Comments (constructive) on the New Forum Software

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Thanks, Jason

… it will be interesting to know what peak4 sees

MichaelG.

.

 

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Thanks, Nick

MichaelG.

.

On Sucuri … Their reporting that the site is ‘not blacklisted’ is only a matter of them  checking lists prepared by others: Sucuri can provide more [free] information if it’s permitted to scan the site.

Compare this, which is a fresh scan of the microscopy forum that I frequent:

https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/microbehunter.com

 

MichaelG.

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

I’m not techie enough to know why but if Google does manage to find something then the link it finds is the old url and not what it has become on this site so the page is not found.

The other thing is Google is simply not finding things that used to be here. I tried several options including typing as the old front page search did which should get Google looking in model-engineer.co.uk for “Jason’s Firefly” which was a popular thread and previously turned up lots of my images. Results now zero.

Hi Jason,

I raised this issue some few posts back. There have been some very good posts by others on the “Old Forum” which I could only access by doing an “Image” search. As I cannot remember specific topics or thread titles.

Google is still showing the old images from the Old Forum, but when the Image is clicked on the “Coloured Bricks” appear. The link given to this site is just bumf, and not the topic in question like our Old Forum.

As I said previously anyone doing a search in this way “off the forum”, i.e. non forum member, will just give up. We as a Hobby are losing out from this and more importantly for Mortons, so are they.

It is often the simplest of things that are the most damaging to an organisation and often overlooked because of their simplicity.

Regards

Gray,

 

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

Thanks, Jason

… it will be interesting to know what peak4 sees

MichaelG.

.

 

I can see both of Michael’s screenshots, jpg & png.
However, the post which led to the discussion and the private email still displays like this

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

IMG_8973 being, of course, its name in my iPad’s Photos App

MichaelG.

.

[Andrew JohnstonParticipant @andrewjohnston13878]

Having considered leaving the forum it is interesting to note that clicking “Delete Account” gives a warning that all content will be irrevocably deleted. Presumably that means all posts will disappear, unlike previously where they remained but were tagged as “Former Member”?

Andrew

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

I dont like the Blue text on headings but I suppose I will get used to that but being able to post images and pictures without using a gallery to pre post to before posting live is much better. I just wish i had downloaded my gallery before it was deleted but i have them somewhere on my main PC if nessesary.

Dave

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Andrew, yes I would say that everything you posted will disappear. When I couldn’t get into my Amazon account, because I had forgotten my password and the recover password code was sent to my old mobile phone, but because my new phone  number wasn’t in the system, it couldn’t be retrieved. Cutting a long story short, and after finally speaking to someone on the Amazon help line who knew what they were doing, said the only real way of getting a new account would be to delete my old one, which he could do if I requested him to do so, but he warned me that it meant my whole history of purchases and warranties and any other claims would also disappear forever also, which didn’t matter to me, as I had nothing from them that was still under any kind of guarantee, or anything else that I could make a claim against them for. One good thing though, was I got a new three month free trial  of Amazon Prime, which I did cancel before I had to start paying for it.

Regards Nick.

[Andrew Johnston]

On Andrew Johnston Said:

Having considered leaving the forum it is interesting to note that clicking “Delete Account” gives a warning that all content will be irrevocably deleted. Presumably that means all posts will disappear, unlike previously where they remained but were tagged as “Former Member”?

Andrew

On Nicholas Farr Said:

Hi Andrew, yes I would say that everything you posted will disappear. When I couldn’t get into my Amazon account, because I had forgotten my password and the recover password code was sent to my old mobile phone, but because my new phone  number wasn’t in the system, it couldn’t be retrieved. Cutting a long story short, and after finally speaking to someone on the Amazon help line who knew what they were doing, said the only real way of getting a new account would be to delete my old one, which he could do if I requested him to do so, but he warned me that it meant my whole history of purchases and warranties and any other claims would also disappear forever also, which didn’t matter to me, as I had nothing from them that was still under any kind of guarantee, or anything else that I could make a claim against them for. One good thing though, was I got a new three month free trial  of Amazon Prime, which I did cancel before I had to start paying for it.

Regards Nick.

I believe there is the right to be forgotten etc (under GDPR??) so that may well be the case.
I see that Andrew has something like 280+ pages of replies to posts at (I think) 25 posts per page, as well as 3 pages of topics started.

You’re obviously an active member, who’s contributions are valued; why not stay on as a member, but bow out for a week or three until the forum’s new software has become more stable, and visiting is less stresful.

Bill

[Andrew Johnston]

On Andrew Johnston Said:

Having considered leaving the forum it is interesting to note that clicking “Delete Account” gives a warning that all content will be irrevocably deleted. Presumably that means all posts will disappear, unlike previously where they remained but were tagged as “Former Member”?

Andrew

I’d always understood that it was deliberately done that way previously to maintain the continuity of threads that the member was involved in (sometimes heavily). Perhaps the architects of this new site haven’t thought it through?

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

You could not delete yourself from the old forum, a few asked to be deleted but it did muck up threads when all you saw was “Former Member”

I’ve not tried it on here but have a feeling it may still leave the old posts and just remove your account and anything posted on the new system.

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

Two images posted … how many can you see ?

First a .png screenshot [drastically cropped to 874×865]
.

Just a fwiw (which may be obvious to all except me), the site presented both images (including the png) as jpg. So apparently it accepts a number of image formats then resizes* and converts them to jpgs.

* at least it did to one I inserted some days ago. It didn’t do that initially in the composition window but once it was finally posted it was resized. (It may have been cropped a little too perhaps to get the aspect ratio into line. Not sure about that).

My guess is you could throw any reasonable format at it in any reasonable size and it would handle it more or less. (My feeling is that it should resize but not crop … since cropping can change effective content).

[Peter GreeneParticipant @petergreene36336]

 

My guess is you could throw any reasonable format at it in any reasonable size and it would handle it more or less. (My feeling is that it should resize but not crop … since cropping can change effective content).

Please ignore … I was experimenting with drag-and-drop but apparently it isn’t working at all for me right now.

[John PurdyParticipant @johnpurdy78347]

Ignore, just to get rid of e-mail notifications.

[Peter Greene]

On Peter Greene Said:

On Michael Gilligan Said:

Two images posted … how many can you see ?

First a .png screenshot [drastically cropped to 874×865]
.

Just a fwiw (which may be obvious to all except me), the site presented both images (including the png) as jpg. …

That’s not altogether surprising, but it is interesting to know … thanks

MichaelG.

[Peter Greene]

On Peter Greene Said:

My guess is you could throw any reasonable format at it in any reasonable size and it would handle it more or less. (My feeling is that it should resize but not crop … since cropping can change effective content).

Playing around with this answered my own question: allowed formats JPG, PNG, GIF (not even BMP). Max file size 8 Mb.

Since some of my earlier screwup involved forgetting to push the <Insert Image> button before dragging and dropping, it raises the question (to me): Why should that be necessary?

Why couldn’t the software be written to allow us to simply d-and-d where we want to without telling “it” – “I am now going to insert an image”. Surely the very d-and-d act would tell it that?

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

On Peter Greene Said:

On Michael Gilligan Said:

Two images posted … how many can you see ?

First a .png screenshot [drastically cropped to 874×865]
.

Just a fwiw (which may be obvious to all except me), the site presented both images (including the png) as jpg. …

That’s not altogether surprising, but it is interesting to know … thanks

MichaelG.

Btw, Michael – absolutely not being picky (please believe) but I think it’s important in a discussion like this – did you actually mean “cropped” up there or resized?

To me “crop” means removing part of an image and no forum software should be doing that to make the image fit. If this site is doing so, that would be a big negative to me.

“Resize” is simply scaling the image to make it fit within the available space (or memory/storage constraint) which is what the site should be doing.

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

On JasonB Said

Am I expecting too much?

…

If I had negotiated the development contract … the answer would be emphatically NO

… but it rather depends who did.

MichaelG.

It is patently obvious that there could not have been a development contract because that would imply that actual professional developers were involved. Instead, given the results, one can only assume that this “forum” was put together by a group of high schoolers as a class project.

From the outset, it is clear that professionals were not involved. That they chose a tool so completely unsuited to running a reasonably sized forum is proof enough, but even more telling was the need to shut the site down for weeks to do so, something unimaginable these days.

Professional developers would have kept the old site up and running in parallel while developing the new site offline. And once the new site was complete and THOROUGHLY tested, and only then, should the old site have been shut down. At this time pre-tested scripts could have been used to transfer the database from the old site to the new, something that should have taken a few hours at most.

Instead from design to implementation this site is completely unsuited to task.
It screams amateurish at every click.

From the front page of the forum that shows nothing but a page of adverts until one scrolls down “below the line” thus breaking one of the cardinal rules in web design (and this on a 21″ monitor).

To the positively laid-back approach when loading pages, sometimes taking 10 or even 20 seconds, but more than enough to make browsing extremely unpleasant, not helped of course by the few seconds of unformatted text that flashes up on screen as new pages are viewed, even high-schoolers should know better.

As for the developers’ apparent inability to implement a useful “Latest activity” button, this speaks to a complete lack of competence that is only paralleled by the Elon Musk and Twitter/X disaster.

At this point trying to fix this site is like putting lipstick on a pig, a complete waste of time and effort without having a suitable foundation to build on. Management’s best recourse would be to fire the developers, demand a full refund if the developers actually had the audacity to charge, and start from scratch using professional developers and a suitable software platform.

Clive

 

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

I’m not techie enough to know why but if Google does manage to find something then the link it finds is the old url and not what it has become on this site so the page is not found.

The other thing is Google is simply not finding things that used to be here. I tried several options including typing as the old front page search did which should get Google looking in model-engineer.co.uk for “Jason’s Firefly” which was a popular thread and previously turned up lots of my images. Results now zero.

It is up the website developers to inform Google that URLs have moved. Google provides a mechanism to do so via a sitemap.
A relatively simple script should have been used to generate the sitemap listing the pages that are to be redirected.

Clive

 

 

[clivel]

Bump

On clivel Said:

On Michael Gilligan Said:

On JasonB Said

Am I expecting too much?

…

If I had negotiated the development contract … the answer would be emphatically NO

… but it rather depends who did.

MichaelG.

It is patently obvious that there could not have been a development contract because that would imply that actual professional developers were involved. Instead, given the results, one can only assume that this “forum” was put together by a group of high schoolers as a class project.

From the outset, it is clear that professionals were not involved. That they chose a tool so completely unsuited to running a reasonably sized forum is proof enough, but even more telling was the need to shut the site down for weeks to do so, something unimaginable these days.

Professional developers would have kept the old site up and running in parallel while developing the new site offline. And once the new site was complete and THOROUGHLY tested, and only then, should the old site have been shut down. At this time pre-tested scripts could have been used to transfer the database from the old site to the new, something that should have taken a few hours at most.

Instead from design to implementation this site is completely unsuited to task.
It screams amateurish at every click.

From the front page of the forum that shows nothing but a page of adverts until one scrolls down “below the line” thus breaking one of the cardinal rules in web design (and this on a 21″ monitor).

To the positively laid-back approach when loading pages, sometimes taking 10 or even 20 seconds, but more than enough to make browsing extremely unpleasant, not helped of course by the few seconds of unformatted text that flashes up on screen as new pages are viewed, even high-schoolers should know better.

As for the developers’ apparent inability to implement a useful “Latest activity” button, this speaks to a complete lack of competence that is only paralleled by the Elon Musk and Twitter/X disaster.

At this point trying to fix this site is like putting lipstick on a pig, a complete waste of time and effort without having a suitable foundation to build on. Management’s best recourse would be to fire the developers, demand a full refund if the developers actually had the audacity to charge, and start from scratch using professional developers and a suitable software platform.

Clive

 

 

[Andrew JohnstonParticipant @andrewjohnston13878]

Clive has eloquently stated what I have been thinking. I am amazed that the look and feel of the forum, such as colours and fonts, along with features and layout were not discussed and decided upon long before coding, let alone going live.

Andrew

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

He has summed it up rather well

I have certainly used the word “ameateur” a few times in e-mails. Early on when we got first sight of this I said it seemed more suited to a small club or group website than a forum with this amount of traffic and standing.

Layout and font were even worse when we got to look at things but still a long way to go if it is to be  auser friendly place. Not “latest posts” originally and what was intended wa sonly put up the day before going live.

Very little discussiion between Mortons and Active moderators, basically “this is what you are getting” rather than “what are your thoughts on this” or “what do you want to see”

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

Can’t recall this being mentioned before (I may well be wrong). I have noticed that sometimes when opening a post (old or new) that the first post is being split by the system to insert an advert. Doesn’t happen on every post but seems more likely if the 1st post is long with images. This is leaving what looks like a blank post then an ad then the remainder of the post. Screen grab below.

This is another annoying ‘feature’ of the new software.

John

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

It is something to do with what is entered into the topic description, if left blank you get what is shown in your screenshot. If filled in you get something more like the Test posts that I put on at the start.

We had similar on the old system but it was just a single line that appeared (or not) above the first post.

It was one of the first things I commented on when giving feedback.

[Graham MeekParticipant @grahammeek88282]

What Clive has written has been mentioned by several other people off post via private emails. Those others have also said the site is too complicated and that they have been put off by the whole experience.

I would also hazard that those who cobbled this together have no engineering background and know nothing of the fundamentals of our hobby, and thereby know nothing of the requirements.

If Mortons do not wake up and act soon this is going to be the end of this site.

It is clear that on this forum there are people with more experience of this type of thing than those who are supposed to be putting it right.

It would take a good man to admit this is not working and go back to the old site until such times as this site works PROPERLY.

Regards

Gray,

[Author]

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