There are LOTS of ways for someone who is a registered user of the Whateley site to communicate suggestions. True... there aren't many ways for a non-registered user to do so; but that's true of most sites, isn't it? Spammers have pretty much ensured that you don't leave forums, comment panels, PMs and other such things open to the public.The forum section for the purpose is named "The Dean's Office - Suggestion Box" and it is invisible to the public. And that said, the forums also have a section for reporting problems that is available to public/guests who aren't registered. It's moderated. So posts are only visible to me and a couple other 'victims' / volunteers who are willing to deal with a little spam in the hope that we are able to field problems of people trying to register or having problems logging in and can't use the normal methods.

I've also been in close contact with the public Discord channel and the authors and community members who use it through the process of getting the new version of the site running and taking feedback and making corrections almost daily.

Also... there's a difference between posting here attempting to connect to make suggestions or offer feedback... and what actually happened. If this were the only way someone could think to contact me? Ya. Ok. Maybe. But this blog post wasn't an attempt to offer feedback.

Re: your specific response to the design -
Splash page - yes. The splash page is just showing off the cool art. Will that change? Maybe. I don't know. It's possible. If/when money allows, there will be more art and some of it will be for the splash page so its not always the same thing.. I see your point about it not really telling people what's inside / what its a landing page for... but then, I'd point out that 'who exactly is going to the whateley.academy url not knowing what they're looking for'? :) And for people looking for a school of teen supers and fiction about them? Well... the picture seems pretty 'on point' for that. :P Again... I'm not sure it'll stay like that. But its new. We like it. And if people bookmark past it? Well, that would be nothing new, right? Even the 'text' landing page wasn't the most common landing point on the previous site. Most people dropped in on either the forums index or the Recent release page. BCTS has an age of consent (and a selection between two versions of the site) landing page. When was the last time you saw that?

Login Menu text: mmm... yeah, I see a bit what you mean. It looks 'right' when you're logged in. It looks a bit wonky when logged out. I'm not sure what the fix to that might be... maybe a second copy of the module that only shows when you're logged out. Hmm. I'll have to give it some thought.

Author list: Yes. Agreed. And on some screen sizes its stranger than others. I'm of two minds on this. One - I like having the author avatars on the panel. But what's happening there, is that the avatar images are 'nesting' to avoid taking up as much vertical space. And... it DOES that. Sort of. The alternative is a nice orderly vertical line of just author names, without avatars. For the moment? I've left the avatars on... if the oddity of the format drives enough people batty... I'll turn them off.

Thanks for taking the time to offer feedback... but again, I wish it were actually on the Whateley site... instead of here.

Instead of trying to scare people off because YOU don't like the new site... why not let them make their own decision. You are making sweeping statements that make it sound like you gave the new site a good investigation and found it worthless for anyone to use. But even the points you are making don't reflect the parts of the design you don't like accurately... and you completely ignore the various features that have been put in that are improvements to the old site.

And regarding privacy/personal information. Neither I or any member of the staff of the Whateley site care who you are as long as you are not registering with us for the purpose of spamming or hacking (malicious use of the site or harming the community using it). For that reason, we require a working email address and the system provides me with your IP address. I check those against various databases and if you come up clear, your account is approved.

The system requires three things for you to access it. A login name and a password... those two things get you in. And a visible name - the one that will show up when you post in the forums or create content. That's it. email, login, password, and visible name. No other information is required to register. Can you provide more? Yes. The social aspect of both Joomla and Kunena forums communities has large profile setting options that you CAN provide. But doing so has no impact on your registration. Provide as much or little as you want.

In fact, this particular point is SO important to me that I went to the developer of the extension because before this current patch; the default registration panel had only a binary option for gender: male or female. And I asked him to account for it being 2021 and it being time for that question not to have binary answers AND for it not to matter in how we treat site users. He included a third option (not specified) to the form.

Also, the site. All of it. Is https. The old site? The one you are claiming is better. THAT has been http for a few years now, because it was set up on an earlier google virtual machine that didn't have systems in place for me to make it secure. That too is one of the reasons for the new site.

So... you can see why I might be upset when you claim these things. You are welcome to your opinion. It isn't accurate to the facts.

I'm sorry to hear you don't like the graphics in the carousels. There ARE other systems in place to sort/find the stories you are looking for... but no, we won't be going back to table layouts. I'm not even certain that any current extensions exist that would allow us to do so... unless, of course, you are offering to code them for us?