Many new changes underway, new responsive design implemented tonight

[Michael Wechsler]

There are many changes underway here at The Law Forums for a variety of reasons, some of which do and do not include Google. With the huge number of mobile users coming here for legal help, I have redesigned the site to be leaner, slicker and more streamlined. Don't worry - if you like the current look and feel you'll still be able to use the old forum if you're a moderator.

The rest of the site will take a similar look and feel with the entire main menu at the top, above the logo, with submenus available by sections once you're inside the section. It's more organized and the entire site will also have the same look and feel wherever you are. I hope you like it.

In addition, I'm consolidating the forums in a way I should have done a long time ago. For example, the Criminal Law forums will be consolidated into two forums but questions will require the user to define what area of criminal law they are asking about. While it will be all in one forum (which makes it easier to see the questions as well as ask), every topic will have an ability to be sorted and seen only by that topic, e.g. shoplifting. Click the tag or use the search and every shoplifting thread will be seen as if it were in a forum result.

You can also see that the worthless tags will now serve as "jurisdiction". There are many reasons to do this and I'll be refining how this will work but, for now, it will be a better system with the dropdown for question asking in many of the popular forums. Eventually, this forum is going to move to a whole nice new forum that I'm sure you'll love. For now, no need to fix what isn't broken.

Thank you all for your support. As always, feel free to comment on anything, no holds barred, both the good, and... the better, lol.

 

[Betty3]

Thanks for the update. I, at this time, do like the current look & feel. I guess because I'm used to it. Changes sound good though.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

If you want to take a peek, you can use the little dropdown in the footer which is visible only to admins and moderators. The messy subcategories will be cleaned up in the manner I've described and, overall, I think it's very fast and very useful if you're on any type of mobile device or smaller screen too. I will still leave everyone with the option of using the current site as is as well.

 

[army judge]

I support your efforts.
All in all, it sounds like things will get better for mobile (cell & tablet users), the majority of our service base.
Okay, sounds great, show us the changes, professor!!!

 

[Michael Wechsler]

You shall see them tonight, probably tomorrow morning. The experience using the new template on a mobile phone is vastly improved since it will use the same template.

And don't worry, Tapatalk is #1 on our forum's priority list.

 

[army judge]

LOL

I love me some Tap A Talk, professor. :yes:

 

[Betty3]

I never use anything except my desktop & laptop computers - both pretty good size screens.

 

[mightymoose]

Whatever you do, just keep that "New Posts" link in there... its the only one I ever use

 

[cbg]

SERIOUS increase in spam the last couple of days

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Yeah, it has gone completely overboard. If you think this is bad you ought to see what they get at other forums (not law related). In one instance if they didn't have the forum spam plugins enabled they would receive literally thousands a day. Even with them enabled it is a constant battle as they get dozens of them.

The problem is that many of these attempts are automated and that their software gets better and we haven't done much to raise the bar. The higher the bar the more difficult it becomes to register.

I hate Captcha - and look at what happened to that service. These days it is all but illegible and it takes a human person two or more tries on many of the captchas served. I honestly would be in favor of incarceration or serious and severe financial penalties for being caught spamming. I wish it was worth prosecuting a civil case against spammers.

 

[cbg]

On another board I moderate we were for a while getting so many spam posts it was hard to get through to the real ones. Betty and I were deleting hundreds a day. It's increased there in the last couple days, and one board on which almost none gets through had about a dozen ten minutes ago. Personally I think we should take the spammers out back and shoot them without benefit of trial....oh, did I say that out loud?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

If I was on the jury I would probably acquit!!! LOL

 

[Betty3]

I have noticed an increase in spam here also - yesterday evening/very early morning was a fair amt. but as cbg noted, it wasn't anything like I saw yesterday evening/very early morning on the other forum I (& cbg) moderate.