RaceDepartment New Website Released

[Paul Jeffrey]

RaceDepartment.com will be down on Wednesday 30th October, as we look to bring a fresh new image to the largest sim racing website in the world.

Having undergone considerable growth and change in the last decade and a bit, we feel the time is right to take our website to the next level of presentation and functionality. On the evening of Wednesday 30th October (approx 22:00 UTC) we will close access to www.racedepartment.com for much of the night, as we upload and launch our brand new website!

We anticipate access will be restricted for around 12 hours, but if you still need that essential sim racing fix, take the opportunity to check us out on our various Social Media platforms, which can be accessed via the below links.

See you all on the other side!

 

[destinationriver]

Wow, didn't expect such an answer. You refer to the "few voices" complaining about it here. Just remember about all the people using RD in a passive way. People that read only and may not even know about this thread here. In my opinion, that's quite a cocky way to adress these things. I've been on quite a few forums running the similar system behind and mostly, when such significant changes have been made and people weren't happy with it, they've been revertible. To me this shows what RD is really about for you, making money. Acting like a company, always trying to get more out of it. Your reaction to this just prooves that you don't really care about the opinion of the users. As long as you will benefit from it, it's fine. As many people already stated, it's time to move on. Been a great time in the last couple of years on RD, but that's not a supportable system anymore. Feel quite bad for all the people that paid for a Premium and also get punched in the face like that now.

 

[gamer19]

Wow, didn't expect such an answer. You refer to the "few voices" complaining about it here. Just remember about all the people using RD in a passive way. People that read only and may not even know about this thread here. In my opinion, that's quite a cocky way to adress these things. I've been on quite a few forums running the similar system behind and mostly, when such significant changes have been made and people weren't happy with it, they've been revertible. To me this shows what RD is really about for you, making money. Acting like a company, always trying to get more out of it. Your reaction to this just prooves that you don't really care about the opinion of the users. As long as you will benefit from it, it's fine. As many people already stated, it's time to move on. Been a great time in the last couple of years on RD, but that's not a supportable system anymore. Feel quite bad for all the people that paid for a Premium and also get punched in the face like that now.

This looks like any letter Ian Bell gets every day.


Hate mail is not read, in jail instead.
Best motto to get through it.

 

[Bonehead]

I've liked the new layout since it was first launched, and I much prefer the menu located near the top of the page.

 

[AndrewBo]

Does that have anything to do with you being a part of "staff" ?

No

 

[LilSki]

Can we please get these icons out of the hamburger menu on mobile and over by the search? Having to get to anything on the top left of a larger mobile phone is less than ideal.

EDIT: Also on mobile can we get the page links at the top again like it used to be and like it is on desktop site? Having to scroll to the very bottom just to change pages is really annoying.

 

[GeoF1]

delete pls wrong by me

 

[Shovas]

Thanks for the new update.

Not sure I'm keen on the main menu being on the left in a big desktop screen, though. I happened to like the always-on top-row menu.

Not a deal breaker or anything. Suppose it helps for the mobile menu implementation.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

To me this shows what RD is really about for you, making money. Acting like a company, always trying to get more out of it.

Lol please. I have dedicated 16 years of my free time into this site buddy. If it was about the money it would have spend those thousands and thousands of hours on something else and would drive a nice car by now instead of a crappy 9 year old Volvo don't you think?

For the rest me or my staff don't owe you any explanation. You have no idea what we are planning behind the scenes, you don't know anything about the technical framework we need in place to have a mighty awesome frontpage page with lots of daily content about our beloved hobby written by a whole team of qualified people who will support Paul!

As outlined before we MUST change to this adopted framework as we are releasing a Wordpress frontend with a xenforo user backend all well integrated and this is the only way to do it. If that means you are unhappy about it and want to make a big fuzz about it, be my guest. It won't change anything as this has to happen.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Can we please get these icons out of the hamburger menu on mobile and over by the search? Having to get to anything on the top left of a larger mobile phone is less than ideal.

View attachment 350364

EDIT: Also on mobile can we get the page links at the top again like it used to be and like it is on desktop site? Having to scroll to the very bottom just to change pages is really annoying.

Hi Liski, i will check that out. Good request, thanks!

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Can we please get these icons out of the hamburger menu on mobile and over by the search? Having to get to anything on the top left of a larger mobile phone is less than ideal.

View attachment 350364

EDIT: Also on mobile can we get the page links at the top again like it used to be and like it is on desktop site? Having to scroll to the very bottom just to change pages is really annoying.

How about now? Please refresh the page.

 

[Mascot]

How about now? Please refresh the page.

Much better, thanks!

 

[Shovas]

You don't need to apologize about aiming to make money, and making a good living amount, at that.

I'm currently looking for work (software engineer) so I get it.

There's no free lunch.

 

[Stereo]

I am on a 16:9 screen but have the browser in a 4:3 ratio because 99.9% of webpages don't put stuff on the sides so it would be wasted space that I rather use to be able to click desktop icons without minimizing my browser.

I'm the same and as I'm a modder, when I see something I don't like, I fix it myself...

If you put this rule in ABP or uBlock Origin's filters, it'll hide the right sidebar so you get a full width forum again with medium browser sizes. It'll mess up the margins on layouts that didn't use the sidebar in the first place, be warned. but it's just ugly, all actual content stays onscreen. (originally only the top line was necessary but the new style manually sets p-body to 100%-320px instead of letting it flow itself)

www.racedepartment.com##.p-body-sidebar
www.racedepartment.com##.p-body-content:style(max-width:100% !important)

RD uses a pretty uniform ui so this applies to downloads also.

 

[krissboo]

I'm kinda used to it now but I still don't like it 100%. At least the staff are listening and fixing some of the issues.
Please could you change the bookmark icon back to the old one though as I keep losing it

 

[Snailer]

Dear Racedepartment Staff,

you folks have been hard at work trying to make this site a place where every person from our tiny corner of the internet could find the latest news, best mods and, most importantly, meet like-minded people to share our passion with. You've tried many different things to try and make our experience better, and were quick to address issues we might have. These were the reasons I was always glad to come back.

That said, I must say I feel like this new layout might've been a step in the wrong direction. Now, things like the menu and search bar are a long distance away from the content itself, while things like alerts and profile options are too far the other way, separated by huge chunks of nothingness. Having an ultrawide monitor means I have to physically turn my head a non-insignificant margin just to look at buttons I use the most, which, unfortunately makes your site uncomfortable to use. Previously, everything I ever needed was right there in front of me in a nice, well-organized and navigable chunk while now, using this site I feel like a kitten watching a very close game of table-tennis. I think oversized monitors might be a more common sight among our community than among the general populous of the internet, so I don't think I only speak for myself when I talk about this issue. I also think that it doesn't look the best, with the top bar being, well... just an empty bar most of its length.

I hope you will take my comment for what it is - a friendly feedback on some of the changes implemented recently, and not as a criticism of your efforts. I also hope you will take this feedback to heart, so you can continue to make this site the best it can be.

With my comment I'm also including a screenshot of what the site looks on an ultrawide (21:9) monitor, so you can more easily see the issues this new layout presents for users like me.

 

[Stereo]

Not so much helping as messing around trying to find the worst case scenario, and I think this is it.
- no adblock
- downloads section
- widen window until you get the permanent hamburger menu
- narrow window until permanent hamburger hides
- open temporary hamburger
- widen window until permanent hamburger reappears under the temporary hamburger

I think I must have one of the ad hosts blacklisted at the firewall cause I have a pretty solid blank area even with no browser extension.

 

[Dux]

Just joined and was like "heeeey this is new and looking good!"
Good job you all working on this forum!

 

[LeSunTzu]

Screenshot please?

The big blank space reappeared.

https://imgur.com/Iv3n4tL

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

The big blank space reappeared.

https://imgur.com/Iv3n4tL

You are using an adblocker or a scriptblocker which prevents ads from loading. You will understand what we cannot provide any support to people who block our only source of income to pay for our servers and costs.

With a default browser without ad block software you will not see those big empty spaces.

 

[LeSunTzu]

Ok that's clear.