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Shop
New Segment/Design Beta Status
12 years ago
Just wanted to leave a quick note about where things stand with the upcoming Beta of the new site design and segment (completely new feature set). In a nutshell, development has been going slower than planned - not due to slow development but due to "feature creep". We've decided to roll more and more new features and polish into this system before bringing it to Open Beta. Which is a good thing! The downside is that we need more time in order to implement it all.
We're already conducting internal beta testing and working on determining which of the feedback will be integrated prior to the Open Beta (public) of the new portion of the site. If you're interested in helping us do this private Beta testing and providing your feedback to help us improve the look, feel and functionality please contact :userjurann: via one of the instant messenger methods in his user profile here.
Our current timeline looks like we will attempt to move the Beta into Open Beta status for the public to try out and bang on sometime in the range of Feb 20-25 - so keep an eye out here and/or on our Twitter or LiveJournal for that information!
We're already conducting internal beta testing and working on determining which of the feedback will be integrated prior to the Open Beta (public) of the new portion of the site. If you're interested in helping us do this private Beta testing and providing your feedback to help us improve the look, feel and functionality please contact :userjurann: via one of the instant messenger methods in his user profile here.
Our current timeline looks like we will attempt to move the Beta into Open Beta status for the public to try out and bang on sometime in the range of Feb 20-25 - so keep an eye out here and/or on our Twitter or LiveJournal for that information!
Just discovered this page by following the link to Jurann's FA page in the latest FB LiveJournal post. If it is linked or even mentioned directly on the FurBuy site I haven't seen it.
So I guess my first suggestion would be GET THE FORUMS WORKING ON THE FURBUY WEB SITE PLEASE! According to time stamp there it looks like they have been down almost 6 years.
Forums are another consideration, but one that we haven't honestly given a lot of merit. When we did have forums they were barely used, fostered a lot of off-topic discussion, and some people were just using it as ad-dumping space. Further, we brought on another developer to our team to make a new forums section about 4 years ago and that ended up being a complete disaster. The overall direction of our marketing team member is that we should be engaging users in a focused and topical way rather than in loose ways like a forum. If nothing else, there's always our e-mail inbox, which is checked several times a day by multiple team members.
As for public discussion of the site changes on FurBuy, we had intended to discuss that at FC until the Sydney Norovirus nailed Jurann to a toilet 2 hours before the panel. The only person able to get him home for bedrest was the other FurBuy team member who could make it to FC. We know you showed up for that, we're sorry we missed you, truly, because we wanted to have that discussion.
However, to be frank, the current site's in such a bad way and so outdated that right now we're focusing on getting the site up to a minimum acceptable "web 2.0" level from within our own team first. Part of that renovation will include better ways of engaging and communicating with users. Once we're there, and we estimate around mid-summer for that goal, we will certainly be engaging users with discussion and feedback about what features and enhancements need to be next.