Adam Tyner

I'm a little puzzled because the other thread was teeming with so many gripes about how Internet Brands has neglected the site, and then when this opportunity to make suggestions comes along, the main thing people talk about are avatars. I mean, I agree that ought to be a standard thing, but why is the conversation pretty much ending there?

For my money, a general UI refresh is necessary.

For instance, when I go to the frontpage of DVD Talk:

1) HD DVD is featured as one of the first links, despite not really being a thing for 6 years now.
2) Many of the featured columns haven't been updated in multiple years.
3) Features are linked to like DVD giveaways (nothing since last Fall) and Easter Eggs (nothing since 2010).
4) There's a promo for new DVD reviews but nothing for, say, Blu-ray, despite the fact that DVD Talk's Blu-ray reviews on average garner more page views.

Even within the forums, the long-dead video game section is still heavily promoted, the "HD Reviews" heading should've been relabeled "Blu-ray Reviews" ages ago, the music forum description lists long-since-stillborn formats like SACD, and I'm sure the list goes on.

There's little-to-no connectivity between the other portions of the site and the forum proper. The columns use Movable Type and don't allow commenting, and even if they did, it's still removed from the forum. The columns each have their own mostly-but-not-quite-the-same site header/footers which makes it tougher to keep everything consistent and up-to-date. Nothing's promoted/cross-promoted between the columns and the forums. They're just so...disconnected. A tighter integration could make readers feel more invested in the site and its content. More eyeballs per column, more conversation: it's a good thing.

I'm not saying that the design needs to be super-slick and flashy. Clean and simple would be fine. Just get rid of the stuff that doesn't need to be there, and use that space to more effectively tease/promote. As things stand now, the site looks like it's been abandoned. Just looking like it's being updated -- that the people running the site care! -- could do wonders for getting casual visitors and new eyeballs to take it more seriously.

Even if there were some little tool in a CMS somewhere to promote threads, think of how useful that'd be. The reason I first started lurking around DVD Talk in 1998 or 1999 was because of the bargains forum. Have some kind of top deals promo where a moderator or something plugs a URL into a very simple form. A "What movies are coming out this weekend?" box, with links to the DVD Talk reviews section and corresponding discussion threads. New release Tuesday lists, extremely popular reviews...there's a lot you could do there. It's genuinely useful, and it'd probably get plenty of clicks.

Features that are standard elsewhere -- such as autocompletes when using review searchboxes -- aren't in place. There's not a way on the site to search the text of reviews. That DVD Talk has three distinct groups of reviews (DVD, Blu-ray, and theatrical releases) makes it tougher, but I'd love to see something like our sister site High Def Digest has with graphical promos, an indication of what's popular, etc. One long list of mostly plain-text followed by another long, textual list followed by another long, textual list is kind of uninvolving. It wouldn't take much within each review to have a "you might also like..." promo featuring similar reviews. Again, that could be useful, it keeps people feeling engaged, and it gets more ad impressions.

I'm totally willing to help out with any of this too. The review CMS I wrote for DVD Talk is pretty powerful but many years out of date. I wrote/maintained it for Geoff for free, and I'm willing (eager, even!) to continue doing the same. The code/database structure is fairly lousy because this was the first project I ever worked on like this (all the way back in 2001!), and I promise I'm way better now.

Groucho

Well, I think the mobile version was the immediate concern for most of us, everything else is gravy.

In terms of design, there's a lot of tiny icons. Fine for clicking, not so good for touch devices. It would be great to have those enlarged so that I'm not constantly tapping the wrong thing.

It would also be good to see some of the lesser-used forums jettisoned or merged.

As previously mentioned, a stronger emphasis on streaming throughout the site would help bring new users in.

BearFan

A few suggestions (mostly repeats)

1) Avatars for reasons stated, but mainly it makes the board look better and it is easier to identify people who post.

2) A rebrand towards blu ray/streaming

3) In the earier days of the forum/site, the old ownership did a decent job at getting interviews and chats (I know that is "old school" anymore) with movie makers/DVD makers .. usually with some giveaways. I won a From The Earth to the Moon DVD (when it was expensive as hell) and a signed by Renny Harlin. While I was happy to win these, the real value was in reading the interviews/chats and having a chance to ask questions.

I would imagine that with the massive amounts of product out there from indie films to shows streaming on Netflix., BBC shows in Hulu, etc there are people that would be willing to take the time to be interviewed on a site like this that still has good traffic numbers.

The benefit to DVD Talk is driving people to the site to read this material and hopefully stick around and be a regular and to keep existing members looking coming back more often.

I am on some music sites where the site has declared a few people as interviewers, who I am pretty condifdent do these for next to nothing to free (or to just get some swag/start off a possible career path).

It would get DVD Talk back in the position of making news versus just reporting on it. In the early days, Geoff did a fairly good job at doing that and I am sure it drove a ton of traffic to this site (that and a zillion reel.com coupons )


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In conclusion, rebranding the site and making it more of a newsmaker is probably needed for the long term survival of DVDTalk and making it thrive.

TGM

rename it www.StreamingTalk.com, but watch out for the golden shower fetishists

ibobi

This is a big issue, and one that's been discussed both in forum and in office for some time. Rebranding to something more inclusive/wider audience would be ideal. I think we're just not sure what that might be exactly, but please keep suggestions coming. Also, do you think there's a bunch of DVDTalkers that would oppose this kind of thing if it were possible?

I was thinking they were a Premium feature; if that's the case, and we were able to go "wide" with avatars (I'm not sure we can right now, given they are a Premium feature), we'd certainly try to make it up to current Premium subscribers. If we were to re-do Premium, what do you think it should include?

Exactly right.

Typically, name changes are verboten. In some circumstances a 1-time change can be done, if we take steps to keep community confusion to a minimum. Let me make some inquiries.

Brent L

People here wouldn't care, and likely would agree it's time to change the name entirely. I wouldn't totally ditch the look of the logo, keep that consistent, but it is time for "DVD" to go. It looks like HDTalk.com already redirects to here anyway, so just make that the official name of the site. Something like that with a tag line mentioning "Movies, Blu-ray, Streaming, Gaming, etc..." so it covers all the bases as a whole.

Most people here thought it was stupid when the premium option was even created in the first place, and most of us who signed up did it to support the site more than anything else, at least that was my main reason for paying. If you re-do Premium, it's going to have to offer options that are NOT available at the sites that are already so far ahead of us in the first place. I would say to set it up so people can list their collections here, but that is a free given at another well known site that I have already mentioned. To get people to pay, you're going to have to offer true "premium" additions. You shouldn't strip normal basic features for the majority and then just repackage it as a "Premium" feature. I think the limitations on our in boxes should even be removed for all members as well, not just the entire thing with avatars.

Either get rid of the premium feature all together, or come up with some additions for it that are not already available at other sites that are already so far ahead of DVDTalk as it is. Doing anything but is just another step that will prevent this site from continuing to exist. This forum is not in the same position it was ten years ago, or even just five years ago.

I don't think people should be able to just change their username to anything they want whenever they want. That is insane and I hate boards that allow that, it's a nightmare. I do however think it should be allowed for members to change their name at least once no matter how drastically if they wish, because things do change over time. For members that want a simple change, like a DVDChris wanting to be changed to BluChris or something like that, it should be allowed no questions asked since it isn't going to cause any confusion at all. I don't blame people with names like that wanting it changed, and I think it should be done for them.

Pizza

Lock up old threads if there hasn't been a new post in over a year.

Shannon Nutt

Is participation on DVD Talk really that down, or is IB just looking for creative ways to make a profit off this site? I've been here for about 10 years, and I think the forums here are still pretty healthy.

Noonan

I agree. I'm surprised to read the comment above that VG Talk long-dead...that section and its posters are the main reason I still visit this site daily.

Adam Tyner

When I say video game section, I mean http://www.videogametalk.com/ , which hasn't had a review posted since November 2011, hasn't had a blog post since April 2011, and hasn't had a feature posted since August 2010. When you're in the video game talk forum, the game reviews teased at the top of each thread are very out of date.

Noonan

Ah. Sorry, I didn't pick that up. Since you mention it, I haven't visited that section in a long time either.

Trevor

On user name changes, I think they should be allowed rarely and in understandable circumstances; but that if the person was an active poster they should have a tag in their whatever-the-box-thing-to-the-left-is-called say "user formerly known as x" forever.

Trevor

As for re-doing Premium, I'm with Brent in that it probably never should have been done in the first place. Limiting things allowed by the forum software to specific users seems wrong, and it doesn't appear as if IB has the resources to create anything really special for Premium users. We were promised "many more features to come" years ago, but have received nothing new for our yearly payments.

But if it had to be more of the same, I'd say at least tweak things in Premium members favor as much as the software allows. Give us more characters/lines in our signatures and more PMs and bigger avatars.

More contests would be nice too.

Speaking of PMs, even outside of Premium users you really should give people who run Challenges and Sheep games and fantasy leagues more space. These threads are much of the glue that holds this forum together, and those people are constantly having their PM boxes fill up.

Thanks for the dialogue IB. This forum has been a favorite place and a home for many of us for decades now, and seeing it stay relevant or even thrive again would be nice.

fumanstan

That's how it currently is, right? Except the tag isn't permanent, just for a certain amount of months.

Tracer Bullet

It would be nice not to have to babysit my PM box whenever I run a Sheep game, that's for sure.

Pizza

It always comes down to wanting a bigger avatar than the rest.

fumanstan

Private message bump would definitely be useful so I can keep up with the dozens and dozens of users that wants to PM me regularly.

Tarantino

I posted this in another post, but videogame talk.com either needs to go or be updated. There are a few gamers (myself included) that could write features and reviews if you need man power.

Drexl

Bring back the Adult forum!

(Okay, I realize that's probably not possible.)

ibobi

It's not awful. For about 2 years it's been really steady. Before that, we may have seen a drop just because DVDs aren't as big now. But we always feel we can do better, given the passion of this community and its varied interests.

Lots of good suggestions there.

As to PM boxes for those running contests and such, please get in touch with me; that's something I can and will adjust for you immediately.

PM me and we'll discuss.

PM me and we'll discuss with our content manager; not sure if we'll do anything with it but it's worth a talk.

Mike86

I agree with a lot of things others have posted in here (avatars, mobile version of the web site). I do kind of agree with this quote though too. To me the site doesn't seem like it's slowed down that much or is really that out of date. A couple tweaks could be made to modernize it a bit and just some cosmetic stuff to make it nicer to look at but overall I enjoy the site basically as is. I do agree that Video Game Talk is pretty much dead though and either needs to be dropped or get regular reviewers to make it seem relevant.

It seems like the way people in here are talking the site is dead or dying which doesn't really seem to be true to me. Certain forum sections might be more active than others but overall traffic on the site to me still seems pretty fair. Also I will say the quality of discussion on this site is way better than most others I visit.

PhantomStranger

+1
These are the suggestions I also would have put forward, if I felt like typing them out. Prune dead areas of the forum and rename relevant sub-forums to more appropriate names.

ibobi

Adam, I feel a lot of this just requires some community input and then a VB reorg of forums, which I can do. Some of this requires a bit of dev work that a webmaster can do easily. And some requires "real" changes to the site that will be harder to push through. But this is great info.

I think what we need first is some votes, or some way to indicate whether the community would like to make each change. Can you take the lead on that? And any input you have from a technical point of view, perhaps you can share directly with me?

ibobi

Another idea, not sure if it was mentioned here, but a while back we discussed enabling some sort of collector inventory feature. This would essentially allow a member to search the DVDTalk review database (which is the Amazon database) and select each movie you own, and add it to your collection attached to your DVDTalk profile in some way. Perhaps allow users to export a list of, say, "top ten 80s slasher movies" as a forum post and FB/twitter link?

Is any of this still desirable, or do better versions of this potential feature already exist?

Mike86

Sounds like a cool idea. I'd use something like that if it were offered.