The Big Forum jump

the sort options on member list i think are usful they help mods spot spammers or at less they help me.

edit

thats is a asumming that mods get transferd and the new auto tools dont make us redundent i will be impessed if they do.

i am a little confused. yes even more than usual - you can say it.

will there sort of still be a forum type thing that happens? im also worried about the communial modding. (and no its not because i will become powerless! never i tell you! never!!! ) its that spammers will just basically click EVERYTHING to peedle of the admins who then have to look through them all.

i have had a quick butchers at the site and it is looking shiny and sparkely

keep up the good work L and D!

The existing forums being ported over to the new system has been our highest priority. Unfortunately, the new system doesn't come out-of-the-box options as phpBB does, so we've been working on adding the necessary widgets to get the same functionality.

About the userlist: the new system has a searchable userlist, sortable by any column, I believe, along with rather a battery of anti-spam, anti-harasser type widgets.

I was very leery of this system for some time, staunchly defending phpBB, but in the end, after evaluating it and laying with it and arguing about it for a long time, it's won me round, despite my intense annoyance at being proven wrong. It's done such a good job at winning me round, that I'm actually feeling very enthusiastic and impatient about it.

Well whattya know? Dewi's human! Who'd ever thought that?

Lee and Dewi,

I'm not paranoid or anything but I frequently check the forum during the week whilst I am at work for various reasons.

1) Ponder is always good for a laugh while I am at work
2) I find that if I don't check the forum once a day (despite the fact I cannot post in the games I play whilst at work), I miss things that could be important later on.
3) Sometimes, especially on Friday afternoons when things are quiet, I can't be stuffed working.

The way I check whether I am going to miss anything is to look for those little yellow flashing crescent moons that indicate there is something there I have not read. Don't change them they are VERY useful. BUT...

It worries me that when there is 4000+ members with 400+ members posting something everyday, how am I going to find out what is important?
There has been mention of ignore tools - This would be cool - no offense MC but I don't need to know about how to get Thud to work on a temperamental Apple computer. But I'm anal retentive enough to HAVE TO FIND OUT WHAT THAT FLASHING MOON MEANS. So some ignore's are obvious, some however are less obvious. What tools are we getting to select/deselect ignore/neva ignore etc etc etc.

Give us details Lee/Dewi - Curious minds want to know.

Windle

WP (and all), there's cool stuff there to flag up content in various ways. I hope Dewi will be able to take a few minutes time from his 25 hour per-day to-do list he has to describe a few. Sadly (or happily in my case as been looking forward to it all year! ) I'm off to Greenbelt in a few minutes and will back late Mon nite. We'll prob flip the forum the next day.

We're working on a couple of shiny widgets we feel should be there but the tbottom line is we will ba able to scale the site much more effectively by uniting everything under one(ish) system.

Do keep the feedback coming!

Lee

Teeny tiny: I am using Lifecod right now because, for whatever reason, whatisreal scrolls very jerkily for me since the last server switch. The only thing I miss from whatisreal is the visible sign of received PMs ("You have a new message"). There's no similar indication in Lifecod. The PM button in the new forum could be highlighted to show there's a new PM - but no big deal, for sure.

Speaking of which, I have been having PM trouble for a while. Many PMs don't leave my outbox at all. I have no idea what to attribute that to, and I don't like to complain, but since you asked...

So do I, for the same reason. Is Lifecod available after the migration, because I can't seem to find it now?

LifeCod and WhatisReal are both phpBB skins, and porting them to the new system would be as complicated as getting a dwarf in a troll-suit,

Flashing moons mean stuff that got lots of replies, I think. Coloured moons is stuff you haven't read, but I might have those the wrong way round.

For the time being, we're going for the same look-n-feel as the website as a skin for the new forums, and will be listening to what people say so we can figure out what options people need. So if you need stuff, please scream! This thread is a good place to scream in, too. See, we got insulated walls and stuff in specially

Hrm - modules we added... nothing you don't have in phpBB already in fact: that's what we've been aiming at: making it so you feel at home in the new system and it doesn't feel a radical usability shift.

No ignore tools yet, sorry! Though we have behind the scenes features like automated spam-spotting and stuff,

how big is this jump going to be? is it like 30cm or 2 meters are infact several kilometers? this is the question i know alot of people would like answering.

possibly light years?

For us, behind the scenes, it should be a "giant leap for adminkind".

For regular users, we are not planning on handing out any seven-league boots or anything (we don't want to be responsible for the resulting mess THAT would cause!). It should, we hope, be just a "small step in the right direction" rather than a leap. All existing posts should still be there, all features you are used to should still be there, but the look and feel will be different a bit. Stuff like that.

Priority in making it "as much like the old system as we can" will be given to those features that people scream about.

another question (sorry!)

how long will theis jump take? will the site be down seconds/minutes or even hours? i hope its not hours

I'm Baaaaack!!!!

Anyway, to answer your qeustion P, we'll lock the existing forums; it should take 15 or so minutes to transfer them to the new database, insert some re-direct scripts and jobs done. Hoalf-hour max (he says, knocking on every available wooden surface! )

Cool thing is your existing usernames and passwords will work as always
(have I said that already? Dunno. It's late and I have to finally sleep....)

Sorry Chaps but i don't know whats happened: something has gone wrong or i have to say i am not too impressed with the new site. this is not me being nasty or poking holes i hope you understand - its just this site is ahem...very good. sorry!

it maybe that you are not finsished tinkering L and D, if so please hit me over the head and tell me to shut up but i am a little concenered.

Many regards, Ponder

----

did you ever see a llama kiss a llama on the llama, llama's llama tastes of llama, llama llama DUCK!

Me for Arch-chancellor!

I would really really appreciate _any_ other skin! I hate (dislike strongly ) the website design, but since I only visit the forums anyways I could just ignore that, until now...

Perhaps you could start by having the background scroll with the rest of the content, and then as a small second step, hire a designer to overhaul the website completely .

Not really useful feedback, I know, but I had to say it. Now I'll go back to my corner and lurk the forums.

Ciao, Mc!

Initial impressions are a bit mixed, for me - tho I'm sure that's largely down to the fact that I've used forums based on phpBB for so long that I know it very well, whereas this I need to learn from scratch.

Couple of things that particularly stand out, tho:
1) Avatars have gone
2) It's quite difficult to go up and down through the forum trees. Especially if you're reading a topic, you can't get back to the flat view of the forum that the topic is posted in without going via the flat view of all the forums (i.e. you have to click on "The Thud Forums" link in the top right navigation, then you can go to the forum you were in). This is obviously slower than it was, especially given that you'll probably be at the bottom of a page when you decide you want to go back, and therefore need to scroll up first, too. I do see that there is a link back to the forum you're in, in the same place as under phpBB, but that takes you to a view with the first bits of text from much fewer topics, which at the very least I'll need to get used to.
3) No "go to last post" link by the topic when you do get that flat view
4) No access to user lists/statistics
5) I'm not sure whether BBcode tags are working - the last word in my sig, for example, should be italic.
6) Regardless of how many empty lines you put between paragraphs, it always puts only one in - when I wrote this there was no gap between my numbered points, but two gaps between the last line and my name, but in preview there's a single blank line between all of them.

On the plus side, I do like having the five last-posted-to topics in the nav bar on the right.

Mr Scrub

_______________
"LOOKS PERFECTLY LOGICAL TO ME"

actually chaps on further looking at settings and such like i have to say i am liking it more!

the only thing that bugs me is not being able to navigate as well as before and not being able to go back to flat view of the forum easily. I do very much like the idea of the 5 active forum badgers on the RHS.

Also - you cannot tell who is online at the moment! that would be nice as well.

Plus i have noticed - some people have dissapeared!!! and also avatars have jiggered off i do hope you are still working on these so i will shut up now

ta, Ponder

----
did you ever see a llama kiss a llama on the llama, llama's llama tastes of llama, llama llama DUCK!

Me for Arch-chancellor!

Hrm... like I said mostly we're aiming to get stuff working as it WAS, before we add the shinies. Feedback will be really, really valuable here, so thank you VERY much for what you've given so far! In particular here, I'd like to single out Mr Scrub for some of the best feedback we've had yet, on any subject!

Is there anything you love about these new forums? Which bit? Why?
Anything you hate? Which bit? Why?
Anything we broke?

Saying you "love" or "hate" the new system isn't that helpful on its own: we need to know *which* part(s) of it you feel that way about, and *why*. This gives us specifics to work with when adding features, designing alternate user skins, etc.

_Known bugs:_
* There are two "quote" buttons below posts, but only the rightmost one works. This is a shame, because the leftmost one would be cooler... if it worked.
* Your posts may now be autodetected as spam. We got three false positives last night, and need to "train" the system to do a better job. Posts that this happens to are hidden until we unlock them.
* People who already existed as site members are now listed as "Anonymous" in the old posts. This is a bit of a pain, and I will see if I can find a way to fix it. I think it really only affects admins, though (Me, Lee, OB).
* Quotes seem to not display correctly. They should be promoted to divs, but I think the bbcode filter is removing the quote tags before that happens.
* BBCode in sigs needs testing (Mr Scrub).
* Empty lines you put between paragraphs are stripped (our nl2br filter seems to be being skipped) (Mr Scrub) (what input style were you using?).
* Single linebreaks between lines are being interpreted as paragraph breaks (Mr Scrub).
* No "most recent post" by forum titles (Mr Scrub)
* No "who is online" (MrScrub).
* We should give up our day jobs as web designers and get some *real* designers in to do the job (Mc).
_New items_
* :!: and :shock: smileys missing.
* People not using textile input, who quote textile users, come out funny.
* Forums are sorted oldest first (Ponder, OB)
* profile page has "don't accept PMs" as default (Ponder)
* No list of smileys (Vanceone)
* No clickable bbcode buttons (Vanceone)
* Newly registered users are not autoregistered with the online game (Ponder)
* "input format" selection is not remembered between posts (Ponder) (If I understood right, that is)
* Profile options lack explanation, and stuff that only admins would care about should be hidden, eg Civicrm (Magrat)
* Option to "stay logged in forever"? (Magrat) (This is one of those cases where usability should probably take precedence over security, so long as a second login is required whenever money comes into play).
* Can't change post order if are not logged in (Mc)
* *[ b ]* and _[ i ]_ tags do not work. (Mr Scrub)
_Newer items_
* Could do with more finegrained breadcrumbs (Mr Scrub)
* "recent comments"/"who's online" blocks are only visible when viewing a thread (Magrat, Mr Scrub)
* #new anchor tag is missing in topics, so "go to last post" fails (Mr Scrub)
* #comment-NNNN anchor tag is missing, too (Mr Scrub)
* Can't view the whole thread you are replying to when replying, just the specific post you are replying to (Windle Poons)
* Ability to "Mark all as read" is missing (Windle Poons)
* Subscribing to specific threads is not possible (Windle Poons)
* Top-corner link to "home" needed (Magrat)
* Post and comment timestamping needed (Mr Scrub)
* Need a visual indication of which posts are stickied (Mr Scrub)
* Sigs are now both autoappended and added into the textarea: the latter should be prevented (Mr Scrub)

_Administrative Grumbles_
(This list is because I intend to either submit these as bug reports, or to write patches to fix them.)
* The filter management interface is Just Plain Disgusting. The number of things you have to click on to get the filters working right for everyone is incredible, the likelihood of getting it all wrong for at least one class of user is practically 100% and there is no decent overview page where you can compare everyone's filters. If ever I saw an input system in need of Javascript assistance, it is this one.
* Even then, the whole "filters are applied to output, not input" thing is badly broken, and results in cockups when people quote posts that were created for a different input method. I'm not even sure that's fixable without writing reverse filters for each filter.
* The smiley management system is almost as bad. The smiley summary list is not sortable by any of the columns, it doesn't show any of the important fields like "standalone", there is no "clone" option, and adding a smiley is dome on a separate page. So cloning involves editing an existing smiley in one tab, adding a new one in another tab, and cut-pasting between them. Then the "clone" is at the bottom of the list, with no way to place it next to the near-identical clone entry.

_Things that irritate me personally:_
* Whatever page you are on, the first post of the thread is always at the top of the page.
* There is no option to turn off smiley interpolation for a post.

_Fixed since the change:_
* Default post ordering made sane.
* Added breadcrumbs
* Some user profile fields were not editable.
* Avatars were missing at the moment.
* Cleaned up and clarified the default menu options (Nice work Lee!)
* Comments are now given equal priority to posts prettymuch everywhere we can.
* Fixed all 25 missing or incorrect smileys. A further 15 smileys or aliases for existing smileys have been added.
* Fixed the smileys (for real this time!)
* Comments are sorted as newest-first. Comment-sorting dropdowns have now been added at the top of the comments, so you can set your own sorting preference. We still need to change the default to oldest-first, though: newest first is just unintuitive to regular forum readers, and just feels wrong with tree view.
* Forum URLs are different. Old-style URLs will continue to work, thanks to some scripty magic. So you don't *have* to change your links on your websites, but it's a good idea.
* Fixed OB's problem "Replies tend to go inline, instead of under the post you are replying to."
* Larger font for poster names.

_Known new coolnesses:_
* No access to the user list. This is an anti-spam feature, and won't be restored without good reason.
* You can subscribe to the forum on your user settings page and get updates whenever anyone posts. This is something I really wanted in the last forums: just subscribing to a single thread wasn't good enough!
* The "textile" input format (not sure if it's visible to everyone?) is rather sexy.
* You now have the power to report spammers, and we have auto-spam-filtering in.
* Five most recently-posted-to topics in box on right.

1. yes! they are maninly my narks to! but like i said after a bit of tinkering this site is looking rather splendid now

2. a very sexy feature indeed.

-

i also have issues with the profile page - it has "accept PMs" automatically un checked, this may cause confusion in the future i feel if people do not realise this - unless its just my account of course.

also - how do you auto matically make the "input format" button highlight when composing posts???

some further thoughts to muse on

Bravo, guys. We are making a new start here, and I hope it will do everything you want in the end. Of course, right now it doesn't. Here are a few thoughts.

1) I used to leave myself logged in all the time. Doesn't seem to be an option now, or am I missing something?

2) If I leave it "newest post first", the default, the original post is at the top (I know you're planning to change that), but I still don't have newest post first after that. Right now it's ordered by days, newest post first, but within today, the oldest post is first. ?

3) I find many of the same things irksome that Mr S has pointed out, so I won't repeat. One thing though is that I used to go to the last page in the postings first (since they were first post first) by using the links for each page within a thread. No more links like that, but I can imagine that's because of having options about the order of posts. Perhaps what we will use instead is the "go to last post" button you're talking about.

4) Many options we have now are gibberish to me, and unexplained. What is this thing in my profile called "CiviCRM"? No idea. The formatting options for posting, likewise, are unknown to me mostly. Perhaps if one haunts forums all over the web one knows these things and I should just get on the bus, but where's the bus stop?

These are just a few things. No doubt more will pop up.

Keep up the good work! Once more into the breach, dear friends...

Interesting.... still several bugs to work out, as is usual (oh, how well I know). I'm sort of intrigued by the lack of a mini-editor (having buttons to auto bold, etc)--the toolbar. Does straight html work now? That seems like a disaster waiting to happen. What kinds of bbcode is available? Can tags be added? And where, exactly, is the list of smilies to add?

I also have noticed the conversion of people into "anonymous" in the moved posts. I hope I'm not one of them. Also, the sorting of posts or comments is messy, as has been pointed out. Hope that clears up soon.

Now, unless I'm just unlucky on the mac version, this seems a huge step back--I don't see any smilies to insert, or formatting options. Yes, I know bbcode, but it's not there automatically for a new user. It's just a box to type in. I hope this is just a bug?

Plus replies tend to go inline, instead of under the post you are replying to.

Major problem to me though is that all topics in Forum Thud are sorted oldest first. All ongoing games are way waaay down in other pages, while an incompleted nov 05 game is on top.

And who the hells is that Anonymous idiot that keeps telling people to check his nonexistent signature for a site we cannot seem to find?

"What a mess the world is in... The meek shall inherit the world it is said. What have those poor people done to deserve that?
Captain Vimes, Feet of Clay

please visit www.oograhboike.com

If you're not logged in, you cannot change the way you view the postings from threaded (and not being able to find new posts) to flat. Is this some cookie I should have accepted?

very sorry again - it appears all i am doing at the moment is compaining.

but i have found that when you go onto a forum the topics are arranged oldest first. Even when i click on the sort button to change this the effects are only temporary - so when i return to the forum they are back to oldest first.

Is this a cookie issue or are other people finding this problem?

many apologies again

This is a bit of an odd one. because it doesn't seem to treat the sig as any different to the rest of the post - under phpBB the sig was attached after you'd finished your post, with a line of underscores above it. Now, when I do a normal reply I get the text of my sig automatically entered as a line of text in the comment box. I then write what I want to say above it (and in a couple of posts I've added a row of _________ but I think I'll stop that as it will only look messy when and if that's fixed).
Thus it shouldn't be BBcode in sigs specifically that's difficult, yet I know that quote & url tags work - maybe it's just the [ i ] tag that I use in my sig?

time passes

a quick check suggests that the [ i ] and [ b ] tags dont seem to work in normal text (this should be bold, and this should be italic).

default - Filtered HTML. Could this in fact be the cause of my BBcode problems as well? (I'll do another experiment on that in a moment).
Tho it's now looking even more complicated - most of the time, after a quote all the empty lines are stripped out, with no gap at all left.

Yes, I wasn't talking about the links once you're in a thread, but from within the forum. (See this screenshot from the old forums)

Id agree on these

Ok, point taken - as long as it can still be used by admins when they need to chase pagerank chumps, all will be well.

One more thing I've just noticed - when you're writing a post the box where you can pick smilies isn't available (so you have to know the code for each smiley, rather than picking the image you want)

Think that's it for now
Mr Scrub

I love you ALL! Ponder, complaining is NOT bad, complaining is GOOD, especially when it's got actual reasons listed and stuff like you did. VanceOne, your comment was listed as spam, I'm gonna whack the spamfilter with a stick.

More bugginess added to my original bug list then. I'll remove 'em as I fix 'em.

WE LOVE YOU TO!!!!!!!!!

in a non romantic way i do hope you undersatnd

Dewi might have mentioned(?) but I've been away, first at Greenbelt then at Wadfest somewhere near northern Norway (or at least the trip outta London seemed that far! ) this past weekend, and today off to Somerset for a week. My poor car is so tired... Bit on the blogs on Wadfest later on.... Anyway, I say all that to say we have taken a bit of time to sort out a couple of things. You might notice the post-order is oldest-to-newest by default now, due to popular demand. If you want it newest-to-oldest, the clicky things are there at the top and the bottom of the page to change it and set it for your self. The site should remember for you when you login again.

Pagerank chumps have had their day; there's no reason for them to join as their URLs don't show up anymore unless they can be asked to actually make the effort to post. A few people had that kind of initiative on the previous forum but it was so much easier for them to just cadge pagerank by listing a URL. Unfortunately (for them), everyone logged in has the power to whack-a-spammer so have fun nixing people who post just to get their dodgy URLs listed. Please do be patient with us as the site tries to get to them first, but, in its enthusiasm, has had a few false positives so far.

Logins: It's a community site so the best features are there for the community (can't post anonymously, can't sort content anonymously, etc.). Joining is free (unlike some other Discworld forums I know of out there) and all major, modern browsers will auto-log-you-in now so we can't really find a motivation to change that. Perhaps someone has thought of a bit of persychology we haven't in which case we're all ears

Website look/design: this is my area (Dewi's well-busy with the rocket science) and I was mildly suspicious when we got universally hearty approval of the existing look. Perhaps folk were being ironic . nevertheless, one of the nice features of the mgt software is that we can put up a choice of themes to use. Once we get some urgent stuff bedded down we can turn our hands to crafting a suitably alternative look and layout for those who aren't happy with this effort. What would really be grand would be being pointed to an existing site, pictures, or a layout that is close to what the site could/should look like, or even some (shudder, am I, as a designer, actually saying the word....)advice(!) on the direction the design might take. To paraphrase Dewi: saying it's no good is one thing but it's more helpful if we had an idea of what people's opinion of a good layout would be

Stay tuned though; more cool stuff coming up.....

Hi, Lee! Welcome back! Hope it was nice.

I have a question and one of my teeny-tiny suggestions:

I am using Firefox 1.5.0.6. Not modern enough? It's not logging me in. It remembers my name and you-know-what, but it doesn't log me in. It did on the old site...am I doing something wrong?

I would find it handy if the poster's name was at least as large as the name of their post. Sometimes I'm looking for a particular comment I remember from a particular someone, and that would help.

I'm sure you're having a nice week. See you when you come back!

By popular demand??!! Seriously?! So there's actual people out there who like to see the same incomplete game over and over again when they log in, and then like to search for their ongoing games every time? Weird...
How popular was this demand? Is there any chance of unpopularising it, by popularising another, like newest-to-oldest? And how many demands would that take?

Seriously though, I think most of us would like the newest-to-oldest approach. The "active forum topics" over there --> is a great help, but I'm guessing that five won't be enough later on.

Oh, and welcome back Lee, and have fun again .

Happy Thudding!

Sorry for the misunderstanding on browsers, my mistake. I should've said modern Browsers (IE5+, FF/Mozilla, Opera, Safari/KHTML, etc. pretty much everything coded since 2000AD) will save your username and password to be able to login with one click. We can look into the "stay logged in" issue but we would want to disable this for Druids and admins (and, really, moderators) as a security risk. Perhaps we can look at it once we get the necessities sorted out?

I've made the "Submitted by" name bigger. It's not asd big as the title (which is an HTML heading so normally supposed to be quite a bit larger than submitted-by text which is usually smaller than normal, but it is bigger and more easily read. I hope that's OK for most folk?

Please, please keep the feedback coming and I;ll try to remember all we're doing and document here on the forums.

Thanks to all well-wishers-- Greenbelt was lotsa fun! And you should see Mr Scrub's hair! My God it's otherworldly (but very cool!) to understate it almost completely! :-0

- Lee

Since you've been gone (oh, how long it's been!) I have gotten used to the one-click login. I suspect (not knowing anything) that "stay logged in" involves perhaps a cookie coming from you, and I can see why you might not want to get involved with that. It's certainly not very important.

Well, since you asked, Oograh is quite right about "newest to oldest," you know.

No fair! Where's the picture? Which brings up the question of "create content." What's the notion, and how do you use it? How about creating some content out of Mr S's hair so we can all see it?

Couple more things popping up in my mind
- A timestamp on posts seems a wise idea
- some way of telling which posts are stickies/anouncements. whether that's using an icon, as was the case on the old forum, or a different colour, or what is up to you
- pleased to see the sigs being added to the bottom again now without needing to appear in the box where you write your comment. Tho they currently do appear there as well, so can easily end up appearing twice, if that makes sense.

And I think it's probably best if I leave the hair up to your imagination, Magrat

Mr Scrub

erm, am i supposed to be able to put up an avatar, as I haven't paid? I'll take it off if the answer's no

i just made this comment, am trying again, because was reported as spam (???) and hey, this may end up as spam too - sorry either way. but how come i can use an avatar now, when i haven't paid? i'm poised to take it off, if i shouldn't have done that

I agree with Oograh Boike--the post order is nuts. It should be newest to oldest, like any other forum system. What I suspect happened is people were confusing comment replies or thread posts, which it does make sense to be oldest to newest. I know that when I read a topic, the order is oldest first, newest last--so I can read along a timeline. But in the actual forum view, I want newest topics first.

I think people mixed that up in their phraseology.

HI All,

Sorry a little work imposed break was necessary.

Hmm Comments... Ready??

1)I liked being able to look back over what other people said when posting a reply. Can't seem to be able to do that anymore, just the previous post.

2) Agree with OB et al, Post order is nuts.

3) Maybe it was just a glitch...but the site wouldn't let me into the on-line game when I clicked the "Play thud Online" link in the top right hand corner...said Access Denied. I worked around it since I had the online game in my history game.thudgame.com was this wrong? is it only paying customers who get access to the on-line game or what?

4)I liked the option "Mark all as read" in the previous incarnation, I seemed to have lost this.

I'm sure there is more but brain is squishy and I have to get back to the presentation I'm giving next week.

Windle

5) It also doesn't appear to tell me when there are new posts in the threads I am interested in now that I have looked for them. I have to open it up and move to the end of the thread to find new posts - not identified by the system.

P.S. I appear to be spam

Errm, by request of a lot of people we changed the defult posting order. This doesn't in any way mean anyone has to accept this as a good thing, or even sane . If one notices at the top of a thread below the first post of a topic, and at the bottom of the page, there are three drop-down form-boxes called "Comment Viewing Options". The middle one changes the post order newest/oldest sequence to be the one you prefer and a quick check shows this remains the preference throughout the site, not just on that thread.

Sorry for not pointing this out first. It's hard to remember all the various features, particularly the ones that are important to other people that we take for granted as we've been using them for so long so keep that feedback coming; particularly negative feedback-- that way we know what to do something about

Right then. That's good. Thanks.

Now what we need is for the threads within the forums also to be listed "newest activity to oldest acitvity," with the sticky ones at the top (with notes saying sticky). This is how we had it on the old forum, and I do prefer to open the Thudding Drum and see at a glance which threads have been recently posted to, rather than page to the end to find that out. And if I'm not mistaken (everyone knows how easily I could be), this ordering does not currently have any user options to it.

I think this was included in OB's remark about having to paw through completed games to find your own active ones. Yes?

[quote=Magrat]Right then. That's good. Thanks.[/quote]

Ta, milady!

[quote=Magrat]Now what we need is for the threads within the forums also to be listed "newest activity to oldest acitvity," with the sticky ones at the top (with notes saying sticky). This is how we had it on the old forum, and I do prefer to open the Thudding Drum and see at a glance which threads have been recently posted to, rather than page to the end to find that out. And if I'm not mistaken (everyone knows how easily I could be), this ordering does not currently have any user options to it.[/quote]

Ah, nice one! You're right, as is OB, so keep the feedback coming!

It was actually there all along but cleverly disguised as ordinary header text with but a wee small arrow by the "last reply" column header. Another one of those things to bring into the light!

These column headers are actually "sort links" in that they'll sort the forum by that column by alphabetical order (topics), number of replies (replies), oldest -> newest (created) and oldest -> newest by time of reply (or by most recent reply). It respects the stickiness of the old phpBB forums but otherwise the columns are usefully sortable. I hope that answers your question

Awwrighty, how about this one? The "who's online" area seems to appear only on the home page. It would be nice if it were on other pages too...especially since the link to the home page is all the way at the bottom of the page in tiny print.

Which leads to...I think there should be a link to home on the menu in the upper right-hand corner. For example, the words "In the Thud Cave" could link to home. That would be intuitive. Or you could just put "Home" at the bottom of the menu.

Signed,

The Lady of Perpetual Criticism

It did end up in a moderation bin. Sorry. Still tuning the sensors

Umm, we enabled avatars on the forum and thought we got the code for avatar display right (that "we" is the "royal we" in this case...) but only got the *display avatar* code right rather than filter by access role. When we do get it sussed everyone will be able to upload an avatar but only those who've paid will it display on the forums, blogs, comments and elsewhere. At the moment though, no one can upload avatars except admins so we're managing it manually for the time being.

And yes, whoever asked, my avatar is black on octarine such that it's highly invisible...

OK, I can tell no one's buying that... I do have shiny new digital camera so have exhausted my last excuse for not putting one up so as soon as I have a coupla seconds...

Hmmmm, Yes, I recognise that notion!
Just grabbed this outta the moderation tray (wasn't spam but seemed to need moderation for some reason that I don't know about. will check later)

If you click the "quote link" below an existing post or comment (AKA a reply) then the post/comment you're commenting on is above the posting textarea and you can look back on it as well as include the actual bit you want to quote in your reply post (I hope I made sense there...).

See my response to Magrat. You can set it to what you want with the "Comment Viewing Options" controls.

No, the game was set to us the phpBB auth table for game authentication. Dewi is altering this to use the thudgame.com auth table for game authentication now so, if it isn't already fixed, things should soon work as they did before.

Yeah, me too. What this site does is give you several ways to view new content and it displays a "New" graphic if it's one that's been posted since you last logged in.

You can click the "View Recent Posts" link in the list on the left (near the top of the page). New topics posted have their own list at the right above a longer list that shows newly commented-upon topics and to see when/what specific people have posted. Just click the link with their name in it on any post they've made, then click the "Track" tab at the top of the CiviCRM page. It lists the posts they've made starting with the most recent listing when they made it as well.

If you have a look at the long list on the right hand side ("Recent Comments") these are listed in order of the most recent comment (at the top) with a number in parentheses of how many comments have been made about that thread.

I hope this helps clarify things just a little bit more

Is there a way to add a breadcrumb trail to the forum pages? So we can always go up a level or two?

They are there but at the bottom of the page. We could look into inserting a breadcrumb trail at the top as well. I actually tried this and ended up bolloxing up the page template but perhaps we could try doing it with a bit more technical rigour this time

Any place in particular you would want them?

OK, working with the API this time we have breadcrumbs at the top of each content block (i.e. at the top above the original forum topic) and at the bottom of the page. We'll look into placing them in each post but that might be a bit tricky

could you add an extra stage to these? When viewing a topic, we've currently got "home" (linking to thudgame.com) and the name of the forum you're in. I'd like to "forums" between the two, (linking to thudgame.com/forum). Although this is available in the menu on the right, it feels intuitive to me to include it in the "breadcrumbs" (which is a term I shall have to use more from now on )

The other thing to go through my mind today regards the "recent comments" and "who's online" blocks - they only seem to be visible when viewing a thread (not, for example, when viewing a forum or making a reply).

Ah yes - and one more thing: I mentioned a couple of posts back the "go to last post" link which existed in phpBB for each thread. The links on these forums to all the new posts seems a good idea (indeed slightly better, as far as regular users go), but don't seem to work... (That's the link in the "replies" column, with link targets of the form http://www.thudgame.com/node/221#new - the reason they dont work appears to be that there's no <a name="new"> in the source code for the topics)

Mr Scrub

The same seems to apply after you've left a new comment: after posting this last one, I was linked back to the page http://www.thudgame.com/node/472#comment-8337 - presumably I should have been at my comment on the page of the thread on which it appears (page 4 to me, as I've set up a preference for 10 comments per page). Instead I was at the top of the first page, and a search for

in the source code of both page 1 and page 4 reveals nothing. Indeed a search for

is similarly blank, so there dont appear to be points layed down to allow linking to any specific comment.

Mr Scrub

i have been offline for a couple of weeks now (damn you BT! *shakes fist*)

and i have to say there has been some very tasty updates added! jolly well done guys!

the pondermiester is back!!!!!!!!!