Thoughts on new forum

Lol

Lol

Super Moderator
Staff member
Once I get used to the way the new forum handles things I think it will be much better than the old one. I think there are some great new features available using vBulletin. Using attachments is now much easier to do (see below).

I lost about a weeks worth of posts in the transition so there will be some threads that were being discussed that might need resurrecting: Steve's 'bench tips' one seems to be absent.

Here are a few things that I can't figure out yet:

Is there a way to get the board to always show recently updated or new threads at the top (or immediately under any stickies)? Each time I set it up like this it reverts to an alphabetical listing the next time I check the same forum. I guess if it can't be done (which seems a bit odd) I'll have to get used to using the What's new link and hoping that it works well enough.

Is anyone else seeing some posts compressed to just the left half of the post area? It's as if the post has been shoved in a left-hand column with nothing on the right. It doesn't seem to happen for all posts; I didn't notice it happening when I first checked the forums but it's definitely happening today. Same things happens in Safari, Firefox and Chrome.

Also, if you try to edit a shrunken post you also get a shrunken editor! That may mean it's a CSS issue but I'm not sure why it seems to only happen for some posts? Odd.

Hmmm, I think things are being worked on now the board is live as I've just noticed a few other things change while I've been typing this (I've got another window open).

As far as layout goes, there seem to be a few CSS related glitches but nothing serious (for me).

As far as the Google ads go, if they have to be at the top and the bottom of each page I personally think it would work better if the top ones went between the above_body div and the body_wrapper div. It's a little weird having the breadcrumb trail links pushed up above the ads.

Something like this:

View attachment 1910
 
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When you enter a board you can click the Last post header and it will other by the date of the last post. First it will show the oldest then if you click again it will order by the newest. I haven't figured out how to save that. I did find in the settings part a configuration to order threads by date, most recent first. Now the first page of the thread has the newest posts and the last page the oldest. I prefer this way.
Your post here for example has a good 4 fingers of white space between the end of the text line and the end of the post box. I don't know if it is supposed to be like that or not.
I also can't seem to add an avatar, the option doesn't seem to show at my settings.
I am also sad that whatever this green reputation bar is I seem to have lost it and all my old posts were imported as posted by "imported_electric" that doesn't link to me. Of course this is not important.
As probably everyone has noted quotes from imported posts do not show up correctly, with the html entities appearing instead.
 
Lol said:
Is there a way to get the board to always show recently updated or new threads at the top
Click to expand...
Go to forum actions (in the black bar at the top
Go to forum settings
Go to thread display
In thread display mode select linear, newest first
 
I apologize for any confusion that comes along with this transition. I'm still figuring things out myself. Over the next little while the board should improve as I become more familiar with all the back end settings that allow adjustments.

-bryan
 
Yes Bryan, we are not complaining, we are pointing out some issues we have identified. Thanks for taking the trouble to update/migrate the board system being full aware of all the difficulty you would have for doing that.
The best of all is that this change got you and Dan back to posting here.
 
Ok, I think I figured out the weird spacing for some posts.

There's a CSS class called "content has_ad" which certain posts are inheriting (maybe a random thing?). This class has a 300px right-margin setting. It's evidently applied to some posts to allow ads to be included in the space to the right. That may be 'switch-off'able in the back-end if more ads are not going to be included. It would be quick to change in the CSS anyhow.
 
Lol said:
Ok, I think I figured out the weird spacing for some posts.

There's a CSS class called "content has_ad" which certain posts are inheriting (maybe a random thing?). This class has a 300px right-margin setting. It's evidently applied to some posts to allow ads to be included in the space to the right. That may be 'switch-off'able in the back-end if more ads are not going to be included. It would be quick to change in the CSS anyhow.
Click to expand...

I'm looking for it but not finding that setting yet.
 
vBulletin says this is a bug and has been fixed in v4.0.2
They also gave the code to fix it manually but I'm not a programmer...so we might have to live with it until we upload the patch.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about it and especially since Google's bots are crawling the hell out the site right now making any drastic changes can begin to throw off your Google results.
 
Just in case this is any help:

The 'has_ad' CSS class selector is contained in the file postbit.css.

Here's a link to the file:

http://thinkmuscle.com/forum/css.php?sheet=postbit.css

This is the '.has_ad' selector as it appears in the CSS:

.has_ad {
display:block;
margin-right: 300px;
}

Just commenting out the whole selector like this:

/*
.has_ad {
display:block;
margin-right: 300px;
}
*/

should get rid of the thin column problem in posts. (I say 'should' because itt is possible that it appears in more than one style sheet, but probably not.)

Should ads be required in posts in future just un-comment the '.has_ad' selector.

This will not mess with Google ranking. Changing external css doesn't mess with urls.
 
Joe.Muscle said:
What is all these green lights below our name???
Click to expand...

I thought they were representative of number of posts made but apparently not, unless somebody just switched your lights off Joe?! :)

----------

Aha! It's a reputation points indicator. I just upped your rep. and a ton of lights came on!
 
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Lol said:
I lost about a weeks worth of posts in the transition so there will be some threads that were being discussed that might need resurrecting: Steve's 'bench tips' one seems to be absent.
]
Click to expand...

The old board should have been locked for the day of the transition so they could get a current snapshot. Not sure why they did it the way they did.

I am also having the issue that threads are not in order with the newest posted threads at the top of the list.

I also agree on the google ad location. If they have to be there then above the forum bread crumb/header menu would be much better. I can't stand having ads in the middle of a page. I would even suggest moving them up higher than what Lol's mockup shows (so they are above the "Forum" and "What's New?" buttons). There are some forums with great information that even place adds in the middle of threads. I don't go to those forums just because of that fact. I realize some sites need the ads to exist. But if that's the case then they should be placed in the least invasive location. Evertying related to the forum should be contiguous on the page (IMO).

How come clicking on the "Reply to Thread" button forces you to use the "Quick Reply" box rather than the normal (Advanced) reply page?
 
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What is all these green lights below our name???
Aha! It's a reputation points indicator. I just upped your rep. and a ton of lights came on!


It's how big your Whackapacky is...that's why Joe's shrunk...
 
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I sort of like the recent posts on the sidebar, but I've always just used the 'new posts' buttons to catch up on everything I've missed. I doubt the sidebar can hold all that.
 
The old board still isn't locked down as of now.

If the ads were right at the top of the page, above everything else that isn't fora related, that would be fine by me too.

Not sure about the Quick reply/Normal reply issue. I'm happy with the quick reply box most of the time anyway so it doesn't bug me. Under Miscellaneous Options in the Settings page, I have the Message Editor Interface set to Enhanced Interface but I'm not sure whether this makes any difference to the Quick Edit box?
 
Thread display listing

What's missing from 'Settings'>'Forum Settings'>'Thread Display Options' is the ability to sort threads by 'Last post time'. You can do this manually for each forum but it seems a bit strange that it can't be set in stone if required.

Aha! Just trawled the vBulletin forum and found that it's apparently possible to control this by going to: Forums&Moderators-Forum Manager-Edit Forum-Default Sort Field. Bryan or another moderator would need to do this as it's a backend setting.
 
It seems that a whole bunch of spammers are finding their way here and posting all sorts of stuff unrelated to training. What makes this a pain is that the 'What's New/New Posts' links and the 'active discussions/recent posts' side bar are populated with more junk than actual useful info. It was already tricky to get to the posts I wanted to see and this is making it worse.

Is it not possible to just delete the obvious junk posts and ban the user responsible?

Sometimes an appropriate IP address block can be very effective.

Not complaining. I'd just like to help find a solution as I don't suppose this will get better with time? :)
 
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