_nudge on 12/20/2017 08:51 pm
Logo is great. Site is nice and readable. Good work all involved. It’s new and the change was a surprise but like most things, I’ll get used to it

Thanks for not changing the name to NASASpaceXflight.com

Happy Christmas and thanks for the new look site
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Markstark on 12/20/2017 08:54 pm
Looks excellent


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: ludovic_f on 12/20/2017 08:55 pm
Congrats and thanks for the upgraded site. It looks fantastic!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: saundby on 12/20/2017 08:56 pm
Wow, it really looks great! I had high hopes based on the previews, I think the reality looks even better.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: bjornl on 12/20/2017 09:03 pm
Looking good!

I used to navigate to http://nasaspaceflight.com/ which now shows just 'lalala'. http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/ works great.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/20/2017 09:05 pm
Looking good!

I used to navigate to http://nasaspaceflight.com/ which now shows just 'lalala'. http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/ works great.

That is fixed but that page might still be cached in your browser, will resolve itself
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: bjornl on 12/20/2017 09:09 pm
Yes! Cleared the cache and it works fine!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Lee Jay on 12/20/2017 09:18 pm
Still really want this link somewhere:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=unreadreplies
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Bynaus on 12/20/2017 09:23 pm
I like it!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: DavisSTS on 12/20/2017 09:34 pm
Wow. That is so much better and the articles ready so much easier!!

Now, just to change the Copyright Notice at the bottom of the forum from All content © 2005-2015 NASASpaceFlight.com

To 2018 to cover the new year ;D
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: eric_astro on 12/20/2017 09:38 pm
A+
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: TrueBlueWitt on 12/20/2017 09:47 pm
Cleared cache and now text part of the site loads fast with Chrome beta on  my LG V30.. however even on fast WiFi  the images are a still slow.. scrolling down it's taking 10s of seconds for images to load. Don't see that with any other site. Guessing they're very high resolution? Mobile it might be nice to have option for initial images to be smaller.. at least unless clicked on.. help bandwidth  and data usage on both ends. Thanks
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/20/2017 09:49 pm
One more thing I just found. Captions are not showing on my phone. I tried tapping the images too, that didn't help.

What's your phone as I just looked at the site in my iphone 6 (Safari) and it showed captions.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Andy DC on 12/20/2017 10:00 pm
Yes! Looks amazing on my new monitor. So much content in one place, but very nicely presented. Feels clean and friendly.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Michael Baylor on 12/21/2017 12:33 am
One more thing I just found. Captions are not showing on my phone. I tried tapping the images too, that didn't help.

What's your phone as I just looked at the site in my iphone 6 (Safari) and it showed captions.
It appears to be fixed now! I was using a Google Pixel 2 XL on Chrome.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Cherokee43v6 on 12/21/2017 12:48 am
Gobsmacked!

I don't generally 'graze' the forums, so I had no idea this was in work.  So after checking the site today at lunch while at work my first reaction when I clicked in a little while ago was 'Where the HECK have I landed?'.

As some other's have said, this will take some getting used to, but that is not a bad thing at all.  One thing I do particularly like is the larger images in the articles with captions tying them more closely to what is being said in the article.  Especially when discussed details are now more easily visible.

Keep up the awesome work!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: FinalFrontier on 12/21/2017 01:01 am
Looks Great, but I will miss the old site heheh.

I hope when you upgrade the forum you don't use Disqus. Alot of forum's have switched to that over the years and it's totally awful.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: IanThePineapple on 12/21/2017 01:16 am
Oh my goodness, I just noticed picture captions and that when you click on them they display a full-sized image!

FINALLY!!  ;D
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: cwr on 12/21/2017 01:32 am

The new site looks GREAT!
Oh, and it looked pretty good on my smartphone too!
And it did take me a few tries to bring it up on my laptop.

One thing I'm unsure on - what's the purpose of the 'Popular Posts' section?
Is this the top 5 articles in terms of forum posts?

I was scrolling looking for the top posts section and when I found this, I clicked on one of them and was redirected to an article. I scrolled further down and then found it - 'Active Discussions' section.

Kevin

The thing about the placement of active discussions is two fold.

1) Most people enter the news site to read an article (direct link or otherwise). The placement means the active discussions are in the prime position when scrolling down, as opposed to scrolling out of view as soon as you move down the article.

2) Any new people entering the news site (front of house) the first time need to be "exposed" to content, as in the news articles. Putting the forum discussion links right at the top of the fold view means they may never scroll down.

Or something ;)

But yeah, having spent time on the beta site playing around, that worked out best overall.

Hmmm - I guess that my usage of the NSF home page is atypical.
My 2 main uses of the home page is to
a) see if there is a new article - usually I see a ChrisB tweet 1st and view the new article from his embedded URL Plus I also have an RSS feed of the new articles. So this usage is low runner.
b) My main usage of the home page is to refresh it to see the recently active threads and read the ones that I follow. I find this more useful than going through the forums page. Perhaps adding a way to get the active discussions list rather than staying at the bottom of the home page.

So my main uses of the home page are right at the top and right at the bottom and it takes a while to scroll from one end to the other.

Carl
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: KEdward5 on 12/21/2017 02:41 am
Great work with the design. Everything is amazing. Only pointing out suggestions below to really top it off.

1) The About Us page is missing. Literally the only site contact an e-mail link ([email protected]? Who is that?) at the bottom. Previous site had a list of writers and a better contact list.

2) Yes, priority on the right hand side should be active discussions. The forum is a great part of NSF and the news site and forum are joined at the hip. It makes sense to have it above the page break.

If not, it shouldn't be that ad words placement there. I'd swap active discussions and that adwords in placement. If you really want an ad there, do one for an online NSF store that's been proposed or a paying aerospace company. At least that would match the theme of the site. The adwords ads do not. Just move it down the right.

Otherwise, amazing. :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Bubbinski on 12/21/2017 03:01 am
I like the new look, looking forward to seeing the new forum when it comes up. Very clean look, enjoyable to read the new article that went with it (SpaceX 50 launches)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Beittil on 12/21/2017 08:07 am
Overall I really like the new design of the front page and news articles, it is much easier on the eyes and it makes for great readability. Personally I dislike the multi-page article setup though, I prefer to be able to just have it all at once, long read style.

But hey, as long as you guys are not starting with these click-bait style 'SEE THE BEST 15 ROCKET EXPLOSIONS OF ALL TIMES!!!!' type of things where you need to click through an addvertisement riddled page for each of them... I'll live with it :P

Another thing I'd really think would be great for the website with the new article template would be the ability to click on the pictures and open a modal with high res versions of them. Thats the one thing that always bothered me in the old layout, so many awesome images, but they are always stuck in their low res small versions :(

Yes I know the high res stuff is often found on the forums, but it would be so much better to be able to see them in a gallery with the news article!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Space Pete on 12/21/2017 09:10 am
I love the new site! Very clean looking and in keeping with modern "flat" design principles. Will test it later on my 4K TV.

The larger image format will finally mean that Nathan's amazing renders get the screen space they deserve.

Just one request, and I know this has been discussed before, but a "dark theme" would be excellent. YouTube has recently implemented one, and it is so much easier on the eye, especially at night (images attached). As a space site I think a dark theme would work well for us anyway.

Great work! :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/21/2017 10:40 am
I love the new site! Very clean looking and in keeping with modern "flat" design principles. Will test it later on my 4K TV.

The larger image format will finally mean that Nathan's amazing renders get the screen space they deserve.

Just one request, and I know this has been discussed before, but a "dark theme" would be excellent. YouTube has recently implemented one, and it is so much easier on the eye, especially at night (images attached). As a space site I think a dark theme would work well for us anyway.

Great work! :)

We heard you (all) :-) The dark theme and/or fine tuning the current theme is being evaluated. More news on this probably next week.

Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Overcast on 12/21/2017 11:11 am
Love it so far, but agree that the "Active Discussions" needs to be a lot higher up.  Maybe swap with "Popular posts"

Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: haywoodfloyd on 12/21/2017 12:19 pm
Great looking new site Chris but you are missing one very useful thing that other sites like Spaceflightnow have.
You need a Launch Schedule button or link at the top of your main page.
I used to hunt around Nasaspaceflight looking for advance notice of future launches to set my schedule but I gave up when I discovered that Spaceflightnow had one.
I prefer to use your web site so if you could add one, it would be helpful and much appreciated.
KBO!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: catdlr on 12/21/2017 12:42 pm
My vote also for a "Dark Theme Option" and  "Active Discussion" at the top.  I do a lot of night reading and it would help with the pain of changing the monitor settings back and forth.

TonyD.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: AnalogMan on 12/21/2017 01:05 pm
Great looking new site Chris but you are missing one very useful thing that other sites like Spaceflightnow have.
You need a Launch Schedule button or link at the top of your main page.
I used to hunt around Nasaspaceflight looking for advance notice of future launches to set my schedule but I gave up when I discovered that Spaceflightnow had one.
I prefer to use your web site so if you could add one, it would be helpful and much appreciated.
KBO!


Is the calendar of any help? (button on menu bar in forum)

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=calendar (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=calendar)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: haywoodfloyd on 12/21/2017 01:38 pm
Great looking new site Chris but you are missing one very useful thing that other sites like Spaceflightnow have.
You need a Launch Schedule button or link at the top of your main page.
I used to hunt around Nasaspaceflight looking for advance notice of future launches to set my schedule but I gave up when I discovered that Spaceflightnow had one.
I prefer to use your web site so if you could add one, it would be helpful and much appreciated.
KBO!


Is the calendar of any help? (button on menu bar in forum)

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=calendar (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=calendar)
It sure is!
Can't believe I missed that.
Thanks.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: gongora on 12/21/2017 01:58 pm
Great looking new site Chris but you are missing one very useful thing that other sites like Spaceflightnow have.
You need a Launch Schedule button or link at the top of your main page.
I used to hunt around Nasaspaceflight looking for advance notice of future launches to set my schedule but I gave up when I discovered that Spaceflightnow had one.
I prefer to use your web site so if you could add one, it would be helpful and much appreciated.
KBO!

It's on the (probably rather long) list...  :)
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=43826.0
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: JasonAW3 on 12/21/2017 04:01 pm
Great looking new site Chris but you are missing one very useful thing that other sites like Spaceflightnow have.
You need a Launch Schedule button or link at the top of your main page.
I used to hunt around Nasaspaceflight looking for advance notice of future launches to set my schedule but I gave up when I discovered that Spaceflightnow had one.
I prefer to use your web site so if you could add one, it would be helpful and much appreciated.
KBO!


Is the calendar of any help? (button on menu bar in forum)

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=calendar (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=calendar)
It sure is!
Can't believe I missed that.
Thanks.

A couple of ideas to help?

      First; It might not be a bad idea to limit the data in the calendar to simply; Payload, Launch Vehicle and launch location.  Date, time and other data can be gotten from the link to the forum that's linked in the calendar.

      Second; Putting the Calendar link on the main page would also be a good idea.  It would allow people unfamiliar with the layout to access the info more directly, and still lead to the forums.

      Just a couple of thoughts...
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Space Pete on 12/21/2017 05:37 pm
Here's how the site looks in 4K.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/21/2017 08:03 pm
Wow. Normal PC, but on a 4K telly?

PS I don't think I'd ever consider Doncaster! ;D
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Space Pete on 12/21/2017 08:10 pm
Wow. Normal PC, but on a 4K telly?

PS I don't think I'd ever consider Doncaster! ;D

Yup, PC hooked up to a 4K TV. I use it for gaming and media, it's not really any good for general web browsing as most sites aren't optimised for 4K.

And yeah, stay away from Doncaster. I hear it's almost as bad as York! ;D
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: MATTBLAK on 12/21/2017 08:14 pm
I like the new site. Only gripe is that active discussion area now much harder to find on desktop and on a mobile device; REALLY hard to see.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Rocket Science on 12/21/2017 08:24 pm
Thank you for all the hard work in updating the site. Works good in Windows 7 Explorer and on one of My PCs' for updated Firefox, my second PC Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit doesn't like the homepage in Firefox (all jumbled/left oriented) and I get a 404 for the "recent forum posts" discussions. Tried playing with Adblocker on/off and deleting cookies. Nothing yet, will try clearing cache next I guess... Keep at it! :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: cro-magnon gramps on 12/21/2017 08:35 pm
I use a 42 inch TV about 12 years old, got it second hand last year... it has a secondary use as an electric heater this time of year... I just tried to do a cut and paste for an image to attach here, but it's going to be HUGE!! 1920x10,000+ pixels.. not a good idea.. :D have no problem with the getting to the active forum posts, but the number of double imaged articles on the left could be trimmed... 20 seems a bit excessive...  just my opinion, it's not really a hardship with a wheel mouse... btw, all my hardware is either free or cheap, all "flight proven" :D :D You should look into it Chris... Especially this time of year, when people start upgrading their TV's
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/21/2017 08:39 pm
I like the new site. Only gripe is that active discussion area now much harder to find on desktop and on a mobile device; REALLY hard to see.

We're absolutely going to have a think about active discussions placement. Let's get mega launch Friday out of the way and have a review. I liked it, but the mob has spoken! ;D
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/21/2017 08:47 pm
I like the new site. Only gripe is that active discussion area now much harder to find on desktop and on a mobile device; REALLY hard to see.

We're absolutely going to have a think about active discussions placement. Let's get mega launch Friday out of the way and have a review. I liked it, but the mob has spoken! ;D

Now that I've been using it I too agree that discussions are too hidden. The first thing I look for when I come to the website is to see what everyone is talking about, so having to scroll to the bottom of the page to find out what the hot topics are seems to discourage discussions - which I know is not the intent.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Bob Shaw on 12/21/2017 09:03 pm
I agree about the difficulty in finding the forums. Just put some buttons near the top, or a floating control panel/menu.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: cro-magnon gramps on 12/21/2017 09:05 pm
my main computer hooked up to TV is a Gateway 64 bit windows 7 ultimate, i3 chip, 550 @ 3.20GHz
16 GB memory
on s shared router, 15mb ASDL last mile copper..

I have 6 browsers open, Chrome, Firefox, Opera Neon, Opera Regular, Safari and MS Explorer
no problems... a little slow down on loading, nothing over 15 seconds...

On all the browsers the forum posts selection pops up after the ads on the right, half way down, at fifth News Article, as seen in the image;
then it follows on the right side as I scroll down through the rest of the articles..
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Rocket Science on 12/21/2017 09:08 pm
Bah, clearing cookies, cache, reboot didn't work... May need an exorcist... :o
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: whitelancer64 on 12/21/2017 09:58 pm
Maybe show more than the 5 most recent forum posts. Some days, that buries stuff that may have been interesting.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/21/2017 10:44 pm
Bah, clearing cookies, cache, reboot didn't work... May need an exorcist... :o

That screenshot is funny, as it has some content from the old site and the mobile theme from the new site. Something very wrong in your browser there. :)

PS. HOW many tabs do you have open! :o My PC grinds to a halt when I go over six tabs.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Rocket Science on 12/21/2017 10:58 pm
Bah, clearing cookies, cache, reboot didn't work... May need an exorcist... :o

That screenshot is funny, as it has some content from the old site and the mobile theme from the new site. Something very wrong in your browser there. :)

PS. HOW many tabs do you have open! :o My PC grinds to a halt when I go over six tabs.
I lost count of how many on different windows... ;D I believe more open windows uses more resources than tabs. Perhaps a RAM upgrade would help? We can start a go fund me page for that on here, I'm sure many will chip in! :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: kitmatthews on 12/22/2017 12:12 am
I followed a link here from reddit, and after a few minutes of reading I thought "wow this is really good content, I wonder why I've never seen this website before". Then I realized where I was. :P  The only issue I see is with the "Pages" indicator at the bottom of lengthy articles. The blue box indicates which other pages can be navigated to, rather than which page the reader is currently on. This is the opposite of the way it is done on the forums, which is confusing.
Otherwise the new site looks great!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/22/2017 01:01 am
So we're looking at three points to work on so far:

1) Active Discussion placement on the right hand side.
2) Potential of a Dark Theme option.
3) Long articles with several pages (remember, it won't be all articles, just the really long ones) require more obvious page indicators.

Copy that!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Rocket Science on 12/22/2017 09:38 am
Is it possible to have a tab on the home page that can switch to the "old classic view" for those that might have a "ghost in the machine" (like I have :o) but are too embarrassed to ask? :-[ I have no pride... ;D
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: kevinof on 12/22/2017 09:46 am
Do you use chrome? Open the new site in an Incognito window and see what happens.

Bah, clearing cookies, cache, reboot didn't work... May need an exorcist... :o

That screenshot is funny, as it has some content from the old site and the mobile theme from the new site. Something very wrong in your browser there. :)

PS. HOW many tabs do you have open! :o My PC grinds to a halt when I go over six tabs.
I lost count of how many on different windows... ;D I believe more open windows uses more resources than tabs. Perhaps a RAM upgrade would help? We can start a go fund me page for that on here, I'm sure many will chip in! :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Rocket Science on 12/22/2017 09:50 am
Do you use chrome? Open the new site in an Incognito window and see what happens.

Bah, clearing cookies, cache, reboot didn't work... May need an exorcist... :o

That screenshot is funny, as it has some content from the old site and the mobile theme from the new site. Something very wrong in your browser there. :)

PS. HOW many tabs do you have open! :o My PC grinds to a halt when I go over six tabs.
I lost count of how many on different windows... ;D I believe more open windows uses more resources than tabs. Perhaps a RAM upgrade would help? We can start a go fund me page for that on here, I'm sure many will chip in! :)
Yes, I have Chrome but I have been road-testing the new Firefox Quantum since it's release about a month or so back. Thanks for the incognito window idea, Ill give it a try... Cheers!

Brilliant Kevin, thank you, it works in "incognito"! 8) Is the new site "classified" or something? ??? ;D


Edit to add:
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: kevinof on 12/22/2017 09:57 am
If that doesn't work then in chrome, right click and then Inspect, then click on Console in the debug window that shows up. - the info from the console can give Chris and the team (and the rest of us) info on what's not loading.

I suspect you are either loading different versions (cache problem) or something is failing to load properly.


Do you use chrome? Open the new site in an Incognito window and see what happens.

Bah, clearing cookies, cache, reboot didn't work... May need an exorcist... :o

That screenshot is funny, as it has some content from the old site and the mobile theme from the new site. Something very wrong in your browser there. :)

PS. HOW many tabs do you have open! :o My PC grinds to a halt when I go over six tabs.
I lost count of how many on different windows... ;D I believe more open windows uses more resources than tabs. Perhaps a RAM upgrade would help? We can start a go fund me page for that on here, I'm sure many will chip in! :)
Yes, I have Chrome but I have been road-testing the new Firefox Quantum since it's release about a month or so back. Thanks for the incognito window idea, Ill give it a try... Cheers!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Rocket Science on 12/22/2017 10:27 am
OK, I think I found a home page fix for the Firefox Quantum: Go to NSF homepage, type Ctrl+F5 and it will clear the cache for the issue of not loading correctly...
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1127301

Ctrl+F5=Exorcism... "Spirit be gone"!!... ;D
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: kevinof on 12/22/2017 10:46 am
Chris (and the team).
there's something on your home page that causes my GPU on my laptop to running endlessly (and then the fans kick in and the heat builds up). Jumps to > 50% usage on page load and then settles down to around 18/20% continuous.

This is Chrome on Windows 10. I  will try on other browsers and see if it's the same.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/22/2017 10:51 am
Chris (and the team).
there's something on your home page that causes my GPU on my laptop to running endlessly (and then the fans kick in and the heat builds up). Jumps to > 50% usage on page load and then settles down to around 18/20% continuous.

This is Chrome on Windows 10. I  will try on other browsers and see if it's the same.

Do you also see this problem on article pages (any other as the homepage) ?
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: kevinof on 12/22/2017 10:56 am
Just the home page - Forums and everything else are fine. It's related the image loading (and processing) and also you don't seem to be caching them - they re-fetch every time. Once the images have loaded, it settles down to 20% with the odd spike back to 50%+



Chris (and the team).
there's something on your home page that causes my GPU on my laptop to running endlessly (and then the fans kick in and the heat builds up). Jumps to > 50% usage on page load and then settles down to around 18/20% continuous.

This is Chrome on Windows 10. I  will try on other browsers and see if it's the same.

Do you also see this problem on article pages (any other as the homepage) ?
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Rocket Science on 12/22/2017 11:52 am
Just the home page - Forums and everything else are fine. It's related the image loading (and processing) and also you don't seem to be caching them - they re-fetch every time. Once the images have loaded, it settles down to 20% with the odd spike back to 50%+



Chris (and the team).
there's something on your home page that causes my GPU on my laptop to running endlessly (and then the fans kick in and the heat builds up). Jumps to > 50% usage on page load and then settles down to around 18/20% continuous.

This is Chrome on Windows 10. I  will try on other browsers and see if it's the same.

Do you also see this problem on article pages (any other as the homepage) ?
Kevin, in Chrome site specific, try a "hard reload" or empty cache/hard reload: Good luck! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-pcJrfrpQI
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/22/2017 12:27 pm
Just the home page - Forums and everything else are fine. It's related the image loading (and processing) and also you don't seem to be caching them - they re-fetch every time. Once the images have loaded, it settles down to 20% with the odd spike back to 50%+



Looks like the slider is misbehaving for some. Thanks for reporting, we will investigate (and fix) this!

Mark
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Perchlorate on 12/22/2017 12:45 pm
I like the new site quite a lot.  Of course, I liked the old one as well.  Elegance of form is wonderful, but it is the great content that keeps me active.

I am not a "power user."  Mostly I lurk, with just a few posts per year.  But I visit the site several times a day.

Minor point:  I like the Calendar of upcoming events near the bottom of the Forums page; I think it would be worthy to move the Calendar to a "Coming Events" box on the main page.  I understand that real estate there is at a premium, but a very readily accessible display of launch dates and times would be great for the lower- to mid-level users such as I.

Thanks again for all you do.  I consider my Life L2 membership very much a bargain.

--Pete
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/22/2017 01:05 pm
Just the home page - Forums and everything else are fine. It's related the image loading (and processing) and also you don't seem to be caching them - they re-fetch every time. Once the images have loaded, it settles down to 20% with the odd spike back to 50%+



Can you try this again ?  I made a quick fix/workaround which seems to drop the load a lot on my machine(s), can you confirm ?

Thanks,
Mark
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: kevinof on 12/22/2017 01:10 pm
That's better. Not perfect but a lot less. Low end is now 4% and top end is 16% (which is a lot better than 50%)


Just the home page - Forums and everything else are fine. It's related the image loading (and processing) and also you don't seem to be caching them - they re-fetch every time. Once the images have loaded, it settles down to 20% with the odd spike back to 50%+



Can you try this again ?  I made a quick fix/workaround which seems to drop the load a lot on my machine(s), can you confirm ?

Thanks,
Mark
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/22/2017 01:15 pm
That's better. Not perfect but a lot less. Low end is now 4% and top end is 16% (which is a lot better than 50%)


Just the home page - Forums and everything else are fine. It's related the image loading (and processing) and also you don't seem to be caching them - they re-fetch every time. Once the images have loaded, it settles down to 20% with the odd spike back to 50%+



Can you try this again ?  I made a quick fix/workaround which seems to drop the load a lot on my machine(s), can you confirm ?

Thanks,
Mark

thanks for checking, this gives me good guidance to fix this.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Pete on 12/22/2017 03:59 pm
Very Very nice.

For myself, I could reasonably easily find everything i was looking for, and the *only* design element that was unfavorable is the "popular" bar right at the top.
As it is high contrast, *and* the automatic changeover to next item on list is a very rapid scroll, it forcibly snatches my eye's focus every time it changes.
Using a slower scroll, or using no scroll just a wipeover, or using a lower-contrast display, would alleviate this.

I **love** the level of detail/info available on the mouseover heading tabs (under International and Other). It shows when article was created, region applicable, and a thumbnail with just the right size to see what it is about without clutter.

Even the placement and identification of advertisements is quite acceptable.

Is there a possibility for a "dark" theme, as some people (not myself) prefer to view in a dark room, and then the large amount of brilliant white background would be painful.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/22/2017 04:08 pm
Thanks for the kinds words!  :D As said before, the possibilities for a dark theme are currently being investigated and this will probably have first results in the coming weeks.

Mark
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/22/2017 06:10 pm
As an early Christmas present, a small peek on the on the dark-mode development. Please let me know if this is what you are looking for..

Homepage
(https://i.imgur.com/PV1CY1C.png)

Article
(https://i.imgur.com/BFEvCQf.jpg)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: intrepidpursuit on 12/22/2017 06:31 pm
Oh no! Not change!

Looks great guys. Fantastic job. Do we get some new merch to buy? Can we still buy the old merch?
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/22/2017 06:40 pm

Looks great guys. Fantastic job. Do we get some new merch to buy? Can we still buy the old merch?

Online store is on my to do list on working out the best way forward :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Rocket Science on 12/22/2017 10:17 pm
I saw the "dark homepage" when you had it up earlier, looked nice! 8)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: WulfTheSaxon on 12/22/2017 10:19 pm
Am I missing something, or is there no longer a list of all recent articles?
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/22/2017 10:20 pm
Am I missing something, or is there no longer a list of all recent articles?

We are currently fiddling with some layout changes so yes things might jump a bit for the next 20/30 minutes
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: WulfTheSaxon on 12/22/2017 10:22 pm
As an early Christmas present, a small peek on the on the dark-mode development. Please let me know if this is what you are looking for..

Homepage
(https://i.imgur.com/PV1CY1C.png)

Article
(https://i.imgur.com/BFEvCQf.jpg)

Looks great. Maybe a bit darker margin?
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: ulm_atms on 12/22/2017 10:29 pm
Looks great. Maybe a bit darker margin?

^^^^^  LOL...I chuckeled at this.....DARKER!!...DARKER!!!.....HAHAHAHAH   ;D

That dark theme looks nice though.  Any way for us to test drive it currently? (different URL)?
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/22/2017 10:31 pm
Looks great. Maybe a bit darker margin?

^^^^^  LOL...I chuckeled at this.....DARKER!!...DARKER!!!.....HAHAHAHAH   ;D

That dark theme looks nice though.  Any way for us to test drive it currently? (different URL)?

Not yet, hopefully just after christmas (somewhere next week)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Space Pete on 12/22/2017 10:37 pm
As an early Christmas present, a small peek on the on the dark-mode development. Please let me know if this is what you are looking for..

Yep, that's exactly what I had in mind! Nice work. :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/22/2017 10:54 pm
Looks great. Maybe a bit darker margin?

^^^^^  LOL...I chuckeled at this.....DARKER!!...DARKER!!!.....HAHAHAHAH   ;D

That dark theme looks nice though.  Any way for us to test drive it currently? (different URL)?

I think we've worked out who Wolf is..... ;D
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Naito on 12/22/2017 10:56 pm
Congrats on a successful launch! Site looks great!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Patchouli on 12/22/2017 11:25 pm
As an early Christmas present, a small peek on the on the dark-mode development. Please let me know if this is what you are looking for..

Homepage
(https://i.imgur.com/PV1CY1C.png)

Article
(https://i.imgur.com/BFEvCQf.jpg)

It looks much better with the dark theme.
A desktop mode to make use of larger displays also would be nice.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: eric z on 12/22/2017 11:35 pm
 Please don't do that! Or optional so we have a choice? Thanks. PS, Also makes the logo look worse, too. IMHO !
Smaller white print on black is hard on these ol'eyes; maybe it just me. If it ain't broke, why fix it? Someone said the forums need a makeover, but I have no trouble with them the way they are. I do get I am in a minority, probably! And I know you all are working very hard for a good result, and regardless, I appreciate that... :-X
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/22/2017 11:41 pm
Please don't do that! Or optional so we have a choice? Thanks. PS, Also makes the logo look worse, too. IMHO !
Smaller white print on black is hard on these ol'eyes; maybe it just me. If it ain't broke, why fix it? Someone said the forums need a makeover, but I have no trouble with them the way they are. I do get I am in a minority, probably! And I know you all are working very hard for a good result, and regardless, I appreciate that... :-X

To reassure everyone, the dark mode will be OPTIONAL :D
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Patchouli on 12/23/2017 02:01 am
Optional definitely would be the way to go on it.

A little more shading on the sides or even some kind of space themed background to add little depth and set it aside from other sites would be nice.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: leovinus on 12/23/2017 02:15 am
New web pages looks nice but would it be possible to fine-tune the fonts? Like 1pt larger, heavier body? Both on Safari iMac and iPhone. I keep comparing with Safari reader mode and the reader mode seems clearer. Probably just my old eyes, sorry :) To give you an idea, attached a side-by-side screenshot of an article as shown in Safari vs Safari reader mode.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Exastro on 12/23/2017 02:21 am
Just noticed a spelling error in the browser titlebar when viewing the new homepage.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/23/2017 11:44 am
Just noticed a spelling error in the browser titlebar when viewing the new homepage.

Good spot! Never taken any notice of that before. Will be removed and we can think of a good tag line in the future :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/23/2017 01:09 pm
Just noticed a spelling error in the browser titlebar when viewing the new homepage.

Anddd it's gone :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: clongton on 12/23/2017 01:12 pm
Looks really good Chris. Thank you Mark! Here's what it looks like on my Chromebook.
Working my way thru the new features. Great stuff!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/23/2017 01:30 pm
And to all, we have final placement for the articles. Note that the ones you see in Chuck's screenshot at the featured (main) articles. As per the old site, we have "secondary" articles, used - for instance - when there's three events at the same time.

So last night was SpaceX launch - featured.
Japanese Launch and Chinese launch - secondary:

The secondary articles run under "Latest News". They all have their own sections, but that ensures new articles are easy to find. Most articles are featured when we run them, so that's why there's only the need for the two article secondary placement as it's pretty much just for when there's two or three stories in the day.

Speaking of which, we'll also be working on a writer drive as we know there's more talent out there :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Lar on 12/23/2017 01:36 pm
This might be interesting reading. There is a lot of magic you can do with image caching... if applicable it can reduce the load on your servers as well as the load on everyone's browser... Most NSF images once posted would never change I think? so really long time to lives might work well.

https://code.facebook.com/posts/557147474482256/this-browser-tweak-saved-60-of-requests-to-facebook/

I don't know (and don't want to know) NSF internals well enough to know if this might apply here but thought I'd toss it out.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/23/2017 02:18 pm
The only images that would change on the news site tend to be launch articles and events, where it's pre-event/launch, post-event/launch. (Including things like RS-25 tests and so on).
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 12/23/2017 03:10 pm
This might be interesting reading. There is a lot of magic you can do with image caching... if applicable it can reduce the load on your servers as well as the load on everyone's browser... Most NSF images once posted would never change I think? so really long time to lives might work well.

https://code.facebook.com/posts/557147474482256/this-browser-tweak-saved-60-of-requests-to-facebook/

I don't know (and don't want to know) NSF internals well enough to know if this might apply here but thought I'd toss it out.

Thanks for your input! Yes, images on the news site can be cached really well and will be starting in the coming days. First I wanted to site to move completely before turning on all the goodies (caching etc)

Mark
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Eagandale4114 on 12/24/2017 05:23 pm
As an early Christmas present, a small peek on the on the dark-mode development. Please let me know if this is what you are looking for..

Homepage
(https://i.imgur.com/PV1CY1C.png)

Article
(https://i.imgur.com/BFEvCQf.jpg)

That looks really nice. Could we also get a pure black option? Pure black backgrounds with white text look amazing on OLED. I’ve attached a picture of the reddit mobile client Apollo in regular dark and pure black modes.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: WulfTheSaxon on 12/24/2017 10:32 pm
Could we also get a pure black option? Pure black backgrounds with white text look amazing on OLED.

Just as long as it isn’t the only dark option, because straight white-on-black looks terrible on CRTs (we’re still out there!).
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: eric z on 12/25/2017 01:48 pm
 A non-computerization question--- When will the NSF merchandise be re-done? Or can we still get the old stuff? I've put on a few pounds and need a larger-size sweatshirt! :-[
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/26/2017 02:30 pm
A non-computerization question--- When will the NSF merchandise be re-done? Or can we still get the old stuff? I've put on a few pounds and need a larger-size sweatshirt! :-[

Yes, we will be working on a new store :)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Eric Hedman on 12/26/2017 02:40 pm
Could we also get a pure black option? Pure black backgrounds with white text look amazing on OLED.

Just as long as it isn’t the only dark option, because straight white-on-black looks terrible on CRTs (we’re still out there!).
What's a CRT? :) ;) ;D
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: CorvusCorax on 12/26/2017 03:36 pm
I dunno where to best place feedback (aka rant) to the webpage, or if this has already been discussed...

I just read the 50 launches by SpaceX article:
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2017/12/spacex-50-taming-falcon-1-achieving-cadence-falcon-9/

The text is full of dozens of links in the text when historic events are mentioned almost like a text on wikipedia would be, such as

Quote
SpaceX proposed Dragon (https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/Dragon/), a recoverable spacecraft it had already been developing privately,

or

Quote
Instead, SpaceX leased Space Launch Complex 40 (https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/slc-40/) at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, demolishing the former Titan IV launch complex

However these links don't go to a specific article with details about the specific event mentioned as the reader would assume, but to a landing page which lists everything tagged "Dragon" or everything tagged "SLC-40"

The latter is a  page that lists a limited number of articles matching that tag, starting with the newest. But the oldest SLC-40 tagged article is from 2013 about CRS-3. None of the articles from the time mentioned, when SpaceX first leased and transitioned SLC-40 is actually tagged "SLC-40". As such, linking the tag list is completely useless.

That being said, there are articles from that time that mention the plan to launch from the old Titan pad, such as
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/01/musk-ambition-spacex-aim-for-fully-reusable-falcon-9/

The link to the "dragon" tag is even more useless. There are really a large number of "dragon" tagged articles, so the list page is actually paginated - in a bad way, one needs to scroll down all the way to see a link to "older" articles.

Then scroll down again to see the link to "older" articles

then scroll down again to see the link to "older" articles

repeating that 6 more times one ends up on
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/Dragon/page/8/

and the oldest Dragon article the above mentioned one from 2009. There is no detailed info about SpaceX private development prior to the NASA contract as one would have assumed seeing the link text.

Interesting thing is, reading old articles that predate the tagging system, they are also full of links, but in this case these links mostly link to individual and highly relevant articles.

It's only at a later point that someone got lazy and assumed linking to a tag search result is a viable substitute to looking up a specific article URL from the archive.

Bad news: It's not a viable substitute, it leads to user frustration when they can't find the information they expect.

This becomes especially obvious when historic facts are referenced which are not covered by the most latest articles, as the tag system is completely useless to find those. (Often the tags in question weren't even being used yet when something was brand new. Tags only get established when a certain news item shows up repeatedly)

Tags are nice for a "tag cloud" so a user can look up everything related to X. But linking a tag is pointless, one would have better results putting the link phrase into google.

Of course to fix this, the authors need to search the archive to seek out the actual article links, which can be tricky, especially if the archive is large. Tags could make this easier, but only if one can narrow the search by also specifying the timespan in question. And also only if someone ever went to the trouble and updated the tags of older articles where applicable, especially as new tags get introduced.

Ah and by the way,  merry xmas and a happy new year to the NSF crew :-)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/26/2017 04:16 pm
Added it here as it's the right place.

Yeah, that's not the fault of the site, more to do with the editor (i.e. me as I add the links), as I've found giving the read a lot of resources is better than a specific article link, as much as we do use such specific links a lot.

Also, for the interim, that's my best option as the old articles are ported and not in the style we are now using. Eventually, as more and more new style articles are published, I will be at more liberty to link to specific articles.

Also, probably a bit of lazyness on my part as it's a lot of work to get an article from text draft to published with pics and links, and long articles can result in "I'm running of out of time here and we're mentioning Dragon again, let's just link the Dragon articles and give the reader the option of what they want to read about.

Potential mid-solution is to use tags less and use more of the search string link, with multiple words to refine the articles the link sends you to, so I'll do that.......but the new style needs to bed into the article range of course.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: CorvusCorax on 12/26/2017 05:40 pm
Added it here as it's the right place.

Yeah, that's not the fault of the site, more to do with the editor ...

(emphasis mine)

I fully agree, however I think the site could help make it better. Especially if a tag (like Dragon) links to a very large number of articles, the page listing them should have additional means to narrow the search down. Clicking repeatedly on "older articles" when searching for something specific is somewhere between tedious and frustrating (especially if one doesn't know if the article one searches even exists and/or has been tagged correctly)

The same is true for the search results. Just for shits and giggles I tried

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/?s=Dragon

which lists an unknown number of articles
(I went to the trouble of following the "Older Articles" cascade, there are 34 result pages with the oldest from 2006

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/page/34/?s=Dragon

I think there's roughly 20 articles per page

trying to narrow that down with

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/page/34/?s=Dragon+2009

which gets it down to 9 pages (that's good!), but most are not actually from 2009 but only list any date or link with the number 2009 somewhere in it.

I like that its possible to narrow the search by adding more search terms (with google it's the opposite) but a more specific search interface to search for combination of tags and terms and/or date spans -- as well as narrowing down a search result by tags and the like would be useful.

so I could run a search result anything tagged SpaceX with the search term "planned"+"Dragon" in an article before 2010

and/or, the ability to see a tag cloud with all the tags and their relative prevalence within a search result. Which could then be clickable to narrow the search further.

just a suggestion :-)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: bulkmail on 12/27/2017 09:31 am
I miss an easy and consistent way to get a "timeline" of articles, e.g. when I'm back from holidays I want to check all articles appeared during the past 1 or 2 weeks - not to look in various sections ("hero" pictures on top, latest news, commercial, SLS, SpaceX, etc)

It feels like I'll get that if I go trough the "hero" roll (all of its pages) and then start clicking "load more articles" on "latest news".... but I'm not sure there aren't some OTHER articles falling trough the cracks somewhere in the other sections.
Confidence would be higher if "Latest news" also included duplicates of all other sections (although I assume you made it NOT TO have those on purpose)

Can you add an overall "view all" page? Something like "https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/news/all/page/1/"
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: whatever11235 on 12/27/2017 03:32 pm
Thought I give my feedback after a week or so of using a new site. It's slower compared with old site. I get that old site was Web 1.0 version and this one is modern one with mobile version included, but it really feels slow. Mobile version even more.

"Active disscusions" section for mobile version is waaay down and requires a lot of scrolling and for me this is really importat section. If possible, I would move it up more. That section changes probably most and people probably use it most.

Old grey/blue colour theme was better that this black/white and now is different than forum one.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: tater on 12/27/2017 07:43 pm
The main NSF page routinely throws a warning on Firefox, Mac, that a web page is slowing down my browser. I don't recall it doing so when the new front page went live, but it has for the last few days. If there is anything you'd like me to do to try and diagnose the issue, I'd be happy to help out.

The thread for NSF in general is locked, so I posted here in the forum thread, sorry.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/27/2017 08:24 pm
Tater, moved it here as this is the thread now. Other one is just the forum (as that's a continuation), this is a new one for the news site upgrade.

I find it nice and fast, but there is more work being done as there's things like refining the cache where it helps loading, but we probably went too far as I didn't see a change/edit applied when I edited it in. That live edit is solved now, but Mark is working a bit more on the CMS, so there's more cowbell options that may help you.

By all means always diagnose anything you see amiss and add it to the thread!

Bulkmail: The layout is my wishlist.

Featured will rotate around the top per the timeline of publication.

Secondary stories (as I inaccurately call them) move on the two spaces below the featured block.

Scenario, where you come back after a few weeks, would be to check all the featured block, the secondary block and then "load more articles". <---that totally covers you for all the secondary stories per several weeks.

Most featured articles here will be SpaceX, SLS, Commercial - and the blocks of five further down the front page will host probably about a month or more worth of articles for that subject block.

The only ones you may miss, if you went away for a long time, would be a featured article, not from a major block, published just after you left. So hmmm, that I'll have a think about.

The vast majority of readers come back every day, if not every few days, so that's how I knew we'd be covered, but yeah, I'll think about some sort of RSS feed timeline (either a standalone link, or added to the forum) where you'd come back and see a list of article links covering the past month or two. That'd solve it all.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: gfagley on 12/28/2017 08:13 pm
I would like to see a list of articles by date.   I don't want to have to search through the the whole page to figure out what articles are new.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Michael Baylor on 12/28/2017 09:48 pm
I would like to see a list of articles by date.   I don't want to have to search through the the whole page to figure out what articles are new.
I agree. It would be better if the "Latest News" section had all articles in chronological order including the SpaceX ones.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/29/2017 01:05 am
I think both of you missed my post directly above yours.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: dansoton on 12/29/2017 05:10 am
A minor possible improvement: It would be nice as a recent L2 subscriber to not be shown the "L2 Sign Up" Top Nav item everytime I hit the homepage.

Not sure if the main site tracks the same logged in user as the forums do (I'm guessing not?), but perhaps a cookie could be used to distinguish an L2 user to remove this redundant Top Nav item? For L2 users it could perhaps be moved to the "Other" section in case L2 users want to review the L2 Signup page - to perhaps send it to a friend! ;)

Second piece of feedback: Where's the About (https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/about/) page linked from the home page now? I expected it perhaps under the "Other" section and also/instead in the footer, but I can't seem to find it. I had to google it to find it.

Those tiny niggles aside, the site redesign looks awesome!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: dansoton on 12/29/2017 05:17 am
Oh another thought: Any chance L2 subscribers get to view the main site ad free as one of the perks?

Again it would require the main site to track logged in user status among other things, but would be a nice perk if doable and not overly costly in terms of lost ad revenue.

Apologies if this has been brought up before, and you're answering this for the umteenth time.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Michael Baylor on 12/29/2017 07:22 am
I am still not clear on how this whole secondary article thing is useful. In my opinion, it is making things way more complicated than they need to be. Really, all you need is dynamic control of the arrangement of articles in the headline boxes at the top. Think about it like this. On December 22nd during the launch mayhem, the average order of interest in a user coming to the site was Iridium, followed by Japan, and then the China launch.

In reality, the site instead had the Iridium article front and center (good), and then had the less hot Cygnus, MS-07, and SpaceX at 50 articles (bad) featured along side it. In my opinion, during that time the Iridium article should have been in the main box, and then the smaller boxes should have had Japan, China, and SpaceX at 50. However, the this was not possible because the site was categorizing articles based on their long term importance, rather than the short term importance.

By the next day the hype for the China and Japan launches would have died down, so you could have gone back to running the Cygnus and MS-07 articles at the top. The internet is very dynamic. What people want changes rapidly. The "featured" articles system should be flexible rather than rigid. The current system does not allow for this.

Additionally, the latest article section is confusing. If I see something called "latest articles," I am expecting to get a list of all recent articles. Instead, I get a list that only has the less exciting secondary articles. You are making the recent news too boring!  ;)

A good example of a site that puts this all together is https://electrek.co/. They have a flexible headline system. Whatever people are the most interested in goes at the top. Then, below that is a list of all articles chronologically. I think you should consider doing the same.

Now, NSF does not post as regularly as Electrek, so I think it's good that you also have the SpaceX and Commercial Crew sections below the latest articles. That helps the people who only care about SpaceX (and there are a lot of those) find their meat.

TL;DR - Basically just have normal articles and headline articles. If an article is about a hot topic, headline it. Once it's done being hot it becomes a normal article. All articles go in the latest articles section no matter what.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/29/2017 11:22 pm
OK, quick answers! ;)

1) Hey, I'd be totally cool with L2 members being able to custom remove ads or anything, they've totally earned it...but yeah, as you note the news site and the forum are two different software bases. Not sure if a cookie would do the trick. Only way I could see it working is if you logged in from the news site and went through to the forum *thus the news site would see you as a L2 member*. Maybe for the future, but it's a bit over my head per application.

More so for the L2 button as that - and the top bar - are literally like the paint on a wall, as opposed to pictures you can move or remove.

2) The news site is absolutely right (at least in how I envisioned it) and I'm wondering if we're all talking about the desktop version? The desktop version (and I can't see how the mobile version wouldn't be) are in two-phase chronological order. Per the Featured and the secondary blocks (all above the page fold). You'd need to be off the site for nearly a week or more, to miss a new article as you load the page, and in order. If there were more than two secondary stories, you click load more, again above the fold.

The question was for someone coming back after several weeks away (which is a small amount of people based on the stats) to which a solution may be a forum thread in General titled "January NSF News Articles" and post the URLs in the opening post as we add the articles.

HOWEVER! There's the ticker at the top of the news site "Popular" which may be working on most reads, which we could simply change to ensure it was actually that newest to oldest list of the latest 20 articles! Booom!

Overall, per the new site, the trick is the balance as we could create a site that made you a cup of coffee as you entered the site and starting reading articles, whilst giving you a bad rub and a few people would say "But I don't like coffee!" ;D I really expected a lot more of the "I don't like what most other people like" so this is good. We seem to be mostly "like it" and a few "refine a few things" and pretty much ONE "hate it!" That's a good result! :)

--

Other to do things:

"Contact" is wrong. It links to an e-mail address. Needs to link to the previous "About Us" page with more contact info.

Store. Because I want a NSF laptop bag. ;D

Continued utilization of the extra cowbell we have in articles. Chris G hit the ground running with his Year In Review articles and found more coolness. Caution is not to go overboard and ensure it remains focused on the content and not "fancy gifs".

Other drives are more to do with me as editor getting more writers in and so on.

Next phase of server improvements is next. Something you guys won't notice other than how long time members will have noticed the days of "Bad Gateway" when someone sneezed SpaceX are long gone (Falcon Heavy is going to be a real challenge, however).

Then we work on bringing the forum software up a notch or three WITHOUT losing familiarity or ease of use. I've seen some sites completely change their forum and you're left shaking your head thinking "Why???" Yes, we have to upgrade, but man that will be a massive community crowdsource and discussion to get it right before we even think about changes.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: WulfTheSaxon on 12/30/2017 02:14 am
OK, quick answers! ;)

1) Hey, I'd be totally cool with L2 members being able to custom remove ads or anything, they've totally earned it...but yeah, as you note the news site and the forum are two different software bases. Not sure if a cookie would do the trick. Only way I could see it working is if you logged in from the news site and went through to the forum *thus the news site would see you as a L2 member*. Maybe for the future, but it's a bit over my head per application.

More so for the L2 button as that - and the top bar - are literally like the paint on a wall, as opposed to pictures you can move or remove.

[snip]

I’m surprised there isn’t already an L2 indicator in the forum cookie. Getting that in there would be 99% of the work, but I have no idea how SMF handles cookies (might need a mod). Once that’s done, though, getting rid of the L2 link shouldn’t be any harder than stopping the ads: .ltwo {display: none;}
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: DMeader on 12/30/2017 02:51 am
Looking forward to the "dark mode" being launched. While the new front page looks nice, there's too much bright white space for my tastes.

On the subject of layout, any possibility of a "list mode" in addition to the current "grid mode"? Go over and look at the options for the ArsTechnica front page to see what I mean.

Beyond that, good job, looks nice. The only other gripe I had was active discussions being below the fold, which you've addressed.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: dansoton on 12/30/2017 06:35 am
I’m surprised there isn’t already an L2 indicator in the forum cookie. Getting that in there would be 99% of the work, but I have no idea how SMF handles cookies (might need a mod). Once that’s done, though, getting rid of the L2 link shouldn’t be any harder than stopping the ads: .ltwo {display: none;}

Yeah I'm not a web developer (backend developer actually) but a quick Google search seems to me that it should be possible to share some cookie value between both www.nasaspaceflight.com and forum.nasaspaceflight.com:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/23086139/1161972

So perhaps that can be used to activate some JavaScript or CSS (https://stackoverflow.com/a/41528803/1161972).
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/30/2017 10:14 pm


Other to do things:

"Contact" is wrong. It links to an e-mail address. Needs to link to the previous "About Us" page with more contact info.



That's now good, per the bottom of the page. Was previously just "e-mail" and now it's proper about us and contacts.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 12/30/2017 10:21 pm
One issue I've noticed after more investigating this chronological order reference and asking around...


Well I've mainly searched used "Tags". We probably could use that tag box back if it doesn't add much load. If it does, it might not be worth it and we can use direct tag links in articles and the forum.

However, while they still work per working URLs, there's the Search Function, which is far more standard for news sites. That works, but I've noticed new articles I've added since the new site went live going are displaying in full, not in brief (like you see in the front of site). I bet that's literally a line of code Mark needs to refine. Not relevant to the front of site, so it can wait until Mark is back. At the same time, those "groups" of articles displayed after entering from a search are *not* in chronological order! That obviously needs to be changed and I bet that's again just a line of code for Mark.

Just posting to say I'm aware and it'll be sorted out. Both are minor.

From an editorial standpoint, I've got to say it's a lot easier to create the articles now. Before I would be running around spending a lot of time trying to find images that would fit the article. Now pretty much any large size image will work. Also allows far better breaking of paras, without actually breaking the paras with a line break. Now large images, twitter embeds and so on do it. Really is a big improvement.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: ulm_atms on 01/02/2018 01:10 am
Then we work on bringing the forum software up a notch or three WITHOUT losing familiarity or ease of use. I've seen some sites completely change their forum and you're left shaking your head thinking "Why???" Yes, we have to upgrade, but man that will be a massive community crowdsource and discussion to get it right before we even think about changes.

Serious question Chris and not a joke from what you wrote above but it is the question I have..........Why?

The forums are the absolute best forums I have used anywhere and are using currently.  ;) ;)

Just curious as to the driving reasons for the bold part above.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 01/02/2018 01:44 pm


However, while they still work per working URLs, there's the Search Function, which is far more standard for news sites. That works, but I've noticed new articles I've added since the new site went live going are displaying in full, not in brief (like you see in the front of site). I bet that's literally a line of code Mark needs to refine. Not relevant to the front of site, so it can wait until Mark is back.

Silly me. I've fixed that as the new site was reading the ported articles over with the "abstract" link we put in, which I didn't think we needed for the new articles. Putting that back in (you don't see anything different in the article) fixes that issue. Boom! Call me a web genius. Ok, perhaps not ;) But that's that one fixed. Time order for searched blocks, will check if that also fixed it, but if not, will let Mark know.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 01/02/2018 01:54 pm
Then we work on bringing the forum software up a notch or three WITHOUT losing familiarity or ease of use. I've seen some sites completely change their forum and you're left shaking your head thinking "Why???" Yes, we have to upgrade, but man that will be a massive community crowdsource and discussion to get it right before we even think about changes.

Serious question Chris and not a joke from what you wrote above but it is the question I have..........Why?

The forums are the absolute best forums I have used anywhere and are using currently.  ;) ;)

Just curious as to the driving reasons for the bold part above.

Have to move on with the technology. But as previously noted, I've seen some sites die by making massive changes. Trick is to keep things familiar. Will be the biggest effort, but one where we really get the community involved with both technically and via discussion of how to do it.

A bit like the news site....how it still feels NSF, but it's now totally tech updated, so it works well on mobile and desktop. This forum....I literally refuse to use tapatalk as it's a pile of nonsense and go on the forum on my phone in desktop mode, which could be better if the place worked better in that version on a small screen. Then there's things like copying with big events...this is data heavy. Needs to be better at that (has improved a lot of course). And so on....
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: joncz on 01/02/2018 03:36 pm
Chris, your caution and forethought are appreciated.  I'm on several partner forum sites for software and services I use professionally, and I've held out NSF as forum-done-right in those venues.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Jet Black on 01/04/2018 08:55 am
Absolutely lovely on all the browsers on all the devices I have (I checked, because there is nothing worse than non-standard rendering of HTML to destroy all your hard work!)
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: WulfTheSaxon on 01/04/2018 06:52 pm
Absolutely lovely on all the browsers on all the devices I have (I checked, because there is nothing worse than non-standard rendering of HTML to destroy all your hard work!)

This made me think to check it on my slowest device. One thing that I noticed is that the images actually load long before the headlines, which is less than ideal.

Also the back-to-top button is a bit glitchy – is it really needed?
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: NSF Webmaster on 01/05/2018 04:30 pm
Absolutely lovely on all the browsers on all the devices I have (I checked, because there is nothing worse than non-standard rendering of HTML to destroy all your hard work!)

This made me think to check it on my slowest device. One thing that I noticed is that the images actually load long before the headlines, which is less than ideal.

Also the back-to-top button is a bit glitchy – is it really needed?

And what system/browser did you have this experience?
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: WulfTheSaxon on 01/05/2018 06:18 pm
Absolutely lovely on all the browsers on all the devices I have (I checked, because there is nothing worse than non-standard rendering of HTML to destroy all your hard work!)

This made me think to check it on my slowest device. One thing that I noticed is that the images actually load long before the headlines, which is less than ideal.

Also the back-to-top button is a bit glitchy – is it really needed?

And what system/browser did you have this experience?

Actually, both problems seem to have resolved themselves – I’m unable to replicate them. I’m now guessing the images-before-text was probably just something to do with the horrible packet jitter I’ve been getting lately.  :(

I’d still prefer getting rid of the back-to-top button, though. Even when it’s working, it’s just annoying.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: deruch on 01/10/2018 04:32 am
A minor problem I've encountered is that for some reason the image captions don't work/show-up for the first picture of an article.  They work in all the subsequent ones but never in that headline or lead picture. 

I'm browsing in Firefox 57.0.3 on Windows 7.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 01/10/2018 10:59 am
A minor problem I've encountered is that for some reason the image captions don't work/show-up for the first picture of an article.  They work in all the subsequent ones but never in that headline or lead picture. 

I'm browsing in Firefox 57.0.3 on Windows 7.

Yeah, that's been like that from the start. Captions only work for images in the body, not feature section. Really not a big deal per the main function of a caption, which is to describe the picture. The lead image will always be obvious and the headline will likely be its caption.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: deruch on 01/11/2018 07:53 am
I guess I wasn't thinking so much about the "what" in the picture but more the photo's attribution/credit. 
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: intrepidpursuit on 05/28/2018 04:09 pm
The changes are great! Love the new iconography and logo. I would love to see the favicon for the forums updated to match the website; right now it still uses the old logo.

Great job Chris and team!
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: intrepidpursuit on 07/11/2018 02:25 pm
I personally find GIFs inline with articles extremely distracting. So much so that I have a hard time reading the article when the GIF is in frame. This may be unique to my own less than perfectly functioning brain and if it is uncommon then I certainly don't expect anything to change on my account. Does this bother anyone else?

The most recent Cygnus article has such a GIF and there doesn't appear to be a dedicated discussion page, and this certainly isn't related to the vehicle so I hope this is the best place to put it. Please ignore me and/or delete this if it is not appropriate or it just comes off as whining, but I thought it was worth mentioning if others feel the same.

50 second reboost test burn confirmed for the OA-9E Cygnus! First time a US vehicle has conducted a reboost since the Shuttle era!

Article:
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/07/cygnus-reboost-conducted-iss/
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: gongora on 07/11/2018 02:49 pm
If they bother you that much you might want to look for a good gif blocker browser extension.  I used to have one that would just play the gif once unless you clicked on it to play again.  Much less distracting.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: William Graham on 08/03/2018 05:03 pm
I think there might be a bug with the "like" button at the bottom of articles. I went to "like" Chris Gebhardt's commercial crew article, but the icon was already lit up as if I'd already clicked it. I've noticed this a couple times before but this time I'm absolutely certain that I hadn't already clicked it.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 08/03/2018 09:27 pm
Yeah, not even sure the point of that as I didn't even notice we had that until now! ;D

I'll speak to Mark and see if there's a better thing we can add to that.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Nomadd on 08/28/2018 11:21 pm
 Am  I the only one having trouble getting pages to show up in mobile mode? They come in that way but snap back to desktop half the time. Reloading fixes some but not others. Only on this site and the same with Chrome, Firefox and Brave on my Galaxy S7.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: russianhalo117 on 08/28/2018 11:26 pm
Am  I the only one having trouble getting pages to show up in mobile mode? They come in that way but snap back to desktop half the time. Reloading fixes some but not others. Only on this site and the same with Chrome, Firefox and Brave on my Galaxy S7.
I'm not having issues on my G S7.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: wjbarnett on 08/28/2018 11:43 pm
No issue on iOS
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: DaveTX on 08/29/2018 01:26 am
Am  I the only one having trouble getting pages to show up in mobile mode? They come in that way but snap back to desktop half the time. Reloading fixes some but not others. Only on this site and the same with Chrome, Firefox and Brave on my Galaxy S7.
I'm not having issues on my G S7.

All great on my G S7 too. So it's not the site.
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Rocket Science on 06/10/2019 04:58 pm
Anyway we can block political ads from appearing as an ad for example on the main home page? I don't need any Trump swag or MAGA hats and that would be for both sides of the political spectrum Democrat or Republican...
Thanks
~Rob
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 06/10/2019 05:00 pm
Anyway we can block political ads from appearing as an ad for example on the main home page? I don't need any Trump swag or MAGA hats and that would be for both sides of the political spectrum Democrat or Republican...
Thanks
~Rob

It's random, no one person gets the same ad, per that one you're talking about and it's supposed to be on topic and based on location etc. So that's very annoying to hear. You should see an "X" where you can note it's inappropriate etc. If all else fails, use Adblocker as you're a L2 member and totally earned no ads on site.

This is what I got just now, for example (was looking at new keyboards on Amazon! So that was clever ;D) Notice the X in the top right?
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Rocket Science on 06/10/2019 05:04 pm
Anyway we can block political ads from appearing as an ad for example on the main home page? I don't need any Trump swag or MAGA hats and that would be for both sides of the political spectrum Democrat or Republican...
Thanks
~Rob

It's random, no one person gets the same ad, per that one you're talking about and it's supposed to be on topic and based on location etc. So that's very annoying to hear. You should see an "X" where you can note it's inappropriate etc. If all else fails, use Adblocker as you're a L2 member and totally earned no ads on site.

This is what I got just now, for example (was looking at new keyboards on Amazon! So that was clever ;D) Notice the X in the top right?
Somebody's watching us! Thanks for the quick reply.
~Rob
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com New Site Launch
Post by: Chris Bergin on 06/10/2019 05:05 pm
Anyway we can block political ads from appearing as an ad for example on the main home page? I don't need any Trump swag or MAGA hats and that would be for both sides of the political spectrum Democrat or Republican...
Thanks
~Rob

It's random, no one person gets the same ad, per that one you're talking about and it's supposed to be on topic and based on location etc. So that's very annoying to hear. You should see an "X" where you can note it's inappropriate etc. If all else fails, use Adblocker as you're a L2 member and totally earned no ads on site.

This is what I got just now, for example (was looking at new keyboards on Amazon! So that was clever ;D) Notice the X in the top right?
Somebody's watching us! Thanks for the quick reply.
~Rob

That'll teach you for watching Fox and Friends. ;D
Title: Re: Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com News Site Launch
Post by: BeamRider on 12/19/2019 09:52 pm
Tried to find a place for feedback on the launch webcasts, but hope this is close enough.
1. I can tell there are teething problems, but you are making good progress.
2. Often when remote cams are placed, they are not precisely level. With big vertical things like rockets, it is visually jarring. If leveling at the pad is difficult, perhaps consider image rotation software?
3. A really cool feature would be to be able to show different rockets side-by-side to correct scale. Is an F9 taller than an Atlas V? Thinner? The "live" rocket could be compared to various other current and historical vehicles. Instead of historical photos for comparison, silhouettes could work too, and might even be easier to understand. On-air crew is always asking for comments and questions, and this would generate lots of opportunity for audience interaction (and fill that bane of live commentators, dead air).