Sidebar on topic pages

[roddy]

2 hours ago, 889 said:

What Roddy's done to the mobile version does nothing but waste time and money.

I actually didn't realise that recent posts block was showing at the bottom of the page, that was an oversight. 

[imron]

12 minutes ago, roddy said:

That's it gone for now

[abcdefg]

The sidebar seems to be gone from the topic pages now too, as of this morning. That's a relief. The long, informative posts with pictures look better again.

 

(I'm viewing on a laptop computer.) 

[roddy]

Just to follow up on this...

 

Sidebars, with extra links, site info, ads, whatever, are if not universal, not far off. Here's one. Here's another. I'm not inventing things deliberately to torture you. I promise. See?

 

These are not the best of times for sites such as this (cough cough, sidebar). The competition for eyeballs is orders of magnitude beyond what it's been in the past. Every student has a blog, every school has a Facebook page, every class has a Wechat group. A graph of post numbers 2014 vs 2017 does not make a pretty sight.

 

Frankly, the site'd be a lot better off if we were engaging new and occasional visitors more. This was an attempt to do that, using the tools I had available (there are certain content blocks set up I could drop in easily, rather than coding new ones from scratch). As it was the stats didn't budge so I pulled it for now. If and when I try again I'll provide an option to hide it, but what I'd actually really appreciate would be more along the lines of "it'd look better if... " and "What'd be useful there is..."

 

@abcdefg - I love your posts, but I think you have unrealistic expectations about the control you have over how your posts look. We can spend as much time as we want on them, but when someone shifts their tablet from portrait to landscape or adjusts their font size... I can't not do things for this reason. Short of publishing your posts in pdf format, I'm not sure what to tell you. For what it's worth, I saw nothing more than minor image alignment issues anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mati1]

As I stated above, the design of the "Site Sponsors" column on the main page (when logged in) is way less intrusive and narrower. Why not start from there (if it can be applied easily)?

 

Maybe posting some declining stats will provide you with some valuable ideas from the community. I guess many more people are now interested in learning Chinese than ten, twenty years ago. I have a feeling that the problem is not page layout, but rather that learners don't find the forum in the first place, or they are not keen on reading through a forum when there are also other promising search results in a web search. The forum is also competing with Youtube and those viewers must decide on their to do a more in depth web search for relevant information. It's easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of videos there ...

 

So, how do we spread the word?

[abcdefg]

17 hours ago, roddy said:

I love your posts, but I think you have unrealistic expectations about the control you have over how your posts look.

 

I understand, Roddy. No offense taken. I will be thinking about alternate formats.

[imron]

Start your own blog

[abcdefg]

Yes, @imron, that is probably the best bet.

[imron]

Well best bet would be a video channel