I suspect it had something to do with

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/j...-member-63774/

As soon as I saw the title, I had a feeling someone was going to rat out the loophole.

But in addtion, two other features went missing.

The "today's posts" feature is now not available either logged in or not. The "new posts" feature is not the same thing. If one closes the browser window, or is logged out due to session time out, using "new posts" again results in a much shorter list. Then you cannot get to a global list of posts you have not read yet. The workaround used to be logout and use the "today's post" function. That is no longer available, so the choice becomes read it in one sitting, or lose the older messages that you do not get to in the session. Result: less page views.

The "thread preview" tool tips function is entirely gone. It is no longer possible to get even a small sense of what the thread is about without opening the thread. Given the vague titles some users favour, it becomes easier to just skip vaguely titled posts. Result: less page view.

Then there is the forcing of cursor type to "arrow" for certain links. This is a information architecture disaster. Hovering over a potential link *should* result in the "hand" cursor as expected by users. The change in cursor shape is a standardised visual cue. It does not make sense to use bandwidth and cpu cycles to worsen the user experience. The loss of visual cues will result in less page views from users not familiar with how vbulletin is laid out.

The underlying html code is not pretty. It seems to do things using javascript when raw html would work the same way without the potential for errors. For example, the opening of a link to a member page is done as a window.open with a target of _self. An A tag would perform the same mission natively. There is something in the javascript code that causes a page to refresh a few times before it settles down and becomes navigable. Very annoying to be able to see the page but not use it.

Promoting page views is part of the business of Internet Brands, but there is a cost in page views every time that a page stalls or crashes a browser or a user cannot navigate easily.

Sorry, $0.02, YMMV and all that.

 

Thanks for the heads up , I think images should be available to anyone that visit the forums as well. You know in this current set up only + 10 posts and a few days requirements