Forum Software Upgrade

[Ian]

You may have noticed that the forum looks a little different . We've upgraded to XenForo 2.1, which brings some significant improvements to how the forum software works. I'll make a follow-up post in a few days to explain some of these new features.

For the meantime, I'm busy trying to get the forum software working as it should with all of the addons - so there may be the odd bug or two over the coming week. Please let me know if you spot anything out of place and I'll work on fixing it asap .

 

[Becky]

Looks great, thanks @Ian! I like the new ability to react to posts rather than just liking them

 

[happyrat1]

I'm not all that sure I'm keen on the new interface. It may take us a while to get used to it. The editor seems ok though. Pretty much everything seems to be where you'd expect it.

We'll keep you posted on any bugs that may arise for sure.

Gary

PS... The new smilies are ugly

The old one were cooler

 

[Ian]

There are still some tweaks to come, which will hopefully improve things a little . The old software was not going to be patched beyond the end of the year, so we had to take the plunge and upgrade soon - but I've tried to match the design up as best I can like-for-like.

 

[happyrat1]

Fair enough. Like most upgrades, people tend to balk at first, then as they warm up to the new format it becomes second nature again.

Upgrades are a necessary evil, and I hate it everytime Debian goes from an older LTS version to a new one, but eventually we all just shut up about it and get on with business.

Gary

 

[SeaGtGruff]

Regarding the smilies, some forums have so many that it can get confusing-- which seems overkill to me, although some of them can be kind of cool and fun, like a smiley that puts on pilot goggles and takes off and flies away, or one beating a dead horse with a stick, or one wearing a hat and smoking a cigar and toting a gun, or even one playing a piano! As long as I can still type an old-fashioned colon-right parenthesis, or semicolon-right parenthesis, I'm good.

 

[happyrat1]

I agree that some forums overdo it. But the old smilies we had pre upgrade were really cool and I'll miss them.

Gary

 

[SeaGtGruff]

One thing I just noticed is that we now have an option to enable push notifications. In some cases I would find that too "pushy" and leave it turned off. But for a moderator it's a nice feature to have.

 

[Rayblewit]

Hi Ian,
looks clean and user friendly.
I am struggling a little to navigate certain features.

. I'll make a follow-up post in a few days to explain some of these new features.

Looking forward to that.

What is "push notifications"?

Cheers Ray

 

[Rayblewit]

Looks like what once was called "recent posts" is now called "latest activity"
This one I use all the time and took sme time to locate this button.

But as Gary says . . In time we get used to changes. Probably for the better.
Cheers Ray

 

[Biggles]

What changes ?

 

[SeaGtGruff]

"Push notifications" is where you let your computer or tablet or smart phone accept notifications from software or web pages, and you'll be doing something completely different when suddenly you'll hear a chime and a little message will pop up saying something like "happyrat1 replied to your post." They can become very annoying if you let every app on your device send you notifications, so I try to keep them turned off except for a few apps. I was thinking that it would be nice (as a moderator) to get notifications whenever someone posted something, but I just realized that it's probably only for the threads I've posted in or am otherwise "watching."

 

[Rayblewit]

"push notifications"
Thanks for the explanation Mike.
I don't need that feature. I am on the forums constantly anyway so I can see. I have those notifications on other programs and I know what you mean about annoying.
Cheers Ray

 

[Ian]

Yeah the push notifications feature is something that I don't use either, but I'm sure some people will find it useful. There's a page here with some options on when it can alert you (if it could alert me to only important things, like reported posts or problems, then I'd use it more):

https://www.keyboardforums.com/account/preferences

 

[happyrat1]

I just noticed that we now have 5 options besides a thumbs up for liking a post, including some truly odd emoji choices.

Neato

Gary

 

[Biggles]

Its great being able to turn everything off.

I will find out what has been happening when I come here, I do not want to know via a ping, clunk, whoosh etc that a message has been posted whilst I am away from home or even whilst actually playing the last thing I want is for my iPad to display a Message mid song.


PS
More choice of emily's, emu's, modgies or whatever these smiley things are called

 

[SeaGtGruff]

Looks like what once was called "recent posts" is now called "latest activity"

Not quite. “Latest Activity” actually gives you a sort of peek at the post, rather than just the list of topics as “Recent Posts” did (if I’m remembering correctly). You can still get the equivalent of “Recent Posts” by selecting “New Posts”— which gives you the list of new unread posts— then just above the list of posts is the word “unread,” which is actually a filter. Click or touch the little x on that filter to remove it, and you’ll have the list of recent posts which are both already-read and unread.

 

[Rayblewit]

That is certainly an improvement all of the above what @SeaGtGruff just said.
Great!
Ray

 

[rbONkeys]

I'm trying to post a thread starter and getting this message: "Awaiting approval before being displayed publicly." However, I can't find where to approved the post.

 

[Ian]

I'm trying to post a thread starter and getting this message: "Awaiting approval before being displayed publicly." However, I can't find where to approved the post.

I've approved your post now - it got caught in the anti-spam filter, but it's working now .