new website thoughts

I have a few thoughts and ideas regarding the new website that I'd like to share, in hopes that it will spur some improvements and make the site better and easier to use.

First general comment is that the website pages are too wide.  I have a fairly widescreen monitor, but it still falls off the edge, making navigation tricky and inconvenient.

Second, I find this new site to be a bit more well-organized, the old one seemed a bit "cluttered" to me (though certainly still very usable).  So this is good.

Third, with regard to the forums specifically - the organization is reversed, with model-specific pages at the top, more general categories at the bottom.  Not a huge deal.  But what is difficult, is that each and every post is its own "line item" now, rather than one line item for a topic (as defined by the original poster), with all the posts relevant to that topic included within.  This is a huge problem, and I see it as a surefire way to drive users and members away.  Already, I view visiting the JCNA Forums with trepidation, and I thought the old forum was cumbersome to use, compared to others I frequent (see next paragraph).

Fourth, with regard to forum post previews - what is the point of having a "trimmed" preview and a "full" preview?  Seems like a waste of space and processing power to show a "trimmed" post.  And why bother with instructions for the complicated "" delimiter when a simple "return" or "enter" will do the same thing?  In Stephen Hawking's first book, "A Brief History of Time", he stated that his publisher told him that his audience would halve with each equation he included in the book.  Similarly, this "" computer-speak will surely cut traffic and usage of this new JCNA Forum.

Here in the 21st Century, there are many, MANY forum engines.  One in particular (I think it's called "vBulletin") is used by no fewer than 3 or 4 other auto-related forum sites I visit.  JCNA would do well to use one of the well-established (not to mention VERY easy to use) engines and just link to it via the "Forum" button at the top of the screen.

I hope this will be considered and the "updated" forum implementation revisited because, sadly, it's really not much of an improvement (with apologies to those whom I'm sure worked very hard to help make the transition happen).  But most importantly, please, please, PLEASE - Remember your audience!  ;-)