The New Forum Layout

[BioWizard]

As you may know, the forums underwent a comprehensive upgrading and redesigning of epic proportions. With improving your experience as a user in mind, a very large number of new features has been added to the forums, which include but may not be limited to:

User control panel
Customizable profiles
Consolidated news page
Email-like private messaging system
User customizable blog
User definable access to posts or other users
Post drafting system
File attachment
Topic bookmarks

Please note:

1- Like any major upgrade, there is bound to be some kinks that we'll iron out over the next few days. Hopefully, everything will work smoothely and no problems are encountered, but if you do encounter a problem, please let us know.

2- In the next few days, take care what you click and don't assume that everything is still exactly where it used to be. If you're submitting a new post, make sure you're hitting the submit and not the save button, and so on. It will take a few days to get completely used to the new layout. Be patient, breathe, and give yourself at least a day or two to adjust, because once you do, you will realize how much improvement the new layout brings to your forum experience.

3- Review your profile, make sure all your information was transferred correctly. You will need to re-enter the information in your education field.

4- The forums have been reorganized to reflect 5 major sections.

Announcements: This is where all announcements and policy related posts are made.
Discussion forums: This is where all the science and philosophy discussion forums reside
Live Chat: This contains the forums for discussions related to either one of our two chatrooms
Community: This contains common interest style forums
Technical Help: As the name indicates

The feedback of every section now is contained with that section. For example, the SCF feedback forum is now located in the SCF subsection, along with all the other SCF forums (biology, chemistry, etc...)

5- Some of your topic subscriptions may have changed. Make sure to resubscribe to your favorite topics. You may also bookmark topics now.

6- The old links in all the imported posts from the old forums will open in the same window. This was enforced by the phpbb3 release for some XML validation reasons. I have however installed a modification that allows links to open a new window, thus preventing you from being navigated away friom the forums, but this will only apply to newly made posts. It cannot be applied retroactively to old posts, until further notice.

Enjoy!

[wolfhnd]

Thanks Bio

[Don Blazys]

To: Whoever recently "restructured" this forum.

My proof, along with all other equations in this thread, are no longer in "LaTex".

Can this be fixed?

Don.

[BioWizard]

Some of the bbcodes seem to not apply retroactively after the upgrade. I simply resubmitted your posts and that fixed them. I will look into this further and see if there's a way to reapply bbcode to all previous posts.

P.S: Next time, please place such requests in the technical help forum.

[BioWizard]

Some of the bbcode in posts seems to require resubmitting old posts to re-render, such as superscript, tex, etc... I'm looking for a way to automate the process, or otherwise I will have to do it manually. If you see any of your posts that you need fixed for the same of an ongoing discussion, please let me know.

[Forest_Dump]

Sure looks great. Good job.

[BioWizard]

I ran a bbcode reparse script and all latex, superscript, and subscript renderings in old posts should be back in place now.

[BioWizard]

I created symlinks so that sciencechatforum.com/bulletin works like sciencechatforum.com/, etc. Now all your old bookmarks will work again. For future use though, just access the site directly via sciencechatforum.com or philosophychatforum.com, and create bookmarks from there.

I can't think of anything else left to do. Cheers everyone!

[mtbturtle]

Congratulations BioWizard!

It really does look great and I know how much work, blood, sweat and tears you put into it. Thank you :)

[mtbturtle]

With the upgrade we now have the ability to attach images. We are hosting the uploads ourselves. Previously, uploaded images were hosted on an outside site (usually postimage). The links to these images do work.

We can make the images display directly, if the numbers following the [img] tag are removed.

For example

Code: Select all

This is what the links look now

[img:240:160]http://www.postimage.org/aV2L93J.jpg[/img]

we need to change them to

[img]http://www.postimage.org/aV2L93J.jpg[/img]

Moderators, if you come across this in posts, please take a take a second to make the appropriate edits - remove the numbers.

Users, if you have posts with images in them that you would like fixed, let me or another mod know and we'll try to get to them as soon as we can.

It's unlikely that we'll be able to fix everything but at least the links do work and will take you to the image if you click on it.

The ability to upload the images directly is a HUGE improvement so we're lucky to have it now.

[ronjanec]

The new forum layout is very professional looking, and I really like the color graphics at the top of the page. Great job BioWizard!

[Celestia]

We can make the images display directly, if the numbers following the [img] tag are removed.

For example

Code: Select all

This is what the links look now

[img:240:160]http://www.postimage.org/aV2L93J.jpg[/img]

we need to change them to

[img]http://www.postimage.org/aV2L93J.jpg[/img]

Moderators, if you come across this in posts, please take a take a second to make the appropriate edits - remove the numbers.

This only works for certain images. I've already gotten this message when trying to edit in the Art forum: Your images may only be up to 500 pixels wide.

Celestia

[Forest_Dump]

I have a question. In the old layout, you could see some of the most recent posts and I found this useful for deciding whether the hunt through the latest posts. Is this feature gone now?

[BioWizard]

I have a question. In the old layout, you could see some of the most recent posts and I found this useful for deciding whether the hunt through the latest posts. Is this feature gone now?

Did you try the "what's new" page? You're going to flip!

[mtbturtle]

I have a question. In the old layout, you could see some of the most recent posts and I found this useful for deciding whether the hunt through the latest posts. Is this feature gone now?

Either the What's New Page OR the New posts link which is up by the User Control Panel -

User Control Panel (0 new messages) • Your posts • New posts

[BioWizard]

This only works for certain images. I've already gotten this message when trying to edit in the Art forum: Your images may only be up to 500 pixels wide.

Celestia

Yes, there's an upper limit of 500px on the width of any posted image now.

[BioWizard]

If anyone is having log in problems, they should delete their cookies and restart their browsers so that the new settings take effect. Also make sure the multidomain box is checked when you use the login form.

[Forest_Dump]

Okay, found that page and it is very, very good. I would make it my bookmark if I could tell when they were posted.

[BioWizard]

if I could tell when they were posted.

Say that again?

[Forest_Dump]

Okay, sorry I suppose that was a very mildly passive aggressive way of pointing out something (that should go into feedback so I will stop after this).

The "What's New" page is great and does list latest things. However, I thought (could be wrong) that in the old way, you got a time stamp, of sorts, so you could see when the latest posts were made (i.e., whether or not some were made since my last visit). Currently, the descriptions show when the string was begun (not sure what that info does for me) but not when the last post was made. So I have to parse through the different forums to see individually when that was. I admit I am lazy so I don't often want to check all the threads to get rid of those little check marks that indicate something is new.

[BioWizard]

Okay, sorry I suppose that was a very mildly passive aggressive way of pointing out something (that should go into feedback so I will stop after this).

The "What's New" page is great and does list latest things. However, I thought (could be wrong) that in the old way, you got a time stamp, of sorts, so you could see when the latest posts were made (i.e., whether or not some were made since my last visit). Currently, the descriptions show when the string was begun (not sure what that info does for me) but not when the last post was made. So I have to parse through the different forums to see individually when that was.

They're ordered by time of the last post, so the top is the latest, and as you go down it's less recent. I can make it mention the time of the last post as well. The new format actually has a lot more information than the previous one.

I admit I am lazy so I don't often want to check all the threads to get rid of those little check marks that indicate something is new.

You don't have to. That's what the "mark forums read" feature is for...

[mtbturtle]

Forest,

Try using the "New posts" link next to the User Control Panel. This will probably give you the best fit for what you are looking for and it displays more posts (from all the areas) and the newest posts are always at the top.

Or if you want to see all the Discussion Forums (SCF&PCF) displayed similar to the way they used to be either click on the "Discussion Forums" category link - viewforum.php?f=98 -

or hit the "Forums" link in the banner at the Top

[Forest_Dump]

Okay, very nice. I am slowly getting the hang of this place.

Yep. Been spinning around through things. Very nice. In fact, Bio's artistic eye certainly has been well used. You might be in the wrong field - thought of getting into marketing?

[BioWizard]

Okay, very nice. I am slowly getting the hang of this place.

Yep. Been spinning around through things. Very nice. In fact, Bio's artistic eye certainly has been well used. You might be in the wrong field - thought of getting into marketing?

Thank you, and everyone else for your positive feedback on the layout.

Forest, I KNOW I'm in the wrong field. I could be making hundreds of thousands of dollars, rather than a thousand something dollars as a science graduate student. Ah well.

[asocialnorm]

Great work on the updates, thank you BioWizard and all others for your hard work.

[BioWizard]

Great work on the updates, thank you BioWizard and all others for your hard work.

One problem though (for me at least): I miss the 'Recent Posts' block on the centre/top of the older page. Any way to get that back? It really helped.

It has been replaced by the bigger, better, more detailed and comprehensive "what's new" page. Just click on the "what's new" button at the top of the page.

[asocialnorm]

I realized that a little later; therefore, edited my earlier post to just thank you for the hard work. Thank you for the quick response though.

[SkinWalker]

This forum looks GREAT! Great job admins and thanks Bio. :)