Rentboy 5.0

[+ deej]

Internally consistent? ROFL

 

OK, if it had been ordered that way I'd buy it. (Hey, I've offered up equally lame excuses for my own code's behavior! ;-))

 

I'm still submitting the screen shot to the User Interface Hall of Shame.

 

(Just looked again and now they have all the NC grouped together, but if they're alphabetizing on North they should display North, and that dropdown won't support it!)

[seeker630]

I got 0 results for 'josh' multiple times, until I realized I had to roll all the location search boxes back to 'select....' I had North America in the top location box & got 0 results.

[buckguy]

Using "text field" instead of "screen name" is non-intuitive and likely to be ignored by many people if an obvious "screen name" doesn't work. It's neither my responsibility of "Josh Weston's" to worry about whether he uses dashes around his screen name. Simply said, this sucks and they should have done the proper user testing before releasing it.

[Kevin Slater]

>Using "text field" instead of "screen

>name" is non-intuitive and likely to be ignored by many

>people if an obvious "screen name" doesn't work.

>It's neither my responsibility of "Josh Weston's" to

>worry about whether he uses dashes around his screen name.

>Simply said, this sucks and they should have done the proper

>user testing before releasing it.

 

Searching for an escort by a screen name he does not use doesn't find his ad. I don't know what sort of user-testing could have fixed that.

 

Conversely, if you suspect it may involve something like "Josh Weston", you can search for exactly that text and find the ad.

 

Think of screen name like a phone number: it doesn't work to say it has four fours, two sixes and a nine. Not on rentboy nor any other site.

 

Kevin Slater

[seeker630]

Another thing I dislike is that once you've done a searh an clicked on one of the results to see the details, there's no navigation option to return to the results list - you have to use the browser 'back' button.

[+ deej]

I'm with you on this one.

 

Can't much blame a search engine for not finding something that isn't there.

 

Kinda like asking Word to show you all the places you didn't use a certain word. There's nothing there to find. ;-)

 

It's the same whether it's Rentboy, Google, MSN Live Search (or whatever they're calling themselves these days), etc.

[Kevin Slater]

>Another thing I dislike is that once you've done a searh an

>clicked on one of the results to see the details, there's no

>navigation option to return to the results list - you have to

>use the browser 'back' button.

 

You can click to see the next or previous ad (near the top of the page, just under the rust colored bar that runs the width of the screen). But if you want to see the thumbnails again, yup you have to use the back button. Actually, this is one improvement I noticed over 4.0. Remember when it would lose your search results when you tried to go back to the results page and you had to start all over?

 

Kevin Slater

[+ deej]

Or press the backspace key.

 

THE NERVE! They expect you to know how your browser works! Jeez! :o

[seeker630]

I think a *good application contains common on-screen navigation within the app. As referenced earlier, using the back button is not reliable in some interfaces.

[mattsmojo]

So I can see this conversation is happening in two places on this forum simultaneously - so, I suppose I feel the need to comment in both sections:

 

I like:

 

The user interface for the escorts, it's simpler and more intuitive.

 

The immediate home page is ok - I like the recent updates section being prominently featured (if three items down on the page can be called prominent )

 

The way the search is set up is good - select a specialty then a location and it makes sense where it is located ont he page cause thats what everyone needs to access first. (select a country should default to USA just cause thats where most of the listings are from... if I'm wrong rentboy folks, please let me know....)

 

Rentboy events - even if it is a bit self promotional - being on the right at the top is good - I used to miss out on some of the east coast events cause I would forget to click on the poorly located link that would EVENTUALLY lead to that category

 

I think the initial information for each escort is probably what the client is looking for once the enter thier location and land on the results page - area served - emai - number - and rate - once they see that and the photo then I would imagine one would want to proceed to the more comprehensive details. I would, however, move Stat card and Reviews to the right under Rates. they seem lost down there at the bottom.

 

What do I not like:

 

 

My old link to my page doesnt work anymore - http://www.rentboy.com/mattmojo - at least not at this point. I used this address often in past emails etc and I am sure several clients have bookmarked this address and may try to access it again and find that it does not work. I am not sure if this is a temporary problem - which 90% of the problems I had with the new site were.

 

It's not actually completely clear that clicking on the photo in the search results will take you to the escorts main page. This may seem minimal to the folks who grew up on computers, but being my (all older) family's permanent free tech support - I can bet that alot of folks visiting the site don't know to click on the main thumbnail pic to access the escorts main page. Once this thumbnail is clicked on, I like what i find, it's cleaner, it's simpler, but it still gives all the nescessary info right there on one well organized page - ....if the client makes it there

 

I realize many problems have bee resolved since the new site went live - but, as a former web administrator, I would have to classify the transfer to the new site as a small disaster! My first day visiting the site after the transfer nothing came up at all, then slowly, one by one different features managed to appear and dissappear until finally at this point we have a fairly functional site.

 

And that's what I think....

[Kevin Slater]

>My old link to my page doesnt work anymore -

>http://www.rentboy.com/mattmojo - at least not at this point. I used

>this address often in past emails etc and I am sure several

>clients have bookmarked this address and may try to access it

>again and find that it does not work. I am not sure if this is

>a temporary problem - which 90% of the problems I had with the

>new site were.

 

I was told they're still working on making the URLs functional and that we'll soon be able to edit them ourselves (no more rentboy.com/KevinSlater47).

 

Kevin Slater

[pierrot]

Rentboy seems to be completely out of commission. I can't even get on as of Monday evening. Even last night, when I was on, it was freezing after a couple of pages.

I hope they get it fixed. My main dislike of the old site has not been addressed anyway -- too slow in moving from one page to the next.

[+ deej]

Yeah, they've been serving up "Server Error in '/' Application." pages for about six hours.

 

That, itself, is a design flaw. They COULD (and really should) provide a more pleasant error page.