Site upgrade!

[roddy]

Wait until the post rebuilding is finished, I *think* that might sort all the ugly white space out. If it doesn't I'll see if there's anything I can do. Have set RETURN to create a new line, rather than paragraph.

[roddy]

Spent some time putting the home page together again - not quite ready to publish, but it's getting there and I'm getting the hang of how to make new stuff.

If you see any formatting in old posts that looks wrong, let me know and I'll take a look. Might be easiest to send in a post report. 

 

[imron]

Speaking of upgrades, is it possible to get a couple of different themes to switch between?

 

This new theme is very white, it'd be nice if there was a darker, I'm-not-looking-at-a-light-globe-all-day theme available

[歐博思]

On 1/16/2017 at 0:48 PM, roddy said:

 

Reputation system is now likes rather than upvotes, and is no longer anonymous. No more downvotes (it didn't get used that much, as we're all awesome. If someone's not being awesome, tell 'em)

 

 

 

Game of Thrones: Chinese-Forums, making friends and taking names.... I like it (but you already knew that from "歐博思 likes this") 

[Guest]

[Deleted].

[Meng Lelan]

Wow is this the first upgrade we've had in ten years?

[陳德聰]

So this is kind of magical. I like being summoned haha! One thing I noticed other than the beauty of the new sleek look is that the homepage ads seem to not be auto resized to the screen on iPhone Safari, I don't recall noticing the ad size before.

[roddy]

Different themes - Not keen on completely different themes but we can tweak the css colours. Name your hex value and css class.

The home page ad will need adjusted.

Spent an embarrassing amount of time today getting the home page back together - I just don't use MySQL and PHP often enough to really know what's going on, and the templates are all... I don't know what it's even know what it's called. Getting there though. 

[889]

Where's the list of threads with recent posts? I'm not talking about the laundry list of recent posts, but the list of active threads that was in the right column of the home page.

[roddy]

Hopefully back tomorrow, although there's a chunky translation to be done which thinks otherwise. In the meantime, I knocked this up for you. I think you can save it so it appears under Activity > My Activity Streams. You could also customise it if it's not what you want. Oh, and maybe select 'condensed' - looks like that's a cookie setting so it doesn't save across users.

 

Also - the search index is back, so if anyone wants to play with the search engine...

[Lu]

I have another nitpick. Underneath username and photo, there's a few lines with Chinese: and Location:. But there's no space between the colon and the next word. So:

Chinese:fairly advanced

Location:Leiden

should be:

Chinese: fairly advanced

Location: Leiden

 

Needless to say this is not an urgent matter, but I thought I'd point it out anyway.

[陳德聰]

It seems that I can't see any of those things on my mobile either, not that I even realised!

[889]

I start composing a post, then decide not to post anything after all. Normally, there's a "Cancel" button for this situation, but I only see a "Submit Reply" button, leaving me stuck on the Compose New Message box.

[roddy]

@889 - Slightly confused by what the problem is - can't you just scroll up and click on whatever link, or hit back, or... whatever you'd have done after posting, if you'd posted?

@Lu - your formatting concerns have been addressed

@Shelley - There's a link at the bottom to take you to the top

@imron et al - if you're not careful I'll chose something to replace the white with myself, and it'll end up lime green. 

 

Right, can't be bothered remembering who said what...

 

Leaderboard has been renamed 'Featured'

I've cut down the homepage on mobile so it only shows the list of recently active topics. What often makes sense on mobile is to set a bookmark for whatever you use most - could be the stream of all activity, of unread content, something customised. See here for more. Banner ad also no longer shows on mobile (was only showing to guests, and is not meant to be on mobile at all). 

 

The top menu / tab layouts I'll make changes to - any request? I think new and followed should be prominent

 

How are people finding search? I've found it very good so far, only niggle is that sometimes you forget it's about to search the topic you're in rather than all content. I'm in two minds about putting Google search back, as I'm not sure there's as much benefit now. 

 

I have also, variously, got our mail configuration set up better so less emails bounce, checked a bunch of stuff was working (which largely it was), fixed some hopefully mostly unnoticed errors from the upgrade (amusingly, all the posts Imron and I had hidden over the years suddenly became unhidden), anonymised negative vote data as it was popping up in unexpected ways, and got us mods a little icon to light up with something needs moderated. More to come, no doubt. 

[Shelley]

Thank you for the link to the top.

 

I have also started using the Home button, not sure if this is new or I just missed it on the old version.

[Gharial]

Sorry to say but I think the new style of this site is crap, and is to the "old" version of Chinese Forums what Windows 8 and 10 are to XP and 7. Too many hidden, unclearly-named or now non-functioning features. It definitely feels harder and clunkier to navigate - generally poor UI, IMHO.

 

To take but two examples:

 

1) it is less straightforward to find one's posted content to see if there is anything one might need to reply to, and

 

2) uploaded files have no download numbers at all (unless they are mp3s, pdfs, .doc or .xls, say, i.e. not jpegs or gifs). Call me strange but I like to be able see how many times something has been downloaded (my own uploads if not other people's).

 

Maybe things will slowly improve like Windows 10 is (though that's still very much a halfway house, a work in progress), but if it wasn't broken... .

 

'Upgrade' indeed.

[Mati1]

On 16.1.2017 at 8:10 PM, imron said:

On 16.1.2017 at 6:48 PM, roddy said:

Let's summon him. @imron! (depends on his notification settings what actually happens)

This will be one of the first notifications I turn off.  Nothing worse than being constantly beeped at.

The price you have to pay for being awesome ...

[Shelley]

For the moment I quite like being beeped at by my pc to let me know something has happened on the forum. Don't know how long it will last though

[imron]

@Gharial, arguably it's easier to find one's own content that needs replying to, you just need to know where to look.

 

You should be able to create a new activity stream here that contains only replies you haven't read in topics that you started.  That will then appear in your activity streams list.

[889]

 I think I mentioned some time ago that in long threads especially it's useful if posts are numbered so you can refer back to them easily.