The new, improved Rate My Space website is visually appealing and HGTV seems to have delivered on the promised bandwidth increase (speed, for you non-geeks). But much of the functionality has been lost, from my perspective as someone who liked to track the "horserace," the movement of spaces...Most viewed today, this week, this month are all gone.
But hey, now I've got a nice new profile page to add to my growing social-networking clutter on the web.
A major loss on RMS is the search function. You could search RMS itself on usernames or any keywords of interest, like all those descriptive tags you spent time and brainpower carefully inserting into your spaces. Say you wanted to get ideas for Christmas decorating. Search on "Christmas" and you'd get all the Christmas spaces that you could not find simply by looking at the room categories. I could tell friends how to find my spaces easily - search "marykay," my username.
On the new site, search encompasses all of HGTV.com and appears to not include RMS. I searched on my last name, Ulsamer, a keyword in most of my spaces. It returns nothing but the suggestion to check my spelling, try more general words, try different words that mean the same thing, or...contact us. Right!
All that and an annoying drop-down "Inside Crafts" pop-up from accidentally grazing the fancy flash menubar above. At this point, you're totally out of RMS and in the larger domain of HGTV.com. So you look for a link back to RMS...if you aren't too frustrated...
So it looks like the only way anyone's going to find me is on Rate My Space or Oprah reruns.
More later. I'm not done complaining!
9 comments:
I share your frustration. I'm sure you've noticed that the order for "Most Viewed" and "Top Rated" changes randomly.
When my dining room was a "Top Rated" space on the front page last weekend, I took a screen shot because I was so surprised. An hour later, it was gone, not even several pages deep in that category. I guess they're trying to keep people interested by shuffling the order constantly.
I've also noticed a HUGE faux pas in coding. The title of the space is used in the URL of the space's page. If you edit the name of your space at any point, the URL changes. Most web developers know that once a page is created, the URL should stay the same.
Gosh, it hadn't even dawned on my that I haven't been over to RMS in forever until I saw this post.
It was just so darn slow & annoying that it seems I lost all interest.
I'll head over there soon to check it out. I think your feedback is great and I hope you've sent it to the powers that be over there,
Nat
Mary Kay, I haven't been there enough lately to really get a feel for the changes. I have entered a name into "search" and that person's spaces appeared. The thing that shocked me was that they had put the City AND State where I live. I immediately went in and deleted the city from my profile page. When you live in a small town, it might not be difficult for someone, who has a general idea about the layout of your home, to find your home, and we all know that RMS has it's share of "kooks"! laurie
I don't like the new RMS website and seldom visit it anymore. It's just not user friendly as far as I'm concerned. As Laurie stated above, I too deleted what city I'm from because I just feel it's an invasion of privacy. I'm not from a small city but there isn't any reason for everyone to know where I'm from.
Hi Mary Kay, I completely agree with you. I tried to search several times and was very frustrated. I've tried to get on a couple of times and the entire site has been down. It's too bad, as it really was a great way to get ideas, make friends, etc. I guess I'll stick to visiting the blogs to get ideas. :) Pam (pam25)
The made a posting one day that the search feature was down for maintenance. Hallelujah it's back now. I've noticed they've made several improvements in the weeks since the new version launched. They have a forum now for bugs and to request features and they actually respond.. so all in all it looks like they are trying much harder now than they have in the past when the site was soooo slow.
I was out of the look on RMS for quite a long time and decided to check it out a while back.......mmmmmmm......not so good. Why no search?? Odd. And, not user friendly. I wonder if they'll re-vamp...
Blessings,
Spencer
PS......I've done a similar curtain for my bedroom with knobs to hang the panel onto. :-)
Hi,
love your stuff and I am inspired but what you have done. Also, from the screen shot of your profile we like the same "old world done a new way" style. I am upset with Rate my space too because I wanted feedback on my room work in progress and I found my page got buried and no amount of updating the images will get it noticed. I wish you had the time to look at mine but I am sure you are way too busy. But if anyone cares to give me feed back I would love the input.
Use google to search rate my space peanutbutter paint is the easiest way to find it.
http://www.roomzaar.com/rate-my-space/Bedrooms/Peanutbutter-paint/detail.esi?oid=6705178
Great job keep it up.
Buffpainter
Mary Kay - You should have a look at YardShare.com when you get a chance. It's all about the pictures with a focus on yards.
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