How can CarAudio.com be better? Please vote!

[administrator Administrator]

Let’s get some input on this.

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[Jimi77 5,000+ posts]

I wish I had some advice. There isn't anything wrong with the website per se. Forums just die. I don't know if you remember Elite Car Audio back in the day, but it was busy, super knowledgeable members, etc and it still died. I migrated over to CAF when ECA shut down and that place went from insanely busy and slowly lost traffic and then one day the site was gone. I've seen other forums come and go.

As far as fulfilling it's "goal" of providing assistance to people with their installs, the forum functions well. It's like you're trying to fix something that isn't broken, but I get it: no traffic = no website someday.

 

[1aespinoza 10+ year member]

Let’s get some input on this.

I am an Android user so there are some things lacking. When you press the notifications, a list pops up that you select from. On those you have to select "your reply" or thread title. Being that I use the phone, it is hard see what you are selecting. Sometimes you inadvertently select the responding member and it goes into their stats. So it would be nice to select the sentence as a whole.
Another thing is that recently, when you select a thread you have followed, it takes you to the start of the thread instead of where you last read.
Last but not least are the pictures. When you select a picture, it does not stay zoomed in. You have to keep the pinch going and drag to what you wish to scrutinuze. Also when you drag to the edge of the picture, it jumps to the next one. Pretty irritating. What I have had to do is downliad the picture to scrutinize it.
For now that is all.

 

[administrator Administrator]

I am an Android user so there are some things lacking. When you press the notifications, a list pops up that you select from. On those you have to select "your reply" or thread title. Being that I use the phone, it is hard see what you are selecting. Sometimes you inadvertently select the responding member and it goes into their stats. So it would be nice to select the sentence as a whole.
Another thing is that recently, when you select a thread you have followed, it takes you to the start of the thread instead of where you last read.
Last but not least are the pictures. When you select a picture, it does not stay zoomed in. You have to keep the pinch going and drag to what you wish to scrutinuze. Also when you drag to the edge of the picture, it jumps to the next one. Pretty irritating. What I have had to do is downliad the picture to scrutinize it.
For now that is all.

Thanks for the input. When you click on a watched/followed thread, does it always go to the start of the thread? The way it’s designed by default, is it goes to the last unread post in a thread if there are new posts in the thread you haven’t read yet. If you’ve already read all the posts in a thread and you click a watched thread, it goes to the first post in the thread. I agree, you would assume it would go to the last post read, no matter if you've read it or not.

As far as the pinch to zoom on a pic, that’s the way it is by default, even on iPhone. I agree again, not what you would expect.

 

[Old_Slapper]

How about a weekly or monthly factory rep coming in to talk about their products. They don't have to be the top brands, like JL, Kicker, Fosgate, Pioneer, etc... but just any brand. Or just have them post what's the newest product release they have.

We don't want to have to go on FB to find out what's new or what they have. Also, we are not going to these off brands FB sites because we don't know they exists. It will be a good way for these no-name brands to introduce themselves. We all know that the best sellers are the installers. Therefore, get our attention and we might push your product.

 

[administrator Administrator]

I am an Android user so there are some things lacking. When you press the notifications, a list pops up that you select from. On those you have to select "your reply" or thread title. Being that I use the phone, it is hard see what you are selecting. Sometimes you inadvertently select the responding member and it goes into their stats. So it would be nice to select the sentence as a whole.
Another thing is that recently, when you select a thread you have followed, it takes you to the start of the thread instead of where you last read.
Last but not least are the pictures. When you select a picture, it does not stay zoomed in. You have to keep the pinch going and drag to what you wish to scrutinuze. Also when you drag to the edge of the picture, it jumps to the next one. Pretty irritating. What I have had to do is downliad the picture to scrutinize it.
For now that is all.

I may have caused some major site issues, but I think may have fixed the going to the first post in a thread problem you mentioned. Try some links now and see if they go to the last unread post, even if you’ve read the post already.

 

[Popwarhomie 5,000+ posts]

I just think forums in general are dead.


Destroy Facebook?


I remember when there were a lot of vendors on here. Big brands, little brands and their owners posting daily.

 

[Deiimos]

I did not vote, as I’m not really sure what could “make it better”. I grew up on the older forums / layouts, so I’m not a big fan of how everything looks, but it’s alright for the most part and I just never liked the change from the old school forum layouts. I don't see really anything wrong with the current layout.

Unfortunately forums don’t seem to be a place where the younger enthusiast come like we did 20 years ago, they want everything on a social media account? I don't know, I can’t stand FB groups or any of that, so I still come to forums.

A lot of forums have dropped off over the years (most?), definitely not just here, and I’m not sure there is anything that can stop the decline in traffic. Obviously new people do still pop in here for questions and such, but I doubt it will ever be like it was 10-20 years ago. Most of us are old enough to remember how packed these forums use to be, members posting 24/7, almost hard to get a word in with so many posts. I miss those days, but I don’t see how we can get that back at this point. And seems a lot less people even want to mess with, or swap out OEM audio systems in modern vehicles.

I browse this site on my desktop computer and on an older iPhone X. It loads fine for me on Windows 8.1 and said iPhone X from 2017 – 2018, so I’m on older devices and the site seems to work fine for me most of the time, as far as I can tell.

I hate to see the forums eventually vanish, so much great info / content over the years.

 

[1aespinoza 10+ year member]

I may have caused some major site issues, but I think may have fixed the going to the first post in a thread problem you mentioned. Try some links now and see if they go to the last unread post, even if you’ve read the post already.

It worked now.

 

[Mitch86 5,000+ posts]

I'm with the others... There's nothing wrong with caraudio.com per se... It's just that as the older generation dwindled and new platforms became available, the younger generations had other platforms to get info from or just talk about car audio etc. I think Facebook killed a lot of the forum scene not only in car audio but as a whole. There's a group for everything there and there are 3 BILLION users.

Just the progression of the internet, I reckon. Things come and go and the new thing is what everyone starts to use.

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

I wish I had some advice. There isn't anything wrong with the website per se. Forums just die. I don't know if you remember Elite Car Audio back in the day, but it was busy, super knowledgeable members, etc and it still died. I migrated over to CAF when ECA shut down and that place went from insanely busy and slowly lost traffic and then one day the site was gone. I've seen other forums come and go.

I'll second this. I was a member of both of those, and they were very active. I recall some in-fighting at CAF over censorship, that prompted some folks to form a new group that went no where fast. But yes, this forum works for what it is. I don't do Farcebook.

 

[Jimi77 5,000+ posts]

I'll second this. I was a member of both of those, and they were very active. I recall some in-fighting at CAF over censorship, that prompted some folks to form a new group that went no where fast. But yes, this forum works for what it is. I don't do Farcebook.

Farcebook - LOL. ECA went under out of nowhere. If it weren't DIYMA already being established and alot members already on both forums, a large chunk of car audio knowledge could have been lost or scattered over numerous forums overnight.

CAF went from very active to dead in ~1-2 years. I wasn't surprised when it was gone one day. It was sad, but very similar to this site, where the Off-Topic area is as active if not more active than Audio areas and traffic in general is pretty low. IMHO, the issue is more with how google is ranking the sites rather than with this forum. Unless you have a pretty high level question, you'll get a quick accurate answer with minimal bickering here. For more advanced questions, there's always DIYMA.

For the novice or average user, this site is just as good as DIYMA and in many ways better. Here you'll get fewer responses vs DIYMA where you can get information overload, conflicting responses, overly technical information, etc. Google's algorithm isn't capable of drawing that distinction. And I guess in a self-interested way, Google would rather see a simple question generate 30 responses vs 3 responses.

 

[AnthonyO 10+ year member]

Bring back vendors that offer our members discounts.
Like:
Crutchfield
SonicElectronix
SSA
Skar
Sundown
etc.