"Personally, and this is entirely my opinion, I ldon't have a problem with the banner ads - I rarely even notice them. "

Right. And I have no problem with them either. As I don't see them. Just saying that as the net progresses, something might come about, like a new aol feature or new isp idea that lets block banner ads for our users so they can enjoy the internet more... and boom. There goes a source of income. The trend lately has been more and more popup and spam blocking... its just a matter of time.

Let me butt in here and just say that LQ.org is totally and utterly against popup ads. Jeremy has expressed many times if one slips past him in the banner rotation that is fed by burstnet and such advertising sites he uses, to notify him immediately with the ad and link, etc to remove it.

And I'd like to also mention that I too feel the contributing member is just a way to say thanks and help out this site, not to get free stuff, etc. Jeremy spends enough time and money of his own into this site already, I can certainly say contributing members will not pay the bills alone. Ads do help, donations do help. I think adding such things as auctions and such will only add more to the expense this site creates without any additional help.

This is almost solely run by one person, non-profit to help the community using linux and opensource products. Who has the time to burn iso's to sell? I don't run this site and certainly don't even have the time to do that myself.

And I also agree with XavierP on avatars and pictures, they're ugly, distasteful and unprofessional looking on forums and sites like this. I don't think that would be a selling point either to get people to contribute just to have these features, they'd only complain more that they don't have them and the one's who donated do. Its happened with the PM's before. And most of these features you get after becoming a Contrib Member were never enabled at anytime, nothing was taken away.

I do agree that there are many ways to make money but most things take more time, energy, money and probably wouldn't make much of a difference in the long run. This site isn't about making money, the money made is to keep it alive for everyone to enjoy for free.

That's my two cents and how did the layout change thread turn into a "Way to make money!" thread?

Kid,

Sorry if I removed 3/4 of your two cents! ;-)

First, I exhibited a bad attitude toward the changes Jeremy is making, and since I did
that publicly, I want to also apologize to Jeremy publicly. I was wrong. It's easy to complain
when something doesn't suit our tastes, but we should add constructive ideas instead.

LQ is a wonderful site! In 1999 I tried Linux and quit after a couple of months. If LQ had
existed then, maybe I would have "stuck it out." Today I am free from M$ Windoze for all
but one app, and when that's replaced, my Windoze drive gets a low level format. Man,
am I looking forward to that day!!!

Also, maybe my comments instigated this thread becoming about making money. However,
the reason for the layout change is to make money, from ads, so that Jeremy can continue
his vision for the LQ website.

I'm not one to think there's anything wrong with making money. It's "the love of money
that's the root of all evil," not money itself. We would all agree that Jeremy wants to use
any money gained from the ads to improve LQ.

I, for one, vote that Jeremy should also be able to make his living from LQ, and leave any
other employ behind!

This is a great site!

As long as the Search link is easy to find, preferably near the upper right, I will be happy.

As far as the ads go (I really do not mind them)...I usually use Mozilla to block them. If they are Macromedia I sometimes get anoyyed, but that is the cost of using flash right?

I have learned a lot using this site.

The biggest thing to me about using this site is finding things quickly at the end of a hectic day fixing clients' broken windows.

I also have completely switched over to Linux for every day use. I am now running Fedora Core 2 [tettnang] Final, and it is smokin'! I used K3b to burn the DVD iso.

Keep up the great work!

i like the nav buttons on the top right, but i think 1) there may be too many of them, and 2) they could be in a better order. because most people read left to right (english is left to right, at least, and LQ is in english), home in the upper left position seems more natural than in the lower right, followed by search, user cp (or usercp then search), and then the rest have pretty much the same weight, so i don't think it matters as much. maybe logout in the lower right -- or better, the upper right. then with maybe hcl and reviews or two other higher priority links in the top row, the lower row could be a little more secondary. i think it would just feel more cohesive that way.

the ads don't bother me at all, and they seem much less intrusive than most other sites. i have zero problem with them considering the content that's available here. i am generally against avatars and pics in sigs, if that discussion is coming up again.

the main menu link box is more usable on the right, since that's where the scrollbar is and you don't have to go all the way over to the left after scrolling up to use it, but otoh early internet development kind of made left hand menu box the "standard" and that's what a lot of people are now used to. so i think it comes down to personal preference, and a user option for that would be cool if possible (thought i saw something about that as i was skimming the posts?).

i think more attention needs to go toward alignment. this site has a *lot* of information, and things tend to look cluttered when they're not aligned well. someone pointed out the misalignment of the main menu horizontally, and i have that problem too. it definitely detracts from the appearance of the site. same for the vertical alignment with the header stuff (nav buttons) and right-hand menu. those should be aligned vertically on the right so it looks more solid and like more of a single plane instead of broken up.

all the white space on the right is also really unfortunate. it might even be better to have long secondary menus there than nothing at all. maybe with links to things like the rute manual, software sites, a google.com/linux search box, etc. and other popular help resources for quick use and reference. other than things like that, i can't think of anything else at the moment that would work for there.

one other thing i've always thought would be useful is to have the "view new posts" link on every page so when you're in a thread you don't have to click first on "forums" and then "view new posts" to refresh back to the first page of new posts. (edit: n/m, just noticed that on the bottom. maybe would be better somewhere at the top, though, or also at the top in addition.)

anyway, i just want to say that content is king, and based just on that this is a great site without any design updates. of course if the design can be experimented with to make it even better, i'm all for that, too. i also think it's really cool that you are getting input from everyone before going crazy and making a lot of changes. sometimes change just for the sake of change causes more problems than leaving something alone, and in the end it might turn out that LQ is pretty d@mn good mostly the way it is.

We are working on getting a little more content on the right. The problem is that page lengths are *so* variable, so we need to find a length that works well for all pages.

--jeremy

I hope it doesn't become too apparent that I know nothing of what it takes to code things around here, but here I go:

How about something like moving up the "similar threads" box from the bottom to the right if the page is x amount of lines long (meaning it changes dynamically..)? Or, other things like the Forum sponsers to the side instead of bottom, LQ links, and so on. Basically, as the thread grows in length, after x amount of lines, the bottom stuff gets to move to the side, below the static whatever is already there...

Ok, it sounded better in my head, but hopefully my point is still understood

Cool

It's reliably getting the page length that is the problem here.

--jeremy

what about removing the top ad and making it a vertical ad for the right side instead. would that be an option? that way the actual content would start closer to the top, and it would probably solve the white space problem for a lot of the threads, at least.

another idea might be to keep the ads only on top and bottom, and get rid of the sidebar menu altogether, extending the forum part to the full width. having a menu there might just be unnecessary clutter. i for one would never use 90% of those links, but would access them from the main page, etc.

just throwing out some ideas.

My thoughts exactly! Those who don't want to see the ads will get rid of them,
those who desire to can use the top and bottom of the page, and the threads
still display full width...

Hi Jeremy,

I think it is a good idea to remove the link buttons on top. You could also shift the logo to the right... Studies show that people tend to see the right hand top corner of any page first and then the rest of it... Having the logo there makes a huge statement...

Another humble suggestion. How about a small menu on top with the links in text.. I mean as in a slim 2 row 12 column table with the links on top appearing on all pages. You can put this in using a server side include... Use text links with a nice font so that it will look real good. (White on a navy blue background seems to be a good idea.....)

What say you all???

synaptical,

We are experimenting with getting the content closer to the top. See:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/reviews/index.php

--jeremy

That looks good - imo

Jeremy,

Thanks for giving the users a chance to voice their opinions! As for the layout of the site, I suggest only one thing:

Make the following links most visible:

# Linux Tutorials
# LQ User CP
# Logout
# Linux Wiki
# Linux Forums


Thanks, Jeremy!



Chris Rion

First I'd like to say that I love the site - it's been a great help to me getting my stuff set up. What I'd like to see is this: When I do a search, I get a mix of posts from different forums. It would be nice to stay within my search when I click "next thread". Currently it goes to the next thread in whatever forum the post came from, but that thread wasn't in my search. I'd like to see the next thread in my search results. (I hope you understand what I mean). For what it's worth, keep up the good work!