ASN's New Layout

Hi All,

I'm sure you'll all have noticed the new layout of the sections, forums and sub-forums of the site. We have tried to make things cleaner, clearer and more concise - removing clutter and confusing click-trails wherever we can.

Obviously this new layout might take some getting used to; but we politely request you give it a try and see how you get on - We're confident that before too long you'll be finding navigation a lot easier.

We are aware that the some of the 'last post' buttons on the main forum index aren't functioning correctly at present - once there is a new post in the forum this issue will resolve itself.

Thanks and regards,

Rob.
ASN Admin Team

Cheers all - glad you like

@quattrojames - that was a deliberate mistake of sorts; everyone has moved up the screen a bit (so everyone has less scrolling from the top), but we decided to have chassis arranged from oldest to newest in the cases where we have sub-sections for each - mainly because they're also in order of busiest to quietest that way too...

Cheers,

Rob.

Thanks for your feedback - constructive criticism is of course as useful as praise etc...

I hope that the new layout will 'grow on you' - We tried to reduce the space that General (and by that I mean really general - nothing to do with cars of any sort) discussion takes on the board. We didn't want to get rid of (much of) it; as it's always nice to have somewhere that can provide a break from the more technical automotive-focused areas of the forum.

So, we've merged the Food & Drink and Health sections back with General Chat (as they weren't exactly super-busy), and compacted/re-organised the Lifestyle and Tech stuff, in the hope that areas that people use and like are still easily available, but without taking up too much screen real-estate and pushing the automotive stuff (which as you say, is the main business of the site) too far down the index.

So, we added the General Automotive chat section because we wanted to have a place for all general discussion about motors ((non-model-specific) Audi, other VAG and all other marques) as enough of that does take place on the boards; and by separating it from 'General Chat' we hoped to achieve three main things:

1) It keeps general, but automotive-related discussions out of the 'general' General Chat area - which is quite busy in itself with stuff unrelated to motors - so things related to motors (even if broad/non-specific are easy to find).

2) We have removed a lot of the specific forums dedicated to other marques - after all this is an Audi site, so while it's nice to be able to discuss other marques now and then, I don't think we need so many options for that - General Automotive therefore provides a single forum (where previously there were a few), general automotive chat can take place.

3) All the sections under the "General Automotive Discussion" section (except General Automotive Chat (for reasons described in (2) above) were previously in little dis-jointed areas of the site; we've moved all of those and think that they're more logical grouped in the way they are (The Cool Wall was in the 'welcome' area, Motorsport was in 'general'), and having somewhere (again automotive focused, but general and other marques) seemed like a logical thing to go in with them (and it fits pretty well with points (1) and (2) above).

Regarding the performance issues - this is unrelated to the revised layout. We're working hard to investigate what's causing the biggest bottlenecks we have, and as soon as we're certain that the plan to resolve them is the best one, the site will be down again briefly and that plan put in to place post haste.

Thanks and regards,

Rob.