Forum Features

[nicola]

Whilst it's sad that we've left the old ones behind, this forum comes with some perks:

PRIVATE MESSAGING! YAY! Such a simple, simple thing I used to take for granted with forums, but since we couldn't successfully install that feature to ours, I appreciate them! Let's rejoice!

Reading recent posts: at the bottom forum main page, you will see this:

Total Topics: 12 - Total Posts: 25
Last Updated Topic: Hello from Texas by bobm (Today at 7:28pm)
View the 10 most recent posts of this forum.

The line in bold is very useful. Will change the settings so you can see more than 10 posts.

Karma: There is still a karma system here. On the left you will see exalt/smite. Smite is a bit harsh, but you get the point.

Youtube: I see an icon under 'Add tags'... I wonder if that means I can embed it:

*tries*



Did it work?

[nicola]

As you can see, we can embed youtube. It comes with ad. We can live with that, right? Ok, cool.

[nicola]

We also have polls! I love polls!

We are very aware that the forums are painfully slow - we are looking into paying to get rid of the ads, etc. Depends how much it is though.

xx

[bogi]

Youtube embedding works. I don't feel the forum slow for browsing, but in the case of submitting 2 small posts it took few minutes to complete the sumbission. I am still at work, so I will evaluate during weekend if I will experience that issue also from home.

[nicola]

Adam just paid to remove the ads. He will post shortly about that.

I think the forum just suffered the odd minute of slowness. It's been fast ever since. And paying for it should speed it up.

[AJTilley]

The thing to remember with proboards is they do regular maintenance, server changes etc etc etc. The downside is there can be occasional slowness, the up side is that the forums rarely do down.

[max1]

Nicola and adam,

I know it is very early to suggest features and enhancements, but I just wanted to ask to please put on your "to do" plate the ability to reverse the order of posts. On the old site, I had mine set to show newest posts first. I love that feature, saves a lot of scrolling. ;D

Thanks!

[bogi]

Dec 9, 2011 19:35:33 GMT nicola said:

Reading recent posts: at the bottom forum main page, you will see this:

Total Topics: 12 - Total Posts: 25
Last Updated Topic: Hello from Texas by bobm (Today at 7:28pm)
View the 10 most recent posts of this forum.

The line in bold is very useful. Will change the settings so you can see more than 10 posts

I found better way, at least for me.
In the upper part of each page you can find [New topics]. Just click on it. Currently 19 topics are displayed, they are probably all current topic of this new forum. The most right column is Last post. If you click ANYWHERE within this column area expect of the poster nickname, the corresponding topic will be opened and the last topic post is displayed.

I know this is not the list of all lastest posts, but I like that it is organized by topics.

[klamath]

I always use the new topics button that way you can see at a glance all new posts in all the forums.

[bogi]

Adam, I posted it in wrong thread first, but Nicola suggested me here you will read it. There are 2 things I would like to have changed, please:
When I submit a new message, the upper (oldest) and not the newest message is displayed.
And the color of inactive html links is very little visible.

[John]

Thanks Adam! I like the new look better than the previous colour scheme. It's good to have a link to the main CC site too .

Is there a search facility for the whole forum? I see that you can search individual sub-boards or threads, but I don't see a general search. It's not too bad now as the forum is quite new, but often the reason you want to search is because you can't remember in which thread a particular subject was mentioned.

Also, the calendar seems to have disappeared. Is that deliberate?

[John]

I see we have the Search and Calendar tabs back (thanks, Adam but now we seem to have lost 'Members' and 'Help'. Is there a limit to the number of tabs we can have?

There is another way into the membership list but it's not at all obvious. To be honest, didn't find the help menus very helpful so maybe that's no great loss.

One useful feature which also seems to have disappeared is the address line at the top of the main forum block, telling you which board and sub-board you are in, and allowing you to click on it to go back to any level. There was a thread started recently which wasn't at all obvious to which artist it related. The address line would have helped there.

[bogi]

Jan 12, 2012 12:52:51 GMT John said:

One useful feature which also seems to have disappeared is the address line at the top of the main forum block, telling you which board and sub-board you are in, and allowing you to click on it to go back to any level.

I also found that useful. Adam, please retain that feature.

[bogi]

Hi Adam, I have 2 findings I would like to have improved, if possible.

One thing is picture handling. When I find an interesting image on the web and wish to display it in my post, many times I cannot do it because of image width. The forum SW doesn't make automatic image resizing to some maximal width. I tried to use
[img width=640]http://www.someserver.com/picture.jpg[/img]
which functions on more forums but that didn't help. So I need to download an image to my PC and then to attach it. That wasn't my original intention. In that case the image copy is placed on my PC (I can delete it) but also on proboards. Then there is another restriction of only one attachment per post. So if I wish to show more pictures in one post, I have to download them all to my PC, resize them, then upload resized pictures to some image hosting service and then I can insert more pictures in one forum post using img tags. That's very complicated, other forums do automatic resizing or allow to set image width. Is there any possibility to solve this within the proboards environment?

My other finding is related to forum search. I just entered
forum features
to the search input box and nothing was found. I was not able to find this thread through Search.

I understand you are moving now to other house so please do not feel any pressure from my post! I have it just now in my mind and therefore I wrote it now. Thanks for all you are doing for the CCUK site and this forum.