Comments (constructive) on the New Forum Software

[john halfpennyParticipant @johnhalfpenny52803]

2 more things –

1. Can we put the latest posts at the top

2. I don’t mind the pop up once, but continual repeats are very annoying.

Why do forumists have to go through this painful exercise every time a forum is updated? You would think developers should know this stuff by now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

constructive

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

Noel, works OK in Lynn, must be the copper wire slowing things down. !!!!

First impression is like already said, lot of blank space but that’s the format nowadays, don’t compress things so you have too much information on a page, guess we will all get used to it given time.

Well done to the team who carried out the work, glad your’e back up and running.

Emgee

[JasonB]

On JasonB said

There is (was) a “Newest Topics” down the right side but it has just gone AOWL and I have let admin know. Not quite as good a sthe old one and you can’t click anything to get a longer list but it is being worked on. It is something the Mods have been asking for a lot.

Look for Newest Topics and Active Topics.   Active is most useful – it shows new posts.  Has to be hunted for slightly, and as Jason says, it’s just disappeared.   Temporary glitch I’m sure –  launching the new forum has caused every bot, spider and crawler on the planet to start reading all the content from end to end.  Some are good, most are a pain.  Read all about bots here.

They’re a temporary nuisance, in that once they’ve had their fill they move on.  However, at the moment they’re walloping the server and the forum is misbehaving as a result.

Dave

[Thor 🇳🇴Participant @thor]

I understand I’m not the only one that think the forum is slow, hopefully that will improve.

Editing my profile wasn’t possible earlier today, but that has been fixed now, so I uploaded a photo to use as my avatar and it worked.

Thor

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

When using any of the TAGS from the RH column the Warco advert and menu bar remain on screen, they take up more than halve the page height on my screen, can the menu bar/s be closed when using other linked pages to make viewing much more pleasant and informative.

Emgee

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

I have a large monitor but still the text is a poor choice of colour. Surely black is best instead of the grey.

I hope it all gets sorted & sped up. I did not expect it to be perfect straight away. Nice one mods & editore etc.

Steve.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Stevie we have been banging on about that from the start, it was worse. Needs to stand out more, background probably not so white and a better differentiation between reach reply. Bigger problems have meant these detail shave not been given the attention they need yet

[IanTParticipant @iant]

Finally managed to log-in – as already commented, really missing the ‘latest posts’ column. I guess things will take time to settle but at this point I’m afraid I cannot see any advantage to this change from a Users point of view.

I usually pop in at least once a day but I think I’ll wait a few days till my next visit and see if things have improved.

Regards,

 

IanT

 

[Benedict WhiteParticipant @benedictwhite51126]

Just want to say that I really liked “latest posts” which showed the latest posts across all fora. Made life very easy. Appears to be more work to get at now.

[Graham MeekParticipant @grahammeek88282]

I am finding the white screen very tiring, Is there something I can do to or is that down to you?

Regards

Gray,

[Martin King 2Participant @martinking2]

Hi All,

Not too bad getting in, a bit slow, Captcha worked OK; Profile small edit worked fine.

Way too much white space IMHO

Its going to take a while to get used to with many teething problems I am sure.

Well done to all the code toilers!

Cheers Martin

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

To save the Moderators some effort continually repeating themselves can we please ask people to read this thread before they post.

“latest posts” has been raised several times and was answered earlier on here

Font and screen colours also replied to.

[File HandleParticipant @filehandle]

New style looks clean, but can’t find latest posts. This is how I have always looked at the forum. Will explore further.

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

Is it really necessary to have quite so many block ads on the page?

  (This is half size)

There are 3 of these (or similar) plus the banner ad right at the top. They use a huge a amount of page real estate and are unlikely to generate more revenue than just the one sensibly placed and sized ad would.

John

[File Handle]

On File Handle said

New style looks clean, but can’t find latest posts. This is how I have always looked at the forum. Will explore further.

Active Topics (and Newest Topics) have both fallen off the page this afternoon.  It’s a bug.  Been reported.

Dave

[Ketan SwaliParticipant @ketanswali79440]

It is slow because the site is being protected through Cloudflare security gateway which is looking out for security threats/bots. Like having a bouncer on the door. 🙂

A while back, we used Cloudflare. It slowed down our site heavily, and plenty of false positives in Cloudflare reports – especially suspected threats from a particular South East Asian country. When detailed analysis of the reports were requested, they failed to understand our questions!. How good or bad Cloudflare is, is therefore difficult to say. What I can say is that it is expensive and can slow a site down.

Ketan at ARC.

 

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

The ‘Tag Cloud’ in the right hand column is fairly pointless as it refers to website topics NOT those in the forum.

John

[Graham Meek]

On Graham Meek said

I am finding the white screen very tiring, Is there something I can do to or is that down to you?

Regards

Gray,

Yes, I agree too much white space is tiring, and Jason complained during testing too.  Best answer is for the web developer to tone it down. I hope it will be improved in due course, though I guess our developers have bigger fish to fry at the moment!

In the meantime you might try one of the Browser plugins available such as Darkmode, Change, or NoSquintPlus.  How well they work depends on the original colour scheme.   I have InvertColor loaded in Firefox, and typing Alt-R makes the forum look like this:

Dave

[Jim NicParticipant @jimnic]

Welcome back and thanks to all who got it going again, I’m sure it was far from straightforward.  At the moment I have not tried all the new features but I can see that some folks have raised many points.  I trust that in the coming weeks (or months?) many small improvements will appear, as Jason says it’s better to have something up and running than stay offline trying to get perfection.

Jim

[Dave Shield 1Participant @daveshield1]

Needs a latest posts tab. Then if interested I can dig down deeper on the relevent subject.

[Dave Shield 1]

On Dave Shield 1 said

Needs a latest posts tab. Then if interested I can dig down deeper on the relevent subject.

‘Active Topics’ should be listed on the right but it went AWOL earlier this afternoon.  Been reported.

Dave

[Ches Green UK]

On Ches Green UK said

Site looks good. Maybe a bit too much White Space but I guess that helps mobile users?

I had logged in OK about 5 mins ago. Read the Red Box ‘Forum Help/Faq’ and then hit the mouse Back button to return to the Forum but got the ‘Checking Secure Connection’ message…which hung.

Probably just a teething issue.

Anyway, well done on the progress.

Ches

Click Profile on the green bar, then ‘profile’ next to activity below your profile picture. Options for editing pictures and text become available.

Neil

[Dave Shield 1]

On Dave Shield 1 said

Needs a latest posts tab. Then if interested I can dig down deeper on the relevent subject.

The list was causing the site to freeze, it’s been ‘suspended’ until it can be fixed.

Neil

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

Neil wrote: Click Profile on the green bar, then ‘profile’ next to activity below your profile picture. Options for editing pictures and text become available.

Not quite you get this :- ‘You do not have the required user role to view this user list.’

John

[Bill PhinnParticipant @billphinn90025]

Well done to the moderators and back office people for your thankless labours!

My minuscule contribution to the changeover – typo spotted:

“Please log lin (sic) to reply to this topic”

[Author]

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