One of the things we’ve always prided ourselves on is listening to reader feedback and making changes based on that feedback. At the start of each new year I like to set some goals for the upcoming year. For example the two main goals I currently have for the blog are:
- Implement a better comment system. In the majority of posts it makes sense to list the comments from oldest to newest, but for some posts such as ‘Best Current Credit Card Sign Up Bonuses & Offers‘ or ‘List Of Methods Banks Count As Direct Deposits‘ this doesn’t make sense at all. Instead it would be better if you could sort by newest/oldest and even most popular. There are a lot of different wordpress comment plugins, it’s just a matter of spending some time finding and implementing the best fit.
- Update the site’s design. It’s fair to say that this isn’t the prettiest site and it also isn’t the easiest to navigate. This one has been on my to do list for a long long time but I never seem to make time to actually implementing a new design.
- Improved site search. At the moment the current search is pretty terrible.
Those are two major changes I would like to make for 2018, but I’d love to hear from readers in what they would like to see changed. It doesn’t have to be cosmetic, maybe you want to see more or less of some type of content or have us write a post on a specific topic. Also I hope everybody had an amazing 2017 and fingers crossed we can make it an even better 2018.
Doc, is it possible to kill the video ads? They take up half of my mobile browser and there is no way to X them.
AFAIK there isn’t, they shouldn’t take up any more page space than a normal ad though.
For whatever reason it comes off the page and is always on top so it is open as I scroll down the page. Never had an issue before recently.
Can you take a screenshot?
I sent a screenshot through your contact us page just after my original comment. Same name and email.
Didn’t get it, can you try again? [email protected]
Don’t know if it was just me, but I personally loved the Weird Wednesday Credit Card posts. Even like a once a month one would be cool. I know this might be hard to do and would probably take submission from readers, but it’s super interesting imo.
I’ll try to bring back that series for 2018. If anybody has any suggestions let me know.
Thanks! And not super super exciting, but you could mention the 3/2/1 Consumers CU Credit Card. If you spend $500 on groceries/month, good way to earn 3.59% on your checking acct naturally without losing out much or any on grocery rewards depending on what other cards you have.
We’ve mentioned it before, pretty sure there’s already a review on the site.
My personal pet peeve is that when bullet-points are used at the top of the post, the ad at the top-left blocks the bullet-point and it looks messy. Maybe site redesign will take care of this.
Anyone down for a live chat feature? I think that’s the next best thing to a forum, besides the comment section enhancements. That way we can hop on and discuss/help each other etc.
The comment system I’m looking at has a module for that so I’ll see
I know you dislike disqus and you have said it before as well as above, but from a user perspective, I have been a disqus user on another website (LRWC) without experiencing any ads or any sort of a negative experience other than rare disqus outages causing commenting function to be unavailable as well as sometime comments going into moderation.
While I would not suggest you use disqus here given your dislike for it, my suggestion would be that you be a user of disqus for sometime before you decide on it or at least look for something like disqus because to me that mechanism gives the best end user experience when it comes to commenting, replying, tracking comments being notified of replies to my comments, etc. as well as attaching pictures to posts. Frequent users can be allowed to post unmoderated. Plus it is easy for other users to identify frequent and well known posters.
I have the option to make my profile public or keep it private – so if I want people to click on my name and see all my comments I can open it up this way and if not I can leave it private.
While this looks like a (repeat) ad for disqus, I disclaim any connection to disqus and am suggesting solely with the hope that this valuable site improves so all can benefit.
Also, in the interest of full disclosure, the one big bad thing that DIscqus does is to slow down the site especially on slower connections and older PCs.
I’ve used disqus before, I think it has some great features but it does have ads. Sites simply pay money to remove the ads. In addition Disqus basically owns the comments your site generates. Their user experience might be great, but it’s terrible for site owners.
Please do NOT change the layout or design of the site. I like it myself and find it clear and easy to navigate.
A forum is good, but people must qualify and even pay. Keeps the yahoos out and folks that need circles and arrows for even the simplest stuff.
As mentioned above, these won’t be massive changes. I just want the site to load faster and be slightly easier to navigate.
Piggybacking off what some other have said, if you need more time, perhaps you should just take a temporary hiatus from those lower level posts, ie., ones that are $10 or less of value, as well as the recap posts. You can get back to them after. Its not that those aren’t important to some, just that sometimes you may need to prioritize. Good Luck!
Yup, I definitely already do this one. Those are usually just written in a few minutes when I have a spare moment or two. I don’t bother writing them when I have a bit more time as that’s when I focus on the bigger stuff.
I’d have to agree with some of the comments.
1. Please don’t make huge changes to the web-site. It’s clean and easy to navigate, loads fast and doesn’t have tons of distracting features.
2. Yes to improving search function. As of now it’s practically useless. I never can find anything by using search. Have to think through the steps of how I got the info last time and try to replicate the path to find the needed post
3. Reading your articles of the phone is not easy. I don’t need an app, but “desktop view” button to switch the layout would definitely help.
4. You guys are doing an awesome job, thank you soo much for all you do!!!
1. I don’t want to make massive changes, I just want to tidy up the site and improve the speed.
2. On it.
3. This is obviously part of the site redesign I want to focus on.
4. Thanks =)
How do long standing contributors to this site get hold of PW for those PW protected discussions? If there are qualifications, what are those so we know if we qualify to even ask to get in those discussions?
Just sign up for the newsletter and the intro e-mail has a list of the PW protected posts and their passwords
I appreciate all your hard work but am annoyed that every time I come to the site a pop up appears to subscribe to your e-mails. Can’t you just have a link to the side saying click here to subscribe to our e-mail?
Do you have cookies enabled? You should only see that pop up once.
How about adding a tab for brokerage bonuses?
We have tried brokerage bonuses before, not a lot of interest in them and most are just a bad deal. There is already a tab here: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/category/brokerage-bonuses/