So my experience with this forum started when Win-Raid became part of Level1Techs, which is where the confusion begins as the two seem kinda similar, yet are kept apart with a different domains and use different accounts. When I came to the main forum, I tried to log on with my Win-Raid account a few times before realizing that I had to make another account for this forum. I’m not sure if it’s some sort of problem where the two can’t be merged or won’t be merged, but in this case, it should be more apparent that the two subdomains use different accounts.
Onto the layout, which might be useless to complain about as it could just be a Discourse thing, I dunno. I like having a plain main page where it lists all the categories with descriptions, like most forums over the years have. The main page having the latest posts is kinda nice, but that could just as easily be put on a normal main page, or be it’s own page. The dropdown box to switch categories seems a bit odd to me, all I have to go off of is a short name, which means if I want to know more about a category, I have to go to it and read a few posts to see what it’s truly about. There also doesn’t seem to be a good guide post, or if there is, I couldn’t find it.
When browsing topics, I don’t like the infinite scrolling. It adds a script, and makes going to older posts inconvenient. I’d have to scroll a bunch or craft a search query rather than go to a quickly loading page 10 without as many scripts and find post xyz from (insert date here). The same is true with posts on topics, clicking near the bottom of the scroller can take me multiple pages from the bottom on big posts, and the scroller seems slightly off when it comes to the posts on the screen. I can be viewing the last post on a small topic and have a bunch of space below the scroller. Old school pages just seem to be better, and don’t use scripts that slow loading times.
When making posts, a script is used, and the most room I get is about filling up half the viewable area of my browser, meanwhile many forums allow me to make it as big as I want or as small as I want. The preview when typing is nice, but preview buttons serve the same purpose. A better live preview would be markdown/bbcode having a live preview in the typing box (like on Discord), or it could just be below the post and allow me to resize the post box however I want.
I wanted to put my complaints into a post, even though it probably won’t accomplish anything. I’m expecting this will either be a dead post, a battlefield, or locked, but I just wanted to put my complaints somewhere where maybe someone would read them. Maybe someone will point out anything I overlooked or help me understand it better, or maybe even get a theme or option created that has a older style layout.