January 23rd, 2012 • by David Zatz
Sorry about the gray screen that afflicted Allpar users for what seemed like hours this morning. We updated WordPress plugins on the news page, then tested the news page, and all was fine; but one plugin, for a secure feedback form, had no effect on the news, while demolishing the home page.
Ooops.
That’s long been fixed, but it’ll be just a little harder to contact us for a while, as we wait for a revision to the revision. We might simply need to move to a different plugin.
You may have noticed, by the way, that searches on the news section are now much better — thanks to another plugin entirely. What we were able to do briefly last week, but apparently can no longer do, is have searches return 16 articles instead of six. Something to work on later.
Hope you like the new top of page menus, by the way — a very minimal amount of code, written by yours truly, which makes it easier for mobile device users.
December 8th, 2011 • by David Zatz
We conducted a survey on Allpar users’ experience when using mobile phones. The survey was not posted for a long time, and we only asked mobile users to take it; so only around 200 people responded.
We were surprised at the results. 16% said it was very easy to use the site on a smartphone or other mobile device; 38% said it was moderately easy. 19% said it was moderately or very hard, and the rest said they don’t use Allpar on a mobile device.
20% said they had not noticed the top-of-page menus; 12%, the side-of-page menus.
Despite Allpar’s not being especially difficult to use on a mobile device, 41% said a mobile version would be very helpful. The key features desired of this version would be elimination of Kontera/Vibrant “double underline” ads, larger type, using a smaller (or no) logo graphic, and dropping the left hand sidebar. Surprisingly, most did not find smaller images to be “essential” or “important.”
The mobile edition of the Allpar news pages was only used often by a third of respondents. The rest used it rarely or never (roughly one third each).
Only 7% said not having a mobile edition affected their use of Allpar “quite a bit.”
Android dominated the list of devices, with 41% of readers using it as their primary device. iPhones took the #2 spot with 30%. Most of the others used Blackberrys, with Windows Mobile, Nokia, Kindle, Color Nook, and iPad all coming in for small shares.
Of interest, most people who took the survey did so on an actual computer or iPad; fewer than 5% of the respondents had a screen size smaller than 600 pixels wide.
The open ends were interesting, but there was little consensus; some wanted us to focus on the site as it is, others wanted apps, and others had specific suggestions.
We will be moving forward slowly, for a while, implementing relatively easy suggestions and working on page width issues, etc., where needed; and trying to get the news theme working properly. Many of the individual suggestions were very good and we will be working on them.
THANK YOU.
