It appears that this thread (and all of your replies to it) all got DESTROYED by this P.O.S. new forum! So if you previously replied to my thread, please re-post it, so I can respond to your original comments accordingly.
If you're one of the many other ppl that had posted other threads and comments reporting bugs and feedback about this new forum since we all got forced over to it, it looks like all of your comments got "vaporized" as well, so you will also need to re-post all of that!
Luckily, when I saw how flaky this new forum software was acting, I had the foresight to do a better job at backing-up my work than this crappy new software apparently does, so at least all of the time I spent researching & writing this thread did not get wasted!
Following is my original post...
Bugs/Comments Noticed in New Forum Software -
1) General Section - at first it looked like posts for the last couple of days were missing from the General section! But then I found-out that if I clicked "Last Post", it then sorted the posts by date (was it displaying threads randomly for me before that???), and the missing posts suddenly appeared! As listing by date is the normal setting for the old forum, all sections should default to that sort order, to avoid confusion. It appears that the new forum is not reliably doing that for all sections?
2) Broken interthread "links" (i.e. - one thread references useful information detailed in another). Not sure that there is a way to fix this, but should keep old forum posts accessible, at least until people can fix the more recent links in their threads.
3) Broken inline image attachments - this is a MUCH more serious problem, as there is a WEALTH of valuable images which have been uploaded to this site by various members over the years. At a minimum, the original images directory should be kept, with migrated posts fixed so they display the images from the right place (optimum solution, of course, would be for attached images to all be migrated to the new forum system automatically)
UPDATE - this problem is worse than I realized, as even trying to click on the provided image link, instead of displaying the image, pops-up with a "Save As" dialog, forcing you to download the image to your hard drive instead of viewing it!
UPDATE, STATUS - PARTIALLY FIXED. New fix here -
http://laserpointerforums.com/laser_pointer_forums_3/forum/showthread.php?t=40188
now allows members to manually fix their own posts!
Automated Fix - Possible / Pending.
4) Fonts from previous threads being rendered incorrectly, such as intentionally teany-tiny fonts in older posts being displayed in letters an inch tall!
5) The fancy graphics backgrounds, big icons, 3-D graduated tone behind EVERY SINGLE THREAD AND POST, and gray-on-gray color scheme not only wastes a lot of vertical space (and thus limits how much information can be viewed at one time on-screen), but also makes the forum VERY difficult to follow/read for many of us with less than perfect eyesight! (Trying to read the contents of a post should not be used as an eye test!) This problem is increased by the large, very high-contrast options buttons, which have a natural tendency to draw the eye AWAY from the low-contrast post text. Can we come up with a skin that is less "fancy artistic effects", and more practical???
STATUS - PARTIALLY FIXED. New alternative styles now available, original style (skilltest) still buggy.
6) Many emoticons (smilies) in the original posts are not being rendered AT ALL. New forum should at least be updated to include all emoticon codes commonly used in prior forum posts, to prevent loss of meaning in the original posts.
7) Those symbols that ARE being rendered have very poor appearance (looks like they were made by a uncoordinated kindergartener with construction paper and a dull pair of scissors!) I suspect this is because of the bizarre background (see item #5 above), while the emoticon graphics were likely designed to be used with a more traditional background (such as white?)
STATUS - PARTIALLY FIXED - emoticons render OK when using new "Default Style".
8) Allowing at least read-only access to older forum posts, to see what is missing or needs to be adjusted - I understand the idea of switching the original forum into Maintenance Mode with a link to the new forum, to force everybody to switch-over, but doing so is preventing ppl from seeing what recent posts may need to be re-submitted to the new forum, as well as what needs to be fixed in their own threads (inter-post links, attachments, etc.) I would strongly suggest instead to leave the original forum active, so that ppl can make this transition smoothly.
STATUS - FIXED!!!
9) The "captcha" graphic required for getting your new password tends to be VERY hard to read (even for us humans!) This, combined with the multi-step process involved in getting a new password (even AFTER all that, instead of E-MAILing a temp password like many systems, that is just the first part of the process!) Requiring folks to remember what specific E-MAIL addy they originally registered with on LPF way back when (rather than just their nick), is also a problem. I understand that you may be limited by the system you are using, but all of this is likely to be a serious impediment to getting all of the members converted-over, especially given that you are forcing eEVERY SINGLE MEMEBER to go through this arduous process! Isn't there an easier way to do this?
10) Just tried to reply to somebody's thread. Having to click a cryptically labeled "QR" button, before being able to post a quick reply in the text box at the bottom of a thread, is counter-intuitive, to say the least!
11) Hey, were are all the buttons for post enhancement options??? (inline smilies, fonts, sizes, bold, alignment, multiple quotes, images, lists, tables, colors, highlight, etc., etc.) All of this graphics crap on the screen killing our eyeballs, but we can only post in plain text???
12) Members online - I miss having this easily visible on the home page, but am more concerned that when ppl go to view this, they get to see each forum member's activities in explicit detail! (i.e. - user "x" is currently changing their password, user "y" is reading this specific thread, user "voyeur" is watching what everybody else is doing, and user "z" is shifting his g/f's location to prepare for insertion in the "reverse cowgirl" position! I'm not sure I like having everybody being able to watch your every move! Is there a way to fix this?
13) Lost reputation. Granted, I hadn't been around long enough to accumulate a lot yet, but I worked hard to get those few I had! LOL More importantly, are those with "negative" scores, as they served as a warning to forum members, especially before engaging in business dealings with such people! (We just had an incident come-up last night about a blog spammer that is using multiple ID's on LPF, and who had a negative feedback rating that helped clue us in as to the wisdom of purchasing from him - it would be a shame for members to loose that protection!) I think this is important enough not too loose, and this seems like a simple data import task (just an integer value for each user), that I would be willing to help with the process of migrating this data to the new system, if it would mean LPF not loosing this important data!
Finally, I would suggest leaving the original forum up in read-only mode (for the reasons already mentioned, as well as incoming links from Google and elsewhere!), with a clear reference/link to the new forum, and switch the default page for this web site to forward to a simple page with an explanation and two links - "Old Forum (read-only)", and "New Forum".
I would also suggest that you link directly to the forum (with instructions for how to reset your password for existing members), rather than only linking to the password reset page, as this is likely confusing the hell out of the lurkers, as well as non-members that have come here from the search engines, links or other sources.
That is just my feedback after fighting to get my password reset, and using this new software for only a few minutes - I am sure I will have more, once I have had a chance to use this a bit longer!
If you're one of the many other ppl that had posted other threads and comments reporting bugs and feedback about this new forum since we all got forced over to it, it looks like all of your comments got "vaporized" as well, so you will also need to re-post all of that!
Luckily, when I saw how flaky this new forum software was acting, I had the foresight to do a better job at backing-up my work than this crappy new software apparently does, so at least all of the time I spent researching & writing this thread did not get wasted!
Following is my original post...
Bugs/Comments Noticed in New Forum Software -
1) General Section - at first it looked like posts for the last couple of days were missing from the General section! But then I found-out that if I clicked "Last Post", it then sorted the posts by date (was it displaying threads randomly for me before that???), and the missing posts suddenly appeared! As listing by date is the normal setting for the old forum, all sections should default to that sort order, to avoid confusion. It appears that the new forum is not reliably doing that for all sections?
2) Broken interthread "links" (i.e. - one thread references useful information detailed in another). Not sure that there is a way to fix this, but should keep old forum posts accessible, at least until people can fix the more recent links in their threads.
3) Broken inline image attachments - this is a MUCH more serious problem, as there is a WEALTH of valuable images which have been uploaded to this site by various members over the years. At a minimum, the original images directory should be kept, with migrated posts fixed so they display the images from the right place (optimum solution, of course, would be for attached images to all be migrated to the new forum system automatically)
UPDATE - this problem is worse than I realized, as even trying to click on the provided image link, instead of displaying the image, pops-up with a "Save As" dialog, forcing you to download the image to your hard drive instead of viewing it!
UPDATE, STATUS - PARTIALLY FIXED. New fix here -
http://laserpointerforums.com/laser_pointer_forums_3/forum/showthread.php?t=40188
now allows members to manually fix their own posts!
Automated Fix - Possible / Pending.
4) Fonts from previous threads being rendered incorrectly, such as intentionally teany-tiny fonts in older posts being displayed in letters an inch tall!
5) The fancy graphics backgrounds, big icons, 3-D graduated tone behind EVERY SINGLE THREAD AND POST, and gray-on-gray color scheme not only wastes a lot of vertical space (and thus limits how much information can be viewed at one time on-screen), but also makes the forum VERY difficult to follow/read for many of us with less than perfect eyesight! (Trying to read the contents of a post should not be used as an eye test!) This problem is increased by the large, very high-contrast options buttons, which have a natural tendency to draw the eye AWAY from the low-contrast post text. Can we come up with a skin that is less "fancy artistic effects", and more practical???
STATUS - PARTIALLY FIXED. New alternative styles now available, original style (skilltest) still buggy.
6) Many emoticons (smilies) in the original posts are not being rendered AT ALL. New forum should at least be updated to include all emoticon codes commonly used in prior forum posts, to prevent loss of meaning in the original posts.
7) Those symbols that ARE being rendered have very poor appearance (looks like they were made by a uncoordinated kindergartener with construction paper and a dull pair of scissors!) I suspect this is because of the bizarre background (see item #5 above), while the emoticon graphics were likely designed to be used with a more traditional background (such as white?)
STATUS - PARTIALLY FIXED - emoticons render OK when using new "Default Style".
8) Allowing at least read-only access to older forum posts, to see what is missing or needs to be adjusted - I understand the idea of switching the original forum into Maintenance Mode with a link to the new forum, to force everybody to switch-over, but doing so is preventing ppl from seeing what recent posts may need to be re-submitted to the new forum, as well as what needs to be fixed in their own threads (inter-post links, attachments, etc.) I would strongly suggest instead to leave the original forum active, so that ppl can make this transition smoothly.
STATUS - FIXED!!!
9) The "captcha" graphic required for getting your new password tends to be VERY hard to read (even for us humans!) This, combined with the multi-step process involved in getting a new password (even AFTER all that, instead of E-MAILing a temp password like many systems, that is just the first part of the process!) Requiring folks to remember what specific E-MAIL addy they originally registered with on LPF way back when (rather than just their nick), is also a problem. I understand that you may be limited by the system you are using, but all of this is likely to be a serious impediment to getting all of the members converted-over, especially given that you are forcing eEVERY SINGLE MEMEBER to go through this arduous process! Isn't there an easier way to do this?
10) Just tried to reply to somebody's thread. Having to click a cryptically labeled "QR" button, before being able to post a quick reply in the text box at the bottom of a thread, is counter-intuitive, to say the least!
11) Hey, were are all the buttons for post enhancement options??? (inline smilies, fonts, sizes, bold, alignment, multiple quotes, images, lists, tables, colors, highlight, etc., etc.) All of this graphics crap on the screen killing our eyeballs, but we can only post in plain text???
12) Members online - I miss having this easily visible on the home page, but am more concerned that when ppl go to view this, they get to see each forum member's activities in explicit detail! (i.e. - user "x" is currently changing their password, user "y" is reading this specific thread, user "voyeur" is watching what everybody else is doing, and user "z" is shifting his g/f's location to prepare for insertion in the "reverse cowgirl" position! I'm not sure I like having everybody being able to watch your every move! Is there a way to fix this?
13) Lost reputation. Granted, I hadn't been around long enough to accumulate a lot yet, but I worked hard to get those few I had! LOL More importantly, are those with "negative" scores, as they served as a warning to forum members, especially before engaging in business dealings with such people! (We just had an incident come-up last night about a blog spammer that is using multiple ID's on LPF, and who had a negative feedback rating that helped clue us in as to the wisdom of purchasing from him - it would be a shame for members to loose that protection!) I think this is important enough not too loose, and this seems like a simple data import task (just an integer value for each user), that I would be willing to help with the process of migrating this data to the new system, if it would mean LPF not loosing this important data!
Finally, I would suggest leaving the original forum up in read-only mode (for the reasons already mentioned, as well as incoming links from Google and elsewhere!), with a clear reference/link to the new forum, and switch the default page for this web site to forward to a simple page with an explanation and two links - "Old Forum (read-only)", and "New Forum".
I would also suggest that you link directly to the forum (with instructions for how to reset your password for existing members), rather than only linking to the password reset page, as this is likely confusing the hell out of the lurkers, as well as non-members that have come here from the search engines, links or other sources.
That is just my feedback after fighting to get my password reset, and using this new software for only a few minutes - I am sure I will have more, once I have had a chance to use this a bit longer!
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