My Forum - Huaqiaoforum.com

[DavidL706]

I'm posting with the permission of the moderator here, as I've contacted him to make sure I won't be spamming you.

 

Long story short, I've put up a forum of my own.  We haven't been online very long, and we'd like to get some committed members who can post engaging topics.  It was originally for Chinese-Americans, but I expanded it to include all Overseas Chinese, no matter where they may come from.  While that is the focus, everyone, regardless of ethnicity is welcome to join us, as long as they have a general interest in China, Chinese language, Chinese culture, the Chinese diaspora etc.

 

The address is here: www.huaqiaoforum.com

 

We look forward to seeing you over there.

 

PS - If you have problems registering, feel free to contact me over here.  We're testing out some new anti-spam features to improve the user's experience.

 

Once again that address is www.huaqiaoforum.com

[abcdefg]

The tiny font you've chosen makes it extremely difficult to read.

[DavidL706]

abcdefg, thanks for your feedback.

 

I've changed the CSS slightly to get a bigger font in posts.

[ChTTay]

The font is still too small for me!

From within China your site hangs quite a lot too. I get the webpage background for a llllooooooonnnnngggggggg time before anything else happens.

[DavidL706]

The font is already quite large in my opinion.  It's the same size as on this forum.

 

 

As for the speed, I'm not sure what I can do about it.  It loads instantaneously from the US, Canada, England and Taiwan, or so I'm told.

[Shelley]

I went and joined, no problems with loading here in England. Font size seemed ok, it was a little on the small side but usable.

 

Looking forward to seeing how it progresses.

[querido]

To those needing bigger fonts:

Chrome zooms in and out with Ctrl+Scrollwheel and remembers the setting per website!

IE also zooms in and out easily (google "ie zoom"). 

[DavidL706]

If you're in China, I'm sorry that the site isn't loading for you.

I'm in Taiwan right now and I have no problems loading it, even though my server is in Texas.  Might be that Great Firewall acting up again, but I'll try and find a solution to see if I can't speed it up for people on the Mainland.   

[ChTTay]

Reguarding the font... It mighht just be the background and font colour that makes it seem smaller/harder to read. I'm on an iPad and its uncomfortable. It's not the formatting of the site.

To be honest, i probably won't join as i'm not an overseas Chinese or any kind of Chinese. Good luck though.

[abcdefg]

It's more readable now.

 

I'm not part of the target audience, so I'll give it a miss. If there were more content, it would be more appealing. Realize it's new, and may get better as time passes.

[zhouhaochen]

I would suggest to get rid of some of the not so relevant sub-forums. For example: DIY around the house and garden is not very topic related

It doesnt do any harm, but looks a bit strange to have that on a forum that is supposed to be about a very different topic.

 

You might also want to enable messaging for new users, so at least it is possible to send a pm to the admins.

[DavidL706]

I would suggest to get rid of some of the not so relevant sub-forums. For example: DIY around the house and garden is not very topic related

It doesnt do any harm, but looks a bit strange to have that on a forum that is supposed to be about a very different topic.

 

Thanks.  I got rid of them - I might put them back as general discussion topics once we get more members, but I'll have to play it by ear.

It also makes the forum as a whole look a bit more active.

 

I see you're in Beijing.  How is the site load time for you?

[gato]

The "Segoe UI" font used on your site is smaller than Arial font used here, at any given point size (14x currently). Also black text on gray background is harder to read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segoe#Characteristics

Segoe UI is optimized for Vista's default ClearType rendering environment, and it is significantly less legible when ClearType is disabled,

[imron]

I thinks as well it's not so much the size of the posts which is an issue, but rather the size of the forums and post titles.

[DavidL706]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'll be fixing those the next change I get.

 

Although judging by the fact that a lot of non-Chinese people have now signed up, I might just re-purpose it and make it a Chinese culture board open to all people (at the risk of opening a few cans of worms).

[DavidL706]

After tweaking the forum, I've done the following:

 

• Made the section titles larger on the first page
• Changed fonts to Arial instead of Segoe UI
• Improved the contrast on the posts
• Also, the editing box when you type up your post should have a bigger font.

Here's what a post looks like now.  It should be quite readable: http://i.imgur.com/JGbEUcz.png

 

I'm still in the process of tweaking things, so bear with me.  At least now discussions should be a bit easier.