Ok, I’m sorry my first post to the new site is a negative one, but here goes…
What’s with the custom forum? The last one worked well, it may not have been pretty, but it worked.
This looks nice and will take some getting used to which is fine by me, but there is one LARGE problem, where is the ‘View posts since your last visit’ button?
That’s how I read all forums, and now this one is gone, it’s hard to keep track of whats happened. Please Please Please, bring that function back.
(* Of course it may already be there and I cant see it, if that’s the case - feel free to ridicule me as much as needed )
On the left navigation bar, you can choose Recent Posts and it will show you all recent posts to the entire site (usually, mostly forum posts). That is what I look at. On the main Forum page you also see which topics have new posts and how many.
We made the decision to move the forum that is integrated into this CMS system (Drupal) vs. using the phpBB forum and trying to get it integrated. There are a lot of advantages in having it all together from both an administrative side as well as what we can eventually do with Search abilities and more. I believe most of the functionality of the old Forum is otherwise here. If there is something that is not (like you just asked about) we can try to turn it on if appropriate. But - I think you will find that the Recent Posts does what you need plus more. (It only misses recent trac activity which you still pull from the trac timeline.)
Philippe Lindheimer - FreePBX Project Lead
http//freepbx.org - IRC #freepbx
Thanks, clicking the link for freepbx.org/node does indeed give the recent posts page. But I cant see this link in the left navbar no matter what page I’m at. Also if I click the topleft logo to go ‘home’, looking around the front page there I can see nothing that refers to a forum, the forum link is hidden inside the ‘support’ navlink.
I believe forums to be a very important part of most webpages, and all project pages. Could we have the community forums link put in a slightly more prominent location on the front page? A new visitor looking at the front page would not know there was a forum to look for.
Ok, while we’re here, where’s the ‘view my posts’ link? Sometimes I want to read a post that I know I wrote and the easiest way to find it is too look at all the posts I wrote, it’s a standard forum function. Best I can do so far is to search for my username, which will pull in posts other people have wrote that use my name.
Next, usernames. The previous forum had the username quite prominent so you could easily see who was ‘talking’. On the new one, the subtitle of each post in the thread is the biggest text and finding who wrote it is not so easy.
Also! Postcount! Argh, no postcount!?
Not finished yet, what about formatting options? BB code and HTML is supported but are we to write them by hand? Where are the nice little buttons for bold/code/underline etc?
Another one… clicking a username or avatar used to take you to a page of info about that user, that’s gone now too.
Sorry, I’m not bashing here, and I’m not doing the villiager with pitchfork in the street screaming ‘bring back the old forum’ but I do believe that an improved replacement has to have at least the same functionality as it’s predecessor, and not just a new shiney face.
…someone suggest they be PMd for some login info - is there a Private Message function??!!
PS: I agree about getting to the forums - you have to work quite hard to find the link; there should be a darn big button on the front page to get you here.
So it’s “www.freepbx.org” then click “support” hover the mouse to “forums” and click, then when the page refreshes, click “recent posts” from the link on the left which is almost invisible as it’s in the same navbar as he previous screen but it wasnt on the previous screen? Sorry. It’s not enough.
I love these boards, I use them. I like them. I know the admins and developers have been working very hard lately and when In think that some of their tme was spent on this, I just weep.
Custom forums just dont work. One of the reasons I hate the trixbox forums is that it just does not work as a forum, it’s too hard and it does not have the right functions. I dont want this place to take the same path.
Sure phpbb is old ald clumsy and difficult to work with, but hell, there’s a reason so many places use it… it works!!!
Where’s the quote option? Where’s the smileys? Where, most importantly, is the ‘forum feel’? The new web site is wonderful, but is there any need to reinvent the wheel in a square shape just to have intergrated admin of the three sections?
oh and sorry for the double post, but the new posts thing is busted too. I last checked these boards a good few hours ago, like 7 hours, and when i click the forum list section, it tells me there are 93 new posts in the users section alone, which is just not true.
The methodology of the old system, whereby it would track your last activity on the boards and time it out after a while (5 -10 minutes?) and count anything after that to be new is the correct way. I could log in, click new posts, read the 10 or so threads and leave, then if I come back in an hour, there may be 2 updated posts that I can find, read, and respond to if needed. With this new system, I just dont see how I can find posts made since my last visit. The recent posts section has posts going back a year damnit!!!
Ok., I’m bitching I know… I’ll leave it a few days and pray that it gets sorted out.
I didnt moan when trixbox broke their forums because, well frankly, I didnt care. But I DO care when it happens here.
I’m glad to see you so passionate about our site:) I just got back in from a few days of chilling out so I will be reviewing all the feedback and comments. I think most of what you are going though are transition pains. I don’t know the answer to all the questions in the post yet other than I think most or all of them will get answered. As we determine the best solution for the various desired functions (e.g. smiley faces…) we will be testing them on a development site before bringing them online, so they may not all come up instantly. But we are reading and listening.
I understand you liked phpBB and we discussed this for a long time whether or not to stick with it and try and better integrate it into the new environment or move to the fully integrated environment. I think once we get through the transition, the values of the fully integrated environment will begin to show themselves. Give us a little time to make it all work out - and in the mean time, feel free to list what is missing. (Although, you may want to summarize a consolidated list and post it to this Forum: http://www.freepbx.org/forums/this-website/non-ecommerce-issues
Philippe Lindheimer - FreePBX Project Lead
http//freepbx.org - IRC #freepbx
And the nice thing there is you get not only Forum posts but anything else that you added on the site. We will be making changes to allow editing of book pages and other ‘community’ areas of the site. This is one example of the integration I mention. One place, see your full history of changes whether a fourm post, a How To you wrote, etc.
Philippe Lindheimer - FreePBX Project Lead
http//freepbx.org - IRC FreePBX
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