at least on the Model Railroad forum pages, there are multiple ways of logging in. Some lead thru several pages, others thru just one.
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading
I think it is basically because different programmers have been responsible for developing various pages of the forums and they don't necessarily talk to each other and each has a "better idea", mixed with a lot of "NIH" factor. Mix in new programmers taking over from the original programmer and time constraints of having to update a page without really having the time to understand how it was originally intended to operate and thus not able to fully debug what the problem is that has caused the update to be made, and that means the new programmer just adds to the complexity of the page to work around the problems caused by some other programmer had to make a change to the browser to fix a security hole or correct some other obtuse problem in the operating system.
I have been a programmer for over 45 years and I can tell you that I am utterly amazed that any of this stuff works at all. Given the number of programmers that have had their fingers in all the pieces and parts that perform it... and then throw into the mix the various brands/models/etc. of computers that are executing the hundreds of thousands of lines of code that have to be executed to put those pixels on the screen in the right order and it makes the "7 Wonders of the World" (as a whole) pale in comparison.
It sure would be nice if someone at Kalmbach would go through all the forum software and make them uniform in operation, but I think that is a pipe dream and will never, ever happen. The cost would be too much to swallow just to make the site look professional.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.