Discussion regarding new forum

It doesn't look right to me either, with all those forum boards crammed into such a small space. Surely they should be more prominent than thread titles?

Forum Boards




Forum Threads (to same scale)




P.S. And when loading GC, if there are any Alerts it takes what seems like eternity to get them to display.

 

Other problem with that "summary" view of the Forums is that Sub-Forums are not listed anywhere that I have been able to find.

 

It wouldn't let me see PM's or alerts this afternoon at 5pm. I have just logged on again and its OK. Very unpredictable isn't it,
Jenny

 

Someone tried to message me on the chat facility last night. When I tried to respond the whole page kept freezing so I had to keep logging out and in again so couldn't use chat.

 

Blimey that's faster than the trains in North Kent.

This forum is now not very intuitive - I just started a conversation with wiseowl, when all I wanted to do was reply to post. Now I'm even more grumpy!!

 

I don't like this new condensed look and feel, but if its got to be this way than so be it. It looks like GC has had the "Chelsea Chop"

But half condensed and half not?

Surely the gardening forums (on a gardening site) should have priority over all else and be as they where....everything else can be condensed to save the space and bandwidth and we can still have a gardening site.

Just my opinion for what its worth.

Steve...

 

There are several "issues" that have been raised that seem to have been parked. Some disappointing from my point of view.

"LIKE" has been half-fixed

Font in REPLY being Times Roman and not matching the font that is displayed. Cut & Paste from an earlier message and you then get a mix of font types / sizes in your reply and no longer any idea how they will actually display. The Times Roman font has small-size numerals

Sub forums now inaccessible (The Books Sub-forum of "General Gardening Discussion", "Tropical ID" forum, under "Tropical gardening", similarly "Cacti and Succulent ID" under "Cacti and Succulents". Maybe others as well)

Not being able to see the Location for posters without having to press [+] - and yet we can see Mood and whatever "custom title" people have given themselves - of passing interest, but the more critical gardening-related data is not visible. Location helpful for replying to people, and post-count (or whatever else folk think portrays it) helpful to newbies and casual Googler's to gauge whether the poster is likely to have experience, or not.

Issue with some image links using the .NET domain name and then not showing up for some people

Mobile users (I can't test if it is still the case, can you?) have reported that the SIGN UP button is not displayed - if still the case I think that's a pity ...

Something similar with zooming - SEARCH disappearing etc. (which Scrungee has pointed out)


Not really to do with the forum upgrade (unless possible to "fix" via software) but I have a couple of gripes in case the software can do something about it:

I'd like:

"Posted using Tapatalk from my Brand ABC Phone" outlawed! (Why do companies think this is good PR?? and all it is doing is wasting storage & bandwidth). Perhaps folk could be gently reminded to turn this off on their mobile device

Identically duplicate posts automatically deleted (surprised that the software doesn't do that ... any "Failed" error message will cause the user to press SEND again ... and some of the time the first message will have actually made it, even though error message was displayed)

Registration to require folk to enter something in "Location"

 

• Sign up does show for mobile users, its just under the sidebar (which comes under forum list.
• Toggle for Postbit is sadly hard coded that way as location is part of the extra details array, its either all or nothing.
• Posted by X with tapatalk unrelated to website, that's tapatalk.
• Duplicate posts could have an add-on but with xenforo 1,.2 right around the corner (this month) most add-ons won't be needed anymore and those posts affected by add-on could not display correctly.
• Editor is going to be entirely replaced (by redactor) so putting much work into font used in it is wasted effort, tinymce is on the way out and a pain in the rear to make compatible.
• Unsure what you mean with forums inaccessible, I am looking at the sub forums you mentioned right now, they are there above the thread list.

We're looking into ways to restore some of the old layout (subforum wise) without losing the speed boost we gained.

Xenforo 1.2 will speed up the site by a large %, i have tested it and its much lighter on resources (which i didn't think was possible as xf is lightest forum script i tried so far)

Also roughly 50% of Gc add-ons will be replaced by matching core features (less overhead on server queries)

example "@username" is core as of 1.2

 

Richard, thanks for the detailed response. All sounds very promising

Deffo don't want you to add Add-ons unless you want too ... always seem to cause compatibility problems downstream Hopefully Xeno will address this sooner or later

Redactor is well impressive, I shall look forward to that

Sorry, I phrased that badly. Since the revamp of the home page the sub-forums are no longer listed (as far as I know) - which I think you have covered in your reply: "We're looking into ways to restore some of the old layout (subforum wise) without losing the speed boost we gained."

Some individuals that I raised it with have stopped including that in the messages, do you know if this is something that users can easily turn off? If so might be easiest to gently ask them to do so (if other folk/admins here agree).

Good to hear that Xenforo updates will bring improvements. It was an inspired choice of forum software IMO

Just in case you are not aware of it:



these two separate mechanisms for "Like" do not appear to be linked, so pressing "Like" does not appear in the list, unlike pressing the "Thumbs up" icon itself.

 

This server has slowed everything down for me, difficult to log in and out, pages slow to turn, pictures almost nigh on impossible to get uploaded, my nerves fray every time I try to load them as I know it's probably going to end up in rejection at my first attempt, let alone the following ones. It's annoying to have to leave the page and go back to start again especially if I've preceded the pictures with something written. Even the smilies are slow to appear!

Basically, at the moment the whole of GC is likened for me, to watching paint dry!