Official Luthiers Forum!

Couple more usability suggestions. Make the forum logo in the banner a clickable link back to the board index. Also when you are in your private messages there is no easy way to get back out of there and back to the board index.

There is a link that says "View active topics" that takes you back to a list of all the "active topics" listed in order of the most recent post. It is located just south of where your user name is listed on the screen - on the left.
By far, this is the easiest way to navigate the forum.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Yeah, I'd go so far as to say that everyone should bookmark the "active topics" page, and/or that it should be made more prominent.

+1. It has always annoyed me that getting out of message center is such a PITA. Probably will turn out that I was missing an obvious solution though...

The active topics link has been hiding from me for years! That should be extremely prominent.

Users should be able to turn off the TapaTalk pop up on mobile devices. I use both. For different reasons. But every single time I come to OLF on my phone I get that stupid dialog and half the time I hit the wrong button and off I go to the App Store. This happens in other sites, but I got to believe u have control over this.

First of all, THANK YOU, LANCE! This is hands down, the best luthier forum. You've weathered turmoil that
I didn't think you could survive. In every decision, you've made the right choice.

My only quibble: On topics that I care about, it takes some time to compose my thoughts. I often find that when I've composed a response, my log-in has expired. My response is erased. I'll call that "frustrating". (Here at home, I might use stronger language.)

Eric, I think I have a simple solution... check the Remember Me box below the login. If that does not work, your device may be set up to not remember history. My phone is like that. If I don't act fast or often, I'll get logged out regardles of the Remember Me check box (price to pay for privacy).

Mike

+ 10^googol

Podcasting is a great idea! Regular episodes gives people something to follow and look forward to rather than just being one-time visitors to the site. I'm just starting to tinker with the idea of video podcasts in my workshop, mostly how-to kind of stuff but im thinking about covering conceptual stuff as well such as "understanding intonation." I would love to contribute

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http://www.ericschaeferguitars.com

Color scheme is great. Hang on to it. That's all I have, everything seems fine to me

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

I agree with those that like the color scheme. It's sort of a trademark to the OLF now. Kind of like a theme song to a show.
Everything else sounds good. I'm sure it will be great no matter what you do.

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Thanks,
Blain

http://www.ullrichguitar.com

"89.67% of all statistics are made up on the spot."

What if you (Lance) had a way to post pictures and documented steps on these individual processes? Then when someone is at that stage, it would be easy to find that info! Not just anyone could post, but luthiers with a few builds under there belts! It would definitely have to be manage to keep unwanted info off. This would be an incredible source of reference !! Lots of step by step pictures.


Organized like Franks Frets.com

+2 on that. All links automatically opening in a new tab would be nice.

I didn't have time to read all these so this may have already been mentioned. When I do a search I end up with several from the same post. If those could be grouped so the same post doesn't come up several times that would be great.
I am another one that likes the colors.
Mike

When you search, scroll down and select "topics" rant her than "posts" that will return all the topics with your search criteria not just a list of posts.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Maybe I am missing something but I think It would be nice for the website to automatically resize photo being uploaded.

I like the color scheme as it is.

Back way up to the end of page 2. I really like Mike O'Melia's comment about comment threads. Not 'wow that looks nice', but what really needs to be done, without being thin-skinned about it. Of course, this is not sidestepping the fact that, in a lot of cases, the product looks really nice because people understand, from repeated internet contact, what the standard of appearances is. I guess the real question is that we need a totally unbiased, unfiltered assessment tool for knowing how the product sounds! That's a tough one.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

One more quick usability suggestion. I don't see the point in threads of having a New Reply as well as a NEw Topic button. This just happened to me again today and has happened several times before. If you want to make a reply when you open a thread and you accidentally hit the New Topic button then you type out your long winded well thought out reply only to get an error message on submit that you have to have a subject line in a new topic.. New topic? What? Huh... Oooooh I must have hit that stupid New Topic button again.

I don't see the point when reading a tread in having a new topic button. Seems to me most people would be happy to just leave the thread to start a new topic but while in a thread are more interested in that particular discussion and just want to reply. At least don't list the NEw Topic button first which tends to give it prominence.

As for the colors I've never been crazy about it but it is part of the brand now and for the most part is appropriate sort of woody feel to it. I just can't help think of the 1970's

Lance,

This is a great forum, and you've gotten lots of suggestions on improved functionality.

Regarding "look and feel". I like the color scheme, and the basic layout. In the "people fear change" category, I particularly dislike changes to "look and feel" because they through me off when navigating familiar sites just as much as when big changes.

Did I mention that I like the color scheme and "look and feel"?

Thanks for all your work on this.

Corky

Another feature to add: automatic switching of daylight saving time.

As it is, I have to go manually toggle the option every 6 months to have correct time. But it should just be an option to say whether you live in an area that observes DST, and then adjust the displayed times automatically depending on the current date.

This is the airstream forum

I've been uncharacteristically stifling myself just like Edith Bunker was often asked to do as we heard the sounds of Archie flushing the toilet upstairs....

Two things: First and you have wanted to do this in the past Lance, use real names on the OLF. I know first hand that many pros will not participate on any forum that does not use real names. Pros have skin in the game and someone with a screen name such as "vintageFenderSnakeOil" likely does not...

Another forum was formed a couple of years ago as a hedge against some of the unpleasantness here.... and this forum was engineered for pros only. You had to be working in the trade to participate and the majority of your income (most of the $2.....) had to come from working in the trade of Lutherie.

In short order this forum had over 150 pro members all working in the trade and many participants were some of the biggest names in the business as well. Folks got along fine, respect was never something that needed to be requested..., and most of all the level of Lutherie discourse was superior to any forum or any other source that I have ever been aware of.

The forum was recently shut down because the owner wanted to pursue other things. But it worked with real names and only real names and folks got along fine as well.

Second is the designation in the profiles of "professional." I did some research and more than once have seen folks change from listing themselves as industry pros to simply not listing themselves as anything once they learned that the professional designation is intended to be for Lutherie trade working pros. What has happened in the past here on the OLF is folks saw this part of the profile as if they are on Linkedin and if they were a pro say a doc or architect they misinterpreted the designation of pro in the profile to mean a place to list that they are a pro in something and not just Lutherie.

What's the harm? The harm is that someone who lists themselves as a pro and may have only built a single guitar or not even that answers someone else's question with perhaps an unsound reply or an unsafe reply and it's taken as gospel by the OP and perhaps even acted upon because the OP wrongly believed that the reply was from someone with experience.

My belief is that if real names were used AND the professional designation was reserved for only those who make the majority of their living ($2..... )(and I just gave myself a raise too....) in the trade of Lutherie that the OLf would attract more industry pros. This would raise the level of discourse, increase the percentage of "sound" advice provided, and as such be even more of a draw for those just starting out. Some of us value accurate information above who the source of this information may be.

Lastly and what should have been first for me is Thank You Lance for bringing us all the OLF. Personally the OLF changed my life (for the better..... ) and these days I am as happy as I have ever been. I'm grateful too to the countless OLFers too numerous to name who have helped me out here for over a decade now.

I look forward to going to work for the first time in my entire life. My days are filled with helping a guy with a Tele learn how to place a capo so that he does not pull the instrument sharp. Or the Mom and son who the son after seeing our shop wants to be a Luthier as his Taylor was handed back to him with action at a level roughly half of what it previously was. Or the young woman who's Laravee cracked and bridge decided to defect because no one had ever talked to her about the need to humidify wooden acoustic guitars. Or the client who runs the recycling effort for a community of over 100,000 people and has a "fleet" of guitars and brought us every single one of them for set-ups. Or even the guy who has a cold and was coughing and sniffling causing me to use copious amounts of hand cleaner yesterday as I deloused his guitar.... Yuck..... Thanks to Zicam I am happy to report that I remain fine...

All this in a single day in the shop where helping others these days has endless possibilities for us including our friend Travis a homeless kid who has a guitar that we put together for him that will withstand sub zero weather where the kid has to live, out in the cold...

Lance the OLF has changed lives and you my friend should be very, very proud. Many of us are paying it forward every single day as a result of some of the assistance and most of all for me.... the encouragement that I received here on the OLF.

Thanks again my friend!!!