Hello friends,
Thanks for all of your notes—positive and negative—on the redesign. Many of your comments (both on the comments and e-mailed via the "contact" section below) have led to bug fixes and other changes. The new design is obviously something we've been working on for a long time, but we know it's not completely error-free yet. We're incredibly happy that the majority of the feedback we've gotten, both publicly and privately, has been positive. This being the Internet, we figured the loud complaining would drown out everything else.
Anyway, I just wanted to address a couple of things, and to ask y'all to continue helping us make avclub.com purtier and easier to use. So on to the things:
— The default setting for the comments is now "oldest first." If you prefer "newest first," your selection should remain throughout your time on the site. (Meaning if you jump to a different article, you should still see newest comments first if you've previously selected it.)
— We figured this was obvious, but I'll say it anyway: No pornographic pictures as avatars. We have nothing against rock-hard wangs, but not everybody who's casually reading a pop-culture site wants to see one. There are plenty of places on the Internet to both view and upload pornography. Accounts uploading unacceptable photos will be permanently deleted. (That said, we couldn't be happier that so many of you decided to upload photos or other avatars, and that you decided to register. More benefits will be forthcoming eventually.)
— You asked for the ability to have longer user names, and you should now be able to do that. It's not infinite, but it's at least as long as "We want our films to be beautiful, not realistic." Also, you won't be forced to capitalize the first letter of your user name.
— Postal codes from anywhere (and e-mail addresses from anywhere) should work now. Or they will very soon.
— Some of you have complained about the black-on-white text, which was a design element we didn't arrive at easily. One of our readers suggested changing your browser preferences (it's super easy in Firefox) to display a different background color, which seems to work quite well.
— Not sure if we mentioned this before, but there's a "contest" bar down in the lower right. Contests won't be announced in Newswire anymore (probably), but there should be new ones fairly regularly if you click the bar. (Right now you can win a Death Race DVD. You know you want it.)
So what else? What's not working for you? What's working great? (The search function, that's what! Amen!) Use the comments here to let us know, or hit the contact button below. Or just yell really loud.