Yea, I read "imho" in someone's post and didn't know what it meant. I don't know a lot of the abbreviations used in today's texting world. But, after thinking a bit, I thought maybe it meant "In my humble opinion".

By the way, I never saw the old version of this website, but I find this version quite nice and easy to traverse. Could be that because I didn't have to unlearn the old one, the new one seems just great. I have an IT background, so I know what it's like getting all of the comments. You sysops (do we still use that term?) have shown considerable professionalism in responding to the many comments.

Both seem to apply most of the time.

I still don't see a (1) next to my inbox :) Course, it's been a while since a got a mail. Maybe I can mail myself to see if it's there...(why does that sound bad...)

Diablo

i'll look into that tomorrow and try to see what the problem is. thanks for letting me know...

imho?

"In my humble opinion"?

I do not see how to change the password. I found an entry from someone that said to go to My Account, but I was unable to find anything there to change password. Could you provide some help?

By the way, what does "imho" mean?

Thanks

i think its currently being worked on. i can't remember, i'll look into it though.

What happened to the link to the famous flyer?

Yes, I see the "Russian" thing people keep commenting on...but to me, it looks more like some cheesy high school rock band's attempt at a cool logo--but whatever...

My biggest comment is WHERE IS THE SEARCH BUTTON!

Grrrrrr!

and miss out on all this fun?

the sf gate is in the midst of changing their homepage. it doesn't appear that they are undertaking a radical revisioning, but they are changing what is a successful web presence, imho.

what i do find pretty cool is that they're prepping people for the change by saying, 'hey, click here and get a sneak peak @ what you'll be seeing, the changes in context, etc.' i imagine that'll probably help them avoid some of the blowback that f.f. had to deal with.

Fresnoise, you've made your opinion abundantly clear. As I've said before, we are working on an alternate layout with a light background and dark letters. When it is complete, each user will have the option to choose whether they want the light, or the dark version. The old design was very much broken. It was ugly and cluttered, plus there were a ton of technical issues that I will not get into right now. We have thousands and thousands of lines of code to go through to make this new template, so please be patient, there are only two of us working on this site and it's a tremendous amount of work.

In the meantime, I might suggest you increase the brightness and/or contrast of your monitor. Like I've tried to explain before, this is an issue involving CRT monitors that are no longer capable of producing normal contrast levels.

So please, we ask that you try to realize that we do empathize with your problem and are working as fast as we possibly can to create a solution for you, and the others experiencing this issue. Please notice that we have tried to be very responsive to the concerns of the users and are working hard to address each and every one of your issues in a timely manner.

i disagree. i realize this all comes down to opinion/preference but i find the redesign of famous to be superior to the previous. the drop down menus are easy to use, i like the prominence given to photography on the front page, the user preferences on comment reading is great, and i prefer the color scheme.

as for other websites changing when it "works," it happens. as for how well the old site worked, that's up to debate. it was simple, but i only used a few buttons (recent posts, create comment). i still use the exact same buttons.

Why in the world you guys would change something that was so successful into something plagued with problems is beyond me. I wonder what Craigslist or Google would say to a major change in the look and feel of their homepages? You started a whole new learning curve to get up to speed putting those of us having difficulty at a disadvatage. That drives us away from this site. Isn't the first lesson in graphic design make it easy to read? How about this old chestnut: If it ain't broken don't fix it. My solution to the problem is to change it back to the way it was before. As for the Marilyn pic, put a pic of a bee or anything but pleease change it back as it was far superior to this new design.

reminds me of the good ole juarez daze...

Good job interacting with your constituency magic code people that fix the website. Big ups to you

Diablo

There is now a page set up where you can view all the recent comments, I still need to style it but its there! It is located here You can just click on the recent comments title on the home page or access it under the blogs drop down menu. Thanks for all the great feedback.

Subscriptions are back, you should now be able to receive email alerts about new posts... The problem was that there were so many outdated drupal modules running on the old version of the site, and i guess when i updated them the other day, it created a dependency issue that needed to be resolved. anyway, problem fixed (i think)

start using recent posts (under account menu). it's better than just recent comments because it includes new blog & event posts. i made that switch and love it!

that shouldn't be a problem... I'll add it to my list

Here's my beef, not sure if it's a big enough deal to fix ...

The way I've used the site usually is by scanning "recent comments" to see what people are talking about. I liked that on the old Famous, you could click onto a recent comments page and look at a bunch. As it is now, there are only five on the front page, and unless you're checking the site every hour, you can miss stuff on a busy day.

I'm wondering if there's a way to make it so we can click into a bigger list of recent comments?

Thanks
Mike

that was a great idea to add the post blog item to a more convenient place, so i also added the following new menu items to the top navigation bar...

People > Add a Famous Person
Bands > Upload Music

I'll continue to add these to new menu items that we'll be adding in the future.

cool... glad to hear its not broken (saves me work... lol)

ok, i added that menu item to the blog menu up top. I'm not sure if i understand the other problem. I just tried creating a test blog, clicked submit, and the blog was posted. What is happening for you? does something else happen when you click that submit button?

That works great.

FYI - I realized that the reason I was unable to post was because I did not click on a category first. Problem solved.

you got it buddy... how about if i put a link to post a blog under the main blog drop down menu in the top nav bar?

It might also be helpful if the link to posting a blog was more clearly set out. Also, maybe the site would function better if when you actually typed out a blog and hit "post" the blog would be posted. Just a thought.

thanks 559rell and robdefrees for pointing that out. i'll look into this today. i could swear that on like the 1st day of launch it was working, so we must have broken something. i'll try to track down the error as best i can today....

It'd be a REALLY good thing to get those email updates again.

Cuz now I'm trying to remember everywhere I've posted and I find myself going back just to check and see if anybody wrote something after me.

~Rell www.myspace.com/559rell www.myspace.com/trellthareallamane (music production)

lol, click the refresh button dude...

So, the menu is ALL KINDS of FUBAR today...

-s

Revert to the white background asap please.

The content column has now been expanded for ease of viewing and if you haven't seen yet the tabs for editing your posts are back and are now above the title. Thanks for all the feedback.

Am I missing something? What happened to the forums? Please tell me the Fresno top 10 thread is still around. That thread has more Fresno history than any book I've read.

Rob DeFrees

In past, one of the things that I adored about the site was the emails sent telling of new posts to thread I wanted to stay on top of. Mind, I am right busy and mailbox is very well used but it was always nice to stop and see what the latest tirade was. MOI is not the only one posting and do love to see what others are saying.

Am I think as a brick or what. Is that feature gone?

Oi!! Never count the Swedes out. Jag prata svenska! I had good fortune to do business in Sweden and learned the language. I will always remember roaming the roads of Stockholm and my many bike rides in the countryside around Uppsala.

And I love the comment viewing options!!!

Sorry I wrote so negative earlier, but...

These improvements (especially the background options...since I'm probably on one of those older monitors you were talking about) will greatly improve the user-friendliness of the site.

Sucks that they forced your work out so quickly. I think it was indeed damaging to whatever bit of trust we had in McClatchy/The Bee.

Tested Quality > Rushed Delivery.

Things I can live with:

1) The logo, if both R's are facing the correct direction.

2) The fist and the pencil.

3) The trivia beneath the logo.

Yeah, I know I have to live with whatever is given, but there's my 3 cents. :-p

~Rell www.myspace.com/559rell www.myspace.com/trellthareallamane (music production)

Thanks edluv! How refreshing to hear a positive comment! That just totally made my whole week. We are currently working on expanding content column to maybe about 600px rather than the current 425px. It looked good on paper, but apparently isn't as functionally friendly as we'd have liked. We've just got to find a happy medium between our requirements for ad placement and UI ergonomics.

I've now added view options for the comments so you guys can display and sort the comments in whatever way you like. Does this resolve the issue on the comments?

A new theme is on the way, so individuals can decide whether the want a light or a dark page. Please bear with us as this is no simple task, but actually a substantial amount of voluntary work that we will happily do because we care about accommodating your concerns.

outside of the slim columns for text, i love the new site.

that's right. i love it. i like the new logo. i don't care if it conjures up memories/associations with communism or the former soviet republic.

and, today i noticed that they're now giving several options of how to view comments. super freaking cool. so, i can go back to viewing comments in chronological fashion. or, should i choose to look @ them in a threaded fashion, i could do that. or, i could collapse them all.

awesome. great work on that.

the one thing i'm still wanting (other than larger text columns compared to ad space) is either a button or a space in all the drop down menus for the calendar. it used to be there in the menu bar, it's not now.

FWIW, I use an LCD monitor and I like the white-on-black set-up.

I understand that you're working on a solution, and maybe there were extenuating circumstances, but that fact that you attribute this to a "small population" of Fresno Famous users who are using a CRT monitor worries me. It sounds like you're making excuses.

Accept it, and grow. But really, overreacting? I think we've been understanding.

like i said before, we're working on a solution as fast as we can. Please note that this is an issue that only affects a small number of the fresno famous population that are on older CRT monitors, which tend to display much darker colors and lower contrast than new LCD displays do.

We will try to be as empathic as possible, but I cannot stress enough the importance of describing the situation you are experiencing so that we can properly diagnose and resolve these issues. We fully welcome and value your opinions, negative or positive, but please understand that only fact can lead to resolution.

Thanks for your patience and understanding during this transitional period.

Not fond of the new site design, plus what I posted a week ago has been condensed into something completely lost on anyone looking at the Music category only to find 5 million posts by the same person, obliterating everyone else. this should not be allowed, and all posts by kimlien should be taken off. Completely unfair to others who want to get the word out about other events.

And yes, white type on black background only works if the letters are HUGE and movie poster size. This just gives me a headache.

robin ralston

wow, ok guys, i thought you were just way overreacting because you hated the new design. Today is the first chance i've had to see the website on a CRT monitor and it looks HORRIBLE!

I do apologize for the lack of user testing, but we were not given an opportunity to do any. The deadline was so short that we just had to push this out. There were only 2 of us doing all the work, and we did put in a lot of time and really do care about you guys liking the site. The only thing we can do now is ask for your patience while we rectify these issues.

Black background? Number one tacky webdesign no-no: the mark of an amateur, especially on a text-heavy site.

It looks like MySpace.

Allusion to former Soviet Union in graphic and font choices? Cute backward R/Cyrillic text reference. What's the point? And, if not intended, return to comment one, part two. (It looks like the label from an old Russian sunflower oil container.)

Half the vertical space is given over to advertising. Since when do graphic artists split things 50/50? (Maybe it's not that way on your screen? If that's the case, see comment one, part two.)

You have got to be kidding. It looks like Billy from Family Circus took over.

I think any time a site is redesigned there are going to be problems -- technical and otherwise. I think the FF team is really in a good position to be getting this type of feedback too because if I got feedback like this it would help me out immensely.

I just redesigned my Fresno news & information site too -- lateupdate.com -- and it has a lot of the things that people are saying is now missing from this site. It's a redesign but it was really about getting the cleanest code for my site as I'm about to do some major stuff there as well.

The only thing bad about this is that the Fresno Bee said they would not change the site dramatically. I think it's just that the Fresno Bee is taking a step in a new direction and I'd be interested to see what the cool new features will be in the future here.

Here's what Valerie Bender said at the time:

The website will not change dramatically. Often known for taking shots at The Fresno Bee, FresnoFamous.com will continue to enjoy its independence from The Bee and will continue to host candid and open conversations on any topic of interest.

"Our hope is that many things that Jarah Euston had planned for the site's growth will come to fruition through the multitude of resources we have. It is also our intention to retain the personality behind FresnoFamous.com and that those in the public who currently participate in the site will continue to do so. We also hope others will join those conversations and make future contributions to FresnoFamous.com as we grow its readership."

I like the way the pictures look when you first get to the homepage, but other than that...

I TOTALLY side with you.

Sucks reading DOWN a post, then scrolling UP to the next post, only to scroll DOWN again.

Was there no beta test?

One of the main reasons I'm coming back to this site, lately, is to see when these problems are finally corrected.

~Rell www.myspace.com/559rell www.myspace.com/trellthareallamane (music production)

1. That comments now appear in reverse chronological order. Major annoyance.
2. Color scheme. My eyes are burning trying to read. And this site was originally designed as a forum for written content. Oh, the irony.
3. No "Categories." Apparently it's more important to have a giant Warner Company ad than it is to attract people to the site by making it interesting and easy to navigate by displaying timely content. Funny, because I doubt Warner Company will keep paying for ads on a site with no one on it after they've been driven away by lack of focus or good design.

Please fix it, or revert it back to the original. I was very unpleasantly surprised when I came back to Famous today after a couple months off. Make it stop.

looks good.

That's a pretty distorted view of what I said. Most people who get the hell out of dodge don't start a website about how cool dodge is in the first place. Nor do those people start an anti-corporate website and then sell said site to an international conglomerate.

But Jarah did. Then she left, never to return. Now, you must ask yourself. Did she do so because she really loved Fresno? Or was the site designed to help with a B-school application that was rather light, especially in the GMAT department? Who knows...

So "selling" means "selling out?"
Yeah, that's a great way to entice free thinking and an entrepreneurial environment. God forbid someone make money from their efforts, and even worse, to go off and better themselves through higher education.
It's no wonder people are getting the hell out of dodge.

"Sold Out

It sucks. Take the money and run. You probably live north of Herndon."

No, that was jarah...