AH to be updated with a new look

Jerome, excellent to have AfricaHunting back online.

Certainly no need for apologies. What these last few days have shown is that the minute, or five minutes or quarter hour I spend with this online community has become an important part of my day.

Great that you're back online and I'm sure we are all looking forward to our continued discussions and adventures within your online community.

Keep up the outstanding job you're doing.

Jerome, the new format looks great - all those long hours have paid off. I'm looking forward to navigating the new site.

Note that some of you might be missing your avatar from the AH library, this will be fixed soon as well as some of the smilies that are now missing...
Thanks everyone!

Congrats on the new site Jerome, it looks great. Well worth the down-time.

Not sure about the new site yet. Maybe it will grow on me.

Jerome,

Thanks for the new fascia of AH , its great !!!!

Monish

Jerome, I love the new look. Well done!
Ty

Jerome

I am a devotee of the AH site and find it extremely useful, viewing it regularly - well done for all your hard work.

I would however, like to make a point about the format, which I hope you will view as constructive criticism. My issue is about the order of the threads within each forum.

Work committments mean that I am often away for a few days; something that probably applies to a lot of people. When I go back on the AH site after an absence I am always interested to see new threads and new postings on existing threads that are still being commented on.

Generally speaking (but not always) the first three or four weeks of the life of a new thread is the time when it is likely to be read most and will receive most new posts. These newer threads therefore tend to be the more relevant and interesting. Older threads are continually being resurrected, which is usually good because it can give them a new lease of life.

However, what is happening is that there is a lot of resurrection of old threads by posts that do not carry the topic forward. They are receiving "Great pics!" comments, or "Wow, that's great!" posts or some additional remark that doesn't add to or re-open the discussion but which has the effect of carrying that particular thread back to the top of the listings. Some of the resurrection posts are really valuable, such as chemarq on Judging Springbok, but these are rare.

Now, it's always rewarding for the originator to receive a complimentary post and I am not suggesting in any way that people shouldn't do this. They should. What I am saying is that it could be better, in my opinion, if the threads remained in the order in which they were posted within each forum, or at least for the latest 20 new threads, with older threads then following and becoming highlighted if there are any new posts.

To illustrate this, just before I wrote this post, I looked at the Plains Game forum. A relatively recent post on the differences between different types of Eland was only made last month. Yet, it is the 12th on the list, with 10 of those above it having been first posted last year.

I think that most people would like to be able to see the recent new threads (I suggest the 20 most recent) as a priority, with new posts on much older threads being a second priority.

I am not sure if you can do anything about this (if even if you feel it needs to be addressed) although I hope you will consider the point I'm making.

Gloucester, Thank you, I absolutely appreciate your input. As a matter of fact one of the reason why I wanted to upgrade the site was to give the members and visitors of the site more flexibility in how they are able to search the site so that they can find exactly what they are looking for.
I saw on the old site how popular using the Active Forum Topics feature was and so have expended by creating a New Forum Threads Feature as well. The New Forum Threads feature is located in the right column in the forum and shows the seven newest threads that have been started. By using this feature you can see and access the newest forum threads first. Thereby accomplishing what you were suggesting in your post. Once you have checked out the New Forum Threads, then you can look at the Active Forum Topics feature which is essentially the newest posts among all threads old or new.
There is also a new link in the main menu called What's New? which will show you in order of most recent any new content posted on the website from new forum posts, threads, articles, news, deals and in the near future blog posts...
I hope that some of these new features will help you to better use the site how it suits you best.

Jerome,
looking forward to seeing the new look and variety of options. let me congratulate you in advance fo your tireless effort to keep all of us connected and informed on many things about hunting etc. Great stuff.
Popo.

Popo,
Thank you for the kind words. You are already experiencing the new look and platform as it has been running since march 2010...