SummitPost.org

mrchad9 wrote:And it does not work at all on my IPhone after the latest changes. Apparently Google thinks it does and that helps the search rankings... but it doesn't. I can't even access the menu items or see half of what is supposed to be on the screen. It is a mess.

I have an Android phone and the pages are a mess there as well. As I pointed out in another thread, mobile-friendly (according to Google) is not the same as user-friendly.

Whenever I send friends links to SP pages, I tell them to use a laptop, not a phone, which really defeats the purpose of mobile-friendly, no?

As I've got older, I've used one saying more than any other.

Nothing stays the same for ever.

That's life.

Bob Sihler wrote:

mrchad9 wrote:And it does not work at all on my IPhone after the latest changes. Apparently Google thinks it does and that helps the search rankings... but it doesn't. I can't even access the menu items or see half of what is supposed to be on the screen. It is a mess.

I have an Android phone and the pages are a mess there as well. As I pointed out in another thread, mobile-friendly (according to Google) is not the same as user-friendly.

Whenever I send friends links to SP pages, I tell them to use a laptop, not a phone, which really defeats the purpose of mobile-friendly, no?

The site is an utter and total mess on mobile devices. Many of the pages will never look right on mobile because they were designed and written in a way (in terms of HTML) that is impossible to make mobile friendly. But there are many other pages that could look OK that don't. I am not a design guy, but a back-end programmer, so I'm not terribly good at making things look pretty. I'll have to hire someone again (or use the person I'm currently employing) to help with that and it is in the queue of things we are working on.

A recent change in ownership structure has given me more incentive to invest capital and spend significant time on SummitPost to improve it's usability, functionality and hopefully breathe some life back into the site. I have been putting in a lot of time lately on improving SummitPost (like more than 8 hours a day) and hired a new full-stack developer (who is very expensive to pay) to help me.

I wish the ownership change, and thus my motivation to spend time working on the site, would have happened several years ago when the site was much more busy and bustling with activity, but it didn't. I still believe that SP has some of the best and most unique content out there on mountains and routes. I hope to make it much more accessible and user friendly, including developing an mobile app in the coming months. I believe SummitPost still has the potential to turn around. The recent ownership structure change wasn't free and I invested quite a bit of our (my wife and my) savings in SummitPost with the belief that SP still has a bright future if it is properly cared for. But despite all of the ads, the site right now isn't even breaking even. How SP monetizes traffic needs to be re-evaluated as well. That's clear from how annoying and off-putting the ads are.

Once the site is less "spammy" looking, functions better on mobile devices, and is more user-friendly, the focus will shift to how to engage new users to update pages that have been abandoned or not updated in a long time.

I'm happy to listen to any ideas people have about fixes and improvements that should be done or would be nice to see done.

A few things that are in process and will likely be implemented in the next few days are:
1) A better editor, moving away from Redactor 3 in favor of TinyMCE.
2) Bulk image uploading with the ability to input image titles and captions and also attach all images to a parent page.
3) Check images for orientation as images are uploaded to prevent incorrectly rotated images and allow rotation after images are upload.
4) Geo-location based search interface that is much more user-friendly
5) Styling changes, both on desktop and mobile to make the site easier to navigate and view. This will require going through all pages on the website fixing problems -- this one will take a lot of time and it would be helpful for people to report problems once we get started with this task.

If a 17 year old website is no longer cash positive I would hope you got an extremely good deal on it ...and I am glad my offers years ago were rejected!

I hope it works out. If it doesn't one day you are going to wake up with your wife glaring at you over a field of Venus flytraps that is literally eating you alive.

mrchad9 wrote:If a 17 year old website is no longer cash positive I would hope you got an extremely good deal on it ...

Haha! Well, I guess a "good deal" is in the eye of the beholder. I've always thought that SP had huge potential, but couldn't justify spending a ton of time on it with the level of ownership I had. Now I can. At the very least, I bought a somewhat expensive "fun toy" to play with for many years -- unless a buyout offer comes for more than I paid

mrchad9 wrote:and I am glad my offers years ago were rejected!

Any interest in buying part of the site now

mrchad9 wrote:I hope it works out. If it doesn't one day you are going to wake up with your wife glaring at you over a field of Venus flytraps that is literally eating you alive.

This is a great visual and quite true. Leah is basically running FlytrapStore all on her own now and is the only one actually making money while I spend a bunch of money to try to get this website back on track. She wasn't thrilled with my decision to buy the site but I am hopeful that with some TLC and some time the site will be revitalized. The content is still great, even if some of it is out of date. I think targeting younger users to come on board to help will be key to the future of the site, along with making the content that is here and very good much easier to find.

The recent ownership structure change wasn't free and I invested quite a bit of our (my wife and my) savings in SummitPost with the belief that SP still has a bright future if it is properly cared for. But despite all of the ads, the site right now isn't even breaking even. How SP monetizes traffic needs to be re-evaluated as well. That's clear from how annoying and off-putting the ads are.

Haha! Well, I guess a "good deal" is in the eye of the beholder. I've always thought that SP had huge potential, but couldn't justify spending a ton of time on it with the level of ownership I had. Now I can. At the very least, I bought a somewhat expensive "fun toy" to play with for many years -- unless a buyout offer comes for more than I paid

Congrats! Hopefully this will be a very positive change.

Serious question:

What is the plan if the site doesn't turn a profit?

Scott wrote:Congrats! Hopefully this will be a very positive change.

Thanks! It should be. The site has basically been neglected for the last 10 years. Outside of mandatory things to keep the site running, I've only done what I could with the little time I could give to it. Now I'll give it a lot more attention and time.

Scott wrote:What is the plan if the site doesn't turn a profit?

Figure out a way for it to keep going no matter what. The site gets enough traffic there is no reason it shouldn't at least break even.

My quick $0.02, I'd happily pay a small monetary annual fee to access the site sans ads. If that helps, perhaps that's worthy of consideration and polling the site's usual suspects for their views on such an approach. I agree that when researching objectives, I still start with SP first. Would love to find ways to inject new life into it. Cheers

96avs01 wrote:My quick $0.02, I'd happily pay a small monetary annual fee to access the site sans ads. If that helps, perhaps that's worthy of consideration and polling the site's usual suspects for their views on such an approach. I agree that when researching objectives, I still start with SP first. Would love to find ways to inject new life into it. Cheers

Thanks for the feedback. That's something I'm seriously considering, but I've never really liked that revenue model. I've always felt that information should be "free." I'd prefer to ignore ads than pay to see information. I've always been annoyed by the AllTrails.com model, but maybe I'm in the minority? It is certainly something that will be considered though.

I wonder if we could get enough people interested in accessing the information so that it could cover server costs as well as the ads do?

But, you could have it so that people could choose. People that would rather ignore ads could still do so, but if you wanted no ads, then you could pay something. People that don't pay would be no worse off than they are now.

^ZeeJay is spot on with a model that everyone would be content with. This way members who are ad free would be paying their fair share another way.

ZeeJay wrote:But, you could have it so that people could choose. People that would rather ignore ads could still do so, but if you wanted no ads, then you could pay something. People that don't pay would be no worse off than they are now.

I like the idea of a hybrid model! It wouldn't be too hard to implement either. Thanks for the feedback!

Well, SP is Dead! I've been lurking on this site for years, checking in every once in a while. It died once the elves started banning conservatives like Climbwild, Truchas (ATTM), Husker, The Chief, etc. Now the crybaby libs have their ball and went home. They are truly boring with their high five-ing about ruining this country. Many have left the site do to valuable contributors getting banned or others leaving due to the arbitrary elf BS. The spark is gone, this site is dead! Pathetic!

Honor Jesus,-Vasquez

Vasquez wrote:Well, SP is Dead! I've been lurking on this site for years, checking in every once in a while. It died once the elves started banning conservatives like Climbwild, Truchas (ATTM), Husker, The Chief, etc. Now the crybaby libs have their ball and went home. They are truly boring with their high five-ing about ruining this country. Many have left the site do to valuable contributors getting banned or others leaving due to the arbitrary elf BS. The spark is gone, this site is dead! Pathetic!

Honor Jesus,-Vasquez

I agree 100%, a few mods were part of the problem and some are still mods. Favoritism, bias, and even showing a dislike...... sadly we saw the decline. Some members (some I communicated with) admit they harassed The Chief, and Pellucid Wombat as well as others. Conservatives.... as I am ..... a huge bias. Now European members are the most active, that's not a bad thing at all. But American active user's are silent, I come on and vote for photos, otherwise there isn't a reason to be active

Marmaduke wrote:

Vasquez wrote:Well, SP is Dead! I've been lurking on this site for years, checking in every once in a while. It died once the elves started banning conservatives like Climbwild, Truchas (ATTM), Husker, The Chief, etc. Now the crybaby libs have their ball and went home. They are truly boring with their high five-ing about ruining this country. Many have left the site do to valuable contributors getting banned or others leaving due to the arbitrary elf BS. The spark is gone, this site is dead! Pathetic!

Honor Jesus,-Vasquez

I agree 100%, a few mods were part of the problem and some are still mods. Favoritism, bias, and even showing a dislike...... sadly we saw the decline. Some members (some I communicated with) admit they harassed The Chief, and Pellucid Wombat as well as others. Conservatives.... as I am ..... a huge bias. Now European members are the most active, that's not a bad thing at all. But American active user's are silent, I come on and vote for photos, otherwise there isn't a reason to be active

Aloha Marm,
It's been a long time since I've been here, as I pretty much quit SP almost six years ago. The gf and I moved to Hawaii a few years back. We LOVE this place. Nobody here cares about the politics, religious beliefs, nationality, or sexual orientation of others. Why would they? We live close to the land and the forces of nature... everyone mostly gets along with other people, out of necessity. It's a model for how those involved with social media and internet forums could behave, ideally.