New forum vs old forum

[=4c=Nikola]

Can you fix collapsible sections please?

[dundun92]

Yes thanks for the overhaul ED, MUCH easier to use

[D4n]

Maybe we should consider making a Petition to ED to revert the forum, if they don't fix the outstanding issues within the next week? :/ https://www.change.org/

[sc_neo]

@DanieINL ...come on dude. You know it takes time for the devs to fix and enhance things. If nothing changes on the forum withing three months you could make a case, but its way to early to be super loud about this.

 

I'd rather have them re-introduce the old colour scheme/visual style as an option like Denim and Dark mode. And of course bring back the latest thread info on the main page for each sub forum. And what i don't get; new forum but images are still displayed like in the 90s. There are so many good examples of websites and forums that display (especially in a dedictaed screenshot thread) screenshots screen filling and nicely spaced.

[Yurgon]

Some of the recent changes are quite excellent, thanks a lot for those! :thumbup:

 

If I have one gripe with the new forum, it's that it loads slowly for me.

 

Surfing the forum as such is okay. Not as fast as the old forum was during the last couple of years, but it's okay. But private messages, notifications and the Message Center easily take over 5 seconds, more like 10 seconds to load. On bad days, it could be 30 seconds or even run into a timeout. Just now, with 1 notification, it took around 8 seconds to load the Message Center.

 

Is that just me, or are loading times an issue for you guys as well?

[Eldur]

I've seen timeout messages not just once. I'd be glad about 10 seconds actually now. Could hardly be worse.

 

As for the changes, I've set up phpBB boards from a clean install, installed a custom style, changed a ton of CSS things on that including changes that weren't possible via the interface, set up all the permissions, made custom graphics without even knowing how to (total GIMP noob here) and even installed feature addons like file uploads within like 3-5 days. Noone can tell me this takes weeks or even months. And that was me knowing literally nothing about php back then, so I even had to skim s-loads of badly written documentation to just remotely understand what I ought to do. Whoever does this with the pace that we can attest here, isn't actually working on the thing period. I mean, we've been witnessing like one obvious change a week now. If that would have been my job at any company, I'd have been fired within the week the update was done without getting paid for any work I'd have done in that week. Of course, if noone is exclusively dedicated to that, and it's not a priority task, it can easily take what feels like ages, but then it's an issue of distributing resources, but you can't blame the programmer. In the end, we'll just have to be patient.

[Yurgon]

As for the changes, I've set up phpBB boards from a clean install, installed a custom style, [...] within like 3-5 days. Noone can tell me this takes weeks or even months.

 

So have I, both in my spare time and professionally.

 

Yet I won't claim to know the first thing about vBulletin, or make any assumptions on how hard or easy it is to work with it.

 

phpBB3 had changed so drastically I had to relearn most of what I knew about the software, yet such an upgrade was necessary and took me several days to complete at some point.

 

On top of that, vBulletin is not Open Source software, and I don't know how any copy protection mechanisms are potential hurdles when changing things.

 

Learning a template and plugin system of software like Wordpress can easily take a couple of weeks. Working outside of the plugin system is usually a path to pain, followed by pain and then a lot more pain. So despite the possibility to apply a potential easy fix to a single PHP file, it may take days or even weeks to achieve the same task the "proper" way, especially when new to the software or an updated version.

 

I've also been in contact with ED's web staff regarding E-Shop issues and am pretty sure they are not exclusively working on the forum (when I say "they", I actually mean just one guy, and I got the impression he's very competent).

 

So I'm hesitant to say "they should be able to do it quickly because even I could do that", despite the fact that I do this for a living. Actually... because I do it for a living. Seen enough behind the scenes to know the incomprehensible amount of time that can be spent on a single stupid line of code, a type of click-behavior, or even just a single stupid icon, and then on the other side of the spectrum working some pretty intense magic in just 3 hours that I should have billed at 50. What we see here on the surface doesn't necessarily tell us what's going on behind the scenes, nor whether they're doing a bad job.

[Eldur]

I wanted to up your post for all the fair points you gave there, but the forum wouldn't allow be because of:

 

You cannot give Reputation to the same post twice.

 

Without it even having applied it once at all. Well, I guess there's a reason vBulletin still runs a 3.8.14 on their own site, everything beyond that must be Early Access.

 

And as you mentioned doing it for a living - I did that as well and got wrecked out of business multiple times because I couldn't fix such issues within a few days on some occasions - so I know how hard and desparate it can get sometimes, but I do stand with my statement that it gets you fired easily. Which sucks BTW, because that only shows most employers don't even have the slightest clue on the matter at all. I never was lucky to have one who does apparently and with too many years outside, I'll never get a chance to get back in sadly. German economy in a nutshell... but 'nuff of that OT for now.

[Devrim]

Thanks ED. Overhaul works for me, too.

Not big deal but, my sign. sometimes doesn't show up. "Show sign." option is ticked already.

 

I think I figured it out: When you type your message in the box below and send, the forum won't show you sign. but it's there. If you refresh the page or edit and save your post, you'll see your sign...

 

***

 

But! There's a real problem for me. New Posts (or Topics) has now time limited.

 

For example: I checked today, there were 16 pages new topics. When at page #6, somehow I distracted to read and had to take break for 10-15 minutes.

When back and click 7th page, the forum software said it was expired. I clicked New Topics again and I only got 2 pages!!!

 

Previous forum wasn't say anything like that.This behavior is really different than the previous forum <3

 

Anyway... I believe I'll live with that...

[BIGNEWY]

We have listened to a lot of feedback good and bad, and also had some time to get some real testing done using this forum, its not great from our point of view, it can be a little slow especially on the notifications and messages which is where I work a lot, we maybe looking at different options and will let you all know if we do decide to make changes.

 

thanks

[QuiGon]

Thanks @BIGNEWY

 

I want to stress out this point though:

 

and will let you all know if we do decide to make changes.

 

This was a major issue with the forum change. It came entirely out of the blue for us. There was no announcement at all that explained what is happening and why. I think this was a major source for all the frustration and bewilderment.

[BIGNEWY]

Thanks @BIGNEWY

 

I want to stress out this point though:

 

 

 

This was a major issue with the forum change. It came entirely out of the blue for us. There was no announcement at all that explained what is happening and why. I think this was a major source for all the frustration and bewilderment.

 

Strange as I did a forum announcement that could be seen at the top of each forum section a week before we made the change. We will do the same if we make another change.

 

thanks

[Dunx]

 

Strange as I did a forum announcement that could be seen at the top of each forum section a week before we made the change. We will do the same if we make another change.

 

thanks

 

To be fair, there was no detail of the changes being made and no warning to backup our media files. Mine are still missing and show as broken links.

[QuiGon]

 

Strange as I did a forum announcement that could be seen at the top of each forum section a week before we made the change. We will do the same if we make another change.

 

thanks

 

Well, it wasn't really distinguishable from the usual maintainance announcements. It definitely wasn't obvious that the entire forum changes.

I would have expected such an announcement in the weekly newsletter or at least in the official news section of the forum.

[=DROOPY=]

I recently received a 'Permanently Banned' notification when I came back to the forums to catch up from last night... Although all I had to do was log out and then log back in, I was quite startled at being 'banned' to say the least, as I have no issue with anyone, and I have posted only a handful of times...

 

Something that probably should be addressed when able...

[Tom Kazansky]

I recently received a 'Permanently Banned' notification when I came back to the forums to catch up from last night... Although all I had to do was log out and then log back in, I was quite startled at being 'banned' to say the least, as I have no issue with anyone, and I have posted only a handful of times...

 

Something that probably should be addressed when able...

 

happend to a lot of us:

https://forums.eagle.ru/forum/english/customer-support/forum-and-site-issues/7142217-re-login-for-fix-you-have-been-permanently-banned

[dburne]

 

happend to a lot of us:

https://forums.eagle.ru/forum/englis...anently-banned

 

Yeah happened to me early and I came really close to uninstalling DCS I was so ticked.

I made a post about it on another forum and thankfully a user there gave me a heads up on it pretty quickly.

Also I much preferred the old forum software.

[BIGNEWY]

If you get a ban warning on the forum log out and log back in, there seems to be some strange server issue. No bans have been given in a long while. Thanks and apologies for the inconvenience

[Uther]

Hopefully if any further changes are made the forum will look much more like it used to. I dislike this one so much it actually stops me coming here much now unfortunately.

[TAW_Impalor]

I almost got used to the (updated) new look! Dark mode is my favorite feature. The only thing I still hate is that to get to the last page of a thread I must scroll to the bottom of the first page (((

[Kang]

Probably someone mentioned already, but: the fact that you can't see the 'latest reply' thread title when looking over the subforums is quite annoying, among other things.

[Falcon_S]

Nice new forum. I like it.

[RogueSqdn]

I like the look so far, but Tapatalk does not work yet.  Hopefully emojis work with Tapatalk this time.  :)

 

My only problem with the web forum (typing this in Microsoft Edge) is that the auto-saved prompt pops up, covering your first line of text and making it impossible to see what you've typed.  I foresee a lot of blank first lines.

[Dragon1-1]

...and we're fully in 2020s, with a layout designed for nearsighted babies who have their monitors in portrait configuration for some inexplicable reason. I hate IPS, I have to zoom it out one notch to make it look less like crap. If I didn't have functioning eyes, I wouldn't be flying fighter jets! Also, it doesn't support BBCode, and uses slow, crocky Javascript stuff everywhere. Why did forum design have to go to dogs like that? Make it look good on full HD screens, and worry about phones later.

 

The old forum was atrocious, but this is worse. I want the old old forum back. This one is a cluttered, cartoonish mess, the previous one was half-functional, and they were both hideous. At least the comment function and the stupid messenger thing are gone, but it's got those inane "reactions" instead, which are inevitably substituted by some for properly worded replies. Also, no edit button on the lower bar, and even the slightest edit immediately after posting makes the "edited by" text appear, which is useless clutter that doesn't mean anything (before, it only appeared if the edit was made after some time, which made more sense). 

 

Negative comments for negative experience. Just the same that I've had with other forums who moved to this IPS crap. Even in context of what we had before, the best I can say about it is calling it a lateral move, and even that's a stretch.

Edited November 30, 2020 by Dragon1-1

[VirusAM]

I like the look so far, but Tapatalk does not work yet.  Hopefully emojis work with Tapatalk this time.  :)
 
My only problem with the web forum (typing this in Microsoft Edge) is that the auto-saved prompt pops up, covering your first line of text and making it impossible to see what you've typed.  I foresee a lot of blank first lines.

Tapatalk is working for me