New forum software

[AY Mod]

8 hours ago, JDW said:

Why has the ratings system been made harder to use?  What was wrong with the old unobtrusive and easy to click buttons at the bottom of each post? Hovering on the icon then sliding across to the right one seems like adding an extra step just for the sake of it to me.

That's as it came out of the box (with the addition of our categories) but I will review it in due course.

They were criticised by some when introduced but became indispensable, the software providers eventually brought them in as a feature and this was long before Facebook had such things.

[mullie]

Thanks Andy for all your hard work on what was clearly a massive and much needed job.

What has been great is seeing members posting to help others find content on what is a vast site. Yes it will take time to settle down so everyone simply needs some patience. If the screen is too bright turn it down on your PC, that is what I have to do, my latest phone even has a night time filter so check your settings.

Martyn

[AY Mod]

9 hours ago, uax6 said:

Being a luddite its going to take some getting used to this new look (The old site was second nature to look at, and easy to use, I'm hoping that this will become so in a few weeks time).

One thing that I miss already is the little 'top' button that was at the bottom of each page, scrolling up from the bottom of the page is tedious.

I'll be looking at the 'Top' solution.

It's worth noting that the previous incarnation was a long way from the standard off the shelf software, it had a lot of adaptations and additions based on our needs and eventually this software will be adapted to do what we want. There wasn't much point adding all the bells and whistles before going live in case there was any fundamental issues which required any core rebuilds.

[Miss Prism]

12 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

That has now been amended so you can opt out of receiving those notifications in your Notification Settings.

I do not have the image [in your and previous posts], and am struggling to correlate what I have available to me in my Notification Settings with the content of the image, so am at a loss as to what has been amended to enable opting out of receiving various types of notification.
 

This area is something I feel we will need a 'how-to' in due course.

 

[AY Mod]

4 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

I do not have the image [in your and previous posts], and am struggling to correlate what I have available to me in my Notification Settings with the content of the image, so am at a loss as to what has been amended to enable opting out of receiving various types of notification.
 

This area is something I feel we will need a 'how-to' in due course.

 

Any quoted content has a small arrow at the top right (it could do with being clearer and will be made so in due course when I have chance to look at style impacts) which takes you back to quoted material - in that case it leads to this post - https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/141839-new-forum-software/&page=11&tab=comments#comment-3453702

[Mikkel]

Miss P have you tried scrolling down the Notification Settings? The sliders are below the first section.

[Robin2]

9 hours ago, 57xx said:

Read. The. Thread. You are correct, IF it works, why fix it?  Answer -it DIDN'T work!  Unless you were happy with it's security flaws and hackers attaching it...

There is no need to change the user interface to deal with that sort of problem.

...R

[Miss Prism]

Thanks, Mikkel. Things are bit clearer now!!

 

[AY Mod]

3 minutes ago, Robin2 said:

There is no need to change the user interface to deal with that sort of problem.

With updated software which gives better resilience against security issues other features get updated to something more contemporary or have you still got buttons on your TV?

The old software is no longer supported for security issues by the developers, I should have updated it 18 months ago but retained it as long as feasible. Issues over the Christmas period meant it was essential the work was done now.

[Roger Best]

There will be many aspects of running a forum that we, the end users, are unaware of. At the end of the day it is Andy's call. Keep going Andy it will all sort itself out in due course. R-

[Miss Prism]

I have two comments:

1  Does the message really want to say "and posted in" ???  (reading and posting are distinct, so why are they locked together here??)

2  I have tried changing the 'time' option to 'only since my last visit', but most times it always wants to revert (in a new session) to the default 'past 365 days'. (Which is a pretty weird default, btw.) When changing this, I sometimes get "do you want to create a new stream?", and even if I say yes, the setting seems to stay on 'past 365 days', and I'm unclear what a new 'stream' is and whether a new 'stream' will risk losing an 'old stream'. Is this area not controlled by permanent cookies, or is something more complicated needed to change these filters?

 

[Kiwi]

24 minutes ago, Robin2 said:

There is no need to change the user interface to deal with that sort of problem.

...R

Sometimes I really really find myself wanting a “thumbs down” option .........

[AY Mod]

3 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

I have two comments:

1  Does the message really want to say "and posted in" ???  (reading and posting are distinct, so why are they locked together here??)

2  I have tried changing the 'time' option to 'only since my last visit', but most times it always wants to revert (in a new session) to the default 'past 365 days'. (Which is a pretty weird default, btw.) When changing this, I sometimes get "do you want to create a new stream?", and even if I say yes, the setting seems to stay on 'past 365 days', and I'm unclear what a new 'stream' is and whether a new 'stream' will risk losing an 'old stream'. Is this area not controlled by permanent cookies, or is something more complicated needed to change these filters?

 

You're getting into territory better targetted at the software developers. Good luck with that.

[Miss Prism]

6 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

You're getting into territory better targetted at the software developers. Good luck with that.

Jeez. I didn't realise the situation with the new software was that bad.

 

[micklner]

How do you actually simply read active topics as a headings as on the previous forum? I am getting pages and pages of individual posts regarding topics not the other way around ? I don't want to read everything related to topics of no interest to me.

This morning hardly any overnight posts , has thee been another shutdown ? 

 

thanks 

[AY Mod]

2 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

Jeez. I didn't realise the situation with the new software was that bad.

What do you mean by that? My comment meant that you are referring to core functions determined during the developers' build of the software and not something which is a user option to tinker with - it may possibly be editable but there's more important stuff to be looked at.

[DaveF]

 

A lot more of my photos have reappeared overnight, getting on for 30% are there now.

The index process is working slowly backwards through time.

As far as everything else goes I don't have any problems, I think that when everyone gets used to it we will soon forget what the previous version was like.

David

 

[Roger Best]

19 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

I have two comments:

1  Does the message really want to say "and posted in" ???  (reading and posting are distinct, so why are they locked together here??)

2  I have tried changing the 'time' option to 'only since my last visit', but most times it always wants to revert (in a new session) to the default 'past 365 days'. (Which is a pretty weird default, btw.) When changing this, I sometimes get "do you want to create a new stream?", and even if I say yes, the setting seems to stay on 'past 365 days', and I'm unclear what a new 'stream' is and whether a new 'stream' will risk losing an 'old stream'. Is this area not controlled by permanent cookies, or is something more complicated needed to change these filters?

 

If you look at the top of the screen there are two tabs BROWSE and ACTIVITY. Select ACTIVITY > MY ACTIVITY STREAMS > CREATE NEW ACTIVITY. When you save this with whatever settings you prefer you can just go back here, select that activity and your options as saved are utilised. We are all trying to find our way with this new format. Personally I like it. R-

Edited February 2, 2019 by Roger Best
Spelling error

[TheSignalEngineer]

7 minutes ago, micklner said:

How do you actually simply read active topics as a headings as on the previous forum? I am getting pages and pages of individual posts regarding topics not the other way around ? I don't want to read everything related to topics of no interest to me.

This morning hardly any overnight posts , has thee been another shutdown ? 

 

thanks 

I used to take five minutes over my first coffee of the day for a look through the new content page. Having visited the new site a couple of times yesterday I was scratching my head as to where to find things. Did eventually find my old attachments but was left wondering if at my age I have enough years left to be bothered learning it all. Think I'll crawl back to the cave and do some modelling instead.

[AY Mod]

2 minutes ago, DaveF said:

A lot more of my photos have reappeared overnight, getting on for 30% are there now.

The index process is working slowly backwards through time.

As far as everything else goes I don't have any problems, I think that when everyone gets used to it we will soon forget what the previous version was like.

David

I dropped by for a look at how the indexing was going in your topic as probably the best barometer there is for what's happening. As you say it's rebuilt the posts with images to over a year ago so yours (as a 4.5 year long topic) has gone back about 18 months now so hopefully it'll have done yours within 2-3 days. With the current site, as a whole, being 9.5 years old I'd estimate the indexing is likely to take over a week - and that's if it gets to looking at old topics that are rarely visited. Considering it had only managed to find four topics with the word Hornby in them in the first day (whilst offline) then it's definite progress.

[AY Mod]

10 hours ago, D869 said:

Thanks for all of the hard work Andy.

Apologies if this has already been covered (I couldnt find it though) but is there any reason why some people's avatars just show up as a letter in a circle and others seem to have kept their avatars?

Is it a temporary thing that will sort itself out or do us now avatar-less folks need to do something?

Regards, Andy

I honestly don't know if it will pick them up - no harm in uploading a fresh avatar.

[AY Mod]

12 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Feedback: if there is one really annoying feature, it is the inclusion of notification of 'likes' etc in the 'all activity' ticker.

While 'likes' are an important part of RMWeb, I struggle to imagine that we all want to know about all of them.

I don't disagree with the perspective but as you've found it's configurable to suit your tastes. However whilst looking at 'All Activity' I noticed one of my friends had 'liked' something I hadn't heard of and knowing his tastes I found a very nice little layout underway I would have otherwise missed.

[chris p bacon]

2 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

one of my friends

I think a few have crossed you off their xmas card list 

[AY Mod]

1 minute ago, chris p bacon said:

I think a few have crossed you off their xmas card list 

Face? Bovvered?

[Joseph_Pestell]

We were offline yesterday so I am coming to this completely new.

I freely admit to not liking a lot of IT upgrades. Often it seems that the software developers are making work for themselves by mending things that are not broken.

But Andy Y has clearly explained the need for this particular change, so I will just have to get on with it.