Hi,As I stated previously, I'm not a fan of the redesign of the site, and am sad I will have to go elsewhere for my flightsim news until the design has been revamped and made user friendly again.In the meantime, I'm wondering what the goals were with the redesign of the front page and the library?What was wrong with the old design and what will you gain with the new design?I can understand having to upgrade the site to make it easier to manage using different coding methods, but why change a layout that worked and was inviting and so easy to use?Thanks,Tom Perry

I completely agree with FlyingsCool. Just what was wrong with the old layout. I find this layout much too cluttered and confusing. I think I'll have to get my flightsim news elsewhere.

I completely agree! If I'm going to be honest, the new design was ill conceived. The old construct was much "cleaner" and easier to abstract data from. The new design looks pieced together by someone with no real web-designing experience.

Guys, this new avsim design is TERRIBLE! :(I hope, we can get back our useable old design!!!

I think that we all consider ourselves to be part of the "Avsim Family" and as family we tell each other the truth right? So, with that said, I have to admit looking at the front page was like my wife putting on a very non-flattering new outfit to go out to dinner and I'm in one of those situations where I have to tactfully say: "Soooooo, you're gonna wear THAT huh?"So as an IT \ Business consultant please allow me these few constructive critiques.1. The new format is extremely crowded which gives the front page a very cluttered and "thrown together feel"2. The smattering of advertising seemingly randomly all over the place throws off the formatting which adds to the "thrown together feel"3. A website should be like decorating a room, you place objects where you want the observer's eyes to focus and be lead around the room from one interesting piece to another - in this case the readers eyes dart around the page with various flashing ads, articles, etc....again the theme is pretty chaotic.4. The advertisements are WAY too large and flashy for the clean underlying theme of the page. This gives the impression that the focus and intent of the page is advertising and not articles.5. The Avsim logo at the top is formatted in a way that it is not naturally part of the webpage so it looks like another framed advertisement instead of an integrated logo that belongs to the website.6. A lot of huge, blinking advertisements totally destroy the look and feel of the page. They are a huge distraction to the point that reading the headlines is very unpleasant...almost like trying to read a book with a barking dog outside your window. I think the underlying move was to go with a more Web 2.0 look which is clean and modern and underneath the clutter the format could be quite nice and fresh. But, with all the clutter and articles smashed together you've lost the original base of the page. The result makes the Avsim page look like one of those "fake" advertising sites that squat on domain names. The above comments were NOT meant to offend especially since I'm sure a lot of work went into the new page. I hope that Avsim takes another look at the page and the format so that the true underlying clean design of the page can shine through.Just may 2 cents worth....

Hi,As I stated previously, I'm not a fan of the redesign of the site, and am sad I will have to go elsewhere for my flightsim news until the design has been revamped and made user friendly again.In the meantime, I'm wondering what the goals were with the redesign of the front page and the library?What was wrong with the old design and what will you gain with the new design?I can understand having to upgrade the site to make it easier to manage using different coding methods, but why change a layout that worked and was inviting and so easy to use?Thanks,Tom Perry

Wondering if I was the only one receiving the monthly emails from AVSIM about the upcoming changes and the whys for it...In the email it was stated the changes were to help facilitate many members' desires to have one login between the library and forums, and - I believe - better security - from the aftermath of the hack attack. I too am not fond of the new front page but Tom and crew have always been good at ironing out the bugs and revamping / tweaking the site to better meet the AVSIM family needs. I recall much of the same line of comments when the previous site came online some seven plus years ago - as well as the older library. But with time, am sure we all will appreciate the new site / changes. Just give the Crew time to tweak things out, eh? ;-)Cheers!

New site is awful! Why change something that was good?

OK it is late and I am probably one glass too many but I find the new site messy and confusing. It seems far too busy and I have not got the energy to work my way around it.I have commented elsewhere that I cannot get the new file upload system to do my bidding and after four of five attempts to upload a new application we just released I have given up. In the past AVSIM was my first port of call for everything. I am sorry that it has just dropped to the bottom of the list and I will be looking else where now.I also posted a news item yesterday (bad timing obviously) - it does not appear to have been rejected (which is fine - just let me know) but has certainly not appeared..........

Greetings AVSIMDon't know whether our opinion is given any credence or not, but for what it's worth the new site doesn't do it for us.

The reason was so that you would all have something to complain about........and it worked. Maybe give the staff a few days to work on things, but that would be too much to ask for some of you!

Hi,Not sure what the goal was, but I've had AVSIM's main page as my home page for years, not anymore. It's one big mess of a commercial, my new home page is AVSIM's online form.

IMO beta testing should have been done before putting it live. Or even for a month or so have both old and new designs/sites avaliable while they complete testing. Have http://www.avsim.com as the normal site we've all grown to like, and http://www.avsim.com/beta as the new site which will be hosted there for 30 days or until the avsim staff feel it's complete and usable enough to go live on the full site. It feels like their was a need for change will little idea or motivation as of why. And what we got was hurried through development and put live as quickly as possible. That'd be fine if the site wasn't pretty much the top FS website on the net - but it is. It'd be like Google rushing through a whole new interface with little or no testing when it only took a step back in usability.A mix between bad design and lack of testing mean't that we're now stuck with something that's only usable to a small percentage of the people here. There's been some big freeware guys that have mentioned they'll no longer be hosting their files on avsim, which is a massive hit to the site.

Do you think it will be this way forever?

In the email it was stated the changes were to help facilitate many members' desires to have one login between the library and forums

Yeah, and what did I read here:Keep in mind that a separate USERID and PASSWORD will be required on the WEB site in order that you can comment or respond to articles and reviews. This UID/PW pair IS NOT THE SAME AS YOUR FORUM AND LIBRARY UID/PW pair. If all you wish to do is read, then you do not have to register a new UID and PW there.So from two logins, we go to... two logins?

Totally understand the need to modernize the site, but have to agree that it is way too messy and cluttered. Hope that this is just a first shot....