Mysuggestion as newbie is: improve the usability of this webpage.

[Berlinerin]

Please excuse my english I am German.

I want to tell you a nice story about my experience on this page and wrap my suggestions nicely in it I hope.

I am an experienced programmer with different softwares like XT-Commerce, wordpress, typo3, and a lot of smaller softwares basing on php and mysql.

So in the run of searching a new Social Bookmarking Software (one we are already using) a friend send me a link to this page.

It IS hard to use for a newbie. First I was searching on some information weather this software
* IS a Social Bookmarking software
* meets my requirements
* see an example maybe?

Not sucseeding i thought oh well then i just try it out. So I was trying to download. Whenever i clicked on "download" i was refered to the forum. Not a behaviour a user expects. The "download" button never stayed down. The "Forum site" did not look like a Forum. Neither like a download site. I was poured over with statistics and unable to detect nessesary information in between. After a while i got the hack that they probally want me to register to download.

After a much longer while i even tried out and found out that some of the statistics seem to be clickable (even though they neither look like links nor buttons) and i even got news i have to be registered. These news neither looked like important news (a bright color, bold whatever) nor like an error message (red !!!!, whatever).

ok after all I figured I have to be registered first. So I went through the registration process an was first informed - yes the first thing that really jumped into my face - that from this point on I am not alowed to speak any of the 4 other languages i learned but only english. Because the software is American? It did not feel nice but anway i speak english quite fine so i went on.

Then the registration processs. The letter code for the registration was hard to read, almost impossible to tell weather capitals or small letters.

Show me the programmer who programms a low-resolution text-detection just to gain access to a forum.

Then i guess they wanted to inform me about the username containing an illeagal character but the error message looked like this:
"Could not find phrase 'username_invalidchars'."

The whole registration process uses ttons of ajax slowing my modern(!) UMTS mobile connection down to inform me the username is correct (marked in green) only so in the end i have to guess by an unreadable message it is not?

Then finally I guessed right, was registered. I wanted to download the file. it started downloading, a broken file arived, the page informed me I have to have written at least one post (how can I write a post if I dont know what I write about?)

So here I am writing that post and begging the programmers and webdesigner of this forum to read the book "Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen.

I am still here. A friend - not even a programmer advised to have a look. Still I have not found out what the software does or weather it is fit for my needs.

But about the whole process im really ... of.

By the way 337 Millionen People in the world have english as a first language of which 226 Millionen speak american english (does it qualify as english)? If we count 6 Billion people in the world (knowone knows the excact number) that would be 20% of the people in the world. 1.3 Billion people speak fine chinese.
And there are many good rumanian programmers who speak better german then english.

Greeting from Berlin Berliner-in with the "phrase 'username_invalidchars'" in bright grey normal-weight letters.

[tommy818]

Then the registration processs. The letter code for the registration was hard to read, almost impossible to tell weather capitals or small letters.

I know what you mean. I hate these F*****G things. 50% of the time, I leave the site rather then try and guess upper case/lower case/letter/numbers, 5 times to just login . There has to be a better way.

[Berlinerin]

To make all letters upercase and ignore the case is a good idea...

[Geoserv]

I have always thought the download button, should just download the script or send you to a download page.

Having to register then having to make one post has probably turned people off because it delays the process.

Geoserv.

[cmstheme]

Regarding the registration process, I guess it is just a settings in vBulletin Admin. My suggestion for it will be:

Image Verification Library: GD (True Type Font)
Image Verification Options: Just check Random Color and uncheck all other options.

With that settings, I can clearly see all the verification images on my forum.

For the Download button, yes it would be very user-friendly if it point directly to the download link without the requirement to register. Most of the software that can be freely downloaded goes that way such as Magento, Joomla, WordPress, etc.