Announcement of an impending move to Xenforo forums and the technical reasons

May i suggest then you keep just the basic ones?

all of the non animated ones, and the group hug one, oh and my signature, most of the others seem pointless, and are not used much.

 

Need to retain all previous ones so that the codes used for all previous ones get converted into smilies when the message is displayed. Some of them read OK as text, but the ones that don't will just make a mish-mash of the original message if not converted to a picture.

There are already some missing that show as their text equivalent on really old messages.

 

just a small update, i will be adding a twitter feed display into the new gc's offline message on day of the move, so to check the status of the move just come to the gc homepage
and the twitter feed will show you the latest updates on the move, including a ETA of the time we'll be back online

homepage is http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/

 

and for those of us not on twitter will ziggy update on facebook ? please
xx

 

You're welcome on my facebadger page but i'll be off doing community tree planting on sunday, at the communal gardens in Bridport.

 

Don't think you have to be a Twitter member to read someone's Twitter feed (but you woudl have to know their Twitter Name of course ...

 

Do you attend in an orange boiler suit and black donkey jacket with the word PRISONER in white across the back ?

Jack McH

 

I was invited, along with some others, to have a look at a preview of the new site.

I don't think it looks so different that you will notice after the first few moments. There are a couple of things that are in different places, or behave a bit differently, but if you want to read and type messages on a forum then you will be pleased to hear that it Looks like this forum, Walks like this forum and Talks like this forum

However, the new version is way WAY slicker than the old one.

Attaching an image to a message is a dream. I build websites, we have the slickest tool there is for uploading images on our sites, so I know a bit about it. It turns out that the new forum uses the same slick tool we do, but they have implemented it far better than we ever have :(, and I think the way they have done it is absolutely smashing.

Uploaded images can appear in your message as a thumbnail, or as a full size image (your choice when you upload one). If the image is wider than the site design it is scaled back, but people reading the message can just click on it to show it at normal size (in situ, without it popping up in a "light box"). Lots of things like that are really nicely thought out.

There is a clever alerts system. It brings up a non-intrusive little speech balloon to tell you there are new Alerts; and then at you can hover the mouse over "Alerts" in the menu and a little pop-up tells you what they are. You can click on one to read it, or just ignore them all! or you can click on the Alerts menu itself and see a full page list.

You can decide what sort of things you want to be alerted about - from someone liking your post (in which case you're a sad git, or you don't post much, because you'll get swamped by all the alerts if you have THAT turned on!) to receiving a new PM, or a reply on a message, and so on.

There's a New Posts page (called something different, and it behaves a bit differently), it only lists things that are a) new and b) you haven't read. Top Trumps! (If you get in a muddle there is a "Show all" which will also show things that you HAVE already read.)

CoolFeature: if you are not interested in a particular sub-forum you can set that so it does not appear on your New Posts page. I've wanted that in forums ever since the very first one I joined! Sorry chaps but I am not interested in the Games Arena ...

PM's are different (and called "Conversations"). You send someone a message, they reply. Normal stuff. Its in its own thread though, so you can just read and refer back to earlier replies, a bit like reading this thread (On here at present all your PMs are mixed up in a single Inbox, and completely separate from your Outbox).

CoolFeature: you can invite other people to the "conversation", so its a bit like a cross between a PM and a Chat Room.

There is the ability to host Media, Wiki (articles that anyone can edit) and Articles (I think that is for things that people specifically write). So we could have all the How To info in the Wiki, and WOO could write some nice Articles on Roses.

I hope the conversion goes well on Sunday. Richard has done loads of outstanding work on setting up the new system, and I also hope that the testing which the regulars have been asked to do will have managed to spot enough of the teething problems that there will be very few issues after it goes live. If not blame me !!

Fingers crossed. In my opinion there is lots of good stuff once you've got over the jet-lag and got yourself acclimatised, many thanks to Nathan :thumb:

Now I shall probably be shot 'coz I didn't ask permission to give this Head'sUp ..

 

yep thats right you won't have to be a member of twitter to see the feed, it will just appear like text on the forum homepage

 

excellent post

 

Yep, ankle bracelet as well.:D

Home

Don't want to fall fowl of a Bridport Dagger

The Bridport Dagger

 

An additional feature that I have just found:

You can upload large images - bigger than 800 x 600 and/or bigger than the filesize limit, and it just shrinks then down to be within the maximums. That should help with a lot of FAQ's "I uploaded a picture and it said it was too large"

However, there is (currently) a finite limit, as I tried a massive file direct from camera and was told it was too large. But "within reason" the system will sort it out for you, particularly if you are 1-pixel or 1-byte over the limit

Also you can "watch" a forum. So if there is a specialist forum that you like, with very little "traffic", then when anything new happens there you will get an "alert".