New Forum Software

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Not a major redesign - we just took a stock template that was a little more contemporary-looking than our old one and added our logo to it - but to me at least it's still a vast improvement. (one inspired by properly color-calibrating my computer monitor, actually)

Hopefully in a year or two there'll either be a) a new version of phpBB or b) another forum we like well enough to switch to it (this one looks promising but it's decidedly beta at the moment), but this should make things more bearable in the meantime.

If for whatever reason you liked the old theme and want to switch back, you can do so via the User Control Panel (set your theme to "prosilver" in the "Board Preferences" tab).

Edit: see my later post - we ended up with new forum software after all.
 
I think it'd be better if the quoted text (in general) were of a bit darker shade than the rest of the text in the reply window for better distinction...
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
goldyn chyld said:
I think it'd be better if the quoted text (in general) were of a bit darker shade than the rest of the text in the reply window for better distinction...

Duly corrected, thanks.
 

scykei

榜眼
Not bad. But it will probably take a while to get used to.

There is this one thing that bothers me a lot though: Where did the forum search bar go? I can still access it at search.php?keywords=searchterm. However, I don't see any place to access it.

Also, it might be a problem on my end but my spell checker doesn't seem to work when replying to a thread on the new form. In the old style it worked fine.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
scykei said:
There is this one thing that bothers me a lot though: Where did the forum search bar go? I can still access it at search.php?keywords=searchterm. However, I don't see any place to access it.

Ah, sorry about that - somehow got disabled but it should be back now (at the top right corner of the page).

scykei said:
Also, it might be a problem on my end but my spell checker doesn't seem to work when replying to a thread on the new form. In the old style it worked fine.

Seems to be working OK here - try switching back to the old style via the User Control panel, does that get it working again?
 

scykei

榜眼
mikelove said:
scykei said:
Also, it might be a problem on my end but my spell checker doesn't seem to work when replying to a thread on the new form. In the old style it worked fine.

Seems to be working OK here - try switching back to the old style via the User Control panel, does that get it working again?
Okay, it was a problem with one of my extensions. Nothing big. Sorry.
 
mikelove said:
goldyn chyld said:
I think it'd be better if the quoted text (in general) were of a bit darker shade than the rest of the text in the reply window for better distinction...

Duly corrected, thanks.

Hm, it doesn't seem to have changed? Whenever I see (xy wrote: ...) it's still the same color as the rest of the reply window, making it hard to distinguish from the actual reply.

EDIT: now it displays my original post in a dark yellow/brownish shade, but places "Duly corrected, thanks." together with my reply (as though I had written it). Why?
 

johnh113

榜眼
mikelove said:
Not a major redesign - we just took a stock template that was a little more contemporary-looking than our old one and added our logo to it - but to me at least it's still a vast improvement. (one inspired by properly color-calibrating my computer monitor, actually)

Hopefully in a year or two there'll either be a) a new version of phpBB or b) another forum we like well enough to switch to it (this one looks promising but it's decidedly beta at the moment), but this should make things more bearable in the meantime.

If for whatever reason you liked the old theme and want to switch back, you can do so via the User Control Panel (set your theme to "prosilver" in the "Board Preferences" tab).

Dear Mike,
Which is the new style? "afterburner" and "prosilver" both have Pleco logos while "subsilver2" and "proBoot" do not. So if "prosilver" is the old style is "afterburner" the preferred style?
John
 

HW60

状元
For me it is a little bit difficult to find out when a quote ends and the new comment begins - reading the text helps, but there is no support from the style as it was before.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
goldyn chyld said:
Hm, it doesn't seem to have changed? Whenever I see (xy wrote: ...) it's still the same color as the rest of the reply window, making it hard to distinguish from the actual reply.

Try reloading the site - does that help matters?

johnh113 said:
Which is the new style? "afterburner" and "prosilver" both have Pleco logos while "subsilver2" and "proBoot" do not. So if "prosilver" is the old style is "afterburner" the preferred style?

Yes, though we may try another new one soon since this doesn't seem to be working too well for people.

HW60 said:
For me it is a little bit difficult to find out when a quote ends and the new comment begins - reading the text helps, but there is no support from the style as it was before.

Does it help if you reload the page?
 

HW60

状元
mikelove said:
HW60 said:
For me it is a little bit difficult to find out when a quote ends and the new comment begins - reading the text helps, but there is no support from the style as it was before.

Does it help if you reload the page?

No, it does not change. The quote of a quote shows different background color however, as can be seen with my quote within your quote in this post, while your question ("Does it help ...") and my answer here look the same.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
So after claiming earlier in this thread that there wasn't anything better than phpBB available, I decided to test that statement and found something I liked better that also had seamless phpBB importing capabilities, so here we go.

All of your old user info, passwords, PMs, attachments, etc should carry over - let us know if not - and all links to the old forum will automatically remap to the new one.

The one thing that doesn't seem to reliably carry over is a record of which posts you've read recently, so you'll want to click "Mark Forums Read" at the top left corner in order to manage that.

The avatar system supports Gravatar, but you have to enable it through your user profile - we didn't want to automatically apply them in case people have old / unflattering / etc Gravatars that they don't want showing up here unexpectedly.
 

alanmd

探花
I think it looks pretty good- feels a lot less '90s. Looks good in mobile (iOS Safari) too. I would have probably gone for a bit more blue instead of the orange, but it doesn't bother me.
 

Wan

榜眼
Hi! I'm slightly confused: This is not simply a new style but a whole new forum software, right? So the "change the style to the old one in the board preferences" thing doesn't work anymore, at least I cannot find the option.

Now, I'm perfectly happy with the new forum on laptops or desktops, but with my cell phone, the old forum worked better. One example: On the old forum I could login directly from the main page, here I have to go through a menu. When I want to log out, I have to inconveniently confirm this selection. Also, I had to deactivate the standard "Rich Text" method the board uses, because it totally messes with my keyboard. I'm using TouchPal, btw, which is awesome if you want to use different languages and like sweeping the screen like Swype. Also, the button for "go to first unread" seems really small.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I think it looks pretty good- feels a lot less '90s. Looks good in mobile (iOS Safari) too. I would have probably gone for a bit more blue instead of the orange, but it doesn't bother me.

That'll be tweaked shortly, we're settling on a color scheme for the main site but once we have that we'll apply it here too. (and on the new store / My Orders pages)

Hi! I'm slightly confused: This is not simply a new style but a whole new forum software, right? So the "change the style to the old one in the board preferences" thing doesn't work anymore, at least I cannot find the option.

Yes - sorry, I'll update the old post.

Now, I'm perfectly happy with the new forum on laptops or desktops, but with my cell phone, the old forum worked better. One example: On the old forum I could login directly from the main page, here I have to go through a menu. When I want to log out, I have to inconveniently confirm this selection. Also, I had to deactivate the standard "Rich Text" method the board uses, because it totally messes with my keyboard. I'm using TouchPal, btw, which is awesome if you want to use different languages and like sweeping the screen like Swype. Also, the button for "go to first unread" seems really small.

Interesting, actually the mobile skins for both forums were designed by the same guy - we'll see if we can find a cleaner mobile skin for this one.
 

Wan

榜眼
Sorry, I didn’t mean to urge you to change it again: If you and most of the users like it, stick with it! It was just my general impression.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Sorry, I didn’t mean to urge you to change it again: If you and most of the users like it, stick with it! It was just my general impression.

It's a reasonable complaint - we really want the mobile experience on all of our websites to be top-notch.
 

character

状元
The new forum looks nice. One nit: it seems like inside a forum, the last message links on the RHS aren't there if one is not logged in. The date of the last message is shown, but the link to the last message is not present.
 

HW60

状元
I would prefer some more contrast - the dates are light grey on white which is only slightly better than white on white.
 

alanmd

探花
【。。。】with my cell phone, the old forum worked better. 【。。。】 I had to deactivate the standard "Rich Text" method the board uses, because it totally messes with my keyboard.
Interesting, actually the mobile skins for both forums were designed by the same guy - we'll see if we can find a cleaner mobile skin for this one.

If the "Rich Text" editor is being displayed, it sounds like you aren't seeing the mobile version of the forum. What web browser are you using on your phone? Have you configured the user agent string in the browser to fool the forum into thinking that you are using a PC?
 
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