Open forum …. any suggestions for tweaking the site?

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• rossmacd says:

  1 Jan1 January 10:40

  Definitely need to shift focus away from BA, and onto other (better) airlines. *A does not get a good outing in this blog, and considering there are some fantastic options, that is a shame. Considering how poor BA is nowadays, you need to show what else is on the market.

• Yuff says:

  1 Jan1 January 10:51

  Can Harry have his own tab for all his deals 🙂
  Only kidding 😉

• Kathy says:

  1 Jan1 January 10:59

  I find the mobile view quite good. On my desktop the site often causes my browser to freeze – that may be an advert thing. The only annoying thing about the mobile site is when a comment thread gets too many replies and you end up with comments with one-word lines due to the threading.

• James Ward says:

  1 Jan1 January 10:59

  The quality of your writing is as high as ever and your posts are relevant, timely and well-researched. Like many, HfP is the first thing I read every morning. The ‘three posts every morning’ format works for me.

  I miss the option to receive follow-up comments by email and would be happy if you reinstated it.

  I agree the off-topic comments are annoying. I guess it’s a consequence of having such a successful and popular site. I can’t think of many other blogs that get as many comments In posts as you do! It would clearly be impossible for you to manually approve every comment but perhaps you could find a way to remove the worst ones? There must surely be a WP plugin to handle this kind of thing.

  Keep up the great work! And all the best to you and yours for 2017.

  • Polly says:

    1 Jan1 January 11:27

    I agree, James. The formula works well for us too. The variety is good. Don’t think people realise that avios/BA is the main focus of this blog. It’s why he started it, in the first place. I think the OT is not such a big intrusion as referenced here. It’s quite useful, and is often nipped in the bud by one of us regulars with the answer. Definitely we picked up tips from OT comments. Often very useful. But a pain, if it hijacks a topic. Harry’s tips very useful too, thanks! Plus it allows us to pop in a QR sale notice if Rob hasn’t got it. Great ex EU deals to be had that way. We have many localised expert commenters in our group. Scotland, Regions, Asia, USA, QR. It’s nice to help each other out. Almost feel that OT is being blown out of proportion here. People can read on, surely.
    A Q and A useful, yes. Would this be daily or weekly?
    Travel info section where we can post useful tips for fellow posters
    Can we up comments to 8 please, l asked last year too. Quite useful to glance at often. Space?
    Don’t change anything really! Thanks for all the tips.

  • zsalya says:

    1 Jan1 January 15:31

    Agree – I am very happy with current format.
    I read HFP on PC first thing in the morning to wake me up.
    The multiple indices on the side-bar are most useful, when searching for something that was written about in the past.
    There’s a whole issue here which I think prompts the stickies idea that there are at least two functions:
    – news that many people read today, and
    – reference for both new readers and daily-readers-wanting-to-be-reminded-when-about-to-do-something.

    I would like some better grouping of comments, although influencing the behaviour of others is always a challenge.
    How about a recurrent article like “Offers about to close” which is “Crediting of points for offers recently closed”?
    First lists offers (mentioned on the site) recently closed for which points have not been processed (i.e. “Don’t worry”)
    Then offers for which points have been processed since last such article (i.e. “Check and chase if necessary”)
    Classic examples recently would have been the Sunday Times Travel magazine, and the “1,000 avios for new method” offers.
    Then hopefully all the comments about “Has anybody else received…?” and “I have at last just received….” would go to these articles.
    The idea of some stickies (at top of right side-bar?) probably works well with this – to direct the relevant comments there (and for the first few months some reminders in articles)
    Generally I like the idea of moderators moving comments to threads where they belong better, and I don’t see why you should not do that here.

    • the real harry says:

      1 Jan1 January 15:40

      not enough time in the day?

      safe hands extra moderators would fix that but I don’t think Raffles finds that workable

• Sebastian says:

  1 Jan1 January 11:21

  Here is my 2p’s worth:

  Is it clear to a newcomer what the site is about and why they should keep on reading it?

  I would say yes as I have introduced people to the site and they have all understood it and stopped asking me questions.

  Are there too many menus at the top of the page? Too few?

  I would say they are about right. I think some are little used but they are handy to have when I do need them.

  Are there too many ads? (Probably not, most blogs would run ads inside posts as well, which I don’t)

  I detest ads so any ad annoys me. However, as I respect that is they way you earn an income and when I compare it to other websites I would say this site is ok.

  Are the sidebars too confusing? Should I push the social media links more?

  I hate using social media for anything other than my friends so I would say no. As for the side bars I hardly ever use them so I cannot really comment.

  Should there be more ‘sticky’ information for newcomers?

  I would say no but Ibreckon others may disagree.

  Does the mix of content – which veers from Tesco deals to airline deals to credit card sign-up offers – work for you?

  Yes.

  Is the mix of news versus ‘reference / background’ articles (eg ‘How to use Combine My Avios with Iberia’) right?

  Yes but if I had too choose I prefer the news articles.

  Does the current format of running a fixed number of stories at fixed times every day – with a ‘lead’ story and two less important ones below – work for you? (Most blogs just post at random times throughout the day, but I am middle-aged and grew up with the newspaper tradition!)

  Yes, I like knowing when I wake up I am going to have a number of well written articles to read. However, I would say you could be a bit more flexible as some days I find there are articles that are just there for the sake of it and there are other days when I think you hold back to stick to the three article formula. So my suggestion would be to stick to the three but if there are days that are slow just produce 1/2 and if there is a lot then produce more.

  As for other things that the site could do, I think in an ideal world you would have a forum as I find the comments a little dysfunctional as they should be based on very specific articles but posters want to discuss boarder topics. However, I appreciate this is not something you want to do.

  I hope this was helpful.

  • Brian says:

    1 Jan1 January 11:33

    +1 on the flexibility. Quite often, there are articles that – by Rob’s own admission – get pushed back, because some other news item pops up that he considers more important. Some of these delayed articles relate to sales or special offers – almost always, there will be a comment on the article to the effect of ‘drat, just booked – wish I’d known about this offer before’.

    Personally, I would prefer to receive 4 articles one day if there is an extra one that merits immediate inclusion and 2 the following day, rather than one of the 4 being held back to the following day just to make up the quota.

• Judy says:

  1 Jan1 January 11:24

  Good of you to ask for feedback. Having attended the HFP xmas do I get the sense you have a very loyal following. You wouldn’t have daily readers if the content or design wasn’t good so I’d be wary of going for a big change. That’s high praise.

  I guess you’ve considered introducing a forum but I think FlyerTalk has that wrapped up and to be honest I think you’d find it a chore which ultimately wouldn’t improve the quality of the site.

  So keep things as they are. My only plea would be to unearth similar promos to the Shangi-la Golden Circle ones you had a couple of years ago – £140 quids worth of free food and booze was a cracker!

  • Mikeact says:

    1 Jan1 January 11:28

    Agreed, FlyerTalk is the main forum to go to, but I guess many newcomers are totally unaware.

• Pangolin says:

  1 Jan1 January 11:54

  I appreciate this site as one of the few non-US points sites worth reading but since you’re asking for suggestions… 🙂

  1) The ability to edit posts would be nice but that would likely require registration, which many of the more casual readers are never likely to do.

  2) The old WP style commenting tool could be replaced by something like Disqus, however, which would also free up some of the time you spend on moderation, as well as allowing people to see their replies appear immediately.

  3) If sub-threads go on for 3 or more replies then collapse them so you need to click to expand the rest. This would really help with skimming the OT responses that are very common on this site.

  4) Include more stories about European loyalty schemes such as Miles and More rather than just BA/Avios. I’m sure I’m not the only one who spends a lot of time based in other EU countries where other options need to be considered. Like I said, I appreciate that this site doesn’t just consist of US credit card signup bonuses but seeing more stories/offers relating to European loyalty schemes would be nice.

• vol says:

  1 Jan1 January 11:58

  <>….Don’t go changing…..to try to please me….or other HfP readers….whoa…i like the website….you provide freely….i don’t need nothing more….

  Happy New Year!! <>

  • Sergeant Major says:

    1 Jan1 January 16:32

    +1

    The site is perfect as it is, I wouldn’t want anything changed except may be a better index of historical articles arranged by theme or topic (search function usually doesn’t give me great results)

  • the real harry says:

    1 Jan1 January 19:46

    hey vol I think that was quite musical 🙂
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBQdf2ZlDR0

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