New Forum Software

[admin]

I’m sure all of you have noticed that we switched forum software. We imported all of the old threads, posts, users, and attachments.

Please note that some threads may not look right (random [B] tags and such). We are working on improving our parser which converts our old forum software’s styling to this ones.

Also note that you may encounter a couple bugs. We are running a development version of the forum software for now, so that is to be expected.

Some new features:

• User Chat! You can now chat with users in real time
• Better spam filters!
• Markdown styling. No more weird styling formats. This new software uses markdown.

[sudburr]

Aha! Thanx Jbob. I swear I clicked on it before and it gave me a `you can not upvote your own posts’. I must have slipped onto the ^ voting symbol.

< edit >
… and the crowd goes wild.

[Joe Schmitt]

You can still edit a post. Click the three dots on the right of your post and click Edit.

[sudburr]

Okay, I’m now warming to the view style. I’ve set oldest > newest … and it is thankfully became a universal setting once I finished reading through every single thread I had already opened.

The top level topic and downstream topic screens I’m not so crazy about; but then I’m bypassing that altogether for reading by going straight to the unread instead.

I really, REALLY miss the ability to edit a post after posting.

[Wayne Workman]

I’ve gotten used to how the posts are organized.

I strongly dislike how search is performing.

[Tom Elliott]

@sudburr I agree that it’s a change and a large change at that.

What I love most about this forum over the old, beyond that we can keep updating it as it’s 100% free and opensource just like FOG is, is that it’s user customizable. We may setup defaults, but those defaults do NOT need to be what you must always follow.

I actually find the

A - Original post
z - Latest reply
y - reply before z
x - reply before y
..........

very much handy. Of course what I like isn’t what everyone is going to like. I enabled pagination simply because others are more comfortable with that style. The sorting is totally up to you, and even the pagination system is totally up to you.

[sudburr]

I’m going to blame the 3 day old migraine I’m trying to think through… yah, that’s it.

[sudburr]

I’m proving my own case. Okay, I found the sort oldest to newest. yay me. Now I can’t go back and remove my foot from my mouth that my initial reply induced.

Danger! Wil Robinson …

[sudburr]

Whoa… how do I edit an existing post of mine?

Don’t all cultures read top to bottom? I find reading bottom to top jarring and slow.

[sudburr]

I’m not entirely sold on this new software and its interface. I’m finding it cluttered.

My biggest peeve right now is the sorting.

Viewing a forum post with more than a couple of replies is tedious.

Instead of viewing a simple ascending chronological list of post and replies from top to bottom, eg:

A post
b reply
c reply
d reply
pagination (which I’ve turned off for my probile)
e reply
f reply

This new style of:

A post
z reply
y reply
x reply
w reply
pagination
A post
v reply
u reply
t reply
s reply etc…

Forcing the user to the bottom of the last page/post then rescrolling back up through the posts and backwards through the pages (if pagination is turned on) is time consuming. I’m puzzled why this particular wheel was reinvented instead of sticking with the simple ascending chronological.

[Wayne Workman]

@Trevelyan said:

After a day of using it, I actually really like it - so long as you can find a way to redirect old forum links for anyone who might have hardlinked to threads here!

What does the forum use now?

I know that I hard-linked a TON to old forum posts.

[Joe Schmitt]

Sorry about that, it would appear only a moderator can do that. (We’ve appointed a few to help out with this).

[Polii123]

@Jbob said:

If posting a problem / question with FOG, please click the down arrow next to Submit and click “Ask as question”. This will flag the thread as a question for us and put a status flag next to the title.

Just open a new thread, didn’t had any option to mark as a question. Don’t know if I’m blind or if there really is no option

[Joe Schmitt]

We are actually going to add old forum redirect this up coming week. This new forums runs on Nodebb

[Trevelyan]

After a day of using it, I actually really like it - so long as you can find a way to redirect old forum links for anyone who might have hardlinked to threads here!

What does the forum use now?

[Joe Schmitt]

If posting a problem / question with FOG, please click the down arrow next to Submit and click “Ask as question”. This will flag the thread as a question for us and put a status flag next to the title.

[Joe Schmitt]

The searching does work, though I do agree the algorithms could use some work. Luckily this forum software (and all of its plugins) are open source, so I’ll take a look at it later and see if I can’t improve it.

[Polii123]

What i noticed, is that the search is not working really well. If search “image size on server” i get every result matching one of these words. I tried diffrent search phrases, but the problem is the same.

[Tom Elliott]

@Les-Lambert said:

Thanks Tom, that was definitely a help. However, I believe the tutorial is still missing some info at the top. It starts with section c, no a or b, which if I remember correctly covered setting up the VM.

Am I missing something obvious?

I don’t know if they were there or not. It does seem a bit odd to leave off starting with letter C), but it also may be something very very simple.

I understand wanting to setup a VM and all, and I’ll see if I can figure out what happened.

[Les Lambert]

Thanks Tom, that was definitely a help. However, I believe the tutorial is still missing some info at the top. It starts with section c, no a or b, which if I remember correctly covered setting up the VM.

Am I missing something obvious?