JoCo Forum/Website Update

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Comments

  • So there's still no way to edit old posts, correct?  I really want to keep the bootleg thread updated, but I guess it isn't possible.  I'm not sure how this is an improvement over the old forum design, which was both functional and elegant.  Am I missing something?
  • Oops, accidentally fell off the face of the earth.

    @chicazul, I can e-mail or you can e-mail, either way. I haven't been in touch with TPTB for about as long as I haven't been in touch on these forums.

    @Jmonkee, I just went in and changed that so authors can edit their posts forever. I dunno what purpose it serves to block old edits.


    Just FYI, I'm keeping a possible improvements for the future (I haven't the time now, but someone else might take these on for a lark) on the wiki: http://www.jonathancoulton.com/wiki/User:Bry/Forum_to-do

  • Not sure if this has been brought up yet (running on fumes here so haven't read everything) but I've been fiddling around with this new layout and noticed that in my profile I can change my e-mail address (which is useful since that was 5 years ago now) but the box tells me I can't do it due to my username containing a space which I guess is an invalid character now. I also figure that this isn't the most common of problems since I don't remember anyone else with a space in their name, so don't feel this is as urgent as some other things.

    I apologise if this doesn't make sense to anyone but me, if needs be I'll write a translated version when I wake up.
  • The search function used to be fantastic on this forum, and now it stinks.  Anyone agree?

    Before the change, I could search by subject field, or by the body of a post.  Either way I got accurate and useful results.  Now there is just a single search bar, and no matter what I try to search on, I get garbage results.  

    Any idea if this can be fixed?  Am I just doing something wrong?  
  • I agree. I can only ever get one page of results (clicking 'More Results' loads the same results without the 'More Results' button) and I think it's finding posts with any of the search words rather than all. So to find an old post I have to think of a really specific single word that less than a pageful of other posts have.
  • @Jmonkee I believe the new forum software skimped on search by just using whatever the default database search is... I've mostly given up using the search now, which is sad for me.

  • Yeah, sad for me too.  There's a lot of history on this board that is all but inaccessible now!

    Is it something that JoCo himself could easily fix, if he were so inclined?  Since he never comes here anymore, he probably won't even realize it's a problem unless someone lets him know.

  • Well, now if we need to find an old thread, we can just ask @Bry, who knows where everything is. ;)
  • @Jmonkee: Someone appears to be writing a Google search plugin for Vanilla2, but I don't know how well it works. We should look into that.
  • edited November 2011
    Is anyone else having trouble signing in to the forums from an iPhone? Anyone? Bueller? (Does anyone else besides me do this, is probably a question I should ask myself...)

    I can't seem to login properly. I route endlessly from login screen to main index page and back to login screen. All stickied threads show as unread and all non-stickied show as read, but no threads act like they are read, in that I have to scroll from the beginning of each thread to the end.  Very annoying! (and not at all helpful for me to stay caught up).

     
  • In the spirit of failing to be actually helpful, I can log into my Android just fine, so it's not a complete mobile problem at least.  And yes, I do find myself here on my phone from time to time, usually during long winded meetings :P
  • I appear to have fixed it by disabling & then re-enabling cookies in Safari. Weird, but I don't care since I'm back to browsing.
  • edited March 2012
    Am I the only one who can't figure out when tagging someone with @username will work, and when it won't?  I haven't figured out the pattern yet - it is not a particular username that fails consistently, and it doesn't seem to be a particular location in the post.  Here's a quick test
    @Angelastic (capitalization exact) @angelastic (wrong capitalization) @chicazul (name in middle of line)

    @Bry: (exact name at start of line but with punctuation immediately following) 
    @mrgoldenbrown (self tag)


    ETA:  initial conclusions, and trying the same tags to see if position affects things
    ETA 2 : ok initial conclusions mostly proven inconsistent by the first edit.  Someday my curiosity will force me to clone the github repository and dig into the source code, but Vanilla appears to be written in PHP and I don't want to ruin my post cruise high quite yet.
  • edited March 2012
    @wilw (Not an actual user)
  • @mrgoldenbrown I am so glad I am not the only one.  I am pretty much just deliberately ignoring this issue because if I try to figure it out, I will probably annoy myself (in addition to the basic problem of diving down a wormhole of detail and not coming out for two days).
  • edited March 2012
    @Sandrylene in hindsight maybe i shouldn't have burnt PHP like that.  Around here you never know when a  random forum dweller will turn out to be a programming language 'famous person'.
  • @mrgoldenbrown: AFAIK the only programming language 'famous person' around here is @RandalSchwartz
  • @mrgoldenbrown @MRGOLDENBROWN @MrGoldenBrown $mrgoldenbrown @username @mrgoldenbrown: If you find anything out, let me know. #curiousbutlazy
  • I hae found the best form of search is to post something and wait to see what @angelastic (#wonderifthesewillwork*) posts in response. Normally it is a link to what I couldn't find!

    But yeah the search sucks big time.


    *not to be confused with Wil Weaton
  • That's funny, because until the forum was upgraded and the search was broken (making even this method less effective, since it presumably relies on the search functionality), a popular search method was to post something and see what links @Bry dug out.

    Is @Angelastic the new @Bry?
  • Does Vanilla have any reporting features?  The analytics nerd in me would love to see the graph of posts per day for February-March to see how big a dip the cruise put into activity.
  • @mrgoldenbrown There are stats for Vanilla available, but a) they're only viewable by admins, and b) the stats plugin isn't installed. (:

    It was a pretty big drop though, mostly because activity immediately pre- and post-cruise is abnormally high.
  • Bumpety-bump.

    I don't check my forum e-mail very regularly these days, so I missed an e-mail from... over a month ago... from a certain member of these forums, who (according to this message) has not been receiving e-mail notifications when his or her username is mentioned or when updates are made to discussions that he or she has bookmarked.

    (I omit identifying details by my own convention for personal correspondence, not because there's some Pull-the-String-ish secret going on here. Feel free to unmask yourself, mysterious stranger.)

    Has anyone else noticed something similar? I clearly wouldn't have noticed, as I don't check my forum e-mail very regularly these days...

  • I also have not been receiving email notifications. I assumed it was because I had disabled a setting somewhere because I get way too much email.
  • Notifications for mentions and new posts were not turned on by default when we switched to the new forum; I know I turned on 'Notify me when people mention me in comments' myself when I noticed there was such a setting. I do get emails when people mention me. Is this person sure they've enabled it? Also, it could be related to the fact that not all mentions seem to be recognised as such; sometimes in the posts they don't link to the user.

    I also seem to have 'Notify me when people comment on my bookmarked discussions.' turned on, and iI don't think I've ever received an email for that, but I'm not sure which discussions count as 'bookmarked'; perhaps I have no bookmarked discussions.
  • "I'm not sure which discussions count as 'bookmarked'"

    Anything you have starred from the main forum page, which also shows a box on the right side called "Bookmarked Discussions" between "Categories" and "Who's Online"
  • Ah okay. So, as suspected, I don't have any bookmarked discussions so as far as I know, the email notifications for that work.
  • I am the Mysterious Stranger. I have every single box ticked under the Email Notifications setting. I have a number of discussions bookmarked, and when I visit these forums and look at my notifications, I see that it is notifying me, but not by email.

    I did try changing my email address, in case that would kick it into a functioning state, with no luck. All that's really done is screw me up when I try to log in, forgetting that I need to use the new email address instead of the one I always use.

    I know that my Bookmarked Discussions receive traffic, and I know that I get mentioned successfully on occasion. I have searched my Inbox and Spam folders for forum-related emails, and I have none. :-(
  • Sorry, I've got no answers for you, @rhaje. I can say that in the login box, you can actually put in your forum username where it prompts you for your e-mail address.
  • Okay, fun. I got an email from that mention. :-/ But not one from Kate's two days ago...
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