I know you guys are busy with real important stuff, but something was just nagging me and it seems easy to fix:
At the top of main forum view, all the sub (and sub-sub) forums are shown at top of page, which IMHO really is wasteful of space and forces more user scrolling etc. Of course all those sub-forums ARE shown separately on this main page (if you don't collapse parent sub-forum). Occasionally I have found use to click on the subforum links at top of forum, but it's so occasionally I really would prefer if it was collapsed into small button whose effect would be to show pop-up pane containing the sub-forum links (designed to be quick, not like closing/opening subforums via their triangle).
Also, one thing happened to me the other day which I couldn't later replicate, but weirdly when I went to main page the big graphics were slightly squished to allow for right hand column showing "top sales" or whatever. It also had smaller pane on top of that column showing "your shopping cart" (which was weird because there is live link for that in top black bar). Anyways, immediately when I navigated to different page and returned to front, it didn't persist.
But the thing was... I really liked it. I really thought it gave more useful than just the huge graphics which IMHO tend not to provide useful engagement for repeat visitors. IMHO the value of it could be tweaked further by showing top purchases in different categories, let's say RPG Rules, Campaign Setting, and Accessories. Or maybe even PFS Scenarios, although maybe having all of those collapsable like forum would allow somebody uninterested in PFS to hide it in favor of more other products?
So, I don't know if briefly seeing that was forum glitch I caused or you guys messing around with server, but I think if you do bring that back (without un-necessary My Cart section) that would be positive thing for all sides. Hope you're having a good one.
Software Developer
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Thanks for the notes, Quandary!
We generally consider the loss of the sidebars to be one of the biggest downsides of the site update last year, as they contained a lot of useful information! In addition to the top sales, there were many other useful information widgets, such as recent thread postings and recent reviews.
We want to bring those items (and more like them) back, but in a contextualized manner based on where in the site you are and what you're doing there. "Top sellers" would be a great addition to the store, for example.
The biggest obstacle to implementing these changes currently is time. We're working on several major infrastructure upgrades, and of course have to keep on top of the day-to-day business requirements for supporting things like product releases and shipping schedules.
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Hi Brian,
Is there a way to view the Player Companion books in the previous release date chronological manner? (ditto for campaign setting and core line books)
With some difficulty, I managed to located the Player Companion books (the top menus would not give me their location... I had to find a specific book I had and do some backtracking to find the other Companion books). However when I got to that page, I noticed they were all listed alphabetically now, which makes it hard for me to see which ones I don't have yet, which new ones I want to buy, etc.
Regards,
PDK
Hi Brian,
Is there a way to view the Player Companion books in the previous release date chronological manner? (ditto for campaign setting and core line books)
With some difficulty, I managed to located the Player Companion books (the top menus would not give me their location... I had to find a specific book I had and do some backtracking to find the other Companion books). However when I got to that page, I noticed they were all listed alphabetically now, which makes it hard for me to see which ones I don't have yet, which new ones I want to buy, etc.
Regards,
PDK
Presuming this was the page you were looking at.
There is a not-terribly-obvious pulldown menu at the upper right of the list of titles which defaults to listing by name (unfortunately) but which you should be able to change to newest first or to oldest first, according to taste.
FWIW, I just tried it and they both worked but at one point the page spun for a while and just returned a white screen. So there may be some funny business going on. The sorting menu did just work for me though.
EDIT: It should work fine for player companions, but if you ever look for maps (and I suspect fiction) there is sometimes an issue with the date sorting function, since I think it updates the listing date when an electronic version is added after the fact.
So if you try and list the map folios by release date, some of the early ones are surprising late in the list as there weren't PDFs available when they launched and their date was revised when that was added down the track.
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In terms of finding it. Here's what I did:
1. Hover over the Pathfinder title at the top left of the page to bring up the dropdown menu
2. Select "Setting"
3. That offers three categories of: Campaign Setting, Map Folios, Player Companions
Player Companions takes you to the page I linked (defaulting to alphabetical order).
I think the logic there is that the Player Companion and Campaign Sourcebooks are now being merged into the one line of Campaign Setting Books (and as I understand things the Map Folio line is being discontinued).
So "the new way to categorise pathfinder products" is Rulebooks/Setting/Adventures/Accessories - all accessible via the pulldown menus at the top of the site.
Thanks for the notes, Quandary!
We generally consider the loss of the sidebars to be one of the biggest downsides of the site update last year, as they contained a lot of useful information! In addition to the top sales, there were many other useful information widgets, such as recent thread postings and recent reviews.
We want to bring those items (and more like them) back, but in a contextualized manner based on where in the site you are and what you're doing there. "Top sellers" would be a great addition to the store, for example.
The biggest obstacle to implementing these changes currently is time. We're working on several major infrastructure upgrades, and of course have to keep on top of the day-to-day business requirements for supporting things like product releases and shipping schedules.
Hi Brian
I don't know if it's possible, but in terms of "contextualising" what we see, I'd really, really, really like the ability to customise that, if at all possible (my preference would be for everything to be included with the ability to 'hide' certain sidebars via little blue triangles the way we can do with subforums.
I suspect I use the site differently from how you expect and I daresay everyone has their own little quirks. So, for example, my hotlink is to the forums. If you were to include a sidebar showing "Top Sellers" but only to people viewing the store then I wouldn't see it. Similarly with the Blogs - I just don't go looking for blogs and only chime in when the forum discussion catches my eye.
I'd like to be able to select what topics interested me to be sitting there on the sides. I'd close PFS stuff, for example but would want to keep track of Paizo.com news and blogs (but clearly not enough to actually go looking for them!) Someone else might be totally uninterested in paizo goings-on more broadly but keep their finger on the pulse of PFS stuff. Both of us might spend all of our time just coming to the messageboards.
No idea how doable that is, but I figured if you're thinking about it now, now's the time to raise the possibility.
Cheers
Steve
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In reference to the issue of alphabetical sorting, we've reverted the behavior back to sorting from newest to oldest products. This was a setting that was erroneously unset in the move. Apologies for the inconvenience that has caused!
In reference to the issue of alphabetical sorting, we've reverted the behavior back to sorting from newest to oldest products. This was a setting that was erroneously unset in the move. Apologies for the inconvenience that has caused!
Thank you! that's amazing response from you guys!
In reference to the issue of alphabetical sorting, we've reverted the behavior back to sorting from newest to oldest products. This was a setting that was erroneously unset in the move. Apologies for the inconvenience that has caused!
Brilliant, Chris. Thanks.
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Software Developer
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Thanks for all the info, Steve!
What follows is mostly my unsolicited opinions, rather than a statement as a company representative. Still, I think it might be illustrative to express some of my perspective on the site's changes over the past few years and into the future.
The prior iteration of the site definitely allowed for a broader variety of workflows, since we dumped as much information as possible into the page and let the user sort it out. By my count, the old site layout had 5 different navigation schemes on the homepage! However, this approach didn't - couldn't - work well for new users or on mobile devices.
Additionally, we realized that the scope of the company had grown significantly. Starfinder, Pathfinder, and the ACG are all flagships that needed a little legroom. Organized Play is like its own ecosystem altogether. We knew that if we continued expanding as we had been without changing our approach, we'd become lost in our own noise. We knew that we needed to provide a more strongly tailored layout.
The downside of all this, as is rightly pointed out, is that using the site is currently a bit more fragmented and regimented. And, as pointed out above, some useful information views were dropped in the shuffle. But the foundation feels firmer to work from. We have design space again. And we plan to continue to improve the experience going forward, with more new (and previously available) features, responsiveness, mobile support, and accessibility.
Adding customization to this mix is definitely a holy grail of sorts. Though we're moving away from the "kitchen sink" model we had prior to 2017, there may be room for, say, a dashboard or persistent collapsible sidebar with customizable widgets. We don't have plans we can publish for that sort of thing currently, but it's on our radar. With Chris no longer with us, we'll also need buy-in from whomever fills her shoes as UX designer.