Site Talk - Quality Assurance

[CalebD]

I really like the look and feel of the new SBO website so I want to try to help out.
I found what I thought was a problem with the Classifieds - Gear Ads section and thought I should post it over in the 'Site Talk' forum, which I did. Now the forum list shows that my post is there but when I enter the 'Site Talk' forum it is nowhere to be seen. Something is wrong with 'Site Talk'. (#1)

The 'bug' I was trying to report had to do with when you click on Classifieds - Gear Ads the list of forums comes up. No classified ads anywhere. I am not sure if this really is a 'bug' or if the classifieds from the old site were just not converted over to the new format and the default list of forums comes up instead? I used to be in IT BTW. (#2)

Bug #3 has to do with the Chandelry section of the website. I went over there to see what had improved/changed with the makeover. I liked Mainsail's 'sticky' write up so much that I wanted to see if I could find things quickly in the Chandelry (this is where you make your money, right?). Alas, I find that the Chandelry page is unchanged, including the header with links to the old SBO sections which take you to a page called 404! Since I was in IT I know that these things take time but this is where your revenue comes from.

More general rant on the Chandelry.
After reading Mainsail's sticky it struck me that I have been guilty of posting links to Defender's website for gear and such. I realize that this is kind of rude and would prefer to use your store as I have no connection with Defender (other than being a sometimes customer). The real problem I have is that the search engine at your chandelry does not work IMHO. I have tried to find (out of the hundreds of books listed) Nigel Caulder's "Boatowners Mechanical & Electrical Manual" to recommend to various posters. The search engine will not find it whether you search by author or title. It takes 5 or 10 times longer than searching for this book on Amazon as I have to find it from the master list of books using my browsers search within a page function. I would really like to see the chandelry improved for my sake and yours.
Thanks for all your hard work.

 

[Brian D]

CalebD...

Open up that forum.
Click on "Last Post"
See if that brings up the post in the correct date format. I just posted there and it too was lost. I clicked on Last Post and now I see my post.

Let me know what happens. Thanks

 

[CalebD]

CalebD...

Open up that forum.
Click on "Last Post"
See if that brings up the post in the correct date format. I just posted there and it too was lost. I clicked on Last Post and now I see my post.

Let me know what happens. Thanks

Thanks Brian. Clicking on 'Last Post' seems to correct that issue as a work around. I still think that the 'Site Talk' forum should come up with the most recent posts as a default.

 

[Brian D]

I tried to coax it to the right settings and it didn't work. I've made notification of this and hopefully it will be fixed soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[Phil Herring]

Site Talk sort fixed

No, the chandlery wasn't touched in this upgrade. And, as you pointed out, the nav bar wasn't removed from the SBO chandlery until mid-day. I edited the wrong file.

While the chandlery is where we make our money, it isn't in the dire straits the forums were in, crashing multiple times each day for extended outages. There was some urgency getting this done and the chandlery is next on our list.

IMHO, the chandlery search is quite good. We had to remove the books from the general product search because any given keyword would return 20 books for every product. If you search from the book section, or use the 'book search' link on the search results screen, I'm sure you'll find what you need, assuming we have it.

That's not to say the store doesn't have many other shortcomings, but that's a task for the fall and winter.