Forum Feedback & Issues

[Brant Marshall]

Hi all,

If you have any feedback about the new forum, or see anything that isn't quite right, please reply to this thread so we can get it all sorted out for you.

Thanks!

[Anders Moen]

Hi,

 

On mobile devices at least, the top header is white as well as the button to open the menu, thus hard to log in unless you know where the button is 🙂

Android, Chrome 80 something

 

Otherwise it looks really good 🙂

 

Anders

Edited April 11, 2020 at 07:20 AM by Anders Moen

[Trevor Hannant]

Could really do with making the text in the user navigation a darker colour for desktop also:

Even setting it to the same as the reply button background would work?:

 

#elUserNav > li > a {
    color: #3498db;
}

 

Edited April 11, 2020 at 08:37 AM by Trevor Hannant

[Joaquin Blanco]

It seems that the old "Read new posts" has disappeared from this new Forum. This was very useful so as not to have to go through all the unread posts and still be able at a glance to see what is actually new.

Although it doesn't affect me the forum background is far too bright, even Microsoft has now realised that this can be a problem for many people and has introduced Black settings in windows 10.

regards

[Trevor Hannant]

@Joaquin Blanco The Unread Content link at the top right will still provide that.  All content on the forum has been marked as unread since it was migrated over but if you mark everything read, you will only see those items that aren't from then on.

[Alistair Thomson]

Anders is absolutely spot-on. Below is how it looks on my Mac. Incredible that this flaw was missed or ignored.

And I really, really, don't appreciate getting notifications at 1:00am while I'm trying to sleep. I had to reset all my settings. The migration process has clearly not been given much attention.

Finally, the forum takes up too much space on the screen. Good for visually impaired but annoying for others to have to wade down endlessly to scan the posts. I haven't had time yet to see if I can choose a different layout. Once I've done that and looked at the re-hash I'll no doubt have other things to say.

[Matt Booker]

Will the ability to add a forum signature be added at a later date? 

[Callum McLoughlin]

Can the number of brightly coloured names in the user list be cut down to the bare minimum [i.e. the VPs]? I don’t know why highlighting who is a web developer [etc] is needed. Most of VATSIM are staff in some way so I don’t want to take part in a psychedelic trip every time I log in 😛 

Edited April 11, 2020 at 01:58 PM by Callum McLoughlin

[Keanu Czirjak]

Overhauling the forum links has completely borked Google search results - which still come up using the old forum link format. Could you atleast attempt to implement some sort of migration solution to redirect us from the old link structure to the new? Tried to search for something, clicked on a link to the VATSIM Forums, doesn't take me anywhere. This is the thread I'm trying to view in particular: https://forums.vatsim.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=62718

I even tried second guessing the URL by using the title visible from the search result and cramming it in (e.g. https://forums.vatsim.net/topic/62718-finding-valid-routes/ ), but that didn't seem to work either.

[Thomas Michael]

First of all, your new forum is very clean, slick and modern. Kudos for that!

I don't know why but every google search that links to vatsim forum gives me a 404 error.

I've tested on Firefox, Chrome, Edge, my phone using 4G and using home wifi, but still nothing seem to work.

Are you still migrating the data?

[Ryan Bentley]

4 hours ago, Matt Booker said:

Will the ability to add a forum signature be added at a later date? 

 

Visit https://forums.vatsim.net/settings/signature/ to update your signature.

[Brant Marshall]

4 hours ago, Callum McLoughlin said:

Can the number of brightly coloured names in the user list be cut down to the bare minimum [i.e. the VPs]? I don’t know why highlighting who is a web developer [etc] is needed. Most of VATSIM are staff in some way so I don’t want to take part in a psychedelic trip every time I log in 😛 

 

5 hours ago, Alistair Thomson said:

Anders is absolutely spot-on. Below is how it looks on my Mac.

And I really, really, don't appreciate getting notifications at 1:00am while I'm trying to sleep. I had to reset all my settings. The migration process has clearly not been given much attention.

Finally, the forum takes up too much space on the screen. Good for visually impaired but annoying for others to have to wade down endlessly to scan the posts. I haven't had time yet to see if I can choose a different layout. Once I've done that and looked at the re-hash I'll no doubt have other things to say.

 

10 hours ago, Trevor Hannant said:

Could really do with making the text in the user navigation a darker colour for desktop also:

Even setting it to the same as the reply button background would work?:

 

#elUserNav > li > a {
    color: #3498db;
}

 

 

11 hours ago, Anders Moen said:

Hi,

 

On mobile devices at least, the top header is white as well as the button to open the menu, thus hard to log in unless you know where the button is 🙂

Android, Chrome 80 something

 

Otherwise it looks really good 🙂

 

Anders

 

Hello,
I've been working on another theme and it should be ready to go within the next few hours. I apologize that this has been a bit of a pain but I am working on a resolution as we speak. We really do appreciate all your patience.

As for the notification settings - This would have happened no matter what. This Forum Software comes with default user settings that turn on notification settings like that. We couldn't go through the thousands of people that have accounts individually to just turn notification settings off. There are also some people who want those notifications, but nonetheless we apologize if this inconvenienced you in any way.

I do want to say that this was a very long process to migrate over to this new software, and it was a team effort. None of these things were missed. I've been working on a new theme since yesterday but I want to make sure that these issues don't arise on the new theme as well. Sorry for the delay, just trying to make things work for you all.

[Alistair Thomson]

They say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" so something about the previous forum setup was broke. Can you tell us what that was?

[Mike Sweeney]

Same question, was a change necessary?

Edited April 11, 2020 at 07:04 PM by Mike Sweeney

[Ryan Bentley]

The old forums were on a very old version of phpBB which is no longer maintained. An upgrade was necessary, the decision was taken to use IPB instead of further upgrading phpBB. Upgrading phpBB to the latest version is as big a change as migrating to IPB, as both versions of phpBB are very different.

IPB was chosen over phpBB because it's modern, we have people on the team experienced with maintaining it and making changes to the theme, etc.

[Ross Carlson]

22 minutes ago, Alistair Thomson said:

They say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" so something about the previous forum setup was broke. Can you tell us what that was?

That's a non-sequitur ... they also say, "If it ain't broke, it might still benefit from an upgrade." 😄

 

[Trevor Hannant]

I'm assuming a search re-indexing is still in progress?  Otherwise I can't believe there are only three posts that mention VATSpy?

[Joaquin Blanco]

6 hours ago, Trevor Hannant said:

@Joaquin Blanco The Unread Content link at the top right will still provide that.  All content on the forum has been marked as unread since it was migrated over but if you mark everything read, you will only see those items that aren't from then on.

Thank you Trevor, all being so new didn't  realise how it works now.

 

Thanks

[Ryan Bentley]

11 minutes ago, Trevor Hannant said:

I'm assuming a search re-indexing is still in progress?  Otherwise I can't believe there are only three posts that mention VATSpy?

Thanks for pointing this out. We are rebuilding the search index now. 

[Mike Sweeney]

"we have people on the team experienced with maintaining it and making changes to the theme, etc."
Looking forward to user-selected theme options, links from google fixed, post preview, save draft, etc ... features available before the upgrade.

[Brant Marshall]

22 minutes ago, Mike Sweeney said:

"we have people on the team experienced with maintaining it and making changes to the theme, etc."
Looking forward to user-selected theme options, links from google fixed, post preview, save draft, etc ... features available before the upgrade.

Hey there, if you type a message and then close out of the window it will save and reappear when you reopen the thread & start typing a response. I just tested this numerous times and it works without fail, it's just less intrusive and more automated than clicking a button saying save draft.

You can also preview the post by clicking the paper icon which appears to the right of "Size". This will let you preview how your post will look on Desktop, Tablets, and Mobile devices (especially good for when you're adding images!) Here's a screenshot for reference.



I'm working on an additional theme that will most likely take place of the current default theme, but users can select the current theme from the dropdown that says "Theme" at the bottom of the page. (This will only appear when I grant users the ability to switch themes).

Please understand that the migration alone took over 12 hours to complete and we're still working out some kinks. I expect there to be some growing pains and I think all of us here that have worked on this transition understand the frustrations - please be patient with us.

[Mike Sweeney]

Many thanks for (a) inviting feedback and (b) such positive responses!
Great job ... and appreciated.

[Andreas Fuchs]

Many thanks to you web-gurus for doing this and for being patient with people reporting bugs and asking for features. I am sure you got your hands full of work on top of the Easter holidays!

Edited April 11, 2020 at 11:05 PM by Andreas Fuchs
Easter, not East....

[Brant Marshall]

2 minutes ago, Andreas Fuchs said:

Many thanks to you web-gurus for doing this and for being patient with people reporting bugs and asking for features. I am sure you got your hands full of work on top of the East holidays!

Thank you ❤️ It's what we're here for! 🙂

[Trevor Hannant]

Another quickie - might want to take a look at the "bad words" filter:

Think you'll need to either remove as$ from there or make sure it's only catching that as a word in it's own right.