Announcements Response Topic

[James Gryphon]

Series of revisions that should clear up lingering problems, including the mobile issue. Refresh your pages, if you haven't yet, to make sure that you get the full effect of the updates.

[shnoodlec]

When I follow the links in my signature, the text is big in the linked threads. Is this a bug or did I just link it wrong?

[The Skarzs]

Looks fine on my end.

[HeadInAnotherGalaxy]

If ze zankin' zin' vaz ztill on ze forum Ah vid 'ave zanked Cornflower'z pozt.

Becauze Ah'm veird Ah alvayz 'ad ze Loamhedge Abbey Forum up on anozer tab after ze main forum vone, but Ah dinnae zink manybeaztz 'ere vere alzae daein'it taae. Ah loiked ze Zankin' zin', but ve 'ave 'ad ze forum fer a lang toime vizoot it, zae ve can live vizoot it. Frankly Ah am nae fan o' any o' zeze nev recent changez at av. Ah loiked bein' able tae accezz av o' ze forum from ze main vebzoite- vizoot 'avin' tae pull it up in a nev vindov/tab. Ah preferred 'avin' ze Memberz online box at ze bottom, along viz 'ov many Gueztz are on. Av in av, ze forum vaz major juzt az it vaz afore zeze nev changez. Zere vaz nay need tae alter zem.

[Cornflower MM]

Definitely agreed, Head. I think this was definitely  a case of "if it's not broken don't fix it."

All I'm asking now is that if there's any new major changes coming again, although I doubt it now, either don't tell us anything, make us stick with it, and tell us to live with the new changes (i.e. The sort of developers James mentioned a few posts back) or let us know there's changes coming and ask us to go look at them on Loamhedge. Please don't bring up examples of long inactive members when you say "oh but I've asked people in the past to look at things, like *enternamehere*" and please don't say something to the effect of "oh but these changes have been up on Loamhedge, you could have looked sooner! I'm so transparent with my work!" when most of the active members are unaware that things are being done. I don't know if that makes sense or is repetitive, but you can't say stuff like that and expect me, at all, to not go "nope nope nopitty nope nope" when it wasn't broadcasted. Friggin' pick one, yeah? And it's not open and transparent if people aren't aware. That sort of thing is one thing that truly irks and frustrates me.

[James Gryphon]

If the Thanking thing was still on the forum I would have thanked Cornflower's post.

Because I'm weird I always had the Loamhedge Abbey Forum up on another tab after the main forum one, but I don't think manybeasts here were always doing it too. I liked the Thanking thing, but we have had the forum for a long time without it, so we can live without it. Frankly I am not a fan of any of these new recent changes at all. I liked being able to access all of the forum from the main website- without having to pull it up in a new window/tab.

The reason why the forum-in-the-box feature is broken is because newer versions of SMF after 2.0.13 disabled forums running in frames, for security reasons. This is unfortunate for the way the main Redwall site is set up, but I honestly don't think very many people use it in that mode these days, so I'm inclined to write the problem off.

I preferred having the Members online box at the bottom, along with how many Guests are on.

People like to check and see who is online when they get on the forum, and that this is probably one of the first things they do. It makes sense to not have to scroll all the way down the page to get to this functionality. I understand it's a big adjustment at first, but in time I think this change will pay off.

As far as the number of guests on the forum, that's still on display, as always before.

All in all, the forum was major just as it was before these new changes. There was no need to alter them.

Definitely agreed, Head. I think this was definitely  a case of "if it's not broken don't fix it."

This misconception makes me think that I should have presented the announcement in a different order.

The site as it was had two big problems.

First, it was stuck at SMF 2.0.13, where it had been since Loamhedge.

The changes to the forum I had made at that time made it inconvenient to upgrade. So, all of the bug and security patches that had been applied since roughly May 2017 were not in effect, and weren't going to be until I had the opportunity to make some serious changes to the backend.

Secondly, the old theme was based on "Core".

When I first set up Loamhedge in December '15 (after the old site went down, and had been broken before that attempting to run a theme made for SMF 1.1 on SMF 2), I chose that theme as a basis for the RAF because I felt it was simpler and looked like the original RAF theme than the alternative, which also happened to be the Default theme for SMF 2, "Curve", and that it would be easier to configure. At the time, I figured that this was the best way to get the forum to look the way it ought to reasonably quickly. What I didn't know is that Core is something of a second-class citizen when it comes to modifications, and that you're lucky to get a mod that works with it out of the box. If I had been aware of that then, I would have probably bit the bullet and gone with the newer theme, and spent a little more time when it was all said and done setting it up. As it was, nobody on the forum knew it, so I spent about a year building on an outdated foundation, to have to redo the changes when I realized the inherent advantages of the new theme sometime quite later.

To the end user, things looked fine as they were. On the backend, though, that was not the case. The fact that the forum wasn't down, or obviously broken with text not showing up where it should have and vice versa, doesn't mean that there wasn't a problem.

All I'm asking now is that if there's any new major changes coming again, although I doubt it now

When/if SMF 2.1 comes out and is ready for day to day use, there will probably be a need to change eventually, but I project that to be years away, most likely. We'll see what the future holds and if I'll be available to work on it at that time.

make us stick with it, and tell us to live with the new changes

If I change things, I get 'I hate everything about the forum now'. I have to admit that I don't think it's very fair, after having done things that a lot of people hate, when I do have the good grace to admit my mistake and change them, for that to also be wrong.

The reference to 'long inactive members', as you say, is to show that this is a trend that has gone on for quite some time. Besides, these changes had been in the works long enough that a number of those people actually would have had the opportunity to see them, or else something very like them.

In the last regular post made at Loamhedge over a year ago, I said that it would be up for testing purposes in the future. I then made references to work on the forum on Discord in the time in between then and now, showed pictures of takes on themes, and asked people to look at the board then (by which time it was already very different from the old theme, looking very much like the theme that came up a few days ago that so many hated).

It's true that I didn't talk about it for a while because of school, and because nothing much was happening during that time -- just attempts to fix minor display glitches (like with all those border problems), but I had talked about it a fair amount before that. Recently, I also made an announcement 7:43 PM, before the upgrade process actually began around 3 AM or so, which mentioned both that the theme was going to be changed and that it was "from Loamhedge", though I grant that 8 hours in advance is not a lot of time for people in different time zones. I admit there could have been more publicity, but I think this shows there was still quite a bit as it was.

There's several reasons why I didn't talk more about what the upgrade would entail immediately in advance of it being shipped. Some of them are as follows: The sake of time -- with real life pressures, my goal was to get it out and be done with RAF work as quickly as possible, something that obviously did not happen quite as expected. Second, I wasn't going to not upgrade the forum or change the theme to Curve, so I didn't see the point in getting feedback about that. This was shortsighted in that there were still changes to the look and feel of the place that turned out to be controversial. I had talked to a few people about that recently, of course, especially Chipster, but this set was a limited sample size for the most extensive visual changes since the Modified theme was created. Third, since retiring from active forum life, I've preferred to stay away from active correspondence here, an attitude that was self-evidently errant since not doing so before led to a lot more of it being necessary later.

All that said, there were two definite large blunders during the upgrade process. Firstly, the quick removal of the thanks feature, with the destruction of data in the process. I believe removing it as it was was the correct decision, but removing it so decisively so quickly was not. I'm sorry about that, and hope that in time y'all will be able to forgive my error.

Secondly, the initial Default theme was a bigger deviation from the old norm than was necessary. When I was actively developing the forum day to day, I learned that people have certain expectations for what it ought to look like, and that it was necessary to make changes that fit with those expectations. But I took enough of a break in between then and now doing school and such that I forgot about that. Back in the day, I would have rolled most changes into Modified and left a more standard version out in Default. In this case, though, I'd been looking at the 'new' version so long that I'd thought I'd gotten used to it, and I suppose I forgot that it would be a big and unwelcome change for most people, who would have looked at the RAF way more than the LAF over the past few months. Of course, I've already explained the reasoning that led to the experiment in borderless design, and the alternating backgrounds (that hadn't already been there before that) were a pretty natural result of that, but even the post backgrounds/etc. in general were already a deviation from expectations, that wouldn't have made it into Default when I was maintaining Default/Modified branches.

Maudie gave the most on-the-mark feedback, which led to my understanding what went wrong with the 'new look', when she mentioned that the theme looked very "modern". I'm not sure that was what I'd intended to do when I set out on the upgrade project -- my style is typically "retro" -- but even so, it crept in along the way, especially when I gave up on borders for the sake of perfectionism and getting something out the door.

There are a few areas left where it could stand some improvement, but overall I think things look very much like how they're going to look, and if I never worked on it again, I wouldn't be too disappointed at this point.

[Maudie]

I have noticed that when you've got a new PM there's a pop-up asking if you want to open it in another tab, but when you click 'ok' it does nothing. Just fyi.

[Chipster of Noonvale]

I have noticed that when you've got a new PM there's a pop-up asking if you want to open it in another tab, but when you click 'ok' it does nothing. Just fyi.

I've been experiencing this issue for a while.  It's because the pop-up blocker prevents the new tab from opening.

[Maudie]

I don't think I have a pop-up blocker...? Idk.

[Chipster of Noonvale]

Several browsers including Firefox have one enabled by default.  Which one are you using?

[Maudie]

Google chrome.

[Chipster of Noonvale]

https://wmich.edu/helpdesk/internetdisablepopups

[Chipster of Noonvale]

Thanks for taking care of all this Matthias.  The staff list now looks much cleaner with all the inactive staff moved to their own seperate group.

Congrats Dan, Jukka, Nova on your promotions

I have two questions though:
1: Brookskimmer is still listed as a local mod despite being in the alumni group; is this intentional, or is this one of those "loose ends" that will be cleaned up soon?
2: Are there any plans to promote new moderators in the near future?

[Matthias720]

1. Good catch! Let me fix that.

2. I don't know. We'll see based on the needs of the community over the next few months. If there's a void that should be filled, it will become self-evident pretty quickly.

[The Skarzs]

Thank you James and Tsukuyomi for everything you have done. You will not be forgotten.

Congratulations to Jukka and Nova!