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[The Reefuge]

Hello everyone,

Due to the nature of the forums, they are no longer a simple message board. A lot of custom work and tweaking has been done to them in order for them to function the way they do. We kept in mind that a lot of users use The Reefuge on mobile devices, so we accommodated for that by allowing a fluid design.

The responsive design allows us to show mobile users all parts of the site and not hold back on any functionality. It is there to specifically change design when being viewed in different screen resolutions. This means that mobile users get 100% of The Reefuge at all times.

Before this, we had the TapaTalk plugin installed. It is still installed, but will only display small pockets of the site, as anything custom is not supported. This means users who browse The Reefuge via the TapaTalk app will only be able to see what TapaTalk supports (currently nodes only).

What we would like to know is if we completely disabled TapaTalk and encouraged users to use the mobile friendly site, would it be a step forward or backwards?

If you reply / vote please make sure you are a user who uses/has used the site on a mobile device, and has used both TapaTalk and The Reefuge to view it.

Thanks.

 

[DavidS]

Backwards IMHO.

Tapatalk has good notification options for responses and PMs that would otherwise involve having to turn on email notifications (yuck) or otherwise have to rely on using a web browser on the device (in my case a phone so also.... yuck).

Personally I find the functionality trade off worth it for the sake of an app that gives me notifications without me needing to sign in. If I need everything I can try to tolerate using the phone browser or go use a PC.

Despite having an awesome phone, even "awesome" mobile themes are painful compared to tapatalk.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Sarg]

I use the mobile theme 99% of the time but tapatalk is good for quickly uploading a photo from the phone. That's my only reason for voting yes ;)

 

[The Reefuge]

Hello @Sarg,

You should be able to do this via the website. Is there a reason you prefer to upload via TapaTalk and not the website?

Thanks.

 

[Sarg]

During the day my wife has the laptop so my only access is the phone. So it's only if I need to upload something quick. I use the website on the weekends and download any good pics from my camera then.

 

[The Reefuge]

During the day my wife has the laptop so my only access is the phone. So it's only if I need to upload something quick. I use the website on the weekends and download any good pics from my camera then.

Hello @Sarg,

Sorry, I meant you should be able to upload photos to the site via your phone. It should now be fully supported across all phone systems.

Thanks.

 

[Sarg]

Agh ok I'll give it shot next time.

 

[rockerpeller]

I'm answered no as tapatalk drives me nuts... If I was an avid user, and I didn't just use 1 of my phone browsers, I would answer yes just for the notifications like @DavidS above.

 

[macca_75]

Please leave TapaTalk. (also, API needs an update).

I use it for browsing forums on the phone, having quick conversations, etc

 

[chimaera]

I vote no - the mobile version of the site on my phone is perfectly adequate ... however 90% of my forum access is via PC and mobile is more just if I am stuck with time to kill somewhere.

 

[DavidS]

I fear the risk with these types of threads is people may respond as if having Tapatalk support is somehow going to detract from them instead having the choice of using the mobile version.

The question (and appropriate responses) really do need to focus on those who use Tapatalk and have tried the mobile interface to determine if the support needs to continue, rather than being overshadowed by noise from people who only use the mobile site and find that suits their needs, who cannot really provide as relevant feedback to whether or not Tapatalk still has any benefit over just using the mobile site.

If you're not a Tapatalk user in the first place, the question isn't actually relevant to you, and providing a response without satisfying the criteria relative to the question does nothing more than skew the results in one way or another.
That said, for the sake of fairness, I think the poll itself risks excessive skew (regardless of whether or not the outcome is going to be the same) by people who vote on the basis that they just use the mobile site and have no clue what Tapatalk is, have never used it, or have used it with little use beyond The Reefuge and perhaps haven't leveraged it in convenient ways.

At the end of the day - from a website perspective, Tapatalk integration is a couple of lines of code that needs an occasional tweak, and really shouldn't bother anyone other than the people who choose to use Tapatalk anyway. While it does lack some of the functions that @The Reefuge has built into the site (and seem to work well on the mobile version), there are functions that Tapatalk does provide that have certain levels of convenience for users who interact with the site other than when they're just killing time.

 

[Auskenny]

I like tapatalk and use it on heaps of forums , sometimes I just couldn't be bothered turning the laptop on.

About the only thing I don't like tapatalk with this forum is I can't see the classifieds, unless I'm doing something wrong

 

[The Reefuge]

Hello everyone,

TapaTalk is good for a normal out of the box forum. Here are some examples of why it is not a good way of surfing The Reefuge with.

• Gallery - Unsupported (Can not view)
• Tank Journals - Unsupported (Can not view)
• Mico-Communities (inc ALL communities) - Unsupported (Can not view)
• Alerts - Half Supported (Will not show you all notifications)
• Site Notifications - Unsupported (Can not view)
• Likes / Post Ratings - Unsupported (Can not view)
• Gold - Unsupported (Can not view/use)
• Hotspots Map - Unsupported (Can not view)
• Marketplace - Unsupported (Can not view)

90% of the site is not usable with TapaTalk. This could potentially cause a user to participate less on the site. On the other hand, not supporting it may make a user not visit the site on their mobile device.

Thanks.

 

[DavidS]

90% of the site is not usable with TapaTalk. This could potentially cause a user to participate less on the site. On the other hand, not supporting it may make a user not visit the site on their mobile device.

That other hand... it might have the point ;)

Don't over value all of the site features more than the basic premise of it being a forum! A couple of notes floating around that mention that tapatalk provides only a limited view of the forum features might be enough to deal with any new user who has only used the site within Tapatalk who is otherwise unaware (can't see this being a major issue).

Based on my own usage, almost nothing in the above list is a hindrance to how I use the forums within Tapatalk. The likes option not being there is kind of annoying, but that's always been an issue with Xenforo and Tapatalk. Everything else is really extraneous fluff that really doesn't fit into my regular usage, so said fluff can either wait until I get in front of a computer or I can use the mobile site if such need exists. So... in my case, I have practically zero interest in using the site through the mobile version. My usage on my phone would be 75% based on notifications that I get through Tapatalk - notifications that don't require me to be staring at the bloody device to see them!

 

[MTG]

i always enjoyed tapatalk for its notifications, time for a dedicated app i say :D

 

[Dustin Stingl]

i always enjoyed tapatalk for its notifications, time for a dedicated app i say :D

I agree with this ^^. Tapatalk is nice, but I think a dedicated app for this site would be highly beneficial.

 

[The Reefuge]

I agree with this ^^. Tapatalk is nice, but I think a dedicated app for this site would be highly beneficial.

Hi @Dustin Stingl,

Apps cost a lot of money to develop. The site itself has been optimised for mobile devices, so it works pretty much the same as an app. If you have a VIP subscription, you can enable Pushover, which will push all of your alerts to your phone. An app would be nice for The Reefuge, but considering the site runs at a loss (I fund it), there is no reason to spend thousands on an app at the moment.

Thanks.