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management system layout stinks


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I have been programming now for over 20 years and although invision seems powerful, the management and configuration system stinks.

if I need to make a change, it takes me forever to figure out where to make the change. I have to look elsewhere, on other forums, to ask for help to find the setting to change an option. this means your forum has a lousy layout.

there is too much inconsistency in the config options. here is an example:

under cpu settings it says:
Remove 'Users Browsing this topic' feature?
Remove 'Users Browsing this forum' feature?
Show Active Users
Show Board Totals?

now do you see the inconsistency? why can't it just say:
users browsing this topic => enable/disable
users browsing this forum => enable/disable
show active users => enable/disable
show board totals => enable/disable

the word "show" and "remove" have opposite meanings. in some cases, clicking "YES" shows the option, and in some cases clicking "YES" doesn't show it. the option of clicking "YES" should be to either show or not show, but should not be changed from config option to config option.

I should be able to go to the cpu performance option and click "no" on every option to make performance better. in your system, you have to click no sometimes, and yes sometimes. this is a lot more work, and this inconsistency is seen throughout your entire config interface, and it is a pain.

another example. please explain to me the difference between the word "management" and "admin". to me they are both the same. how am I supposed to know what is under the management links or the admin links? or under tools & settings? we manage and administer settings & look & feel. why are the look & feel options not always under the look & feel area?

Ip.Gallery is listed under "components" and under "tools & settings". some of the ip gallery settings are under "components", and others are under "tools & settings". why can't they be in one place? how am I supposed to know if something is in one place or the other?

you need more online help. YOU might know how the board works but a new admin doesn't. phpmysql does a good job with the online help. invision does not.

let's say I want to setup 20 forums. I find that for the most part, I have to go through and recheck the settings for everything over and over and over and over and over and over because you do not have global settings for the forum. yes, if I want bbcode disabled on one forum I want it disabled on ALL forums. I don't want to have to go through each setting every time and double check everything. it is an administrative nightmare.

same with permissions. you have all these pre-named groups which are absolutely useless since the permissions are never set. what good is it to have a "banned" group if it has the same permissions as the "members" group? no, I should not have to set the permissions myself every time I create a new forum. its a royal pain. now I have to worry that I might have missed something somewhere, and I have to depend on members to notify me that something doesn't work.

it took me 2 weeks to figure out how to add a moderator to a forum. not in the permissions area, although there is an option for validating, which is like moderating. I don't recall finding it in the forum management part either. when I need to add a moderator somewhere, its goign to be another massive hunt to find the setting. no use to check all the places where it should be, because it won't be there.

I am the root admin. as far as i know, I can't allow myself to post html but deny members to post html unless I seal off an entire forum. so the only way I know to control html posting (have you seen the pornographic posts that people make?) is to completely deny my members to make any posts whatsover. if there is another way, I expect it will be a long time before I find out how.

one thing I was surprised at thwne I looked at your management interface is that although there are a large number of settings, they are mostly for useless things that the average admin would never care about. like what the text should say in the title of the polls, pinned, & moved topics. or maximum title lengths. or other silly settings that a real admin doesn't need to worry about. I need to know that my board will not get spam, and that it will survive a lot of traffic (like 50,000 people in one hour), that it will generate revenue for me, and that people will get a good experience. I have the feeling all forum onwers want these things. I don't see invision focused on that.

and of course, you company's forum is not to be used for tech support. no surprise there!

yes you have a lot of powerful features compared to the competitors and yes if I don't liek it I can go somewhere else but seriously you need to rethink how you lay out your management system. I am not the first person to come along and not know how to find something. I think it is pretty clear that the layout needs a major overhaul.

the ONLY thing that your company does a good job of doing is showing is what new add-ons to buy and how to get support and renewals. your company is clearly focused on upselling and not on supporting your products.

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I'm just replying because some of your points don't really make sense to me.

same with permissions. you have all these pre-named groups which are absolutely useless since the permissions are never set. what good is it to have a "banned" group if it has the same permissions as the "members" group? no, I should not have to set the permissions myself every time I create a new forum. its a royal pain. now I have to worry that I might have missed something somewhere, and I have to depend on members to notify me that something doesn't work.



Although there is still permissions options for the banned group, it is set in the group settings that it does not have access to the board. I'd assume this would be so that if you wanted the banned group to have access, the permissions are set up to allow this.



How do you expect this to work? I know I've used all the above settings before, and how do you want to "know" all the above? A piece of text that says you can generate revenue from your board and will cope with a lot of traffic? Surely you could figure this out yourself by the boards that are already doing it? :) It's not options to configure, so I don't really see what place it has in the Administration Panel.

There is documentation available. You can't expect just to pick a product up as complex as IP.Board and know exactly how it works. I've been using the product for a long time and still have problems finding options occasionally, but even so, there's documentation available, and IPS Beyond, and the support system. I just don't believe it could be done much differently to how it's done currently without seriously limiting the options available for configuring the software.
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I'll agree with you on a few points. Specifically the Blog/Gallery settings being in multiple places (IPB actually has a setting to hide those in the TOOLS & SETTINGS section so you only see them in the components area related to them), I'm not sure why they are not already hidden. The CPU section could also use some re-wording.

However, the rest of the things you mentioned are pretty intuitive if you give yourself the time to actually sit back and learn the software. You can ask any and all questions on IPSBeyond (the customer resource site) or even open a support ticket about it. General "where is this" questions are usually answered quite fast.

I looked at your management interface is that although there are a large number of settings, they are mostly for useless things that the average admin would never care about.


One man's garbage is another man's treasure. Remember that. While you find it useless, many others like those options and will live and die to support them.

yes, if I want bbcode disabled on one forum I want it disabled on ALL forums.



The issue with a global option (for this or anything that also has a "local" option) is that it adds additional "gochas" to the script that are completely unnecessary. In this case specifically, each forum and each member group has an option to allow bbcode. If you want to remove it from the forum, you remove it there. If you want to remove it globally from your MEMBERS, you kill it at the group level. If you want to allow members to use bbcode, but not in their signatures, you set that value to no in the global settings location.

Now, let's throw in the "global forum all off" option. How many people will contact IPS because bbcode doesn't work in forum X even though they enabled it? How many more man-hours will that turn in to simply because all of these users "forgot" about disabling bbcode for anything and everything globally? Your way is actually more counter-intuitive than the "hard to use ACP".

Although there is still permissions options for the banned group, it is set in the group settings that it does not have access to the board.


Perfect example of the issue I noted above. Gocha! ;)

another example. please explain to me the difference between the word "management" and "admin".


To "manage" is to, direct or control the use of; handle. You "manage" your finances. So it is quite right that we find the ability to control users, forums, badword filters, etc here.
To administrate, though similar to manage, is usually associated with a higher level of management, "top dog" if you will. Specifically, in the IT world, it relates to things regarding server usage, programs (or components in IPB), security and delegation of authority (ie. setting up other administrators), and so on.

it took me 2 weeks to figure out how to add a moderator to a forum.


What I find most ironic about that statement there is that if you think on it, you answered your own question. Let's break it down! I need to "add" a "moderator" to a "forum".
1) Well, add is something related to "managing". So I'll bet "management" is a good place to start.
2)"I need to add a moderator"....hmm...nothing about moderators specifically (though technically the default page is the forum manage view, and thus one could/would see the moderator stuff mentioned below first)
3)..." to a forum"...oh, there's a link to "Manage Forums".
4) Looking at the "manage forums" page, we see a text that says "Add a moderator to all checked forum(s):". I notice there are checkboxes next to each forum. (note: this should also be a little more visible, specifically in the case where users would have to scroll down to even see it)
5)*couple minutes later, after selecting all forums I want this guy to moderate* Now I see " Add a moderator to all checked forum(s): Name OR Group". Aww man, I have to know the guy's name? I think it starts with a J....*clicks "GO"* (note, name choosing could actually use a little work and IPB has AJAX member name searches elsewhere, why not here :P)
6)Hey look! It brought me to a page that lists all names starting with J. There he is, JayBob. *click "choose member"*
7)Now I'm brought to a page where I get to set all the things JayBob can do in the forums I've selected. *add this moderator!* (/end)

As you can see, the entire process makes a lot more sense than you made it appear. Though it is far from perfect, it is indeed a pretty good system and while some things, specifically global settings, tend to have a "where is it" effect on people, most everything can be found if one analyzes the task at hand. That, my friend, is what usability is all about and, frankly, IPB has done a far better job at this than any other forum software I have found or used/administered.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask! :thumbsup:
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We do appreciate feedback on usability of our products. The ACP is likely to be overhauled for IPB3.0, and we have already planned to spend a lot of time working on the usability of both the board and the ACP.

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Maybe you could have some sort of Basic and Advanced "Mode" for the admin cp.

After tinkering around with IPB for a couple years, it doesn't really matter for me though. A lot of things you just set and forget.

___________________________________

I agree that the current options that we have in the admin cp are pretty good. I don't see the need to add many more. In fact, i think it's more important to build on the existing individual options and give them a bit more flexibility.

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thankyou for agreeing with me without realizing it, but I think my point is pretty clear that it needs to be re-organized a bit.

there was an old 3d modeling program called Imagine 3D. Then a competitor came out called Lightwave 3D. Imagine had all the features, but the interface was a pain to use. Lightwave had the most incredible intuitive interface that took absolutely no learning curve.

"intuitive" means "no time to learn" in my book.

sometimes I go to delete a post and there is a "delete" button. if I want to delete a topic, there is no "delete" button. sometimes there is a drop down on the left to delete the post. sometimes it is on the right. not intuitive.

if I see someone post something offensive and I think he needs to be banned, I can't just click "ban". not on his post, not on his profile. but I could remember his name, log into the admin, do a search on his name, and then ban him for a few hours. but that's not what I want. so I have to search through more settings to find out how to ban him indefinitely. not intuitive. the banning process almost ALWAYS involves a post that a member has made. it should be on his profile page.

it's simple normalization; just like normalizing a database. group things together in a way they make sense.

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The "warn" button right next to any user (once you have it enabled, which it is by default I believe) has a way for you and all your staff to keep track of the user's offenses, the ability to ban, suspend, removing posting rihgts, etc all right there. Almost anywhere you find the name of a user you will find that warn link :)

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i don't get the wording issue in the cpu saving area... simple reading eliminates any confusion and its not dumping the db or nothing if you tick something because you misunderstood you can just go back and revert it...

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if I see someone post something offensive and I think he needs to be banned, I can't just click "ban". not on his post, not on his profile. but I could remember his name, log into the admin, do a search on his name, and then ban him for a few hours. but that's not what I want. so I have to search through more settings to find out how to ban him indefinitely. not intuitive. the banning process almost ALWAYS involves a post that a member has made. it should be on his profile page.



I'd be really careful about handing out bans like they were candy if I were you, it's the best way to get flooded by proxies of shock images... and tub girl will reduce site traffic QUICKLY. Not to mention in general increases troll traffic or the moderator load heavily.
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"intuitive" means "no time to learn" in my book.



I also wanted to add, nothing is perfect, or ever will be. One person might take years to learn while another figures it out in minutes. It honestly sounds like you may need to slow down just a bit and think about what you are doing. The answers might just come to you without the need to over think the situation, which is a common downfall for usability. :)
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