New Forum

[Peter]

Just logged in again after a while and absolutely shocked. The new layout is a total pain for me. I loved the forum so much... really could cry.
Why was this needed? Phone-compatibility? (Sorry for not reading the thread where this might already have been answered. Pain to read anything more than one or two posts.)
I would give a free Qzero and QLbase if we could go back to the MUCH better original design.

[NormanDunbar]

Hi Peter,

I'm sure Rob will chime in, but the old forum didn't work! Private messages, email notifications, etc were problematical. The software behind the forum, as opposed to how it looked, needed updating for various reasons, including security. The old forum theme no longer works with the new software unfortunately.

There is still some work going on behind the scenes to tweak the new theme, so if you need anything changing, speak up and it may be posible to amend things.

If it's any conselation, It much preferred the old theme, but at least the changes were done for good reason.

HTH

Cheers,
Norm.

[Peter]

There is still some work going on behind the scenes to tweak the new theme, so if you need anything changing, speak up and it may be posible to amend things.

Thanks Norman, but there is way too much. For me, the forum is totally ruined. Just could cry.
If there is any way to fix the security issues without moving to the new layout, I'm willing to help financing it.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

The new layout is not much use on a mobile phone, but works sort okay on a Octa-Core Tablet.

But looks to be too much formatting in the applied Theme.

[robheaton]

If there is any way to fix the security issues without moving to the new layout, I'm willing to help financing it.

I'm afraid it wasn't just security issues plaguing the old forum, the entire back-end was out of date.
We had to maintain a very old version of PHP and MySQL, I would receive security alerts daily about software being out of date and insecure.
The web host had slapped on a web application firewall as we were causing them issues, this broke the QL Wiki and caused lots of posting errors on the forum too.
(This also caused us to loose connection to the back-end database randomly too, which resulted in some corruption.)

I did speak to some developers of PHPBB (the software that drives the forum) nobody was willing to touch the old version and they couldn't offer any support.

It was time to move on and upgrade.

Since the upgrade the forum has been far more stable, no downtime, no errors and all it's notifications are working again.
(Which was the feature that people missed the most when it stopped working)

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

Can the Forum frontend not be speeded up, as there seems to a time lag on screen refresh?

[dilwyn]

Hi,

Can the Forum frontend not be speeded up, as there seems to a time lag on screen refresh?

Yes, I get this too, but since my PC lags when you mouse click on some things (Windoze OS rust?) I'd thought it was just that and not the Forum.

At least things work on the Forum now (email notifications etc) and if we're in a situation where we are more critical of appearance than function, that must be good at least.

[pjw]

<> At least things work on the Forum now (email notifications etc) and if we're in a situation where we are more critical of appearance than function, that must be good at least.

Not quite, Dilwyn: The end-of-line problem with CODE segments in emails sent out via the RSS option is still not working. The code comes out as one looooong line! This is only partially an aesthetic issue; it is mainly a functional problem as the code becomes unreadable and can also not easily be cut and pasted into the QL to test it.

Please can this be fixed soon!

[dilwyn]

<> At least things work on the Forum now (email notifications etc) and if we're in a situation where we are more critical of appearance than function, that must be good at least.

Not quite, Dilwyn: The end-of-line problem with CODE segments in emails sent out via the RSS option is still not working. The code comes out as one looooong line! This is only partially an aesthetic issue; it is mainly a functional problem as the code becomes unreadable and can also not easily be cut and pasted into the QL to test it.

Please can this be fixed soon!

I posted a screen shot in response to your circles post about this. I had noticed that this was an issue, but assumed it was something on my system (copying the CODE area to Notepad or similar and it then seemed fine). I'm assuming the RSS feed sends out a CR alone as end of line character, and no LF. Notepad, for once in its life, seems to spot this and act intelligently (actually, that's being a bit unfair, I quite like using good old Notepad)

Another issue: every single time I come on the Forum I get the dreaded Cookies blue banner, whether I'm logged in or not and irrespective of whether I've clicked GOT IT in a previous situation, very annoying. I use Edge on Windoze 10.

cookiesbanner.jpg (10.26 KiB) Viewed 1024 times

And attaching those attachments showed up another issue, that the text on the attachment options strip ("Place Inline" etc) in unreadable, light grey and pale green on white. Even worse, it vanishes completely as you hover over them. There is never any gap between the text and inline attachment irrespective of whether I put in a blank line of text, it makes it harder to read.

I still get issues with the typing box falling outside the visible window border on my mobile, so I avoid using the mobile phone for the Forum when I can, even though the text seems a little bigger and more comfortable on the phone.

I tend to agree with Peter that in terms of visuals and comfort, the new appearance is a retrograde step. Rob has already explained that there is no going back, that the old theme cannot be used on the new system, so that's accepted, but please tweak these colours etc to be more like the old system because the colours and screen layout were one aspect of the old system which worked well.

EDIT: You'll note that one of the pictures is included twice. That was my fault, but I'll leave it there as it's indicative of how difficult it is to post on the new system. Much more scrolling about is needed (becuase of the larger text), and you tend to spend more time looking for things, so the posts become more prone to errors.

[Peter]

Don't know if it was mentioned before, but the worst issue for me is the massive waste of vertical space on almost everything. Front page, titles, between topics, between posts, before and after citations, graphic elements, and I could go on and on. Hopeless if one wants to get an overview or read more than one or two posts. Not even the edit area is fully displayed without scrolling first (on Firefox and FullHD screen). So sad this update was necessary, really almost everything has become a pain to use. The forum meant so much to me. If there is any way money can help to get back the original layout, please contact me.