JoCo Forum/Website Update
Things are looking different around here aren't they? Thought I'd start a place for discussion about features and issues with the new digs. I'm still looking around and finding new things, but here's what I've noted so far:
Good News!
Good News!
- Private messages are now easy to find! (Check out the "Inbox" link at the top of the page.)
- You can tag other users in a discussion by putting an @ in front of their username. They'll receive a forum notification. (You can choose to be emailed when someone tags you as well.)
- User profiles now include all discussions you've started and comments you've added.
- Login now asks for your email instead of your username. You can still log in with your username. The prompt text is just a little confusing.
- I haven't yet figured out how to use the new private message system.
Comments
Thanks for the tip about being able to use my previous username instead of my email to login.
Also, where are all the options we used to have when adding a comment? (quote, link, bold, add a photo, etc).
There must be a way to add rich text controls back, but I think it requires an addon to be installed by a mod. Unfortunately Vanilla's plugin db is not very searchable, so the only one I can see on quick review is a WYSIWYG editor.
EDIT: Hmm, I can't edit the original post for this thread either. I wonder if editing permissions are blocked for head posts, or if it's dependent on elapsed time? Editing the original post happens a lot in reference threads. This might be a problem.
Weeeee!
Rich text support: I looked further for a toolbar to auto-generate markup, and based on comments in the Vanilla community, there might not be a plugin for it yet. (Time to write one?) The WYSIWYG editor I linked above is apparently useless in IE7+. In the meantime basic HTML tags work, but I haven't tried anything fancy.
Mobile site: The default mobile template on my iPod doesn't include a link back to JoCo's site or a way to initiate direct messages. Neither of these are terrible, but given that there is also no way to switch to the non-mobile site, kind of annoying.
User profiles: User pages used to have lots of optional information like real names, email addresses and user-defined fields. I can't find that anymore--is it all gone forever? Looks like a plugin might be needed if we want that kind of extended profile back.
I wonder whether anything interesting will happen if I put an ü or an ü (the same thing as an HTML entity) here.
ETA: Well, nothing interesting happened there, so that's good, I guess.
ETA: It seems to be possible to comment on people's user profiles. I just commented on @chicazul's, I think. I wonder if I'll be able to see it by clicking on the link that that @ thing will make.
Missing rich text editor and 15-minute edit lock are both annoying even though they don't affect me directly (I didn't use those buttons much before, and one of the few things I can still do as a mod is edit posts, including others' posts, all the time). Old permalinks being broken really bothers me, but I'm not sure what can be done about that. @chicazul, any chance of extensions to fix it?
(Note that @Jmonkee's links in this thread are broken anyway because they leave off the "www" to save space -- by the way, what's the character limit now? -- and the relative links don't point to the right places. But then, even the right places are broken too.)
Forum upgrades need to happen when I'm less busy, dangit!
ETA: People who don't check the wiki's recent changes may have missed this update. Note the user who made the edit.
Also, it'd be nice if I could preview what I was editing.
ETA: One new thing the profile has are male/female radio buttons, which default to male. I don't know what it does though; I don't see this displayed on my profile but perhaps it's used for pronouns somewhere. Pity there's no 'other/unspecified' option, well not really since it doesn't seem to do anything anyway. Anyway, the reason I looked at that is that I thought it was about time I added an avatar. Can anyone see how to do that in this new version of the forum? I never did it on the old one, so perhaps it's in the same place as before, but I can't find it.
01
which used to go to the URL
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=974
but now goes to
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/forums/jonathancoulton.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=974
But yes, both the intended and the actual links are broken, even if one is brokener.
I see things are changing! Comment editing time has been extended to one week and WYSIWYG controls have suddenly appeared.
I must argue with @Bry's complaint about the header link though--yes it was a bit confusing to have that UI change, but there's already a link back to the forums ("Discussions") and having "Jonathan Coulton" in large font was a welcome bit of visual consistency with the main site. As I write this there's no link at all back to the main site, which is a poor UI choice. Please put it back?
Yeah, I wasn't so much suggesting a different design as complaining that I'm easily confused and click on the wrong thing a lot. I agree we need some way to link back to the JoCo main site.
ETA: Also I liked the non-WYSIWYG box better and now I can also only edit everyone's posts for one week. Grr, change!
@Angelastic: Am aware of the Members Only issue, am trying to acquire necessary powers to address it.
When I try to edit a post in "Show Source" mode (the icon of the little page with the <angle brackets>), the WYSIWYG editor freezes and I have to close my browser tab (this is IE9 -- please don't give me flak for it, I'll go back to Firefox / Chrome / Opera when I'm unemployed, which if there keep being this many shiny things to play with on the forums may be pretty soon).
ETA: Missed @chicazul's line above:
(Not totally useless for me, just hangy.)
@Angelastic: This amazingly unhelpful thread seems to suggest that there should be a way to add avatars involving going to your profile (e.g. by clicking on your name) and choosing Change Picture, but that many people have installations that are missing that Change Picture / Remove Picture link, and that no one seems to know what to do about it. It's also possible that users haven't been given that permission -- if I were an admin (yuhbby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum) I could go in and check if that were the case, but as it is I'll just whinge about it.
Clicking "Post comment" has caused my browser tab to lock up the last two or three times (although the post goes through). Let's see what happens now.
ETA: No hang! Question for @Angelastic, @chicazul, any other wikipeeps out there: can you log in currently? I may have asked someone to do something that may have broken something...
Necessary rights obtained. I now control the vertical and the horizontal.
You might notice the following:
I was already wondering why my RSS bookmark wouldn't update. That being said, will there also be a new RSS feed of the forums?
The new forum is still better than most threaded monsters out there, but right now, mere minutes after getting to know it, I still/already miss the old days. Or at least a reasonable explanation for the change.
Jutze
(turning into a conservative one upgrade at a time)
Honestly, I always found the default Vanilla 1.x design to be aesthetically awful, and looked forward to the possibility of themes. I'll back you in any protests against typical bloated forum design though.
While I'm on about improvements to that script, addinging parameters about what links to include (buy mp3, buy flac, buy karaoke, donate) would be ideal. It'd prevent the duplication of the "donate" button found in @Angelastic's fix.
(I feel like everything I say in this thread is spoken in a stage whisper, intended for the benefit of someone who is merely observing our antics.)
I did note a distinct lack of bot spam since magical upgrade day. Hopefully this is part of some deliberate admin choice and not a fluke.
You're right that putting in a few extraneous newlines would fix the overlap, but ARGH, a hack to counteract a hack goes against my principles.
@Bry, I've noticed the wiki seems to have two types of spammers: those who seem like humans and embed a hidden link to engagement rings in existing text, and blatant robotic spammers who strike in waves, creating a deluge of new articles about mortgages or shoes. The latter type might be stymied by the new system. One can only hope.
@chicazul, yeah, I think the fellow who suggested the CAPTCHA here meant that it blocked the second type. Personally I find the first type more annoying because it's a little harder to detect automatically and so it requires more actual vigilance, but I'll take what I can get
Also of note: we used to have a poll extension installed in the forums, but no longer. Maybe we don't need it right this second, but I'd like one (maybe this one?). It's too bad there's no easy way to determine how many other people agree with me about that.
ETA (doing lots of that these days): Vanilla 2 search seems worse than Vanilla 1 search -- less flexible and it seems to have a problem with loading more than one page of results (in IE9).
cuz...
Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.. ain't got no- bo-------------------------dy!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Cheers, beautiful people.
mPony
Also, the RSS feed would be nice to get back too.
Having links for RSS of individual discussions and/or categories would be quite nice.
For, say, the JoCo Music category, the link in the source goes to
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/forums/categories/joco-music/feed.rss
which 404's.
If you correct that to
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/forums/index.php?p=/categories/joco-music/feed.rss
you get to the RSS feed.
However, as noted above by @chicazul et al, this feed only includes the first post from each discussion, not each individual post. (Similarly, you can get a feed for All Discussions at http://www.jonathancoulton.com/forums/index.php?p=/discussions/feed.rss that only includes the first post in each discussion.)
@chicazul also mentions, and this thread from the Vanilla Forums forums seems to confirm, that the only way to get the proper kind of feed (one with all comments) is to go in and muck around with creating a custom view. For that you have the documentation, this default code, and my best wishes
If you just want to get notifications about new posts in specific threads, you can bookmark discussions by clicking on the little star next to the discussion title; then in your profile you can set your preferences to "Notify me when people comment on my bookmarked discussions." This may cause e-mails.
The upload directory (public) is not writable by the webserver
. This sounds like something that needs to be addressed by The Powers That Be. I doubt TPTB are still checking this thread though, so should I email someone, or is @Bry taking charge of these administration details?