We’ve made the move to a new WordPress forum, leaving our previous Joomla forum behind. For those who don’t know what those are, they are both options for running websites and forums.
On the new forum, things will look a bit different from the previous one, but all of the content and users are still here, and I’m hopeful that the navigation and functionality will be easy to use.
We moved to the new forum today (11/12/2015) but we’ll continue to make some tweaks and improvements over the coming weeks.
Here are some notes about the new forum:
Avatars, unfortunately, didn't make the move. So, I apologize that you'll need to re-upload an image as your avatar. We tried to find a way to move these, but in the end, couldn't.
Badges, Roles and 'Thank You' will be coming, to ensure that active and senior participants are easily identifiable by their profiles.
Images (in your posts) work pretty much the same as the previous forum.
To display an image 'inline' in your post content, it needs to be a hosted image that you have a URL for.
For example, uploaded to flickr, google photos, photobucket, etc.
You can upload image files from your computer, as attachments, but these won't appear inline.
We're on a 'mobile responsive' theme, which means the forum should be easier to use from a phone or tablet.
Private Messaging should be improved, compared to the previous forum.
For unread messages, look for an orange icon in the lower right of your screen.
To go to your PM 'mailbox' use the 'Forum' drop-down, and select 'My Private Messages.'
We've updated timestamps to show absolute times, rather than placeholders.
For example, 'September 5, 2015 at 3:29 am' rather than '3 months ago.'
In the future (timing is tbd)
We'll bring back the Wiki, and the Knife Database. We intend to do this soon; we're working on it now.
'Advanced Search' to make available field-specific searches, and additional search operators.
Social sign-in (login via facebook, google plus, etc.)
WordPress multi-user site (so your forum profile will also work on the website and purchases, and vice versa).
For those interested in the tech specifications:
We're on WordPress 4.3.1, hosted by Pagely (awesome support) in AWS (Amazon Web Services datacenter)
The forum is bbPress 2.5.8
For user profiles and private messaging, we're using the UserPro plugin.
For search, we're using the relevanssi plugin.
Please let me know of your suggestions and impressions. I appreciate your patience, as I know it's always a bit tough to adjust to software changes.
Thanks for realizing this, Chris! It works great. And it is Wordpress-based, which I like.
I also love the responsive design: the site works great on my phone! And thankfully the notification of follow-up replies via email is off by default. This saves me a ton of mail each day .
It only is still possible to create posts in the main forum (i.e. no subforum). Is this intentional?
The lack of outlines is a little off-putting for me, maybe because I sit up close to a large wide-screen monitor. I’ll get used to it.
Should we maybe open a new topic for bug reporting? Here’s a couple I’ve run into:
Searching for usernames in the Member Directory doesn’t work. If I search for Tom Meyer, it finds my profile, listed as “tcmeyer’s profile”, but searching for “tcmeyer” finds nothing.
When I try to save any changes in “edit profile” I get an error.
I thought we were going to hide actual names before the switchover. Every forum I’ve ever seen uses blind usernames. This is going to discourage new member registration and posts.
Tom, this is annoying. I’m not sure, but it seems more people are listed under their real names rather than their profile names. (And the weird thing about your profile is that it indeed lists it as “tcmeyer’s profile”, but that your profile display name is “Tom Meyer”. If I’d have to guess, it could be a conversion error.)
Another bug: I tried to write a private message and found that hitting the “enter” key for a new paragraph cuts you off and sends the message, incomplete.
Also had a couple questions for Chris and the team:
Is it possible to edit posts once they are submitted? Im not seeing how to do this and even googled on it briefly.
A concern would be theres no “last post” option to jump to end of topic. It seems you have to scroll n scroll to get to bottom?
Agree with Tom for what its worth that the lack of a clear division between comments is a bit disconcerting as well. Other then that its a clean interface which is nice!
Thanks to you all for your feedback. We’re taking note of each item, will be working through the list in the coming days.
Tom, for the ability to edit post, I’m looking into this. So far, it looks that all the permissions should be in place to edit a post or topic, after you’ve submitted it. I’m not saying it’s working correctly; just saying that I’ve looked into it, and haven’t found a quick answer. We’ll keep at it.
I hear the feedback that the forum could use better ‘borders’ between replies, we’ll look into this.
Poked around for awhile looking for a Settings page. I’d like to change the color layout. Is that possible?
8-10% of males have a degree of red/green color blindness (a small percentage of women, too). Because of that, I can just barely make out the “red” text.
My current strategy is to “select” the whole page which turns it to white letters on a blue background.
Is there a settings page? If yes, could you give me directions so I could find where I overlooked it!
Thanks, in advance, for your help. Meanwhile, I will keep looking around.
I should add that the “second” layer in text is dark on a light background and easily legible.
Recommendations for mobile devices? Previously, I used Tapatalk. Should I simply use a browser or is there a "reading" ap?
Thanks for all the work you have done and are doing. I do truly appreciate what's going on behind the scenes to make the experience work well for us users.
Looking good! sorry been away since the transition (super busy) but very nice!!!
I agree w/ the others… an option to change the color scheme per user would be killer, or at the minimum separating posts w/ a line or something to break it up would make it easier on the eyes.
We’re listening to the feedback, and will be trying out some changes, like borders around replies to make them easier to visually distinguish, and different text colors. We’ll by implementing these initially on the previous ‘beta’ server, so please PM me if you want a heads up when those are available.
We’re also working right now to get the wiki and knife database available again, and to try out a couple of new plugins (a ‘thank you’ plugin, plus one that has navigation widgets to make it quicker/easier to move around).
The site now uses “responsive design”, which is marketing/techno speak for saying that it looks great on mobile devices. Just give it a try on your phone!
