Lazarus Posted February 14, 2013 Share Posted February 14, 2013 A major software upgrade was performed on the forums today. We're putting together an effort to make these forum are little more contemporary and hip by taking advantage of all the latest technologies. I'm looking forward to putting some additional energy into this place and maybe - just maybe - have it become a lively place again. I'll be posting more details tomorrow - as it is kind of late in my part of the world. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus Posted February 14, 2013 Author Share Posted February 14, 2013 Alright. So, after a much required upgrade, here's what is different. New interface - Looks spiffy and modern! A mobile interface - Full access to the forums from your smart phone or tablet. Spam deterrents - Keeping out spammers is a high priority. Link Sharing - easily share links from these forums to Facebook, Twitter and more.. Topic preview - preview the first few lines of a topic without loading the entire topic. Media embedding - easier to post YouTube movies and other media into posts. Social media integration. Profile customization - new features designed to make your profile page more interactive. Best Answer - This feature enables the topic starter (when allowed) and moderators to mark a post as the best answer. Things we lost. The individual forum skins. We'll have to work on developing things from scratch now. It appears that some Greek text hasn't made it over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HellasHab Posted February 15, 2013 Share Posted February 15, 2013 Great work Lazarus, I think the new design is awesome! I like the new interface and the avatars. Is there any way to change the skin, the current one is a bit bland and all the text is the same which makes it a bit difficult to read. It would be nice if you could bold the titles of each forum, that would help distinguish one section from the other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus Posted February 15, 2013 Author Share Posted February 15, 2013 Sure, the skins can change to reflect each forum's idiosynchracies. However, it's a time consuming process and I have no help on the matter. So, it will have to wait until we ensure that everything else is running smoothly. Unless some member volunteer knows how to work things and offers to help with the process. In terms of forum titles, I'm afraid I need a little more clarification. Which view? Index or Forum view? Can you give me a link so I have a point of reference? Just to clarify. Forum titles become bold when there are unread posts in the particular forum (that's a new feature). If you hover on the icon to the left of a bold forum title, you will see that you can mark a particular forum as 'read'. Doing so turns the forum title into plain (non-bold) text. Also, a topic title is bold when it contains an upread post. Clicking on the icon on the left or the title takes you to the first unread post. One can preview a topic by selecting the 'preview button' that appears when one hover over the white space are between the topic title and number of replies. Then, one gets to preview the first and last posts of the topic. On the same subject, an additional feature that we can examine is using colored topic titles. Take a look here what I mean: Topic - Bonehead Plays. My only problem with that would be the forum becoming too colorful, at the point where it borderlines ugly. It is something to talk about. Let's get the other mods in on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HellasHab Posted February 15, 2013 Share Posted February 15, 2013 In terms of forum titles, I'm afraid I need a little more clarification. Which view? Index or Forum view? Can you give me a link so I have a point of reference? I am referring to the index view (http://forums.phantis.com/), the one that lists all the forums. When you view this page, without having logged in, the text is all plain. When you login, the forum titles are all bolded which makes it much easier to distinguish between sections. Its not really a major problem just something I noticed that makes viewing the forum (at least for me) a bit frustrating. Perhaps its the font that is the problem, I have no problems reading the text on the main Phantis page- is that the same font type as the one used on the forum?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grk101 Posted February 16, 2013 Share Posted February 16, 2013 I would also like to say great work! The new forum look is very nice. The only thing I would suggest is maybe a bit more differentiation between the pinned topics and the rest of the topics. Maybe a bold line under the last pinned topic? Right now they sort of jumble together. It is not a big issue though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanadezos Posted February 18, 2013 Share Posted February 18, 2013 Great work Lazarus! Definitely looks a lot nicer! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus Posted February 18, 2013 Author Share Posted February 18, 2013 The new forum look is very nice. The only thing I would suggest is maybe a bit more differentiation between the pinned topics and the rest of the topics. Maybe a bold line under the last pinned topic? Right now they sort of jumble together.There is a sort option on the top bar of the forum list. I am including a screen capture of what I see - just to make sure we're looking at the same list. The pinned topics have a green icon with the word "PINNED". In my view (the one I uploaded) they are sorted by "Recently Updated". The other options are "Start Date", Most Replies", "Most Viewed", "Custom", "Show un/answered" I would sincerely hope using one of these options would be good enough for sorting. I believe that way it is now is that topics than contain unread posts should normally appear with a bold headline. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grk101 Posted February 18, 2013 Share Posted February 18, 2013 Yeah, I see them as pinned with a green icon. I guess I was just used to the pinned topics being in sort of a seperate box/different color background in the old forum design. It is not a big deal like I said. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HellasHab Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 Lazarus, what time zone is the forum set to?! I noticed that when I am logged in the time displays correctly but when I am logged off the time is off by 5 hours?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus Posted February 19, 2013 Author Share Posted February 19, 2013 Good catch HellasHab! The server was set to GMT. I changed the setting to reflect the server location, which is GMT -5 (Eastern Time US & Canada). Should be good now. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
athinaios Posted February 23, 2013 Share Posted February 23, 2013 The more I use it the more I like it. The "sign in" button should be bigger. And somehow my Last Pass doesn't log me in automatically. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus Posted February 24, 2013 Author Share Posted February 24, 2013 If you are having problems with the site not retaining your log in information over a period of time, try clearing your cookies. And I'm not talking about those chocolate chip cookies stashed in your cupboard (second from the right). :) Remove all cookies with site 'clubs.phantis.com' and 'forums.phantis.com' and try logging in again. In terms of the 'sign in' button. It seems that all registered users are able to find it... :o Not everything can be big and bold. Maybe you're getting older Athinaios and your eyesight is failing you?? :whistle: Seriously now. The login/logout button does not need to be prominent. It's a one time thing. Once you see where it is, it becomes a secondary element. Anything bigger would make it a distraction - and for no reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
athinaios Posted February 26, 2013 Share Posted February 26, 2013 First, I try to replenish those cookies, because how can a man work without coffee and snacks??I use Firefox and set to clear cookies after closing the browser. I'll do a manual clear again.Anyway, these are not big problems. I see a lot better functionality with the new look. Now, did you tell the mods about the new rule?........ Hats are now part of the required attire before they're given the keys to the dungeon (or, whereever you keep the stashed goodies)... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grk101 Posted February 28, 2013 Share Posted February 28, 2013 I noticed that when I tried to "like" a post, I get a message saying: An error occurred You have reached your quota of positive votes for the day Is the quota set to 0 or something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus Posted February 28, 2013 Author Share Posted February 28, 2013 Is the quota set to 0 or something? Oops! That is exactly right. I've changed that. Let me know if it works OK now. Thanks for catching this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grk101 Posted February 28, 2013 Share Posted February 28, 2013 Yep, all is working fine now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grk101 Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 What is up with the frequent Driver Error messages when trying to visit the forum? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus Posted November 25, 2013 Author Share Posted November 25, 2013 Haven't pinpointed to exact problems yet. Troubleshooting different areas, ranging from Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to moving the database to a different MySQL server (this was the most recent attempt to fix). We'll see how it goes..... I'm sorry to inconvenience you, but unfortunately our resources are limited. We have to go one step at a time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genome Posted November 27, 2013 Share Posted November 27, 2013 Had the same thing going on at the same time as Grk101's post... Don't know if that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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