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Site Upgrades! What do you think?


Rubix

Quick Thoughts!  

20 members have voted

  1. 1. Initial Reaction?

    • I love it!
    • On the whole, I think I like it.
    • I'm not completely sold, but give it time.
    • Why is it different?!?
      0
    • CHANGE IT BACK!!!!
    • I can't find feature (X)!!! I'll post it below.
      0
  2. 2. New Forum Layout?

    • Awesome!
    • This seems... Different.
    • It was far superior in the former arrangement!!!!
      0
    • I can't find forum (X)!!! I'll post below.
      0
    • WHY DID YOU LOCK MY FAVORITE RP (X)?!?
  3. 3. Sidebar?

    • This is what I've been missing from my life. THANK YOU!!!
    • These could be put in a superior order. I'll post it below.
      0
    • It's a little different, but I'll get used to it.
    • Why?!?
    • The site looks all squished now. I dislike it.


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Hey everyone!

As I'm sure you can tell, the site has been upgraded. Whether it's successful or not, I don't know that yet (I'm writing this at 4:30 Wednesday, about 6.5 hours before we plan to start the upgrade). Anyway, I just wanted to put up a thread asking what you all think. I know it's going to be a little bit different, but we're pleased with what we've done, and we think you're all going to like it too. Also, there's a guide on the front page (which I'll be writing once I'm done with this post) that will give you a basic tour around the site, and help show you where the things that you know and love have been moved to. If it's missing something (it probably will be) post in here, and I'll do my best to get back to you as fast as I can.

Thanks so much for all of your understanding with the change, and welcome to 17thShard 3!

 

Edit: It's now just about 7am. We're finally wrapping up. We may have botched a couple things that have made it so that we've lost a feature or two (The Gallery and the Awards system come to mind), but we'll be getting those reinstated in the next couple days. Sorry about the prolonged downtime (It only took us twice what we expected, no big deal), and we hope you enjoy!

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Okay so fun story about working on site upgrades late at night: sometimes they make you do stupid things. So granted, pretty much everything is what we wanted them to be, uh... except the part where I deleted the awards system because... well okay it seemed like a good idea at the time! The Lord Ruler made it all better! It's all good! We have the awards database backed up so we'll give everyone their awards back tomorrow or the next day. Don't fret, my skaa!

 

Also, there are some other minor things I need to do tomorrow, so if you're wondering why your reputation count does not appear in your posts, that's a tomorrow thing. 

 

I'm pretty sure I just typed "there" instead of "their" accidentally at some point, so we both really need to go to bed, but I also really hope you think this looks as spectacularly better as we think it does. Okay that sentence also isn't grammatically correct. Whatever :P

 

There's also a big guide in the works, showing you through all the new features! But uh, you know, probably best to wait for a bit more coherency before posting it. So instead you get to be explorers in a brand new world, post-Ascension, and explore it for yourselves! Only, you know, with less ash.

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I like the

General Brandon Discussion

... whoa. I was just trying to cut and paste the phrase into my sentence, and it came out like that...

 

Anyway! I like it as first before Cosmere Theories, might get more general character-based discussions going and stuff.

 

edit: Editor is a bit odd. When I pasted "General Brandon Discussion" in here it came out HUGE. Then when I posted it was just normal words again.

Edited by Morsk
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Well, I had a few initial thoughts, but then they got deleted when I resized the "quick reply" box. That might be an issue.

Quick re-write, then:

Thanks for going through the time to implement all this. Upgrades can be quite...irksome. Though I do want my awards back! ;)

I like the blue hyperlinks, though I'll need to finagle my signature a bit, since they're a bit obnoxious down there.

Can't say I like the fact that avatars show up everywhere. A bit obtrusive. The title of OP's, at the very least, oughtn't to have them, I don't think. Or maybe I just need time to adjust.

I just got a "someone new has posted" alert while I was typing up (version 1.0) of this post, so that's nice.

I have to say I miss the light-blue "dead space" between posts (where "Promote to Article" and member names/post numbers were). It may have been a bit wasteful, but it made the page a bit less intimidating and gave some relief, instead of threads just being walls of white.

-On that note, the forum as a whole seems a bit desaturated. I liked the green look for quotes (though not the pink one for double-quotes)

Wow, this all comes off as a bit negative. Sorry. Criticisms are the things that pop to mind, while all the improvements you implemented kind of sink (very ungratefully) into your brain as "well that was useful, why didn't they do that earlier?" Keep up the good work! :D

EDIT: Oh, forgot. I don't think we really need a "Popular Tags" sidebar in the Forums section. Just seems a bit superfluous, and clutters things up. And the "Recent Blog Entries" section could serve to hold a post or two less at a time.

Edited by Kurkistan
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Also, as note, I'm aware of how awful the mobile version of the site is now. Text the same color as the background, tiny text entry blocks, oh, and the full version button does NOTHING. I'm sorry in advance to anyone who gets stuck on the mobile site in the meantime. It's a work in progress, though. Pardon our dust and all that. :) I really should be going to bed soon... But I figured I should put these notes somewhere I could find them once I woke up. Night amigos!

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Ah, okay then.  That's a little hard to locate.

 

I'd kind of like the forums to be a litle bit... dimmer.  The background is a little eyestraining.

 

 

Also, is there a way to turn off the dynamic text editor in my preferences?  It tends to have issues with copypasting from different formats, and I really prefer bbcode to WYSIWYG.

Edited by Phantom Monstrosity
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Yeah, something is profoundly wrong with resizing the text-entry box. It hasn't deleted my stuff after that first time, but every time I try to resize, it highlights the whole box and I magically scroll higher up the screen and ugh.

 

Also, I really like the way that you can split up quotes by just hitting Enter twice. Makes my life a lot easier during my patented quote-splitting when replying to theorizing threads. Kudos.

 

And now another negative, so you don't get big heads ;). The "Up Rep" and "Down Rep" arrows are a bit obtrusive in this version. They were nice little tucked-away, relatively darkish icons back in the good old days. Now they're a bit too big and vibrant, as well as a bit more spread out on the page than they really need to be. Used to be that you could tell at a glance if anyone had been up- or down-voted, since the color would stand out at the bottom of their post, but now every post has that attention-grabbing splash of color.

Edited by Kurkistan
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Yeah, something is profoundly wrong with resizing the text-entry box. It hasn't deleted my stuff after that first time, but every time I try to resize, it highlights the whole box and I magically scroll higher up the screen and ugh.

 

Yeah, I'm definitely seeing that too. We'll throw it on the list of bugs.

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Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to draw attention to this.

 

Also, is there a way to turn off the dynamic text editor in my preferences?  It tends to have issues with copypasting from different formats, and I really prefer bbcode to WYSIWYG.

Yes you can. The lightswitch in the upper left turns it on and off

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Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to draw attention to this.

 

Yes you can. The lightswitch in the upper left turns it on and off

 

The only problem is that we've lost the functionality to insert tags easily. I hit that light switch, I now have to manually type in the tags for bold, italics, quotes, etc., instead of being able to highlight and click like in the past.

 

If you just want to be sure that copy-pasting isn't messed up, you can go to the far-right option on the top bar (Options, when you mouseover it) and check the "Paste as plain text by default" box.

Edited by Kurkistan
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Hey, I definitely think the new layout is an improvement and I expect it to grow on me even more once I've got used to it.  I noticed one small thing: the 'reputation' and 'about me' sections on profiles now come up with an error message.  

 

Great work!  :)

 

 

Are you referring to the one on your profile page or what appears when you hover over someone's name?

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Nice work, and as I can assume, a lot of work! Thanks for this. 

 

Adding to Straff's point: The "About me" section in my profile also causes an error. But for both of them I think they will work when that bit of broken stuff is repaired. 

 

Edit:

I knew I forgot something. :) Do I err or are the avatar pictures bigger than before? They are really dashy but I can't say why. 

 

Edit #2:

Are this "HOT"-icons needed? They're kind of disturbing, or am I alone with this feeling? 

 

And I may have missed it, but I didn't find the possibility to get to the last posting of a thread (from the overview). (Not the last unread, this I found.)   Edit #3: I found it :).

 

And this "0 warning points" creeps me out. I hope I'll never give you a reason to give me one. :/ 

Edited by Meg
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Okay, I have awakened! Let me address things, in non-chronological order ;)

 

First, whoa that mobile skin is borked. That should not be like that at all. Apparently IPB didn't want to upgrade our mobile skin in the upgrader. Or rather, it tried to, and got this abomination. Oh well, that's first on my agenda then. (Though unlike Josh, the Full Version button works just fine, even on that half-upgraded skin).

 

Yeah, Kurk, resizing that box is kind of weird. I was able to sort of resize it, but it does do that bizarre resizing thing. I'm not totally sure what can be done about that. The text editor has some nice improvements, but it does kind of feel to me like I prefer the old 3.1 style. Part of that is because I simply prefer typing my BBCode, so all the toolbars and stuff is all cruft to me. So, I usually turn off the rich text editor there. Or I would, except that I discovered that if formatting is on, I can press CTRL+I and it italicized my text, which is possibly the best thing ever. 

 

Hmmm, I'm trying to resize it, and it sometimes works and sometimes is weird. I'm having better luck doing the main post reply screen (click More posting options for that), and MBI seems to do it more consistently. Not sure what is going on here. I will need to investigate this further. The annoying thing is how it seems to push your cursor up, for some reason, but once it does, you can still resize it. Also, I have not been able to replicate how it destroyed that post, Kurk, but that definitely sucks.

 

One last thing on the new post box: it apparently autosaves posts, but I have absolutely no idea where it saves those posts into. Overall though, I highly recommend that if formatting is being weird to use the pure text editor for a few moments to get the code straight. (The annoying part there is the pure text editor doesn't like word wrap :/)

 

Okay, wow, that insert quote thing really is amazing. 

 

 

Looking forward to the guide to changes. On the whole I like the more modern look. One thing I think is a shame though is that we've lost the sub-headings on topics (often only used to denote spoilers, but sometimes used for other reasons)

 

 

EDIT: Oh, forgot. I don't think we really need a "Popular Tags" sidebar in the Forums section. Just seems a bit superfluous, and clutters things up. And the "Recent Blog Entries" section could serve to hold a post or two less at a time.

 

Let's discuss tags a bit.

 

Senor Fresh, I agree, I really miss that we lose Topic Descriptions. Unfortunately, there's no way to get them back on version 3.2 of IPB and higher. They decided to go with tags instead. 

 

Tags are actually going to be really awesome, because if I tag a topic and, say, a news article with the same tag, by clicking on the tag, you get content from both. So tags aren't just a way to find similar content in the forums, but the entire site. So give that Popular Tags thing some time. It isn't really useful now because nothing is tagged, but it could be very helpful in the future. Plus, there's length on that sidebar to spare, so space isn't a concern.

Nice work, and as I can assume, a lot of work! Thanks for this. 

 

Adding to Straff's point: The "About me" section in my profile also causes an error. But for both of them I think they will work when that bit of broken stuff is repaired. 

 

Edit:

I knew I forgot something. :) Do I err or are the avatar pictures bigger than before? They are really dashy but I can't say why. 

 

Edit #2:

Are this "HOT"-icons needed? They're kind of disturbing, or am I alone with this feeling? 

 

And I may have missed it, but I didn't find the possibility to get to the last posting of a thread (from the overview). (Not the last unread, this I found.) 

 

And this "0 warning points" creeps me out. I hope I'll never give you a reason to give me one. :/ 

Not sure what's going on with those tabs on the member pages, but I'll get that fixed pronto.

Avatars should still be the same 100x100 size for everyone, but they do feel larger.

Hmmm, not sure I like that "warning points" thing being displayed to all members. I thought that just staff saw it, similar to the old warn system. Don't worry, we rarely if ever use that warn system, and if we did, they totally had it coming :P

What else to say for now? I think give the new boards some time. I've used them pretty extensively over the past few weeks and I really like them and their look. I can understand people saying the layout is a bit bright, for sure, but give it some time :) We will most certainly make small adjustments as we go along.

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^Thanks for the reply. I'll give these "tags" a while before I take them as my enemy, if you insist.

 

I meant to mention it, but I agree with Meg. The warning points counter is a bit disturbing. In the worst case, I can see new members saying "so that's [Ooooh, I only had to hit CTRL+i!] how it's going to be" when they see it after they post the first few times. More realistically, it's just a bit creepy and unnecessary.

 

Also, fun fact on the italics: Firefox, at least, had that functionality back before the changeover.

Edited by Kurkistan
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Okay so I guess this thread is going to be my bug center.

The mobile skin should now be working fine. It should automatically detect a touch device and direct it to the mobile skin. And there should be a "Use Full Version" button at the bottom which can move you back to the desktop version. You can also use the Change Theme button on the bottom left to switch between the two.

 

Slight problem though: Josh and I are having inconsistent results with the Use Full Version button. It works on my Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 (both on Chrome), but it doesn't work on Josh's iPhone 4 on Chrome and Safari, yet does work on iOS Dolphin. What the crap?

 

If you're bored, can you see if the Use Full Version button works on the mobile site (especially if you are on an iOS device)?

Edited by Chaos
What the crap HTML
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Okay so I guess this thread is going to be my bug center.<br /><br />The mobile skin should <em>now</em> be working fine. It should automatically detect a touch device and direct it to the mobile skin. And there should be a "Use Full Version" button at the bottom which can move you back to the desktop version. You can also use the Change Theme button on the bottom left to switch between the two.<br /><br />Slight problem though: Josh and I are having inconsistent results with the Use Full Version button. It works on my Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 (both on Chrome), but it doesn't work on Josh's iPhone 4 on Chrome and Safari, yet does work on iOS Dolphin. What the crap?<br /><br />If you're bored, can you see if the Use Full Version button works on the mobile site (especially if you are on an iOS device)?

 

You've got some freaky html (?) going on there. I'm seeing break-line and emphasis tags.

 

I just tried it on my iPhone 5: Full Version button worked on Chrome, but not on Safari.

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