The big bad forum update topic

[Glowfire]

Can someone screenshot the super white reply page for me?

Hidden: show

[Arn]

My monk character's journal is a bit weird. The very last entry (posted November 15, 2018) is totally missing, and the second-to-last entry is cut off after the Youtube video.

Like for reference: viewtopic.php?p=841760#p841760

[Glowfire]

Hm, I just noticed as well that it seems to be missing the Faerun calender version of the day and month on the top. Not urgent but it was useful!

[Glowfire]

... and the BGTSCC wiki page link isn't anywhere that I can see, along with the donation button for server costs!

[Steve]

Zaniej...do you want a soft or hard “complaint” on putting the poster avatar BACK to the left side??!?

[The Whistler]

I've just got a question
why ?

EDIT: nvm, I educated myself

[SoThereIWas]

@Glowfire, wiki link is found in this post here.

But yes, overall... this is going to take some getting used to for all of us. :p

Edit: also donation post is here

Edit 2: And that wiki link is outdated in the post I had linked!

[Maecius]

Thanks SoThereIWas. I updated the thread with the correct wiki link. Unfortunately, as Arn had reported, posting a YouTube embedded video seems to currently "hide" the rest of the post (nothing shows below the YouTube video).

Until that can be fixed, here is the url for the wiki:

https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title=Main_Page

[Theodore01]

the wiki link seems missing.

[Tsidkenu]

Noticed the youtube link breaking my character biographies, yes!

Related to that, Nyssis' previously awesome biography format utilising table + td2 (right/left) functionality also seems broken at least for the mobile version. Click Shez's bio below and compare to Ara's which I just 'fixed' by removing the nonfunctional code.

[Maecius]

Thank you for your work on this Zanniej. You truly saved us here (and at the eleventh hour, too, so props for the dramatics!), and it's appreciated. It also looks very good. I like a lot of the new functions, too -- notifications, super easy access (for me anyway) to the mod and admin tools. I think I like the fact that we only have a book icon for unread forums (though I miss the "fully read" book icon, too), just because it makes it very easy to see where I have unread messages.

All in all, amazing work!

A few quick thoughts, though, on some things we can tinker with over the days and weeks to come for improving the new forum and its functions:

1) Per the above post (and Arn's post), embedded YouTube videos currently "erase" anything that comes beneath them. (The content is still there when you quote it or edit it, but it doesn't show when you publish).

2) We probably will need to design a new banner. Might be a good opportunity to host another community banner contest, if we don't want to just give it to the Media Team? But at least for the near future, it would be nice if we made it so that clicking on the banner takes the user back to the index page. It was a much quicker way to get to the index than searching for and clicking on the breadcrumbs, and I know I used it frequently.

3) The color scheme probably needs a little additional work. It's currently not very easy to differentiate between posts (due, I think, in part to the fact that all of the colors kind of blend in together). Maybe a slightly lighter background color for the user messages on forum posts, with the darker lines and padding left to separate them from the message above and below?

4) I am personally partial to having the user information on the left with the message on the right, as I've said before. It helped me to quickly see who was speaking and also served to differentiate posts as above. But I'm willing to see if I can get used to the user-on-right layout if it's the simplest way to organize the new forum. It could just be a "this isn't what I'm used to" feeling more than anything else, so it may change over time. My eyes just feel like they're working too hard shifting to the left instead of to the right.

5) As others have said: We'll want to get a link to the wiki on the header at some point, as well as the paypal donate button and the discord link. If you need the code for the paypal donate button, hit me up, Z; I think I can generate one for you pretty quickly off paypal itself.

6) Maybe get rid of the rainbow-animated button (which apparently doesn't work right now, since that part was supposed to be rainbow-animated)? You can leave the function if it's beloved by all and something you're proud of, but as it stands the function bar itself is "broken" (by which I mean that the "YOUTUBE" function button starts into a second row, where a single-row function bar would look a lot cleaner and crisper).

7) I kind of miss having the color swatch immediately available to me on reply messages. Having to click the rain drop function to open the table is a little bit of extra work. Not sure if the emoticons are better to have "open all the time" or not, compared to the color swatch? Or if we could put a color swatch above them or below them? Not sure.

8) I don't know if this is happening for everyone or if it just because I am a mod/admin user, but everyone's user profiles show the anti-spam bot measures for some reason. See what I mean inside the yellow circle:



I'm sure there'll be other thoughts to come! But those are just some starters. I may even come around on some of those above "first impressions," with time and with "getting used to it." But for now that's what I've noticed through an afternoon's worth of forum work.

[Darksaber]

I really like the new forum layout. It's much better than the old one because everything is larger and more contemporary. There's just two minor things:
1)I'm still getting that phpbb error as per this thread: https://www.bgtscc.net/viewtopic.php?f=419&t=68113. It's only for one page, the first page of the Everwatch Knights RP thread in the Guild's Forum (not sure if everyone else is getting this too).
2)The orange date at the top of my forums is one day ahead (2 December 2018) even though in the user control panel it says the correct date. Not sure how to change this.

Besides these really small kinks everything is looking great Zanniej, thank you!

[SoThereIWas]

I'm I the only one that see hyper links blend in with the rest of other text color wise, right now?

At any rate, a suggestion would be to....

- Add the wiki and donation link too the 'quick links' drop down box over embedding them else ware to make use out of it. The cons to that is it's not very obvious to others, so can be easily missed.

[Arn]

The [ hr][ /hr] command also doesn't seem to be working. It should be drawing a big horizontal line, but it doesn't.

[Steve]

Is there / where is the button for PMing a post to the Poster?