Since we finished our transfer of the forums to the Drupal platform over a week ago, we have been collecting feedback from the Taunton forum communities. Our producers and developers have read through all of the many feature requests, account questions, bugs, and calls for updates. In order to have a clear and direct line of communication with you about our progress in addressing these, we have posted a notice block at the upper right hand corner of every page with the latest status on the most important changes (such as notifications, finding new content and search), as well as an FAQ about how to use the new forums. This block will be the place where all announcements, such as this one, will be posted. Here is the progress so far:
1. Fix the “new” feature to actually show what’s new. Completed. This caching issue was specifically affecting the Breaktime forum and new content should be refreshed in the “latest posts” and “latest comments” areas. 2. Enabling notifications so you will receive an alert when someone comments on your posts. Completed. Members must individually opt-in to receive email notifications. To do this:
– login, – edit your profile, – check “Receive node follow-up notification e-mails” under the “Comment follow-up settings” section (note: you can also choose to receive notifications for comments to your comments). – save
3. Displaying replies in non-threaded chronological order with a link to the comment you replied to. In progress. We hope to make this user specific (you choose how you want the forums to appear) 4. Changing the “Save” button to “Post” so there’s no confusion about how to publish a post. In progress (unfortunately not a simple change) 5. Getting Search up and running. Done on Over the Fence & Gatherings; In progress everywhere else. Please note it will take time for the Drupal search index to populate (this is especially true for large databases like Breaktime, which have millions of individual records).
In addition to the visible changes we are making, there is a lot of behind the scenes set-up going on with our hosting provider to fine-tune these sites to run at the high traffic levels Taunton can experience (we will have over 2 Million visitors on our sites this month). If you have any requests, complaints, bugs, or questions about the forums, please respond as a comment to this post for now. Our producers and developers will be spending time with their families during the holidays and we will have a rotating crew who will be monitoring this thread and making the changes as they are able. Please continue to be patient with the process and have a happy holiday. Jason Revzon VP, Taunton Interactive
Replies
"1. Fix the "new" feature to actually show what's new.
Completed. This caching issue was specifically affecting the Breaktime forum and new content should be refreshed in the “latest posts” and “latest comments” areas."
This issue is not fixed in the Knots forum.
I am also experiencing mixed success with this feature. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. It's hit or miss, and I have no idea whether or not it's letting me know all the new messages in a thread, as I have discovered several on occasion that I haven't read.
As with the other 2 responses I have looked at this 3 times and both previous posts show up as new. This is not a consistent experience.
Don
Special thanks for the "Recent Topics" and "Recent Replies" -- helps tremendously!
You said.....
>>"1. Fix the "new" feature to actually show what's new.
Completed. "<< And I reply..... No, its not completed. To me it isn't acting ANY differently than it did last week. C'mon Jason -- do the job right ......PLEASE! . ..
Thanks for your hard work and the attention paid to comments from we poor Knotheads. Many blessings to you and your staff for the Holiday Season.
Jerry
Frosty,
This new format is interesting. I see your photo. You are much younger than I thought. :-)
Merry Christmas.
Mel
Jason:
Please forward my thanks to everyone who has been working on the changeover. The new forum is getting more friendly and helpful, and some of us appreciate all the effort and work. I'm hoping it will eventually have a look and function similar to the old one, but that's my personal opinion.
Thanks for the compliment. The same goes for you. I like your big smile.
Sorry to be so late in responding. I did not receive 'notice' of your post. I can get used to the new format - it is better than I feared. Adding a photo is a snap and the regular feature of the member's face is good.
Yesterday I posted a question in the Joinery section. It showed up immediately after the "Save", but today when I looked for it after I had received no replies I couldn't find it. Maybe after the Holidays they will get back to work on the kinks.
Happy New Year
Jerry
Hi, Jason. As a member who frequently posts links, a couple of requests: (1) please make hyperlinks show as underlined -- it makes it more obvious that they are a link (than if it's simply a different color); (2) to tide us over until the advanced formatting is possible, can you make it possible for URL's to automatically become links? [such that if we simply type http://www.taunton.com, it automatically becomes a link]?
Thanks. Happy Holidays!
We need any hyperlinks within a post/message to open up in a new window (as they did in the past), rather than take our Knots page to a different site.
FG:
If you right-click on a link you'll get a drop-down menu where you can select "new window" or "new tab" as options.
FWIW, I'm using Ubuntu (a Linux platform) and the most recent iteration of Firefox.
Happy New Year!
I know the short-cut, but feel we shouldn't have to use it on the forum. It was standard in the past to have links open in new windows, and the other two fora I browse default to that choice also. Seems like an obvious thing, and I'm surprised at the change.
Jason,
The two topics assigned to reporting bugs and requesting upgrades/enhancements are getting harder to find resulting in these items getting posted randomly in the General or Feedback sections.
If those links stayed at the top of the Forum status window it would be easier to post issues and easier to track on your end.
Don
It's partly my fault, my
It's partly my fault, my rebellious streak is showing itself! The other threads have gotten really long, when I got frustrated with the text-box size, I just blurted it out in a stand-alone thread. I'm on the verge of doing it again, with a screen shot of a "real" composition box with formatting options built in. Don't'cha think that must be a pretty standard component to plug in?
Well there have been other topics started which should have been routed to one of the member concerns topics. If the techies want to pool the concerns then they should ensure that the path to their door is clearly marked.
I was very surprised that the text box sizability is not universal given that most of this web stuff is Windowized for the biggest audience. Mac OS is unix based, maybe that is why somethings work a bit better - I do not know.
I would hope that this is at the top of the list. Peopel can put up with lots, but when the ability to contribute to a discussion is impaired then the intent of the forum is lost.
Don
OK, you win... I'm getting
OK, you win... I'm getting used to the new layout. Here's a few more items that I would find helpful... I find that if I turn my computer screen at a 45 degree angle to where I sit, I can see the colored 'stripes' that seperate one reply from the next. I'm not sure what color it is, but it's there. Can something more obvious be done to seperate one reply from the next?? I can not easily see the blue lettering because of old eyes. Where you posted in bold type, I can read it easier than the standard ultra-thin text font you are now using. And finally YES change that d#### button that says 'save' and have it read 'Post'.
Happy & Healthy New Year to you....
SawdustSteve Long Island, NY (E of NYC)
So far, with all the whining going on, my favorite thing about the new forum is that it's made it very easy to sort wheat from chaff, identify whiners, idjits, and other killfile volunteers.
This change is the best thing to happen to woodworking since the Chinese started manufacturing handplanes!
Dose this make any sense? Not one to complain much although this seems to make it tough to see whats new and whats not. This place has become very confusing.
Rich14
19 replies (19 new)
Ok I went to breaktime and came back this is what I see. Rich14
19 replies (9 new)
Hey the recent replies and recent topics are nice. A suggestion. How about just showing the header instead of the post as well for both. This way you don't have to do a ton of scrolling and you don't need to read posts that don't interest you. You would get rid of a lot of white space. This is how the FOG forum works and is nice you can zero in on the topics as they are entered.
Something is still screwy with the "new post" count.
On my most recent visit, on the left side it says there are 11 NEW replies to a topic I posted. Not.. nothing new from my last visit.
Do I have to log out when leaving and then in again on my next visit for that function to work?
Cheers, Don
A bug, possibly: I sent a link referring to a message and the recipient said it couldn't be opened BECAUSE there "is no period between finewoodworking and com". Whether this applies to any link I don't know.....
Philip, how did you provide the link? Were you using the "Email this message" option at the bottom of the post? If so, it's definitely a bug. There always needs to be a period between the domain name and the "com" or "org" or "gov" or whatever, and the software should be providing an exact URL, "dot"s and all.
Jamie,
I can't remember if I
Jamie,
I can't remember if I used the option you refer to or if I right clicked and used the "send link" option, but with either of those the link automatically appears without having to either type it or copy and paste. Anyway the recipient is savvy and pointed out the fault to me so hopefully the information is useful to the folk running the forum transfer.
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