CDRLabs.com

As promised, we are ringing in the new year with a new site design. We added several new, highly asked for, features such as better printing functions and better review navigation. On top of that, we will still be working on more additions to the site. For example new sections, a different forum layout, a dictionary of CDR/W related terms, and much more are in the works. You may notice that the site is fairly minimal in design; no flashy graphics or animations. With the volume of information we offer, we focused on creating a simple and fast layout in order to emphasize what's important: the content.

We are always open to suggestions, so please use this forum to post your comments and opinions and suggestions. I emphasize that opinions should appear in this topic. Things such as SQL code appearing and other obvious coding problems should go into the New Design Bug Reports topic.

So, to start things off, I'm going to start a poll to see how you guys feel about this new design. We hope you like it!

Socheat

Well, I would have voted "Great" because " Not bad. Still better than the first design" doesn't do it justice.

So I voted "awesome!"

well done, and good luck with the new site.

Nice re-design job guys... I see that you've only had max. approval ratings so far - and who am I to buck the trend?!

Whoa - "awesome" it's not, but far far better than the old design

Yikes, I buck'd the trend!

When I search the forum, and then click one of the messages I found, then click Back, I get a "page has expired" message. It would be really nice to click back and forth through the messages without having to resubmit the query each time after reading one of the message. Of course, if I'm doing something wrong I would love to know, but that's the only way I know to read several messages found from a query.

Any one else having this problem? I have not been able to reproduce this problem on several platforms. But, I think I know why...

I'm going to guess you have strict cookie settings? This problem is more in the realm of the phpBB forums itself, rather than a mistake on our part. phpBB depends heavily on passing user information between pages and it's preferred method is to use cookies. If you have cookies disabled (or strict enough settings that blocks the cookie), it will use sessions instead. Generally expired pages are a result of sessions expiring, not cookies.

When you are logged into our forums, and you are browsing around, what is the URL that appears in the address bar? If it contains SID=[long hash string here], phpBB is managing your data through sessions.

Hope that helps.

Socheat

This new site is really good, a lot neater/cleaner look.

The one thing I dislike about this new format is that (at 800 x600) I have to scrole horizontally to read everything (I like to see who the author of a post is as I read it...). This is a real pain in the butt. I guess I saw this coming, since during the user poll a few months ago most respondents were replying that they were using a monitor resolution greater than 800x600....

Anywy, this is a great site. Thanks.

I believe Socheat is working on maintaining the old layout as well on a different vhost, but I'm not sure.

Yeah, the old website is around... But we upgraded the old website to the new forums as well, and it turns out this screen size problem seems to be isolated to the forums. We designed the main site with our 800x600 users in mind (the site fits for me on an 8x6 14" screen). As soon as I get some time, I'll take a look at the forum themes and see if I can't come up with one better...

Matt wrote:I believe Socheat is working on maintaining the old layout as well on a different vhost, but I'm not sure.

I like the new look, but the pop up ads are a pain.

Yeah.. we originally had one pop behind that popped up once a day/session but now some of the ad companies are sliding in popups along with their standard ads. It does suck. We are looking into other ways to pay for our hosting.

Just found it from Storage Review.

CDRLabs.com
CDRLabs is one of those rare sites that has deployed a reliable set of CD-RW- and DVD-oriented benchmarks. Ian's also not afraid to point out when review on another site simply isn't up to snuff… that's earned our respect.

While I don't know the other guys (Eugene and Co.) as well, Tim @ SR is a great guy and knows his stuff. I've learned a lot from him and he's easy to talk to. I can't say that about many reviewers.