CoasterBuzz v6 refresh

You're looking at the next version of CoasterBuzz, v6. This is mostly visual changes around the site, but the forums are in fact new. They've been running for a bit over on PointBuzz, so if you frequent that site, this will be familiar.

If things look weird, hold down shift and click your refresh button.

So while most of the site is not really new, the forums are. In any case, here's a run down of what's different:

• There is no separate mobile view anymore. It's the same site, made responsive to your screen size.
• The site is crazy fast and clean for club members. There aren't even placeholders for the ads.
• Stuff that was under "tools" on the right can be found in the "more" menu at the upper right.
• It isn't well tested on mobile stuff yet. If you find anything really odd, let me know right here.
• There will be a Q&A style forum for trip planning, maybe, which will earn points for chosen answers. Stay tuned.
• It's my intention to turn on the Facebook and Google login associations again, but it's not there yet.
• New fields in your profile: Facebook and Twitter.
• Post previews. You don't have to edit or delete your post a hundred times if you're doing it wrong. Click the preview button before you submit.
• There are quite a few bug fixes you may have never encountered.

The real intention with this release of the site is to lay some groundwork for certain new features.

This might also be a good time to mention that ad revenue is pretty terrible these days. While I'm not going to give up on the site, it's discouraging to see less revenue for the work I put into it. I want to get to the point where the site is redundant across different parts of the world, and while that is getting cheaper, it's not there. Your club memberships help out where ad revenue can't. Please consider joining CoasterBuzz Club if you haven't. It would help me out a great deal.

Have fun!

Jeff said:

If things look weird, hold down shift and click your refresh button.

Phew!

I was scared at what I was seeing then I came to this thread and saw this.

Much better.

Wish I would have taken a screenshot because I was pretty sure you went nuts.

Looks good. I just need to get used to it.

The mobile look will need a lot of fixes I'm sure (the home page is awful even in a browser), but that will come. The forums are pretty tight though, as we've had a lot of practice on PointBuzz.

Ooooh, daddy likes! I'm digging the new font and the layout feels a lot more feng shui.

Looking sharp. Love the new font, but I do think the font size is a little bit too small for your aging audience's eyes. Easily fixed though, because Chrome, and I assume other browsers, have a special zoom feature. :)

Looking good. As for the profitability of this site, I suggested on PointBuzz once before that if you set up a Paypal donation on the site, I'd be happy to donate to the sites when I got spare money. I'd join CoasterBuzz, but I'm already in another coaster club that I'm pretty happy with.

I like it! Great job! Looking forward to many more years on Coasterbuzz!

Sucks.

:) ;)

You know I'm just kidding.

Needs more trees.

LostKause said:

Love the new font, but I do think the font size is a little bit too small for your aging audience's eyes.

You'll probably be surprised (or annoyed) to find out that the text is actually 1 pixel larger than it was before. :)

Not sure if it's just my perception or something with Chrome or what, but I was going to mention that the large text was one of the major things I was going to have to get used to.

Seems considerably bigger to me.

Maybe I need another shift/refresh?

The body text is 1 pixel larger, while the headlines and headers are all the same size. Actually, they're narrower than they were before, believe it or not. It's interesting though how some people see bigger or smaller. It's like the blue dress for text.

Yeah, it really is. I could swear it's rendering (or whatever the correct term is) much larger than before. My monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080 and in this thread your initial post almost fills my screen vertically (including the post header and the floating menu).

I just don't remember the old design being even close to that big.

My mind is blown.

The dress was clearly blue, however.

Well yes... the columns will spread out now, but the text is the same size. I didn't think that people generally viewed browser windows full screen. At the very least, I would think at your resolution that you were running at a high DPI for sharper text. The analytics aren't very good at figuring that out.

Club members get a ton of room now without the right column. The maps on the park pages are actually useful.

Lord Gonchar said:

......The dress was clearly blue, however.

Bullocks! Clearly the dress is summer lavender and burnt copper :).

I'm almost always browsing in a full screen window. I'm old.

And I don't mean horizontally, I mean vertically. Although now that you mention it, they're spreading further side-to-side too, which I think makes it seem all the more larger.

I managed to find an old thread on the wayback machine to do a comparison of RCMAC's posts from the American Pickers thread. (screenshots below).

For me, the new post is 818 x 277 and the old post was 635 x 240. That's about a 50% increase in screen real estate. (152400 pixels is now 226586 pixels)

I don't hate it. Everything feels more...Boom! Larger than life.

No real point. Just observation.

Everything at this size is substantially larger than it is over at PointBuzz. I feel like I'm looking at an old person's computer when I'm here!

You can see the differences here: http://imgur.com/a/BY1ar

Any chance of restoring the "Recent" button to the top menu like it was on the previous version? It's not a huge deal, but having to go through an extra menu to get back to the recent/unread posts is just another step, especially on a mobile browser.

edit: Oh, I see where it comes up at the top of the thread now, which kind of works pretty well.

Not sure I follow. It's in the forum breadcrumb still, same as before, next to the ^ Forums / General Buzz links.

Yeah, it shows up under the topic view now, and not just under "forum" - I actually like it there, so long as it's an easily clickable option. I'm just used to it being in the upper right corner, and now it's on the left.

I dig the clean look, especially on desktop Safari.