Human Element advertising on MGoBlog

Submitted by Cake Or Death on

So with as well as 3.0 has been received, I was pretty surprised to be served an ad from Human Element (which I believe is the company that did the new site).  Not only that, but the ad said something like "Did your brother's friend's nephew design your website... it shows!"    (Maybe that guy works there)

I'm curious how many users here would think "They did such a solid job with this transition, I'll hire them for my business!"  

(and as this is my first post on the new site I'll note that the old one had spellcheck in the text box - how is that not an automatic feature for a blog site theme?)

Sorry... just ready for football!

Salinger

August 19th, 2018 at 1:53 PM ^

Great first post. No one has had anything like this to say since 3.0 launched.

They're working on improving the site. Let's end this HUEL trashtalk, please. It's a tired position at this point.

FauxMo

August 19th, 2018 at 1:55 PM ^

I don't want to take things too far, but I think everyone at Human Element should die in a fiery bus crash due to the fact that our free MGoBlog website experience is not quite what we want it to be. Bus crash, or office ebola outbreak. One or the other... 

mGrowOld

August 19th, 2018 at 1:55 PM ^

The proprietors of the site definitely like the work Huel did so yes, ad is appropriate.

Sadly (for me anyways)I don't think our opinion of the brave, new mgoworld matters too much.

Don Brown’s Pinky

August 19th, 2018 at 1:55 PM ^

As a Drupal developer (although with a little less than a year of experience with it), I can say that migration from something as ancient as Drupal 5 to Drupal 8 is not an easy task. Drupal changed A LOT from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. In fact, it is almost completely unrecognizable. So imagine the hurdle from 5 to 8. Software development takes time, is expensive, and is not at all trivial. Give them time.

Farnn

August 19th, 2018 at 1:59 PM ^

As someone not very familiar with software development is there a good reason for Mgoblog to stick with Drupal?  It feels like there have been a lot of issues since the beginning with Drupal.  Would another alternative be better?  Or even just starting over with a brand new site and simply keeping the old mgoblog running for link backs and referencing?

Don Brown’s Pinky

August 19th, 2018 at 2:38 PM ^

Drupal is not just a website framework. It’s a Content Management System (CMS). It allows for someone little software development skills to build highly complex websites with little to no coding. The reason (I’m speculating here) that they chose Drupal is to allow for non-technical folks like some of the writers here to be able to publish content (pages, views, blocks, etc.) that look great and are easily implemented through a simple admin interface that comes standard with Drupal. This allows the higher-ups like Brian to focus on writing and coming up with new ideas without having to worry about the cost of hiring a developer every time he wants to do something new and it doesn’t require writers to know a lot of HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc.

A lot of the functionality they use here comes standard with Drupal, but adding functionality like up/down-voting requires add-ons called modules. Sometimes you can get these modules from drupal.org and use them out of the box. Sometimes you have to hire developers to write custom modules because publicly open-source modules don’t fit your needs.

Migration from one version to another is difficult, but nowhere near the difficulty and time/money cost of starting over from scratch then trying to migrate all of their old content from Drupal to something else. Once you pick Drupal, you really kind of have to stick with it or be ready to pay big bucks to do something else while keeping your old content.

Is there something better? That’s up for debate. Other CMS’s like Word Press are preferred by others, but some argue Drupal is better. Depends on what you want. I like Drupal because of how powerful it is. I work on a website that is probably more complex that 99.9% of websites out there, and it wouldn’t be plausible without the foundation Drupal provides out of the gate. 

Every website has their issues. Not every website has hundreds of thousands of visitors every week, loads of content or a massive forum like MGoBlog has either.

Grampy

August 19th, 2018 at 3:15 PM ^

Couldn’t agree more. My career around software spanned FORTRAN to Java Script, with legacy baselines always being perceived to be easier/cheaper/faster to migrate than recode. This has become a murkier model as development environments have evolved from a text editor plus compiler to a complex IDE with lots of automated code generated behind the scene.  As Coach Brown’s digit pointed out, major revisions of IDE tools like Drupal can create harrowing debugging problems, let alone jumping 3 major revisions. Instead of bitching about our generally free entertainment site, I applaud Brian’s commitment to us by taking on this thankless risk. 

Gulogulo37

August 19th, 2018 at 6:24 PM ^

Is it easier to fix a bunch of bugs all at once rather than piecemeal? It's fine that things take time. The only worrying thing is nothing much has changed since 3.0 launched (at least 2 months ago?), so it just makes me wonder what they're working on. Hopefully we won't have to wait until next offseason to get things ironed out.

I realize there have been labor shortages at mgoblog, but I would have thought this was for HUEL. It's not like they were relying on Ace to fix all the problems. Perhaps Brian planned on being more involved working on the site but has had to do more site content than he had planned on. 

trueblueintexas

August 19th, 2018 at 2:00 PM ^

What I have learned during the switch to MGoBlog 3.0 (A report on my summer vacation)

1) People will bitch about anything

2) People do not like change

3) People will talk about shit they know nothing about endlessly

4) When positive improvements are made, those who bitched still bitch

5) People do not like change

That’s what I learned on my summer vacation. Thank you.

Catchafire

August 19th, 2018 at 2:10 PM ^

For a low level site I would definitely hire them... Something not too complicated...

 

A site as big as mgoblog, no way.  Unless I don't want to grow.

Sinsoftheschafer

August 19th, 2018 at 3:01 PM ^

It's unclear to me if it was HUEL or the mgoblog staff that screwed the pooch (the pooch was clearly screwed) .Sometimes the design firm is fine but the client is such a train wreck that bad things happen. 

Maybe the ads were part of their comp package. 

Cake Or Death

August 19th, 2018 at 4:04 PM ^

Good point on the comp package.  That might explain it.  I wasn't intending to add anything to the many posts about the site itself.  Just to note that this user base might not be their best marketing target (so the ad was a bit of a surprise)

Hopefully the ads for womens clothing and "dating" services get more traction (and revenue $) for the crew.

reshp1

August 19th, 2018 at 4:38 PM ^

Most of the work they've done has been behind the scenes. The staff has been pretty clear 3.0 was just a stop gap to get the site off of Drupal 5. Considering how effed up the code behind the old site was, and judging by the multiple failed attempts to transition previously, I'd say they did ok just preserving the old content. That said, some of the lack of attention to detail with the original launch bugs was kinda annoying. I think overall 3.0 is stable and usable, even if I do miss features with the old site. 

eury

August 19th, 2018 at 6:40 PM ^

I'd rather this site be full of OSU trolls, McFarlins, etc. than the lot of losers who use this site as their digital man cave and spit entitled ignorant bullshit daily.

This website is more successful than any you'll build and I hope that random 2 star recruit dwarves all the accomplishments in your frivolous life.

BornInA2

August 19th, 2018 at 7:54 PM ^

Perhaps the biggest fail, and ongoing fail, is user expectation management. It was months of testing, then "the site is launching".

Not, "The site is launching, here is the stuff that doesn't work or isn't implemented yet."

There were comments about "it worked in testing and broke in final conversion". That does not exactly imply a high level of proficiency.

Add on the multiple instances of "X is now fixed" when X was not at all fixed, and layer on "Now X is really fixed" when it still wasn't, and you get a frustrated user base that questions skills.

Shooting the messengers is just a shit-cherry on top of all of it.