Massive Version 3 upgrade

[test]

(this is actually Darth Wong posting under the username "test", which I sometimes use in order to view the board as a normal non-moderator user would see it).

As you may have noticed, I've upgraded to version 3. It took a lot of work just to get the new software up and running, and I have not yet had time to make all of the changes and customizations that I would like to make. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their patience if they were stuck waiting, and also to ask anyone to report any oddities that they notice in the behaviour of the forum, their own permissions, etc.

There are bound to be a lot of glitches or unexpected behaviours, and a lot of features or customizations that were built into the old board are now lost, but many of them will return once I have the necessary time to implement them. In the meantime, we are no longer running an obsoleted version of the board software, and this new version has plenty of features which I have not yet begun to tap.

[Stark]

It's got waaaaay more functionality, but it looks like you've got a lot of fiddly formatting to do if you want to keep the 'look' the same as before. May I suggest removing the 'giant cannon' smiley?

What implications for software/feature support does moving to 3.x have?

[Darth Wong]

OK, now I'm posting as myself again. Looking around, it would appear that yes, there's quite a bit of "fiddly formatting" to do. Quite a few of the icons look like shit in this pseudo-BlackSoul theme we're using. Also, it looks like there's an awful lot of unnecessary black space at the top of the screen. Worse yet, the left and right image tags don't work at all. I'm going to have to look into some of these issues over the next few days.

As for software/feature support, moving to 3.x means that support still exists. Support for the old version 2.0.x platform was discontinued, so I sort of needed to do this upgrade just to keep using a supported product.

[Mr Bean]

It's got waaaaay more functionality, but it looks like you've got a lot of fiddly formatting to do if you want to keep the 'look' the same as before. May I suggest removing the 'giant cannon' smiley?

What implications for software/feature support does moving to 3.x have?

Few short lists
You can now ignore users, as well as friend them.
The board index's quicker and backup's should take less time
As well you can now report posts for automatic moderator attention

Abuse that feature at your own peril
As well you can view topics better
Also search? 100x better.
More to come as I ensure they are working.

[Steve]

So CONVERSION WATCH '08 is over? (That would've been such a cool thing to have some stylized banner on the information page!)

Just remember everyone, never touch the little blue button when playing with the new features. Yes, I know, there's a red button, but that's to trick you. It's the blue button that will nuke the forums (we shall dub it the Laird Button).

*goes back to listening to Bill Cosby comedy stories*


P.S. Hrm.... it actually asks to confirm posts if there are posts while you're writing your own? Intriguing....

P.P.S. And potentially annoying.

[Mr Bean]

Also a new good one I found

If your writing a post and someone else posts while your writing you'll get a popup

Post review
At least one new post has been made to this topic. You may wish to review your post in light of this.
Very helpful that

[phongn]

The fine-grained control over disabling images, avatars, signatures and whatnot is quite welcome. Also, the text-entry field does not appear to trigger Google Chrome's weird rendering bug.

[Stark]

Over the phpBB threads that have popped up, I remember seeing people talk about stuff you couldn't do with the old version, so I'm eager to see what you can do with 3.x. Hopefully the workload for the board style isn't too serious.

Bean, thanks for that. Even just as a user, I'm poking around and finding all kinds of features we didn't have before. It's like christmas!

OMG THANK THE LORD 'a new post has been made' warnings! I'm in heaven.

[General Zod]

Also a new good one I found

If your writing a post and someone else posts while your writing you'll get a popup

Post review
At least one new post has been made to this topic. You may wish to review your post in light of this.
Very helpful that

I dislike how the quote function is now at the bottom of a post instead of the top. Rather irritating when you're used to the other method. Probably a minor foible though.

[Gandalf]

The fine-grained control over disabling images, avatars, signatures and whatnot is quite welcome.

I agree there, as I periodically lose a lot of bandwidth,

Also, the birthday feature is pretty neat.

[Mr Bean]

Quick question, can anyone see the fact I've marked the this post for Moderator response? I want to know if I can only see my own or everyone can see them(IE I could notice someone else)

*Edit
Oh merciful Xenu, the boards built in IP Tracer just allot better!
Also as you might notice the top instruction bar stays locked no matter what forum your in.
OAN,

[General Zod]

Quick question, can anyone see the fact I've marked the this post for Moderator response? I want to know if I can only see my own or everyone can see them(IE I could notice someone else)

I don't notice anything different. Probably only visible to moderators.

[phongn]

Also, the dropdown box now shows private forums, also quite welcome.

EDIT: Mr. Bean, I cannot see that you've marked your post for response, but that's probably only visible to the moderators in question.

[rhoenix]

Overall, the new features are both intriguing and useful-appearing. Given the inherent redesign and power of phpbb3, I remain confident that the upcoming accompanying themes will match the site well.

EDIT: Also, being able to see what posts have been added before one posts theirs is a little thing, but a very useful one.

[General Zod]

Oh wow. We now have a method of sorting through usernames categorically by letter instead of just in one massive user list with hundreds of pages to make finding people's profiles easier. That's a feature I've been complaining about the lack of for years.

[bilateralrope]

Links inside quotes no longer show up as the same colour as the quote box when using Blacksoul.

The removal of the text "Sticky: " on a stickied threads title makes them a bit harder to tell apart from normal threads, especially when the forum doesn't have any unread threads in it.

Black names on a dark background are a bit hard to read.

[bilateralrope]

You can now ignore users,

Could that be disabled to prevent people repeating posts, then claiming that they didn't see the first one ?

[Gandalf]

You can now ignore users,

Could that be disabled to prevent people repeating posts, then claiming that they didn't see the first one ?

I think the bigger concern might come from people just plainly ignoring those they don't like.

While this could work in Testing, it really has no great use elsewhere.

[Ender]

this is trippy, and will take some getting used to.

Also, did we import all of Einy's smilies, or just his favorite ones?

[Stark]

Per-forum ignore functionality would be good; in N&P and others it should be suppressed.

If I could make a feature request, could we get things like the PM link and the User panel link open a new tab? We're all in the land of tabbed browsing these days, and it would make it easier to work with sigs, settings, etc without following links around.

[Mr Bean]

You can now ignore users,

Could that be disabled to prevent people repeating posts, then claiming that they didn't see the first one ?

I think the bigger concern might come from people just plainly ignoring those they don't like.

While this could work in Testing, it really has no great use elsewhere.

Well I've put Shroom on my list, but but if you ignore someone as I've done here you can still click through it as I'll demonstrate.

New limit noticed, images bigger than 640 pixels can not be posted
Need to fix that

[Ender]

You can now ignore users,

Could that be disabled to prevent people repeating posts, then claiming that they didn't see the first one ?

I think the bigger concern might come from people just plainly ignoring those they don't like.

While this could work in Testing, it really has no great use elsewhere.

Yeah, while I am generally very much in support of ignore lists, I think they kinda go against the board's ethos in this case. Not addressing someones points under the claim that "I have them on ignore" is kinda the opposite of what this place is about.

[Ender]

Also, playing with ignore - ignoring someone still leaves the threads they create visible.

[fgalkin]

Quick question, can anyone see the fact I've marked the this post for Moderator response? I want to know if I can only see my own or everyone can see them(IE I could notice someone else)

*Edit
Oh merciful Xenu, the boards built in IP Tracer just allot better!
Also as you might notice the top instruction bar stays locked no matter what forum your in.
OAN,

I can see it. So, it's visible to all mods, not just the reporter.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Darth Wong]

We may end up deciding to disable some of these new features, so we'll have to see about that. A lot of people bring up some pretty good points about the "Ignore" feature; that is a very popular feature on Miss Manners boards for some of the very reasons that I don't like those kinds of boards.

In the meantime, everyone should hit the Refresh button at least once, because I've edited the BlackSoul-SDN stylesheet a few times in order to fix some of the more glaring glitches, like usernames showing up in black.

Anyway, I have to work tomorrow so I'm going to sleep. Try not to make a mess while I'm gone.