I’ve been a fan of 9rules since I heard about its launch, several years ago. Since then, I’ve applied twice (and got rejected twice), joined their community (twice), and seen a flurry of activity in the blogosphere.

Recently, however, I’ve had some frustrations using their site.

I forgot my password…
Last year, I finally signed up to the 9rules community. I’m more of a lurker than anything else, so it took me a while to finally actually sign up. Some stuff went down, and I didn’t end up visiting for a while… Then I returned to 9rules and tried to sign in.

And again. And again.

Just how many passwords do I have? So I finally opted to submit a forgotten password request. But oh ho, what email address did I use? Is it potentially the retired ryanbrooks.net? Of course, it could be another email address I have. So I check my spam filters, wait a while… still nothing. You can see where this is going. See, typically when a system is developed with a forgotten password request, it sets your password to some randomly generated alpha-numeric key, and sends you an email. So what happens the email is no longer active, or for some reason you just don’t get the email at all?

Ideally, it should keep an audit trail of my password requests, and allow me to sign in with my old password (yaknow, in case I remember it) as well as the new one that I could potentially get in my email.

Oh, here’s a thought. Does this mean I can reset the email of Scrivs; any other member of the community? It wouldn’t take much to write a little script to scrape the usernames of 9rules and submit requests for each one. That could definitely throw a wrench in things.

So I decided to go to the top…
Looking around for a contact page, it is immediately viewable in the topmost navigation portion of the site, right next to the search. That’s handy. So I click it.

Want to talk to us? We want to hear from you, however it’s important to contact the right person for the right issue. To make it easy, we made a form for you! Pick the issue you want to contact us about from the drop down menu, fill out your email address and your message, then click submit. So easy…let’s do this…

Now, this is a personal pet peeve of mine. I. Hate. Contact. Forms. Don’t get me wrong, as a developer I can appreciate the need for them to direct inquiries - but as a paranoid web user, I prefer to send email from my client of choice; I like to have a record of the contact in my sent items. So I let out a melodramatic sigh and fill out the form, selecting “Technical issues with the site” from the drop down. I try to be specific about my problem and hit the submit button.

Nothing happens. What the hell! I just did all that for….

Oh, wait.

Thanks for using the contact form. Without you using it we would be left wondering if anyone actually uses this thing, but now we are certain that it is used because of you. You do not understand how special that makes us feel.

I must confess, I’m spoiled by Web 2.0. Where’s the immediately identifiable success message? Yellow fade technique? A different color? Strong font weight? No, this is what I see:

Okay, minor irritation. Ordinarily this wouldn’t concern me, but I just thought I lost my inquiry.

And now, we wait. And wait. An entire weekend passes. I didn’t receive a carbon copy of my message, no auto-response that says “Thank you, your message was received.” Nothing. Now, of course, once again it COULD be my mail server. Doubtful, but it is possible.

Finally, I opt to create a new account…
I’ve given up. I create a new account. Now, here’s the thing I like about 9rules.

The signup process is stupid easy. Pick a username (assuming that it wasn’t already taken. Great, now I need an underscore in my name; I hate underscores.), provide my email and voila.

Whoops! Either you left the username field blank or you’ve chosen a username that is already in use. Should have gotten here sooner! Try another one.

Thanks guys. Thanks a lot.

Except that this time, they have chosen to deviate from their established design pattern. I get redirected to the following page:

Maybe it’s just me, but this isn’t what I expect.

And I’m finally in!

A couple problems.

Straight from their FAQ:

Q: How do I remove friend(s)?

If the friend is in the Top 9, first click the X to remove them as a Top 9 friend. The friend now has a normal friend status. Click on the X to remove the friend from your friend’s list.

What, you mean this X?

Ooooh, no, it must be this one.

Both have the same action. It took me a little bit of time to decipher which did which from the URL, since Firefox is really shifty about choosing when to show me the Alt Text. (Hint: “title” attributes are handy on hyperlinks too!)

Obviously it’s hard to keep your copy up to date with a community that is evolving and growing as fast as 9rules, but come on guys, try just a little bit harder. Please? For me?

And finally, time to start digging for the feeds. This did kinda take me a while (cause yaknow, no search regarding “feeds” turned up anything in their static copy), but I found them! My last complaint about 9rules?

No such file, why?

Nothing personal…
My own struggles with using the 9rules site are nothing but minor irritants. While it may sound as if I’m attacking the team, I am doing anything but.

This just reestablishes a well known point…
9rules has done a downright fantastic job as building a huge community for designers, developers and bloggers. But building and maintaining a community is hard and I hold nothing but respect for the 9rules team, as well as the die-hard users that make it what it is.

I look forward to being part of a community that is sure to grow for years to come!