Forum update today

[JoshM]

We will be doing a forum update at 1pm EST today. We expect a short bit of downtime, and will be monitoring the forums for any bugs or glitches once it is back up. Thank you for your patience.

 

[ntimevan]

What Day ..next week is the Next Update ...so WE all can plan ahead...... Lol

 

[JoshM]

The update is actually already done and in effect.

 

[RLENT]

Whoever is primarily responsible for cooking up the clusterflop that is the new "redesign" of EO needs taken out back behind the woodshed and thoroughly spanked ...

It may be cute "eye candy" to some (who likely don't know any better) but when you remove features that people use on a regular basis, it kinda has a way of making folks ... ahhh ... less than enthusiastic ...

Couple that with a buggy implementation of new features, and it's a loser ...

 

[Turtle]

Whoever is primarily responsible for cooking up the clusterflop that is the new "redesign" of EO needs taken out back behind the woodshed and thoroughly spanked ...

It may be cute "eye candy" to some (who likely don't know any better) but when you remove features that people use on a regular basis, it kinda has a way of making folks ... ahhh ... less than enthusiastic ...

Couple that with a buggy implementation of new features, and it's a loser ...

Uhm, what features, specifically, have you found removed?

And what bugs, specifically, have you discovered in the new features?

 

[Dynamite 1]

You beat me to it. I would be curious also plus you could have worded your complaint much, much more appropriate !!!

 

[RLENT]

Uhm, what features, specifically, have you found removed?

Preference to have titles retrieved for links.

Ability to or hide show Vbulletin code tags in the edit window ... and still have the toolbar available.

And what bugs, specifically, have you discovered in the new features?

Should have said new format (not features)

Linking is flakey ... the link often winds up at the beginning of the edit window, in front of anything that's been quoted ... rather than where the cursor had been placed in the edit/composition window.

Same sorta deal with formatting (bold, italics, etc) - select a word to apply formatting to, hit the desired format button ... and the cursor jumps to the beginning of edit/composition window ... without applying the desired formatting ...

That's just a couple off the top of my head ...

The whole thing with renaming Private Messages to "Conversations" is a real hoot as well ...

BTW ... is the mobile app for iOS available yet ... or are we still waiting on Apple to do their thing ?

 

[RLENT]

You beat me to it. I would be curious also plus you could have worded your complaint much, much more appropriate !!!

If I had worded it any more appropriately it wouldn't have made it past EO's internal censor ... and probably would have gotten me me banned ...

 

[Turtle]

I'm not a big fan of an update that changes the user interface. It's a major pet peeve of mine, actually. Smartphone apps do that crap all the time, where the "What's New" lists "enhancements and bug fixes" and it turns out to be a complete change of the UI, where the places you used to go to do stuff have changed, and the procedures to accomplish something are completely different. When that happens, it's not an update, it's an entirely new app that you have to learn all over again.

In this case, the forum software isn't just a redesign or an update, it really is a completely new product. The old software was vBulletin, the new software is the Xenforo Internet forum software. Xenforo is actually developed by former vBulletin lead developers Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan.

Preference to have titles retrieved for links.

Yeah, when you insert a link it inserts the raw link, however, you can immediately go back and replace the text of the link to have it read however you like without having to hit "preview" first. I generally just highlight the entire link except for the first and last letter, then start typing (or paste) whatever I want, then delete the first and last letter of the original raw link.

Ability to or hide show Vbulletin code tags in the edit window ... and still have the toolbar available.

I agree that it would be nice to still have the toolbar available when in BBCode Editor Mode. I'll forward this request to the Josh in the office. I'm pretty sure there's an addon that can be installed that will add that functionality.

Linking is flakey ... the link often winds up at the beginning of the edit window, in front of anything that's been quoted.

That's something I haven't yet experienced. All my links go to right where I have the cursor.

Same sorta deal with formatting (bold, italics, etc) - select a word to apply formatting to, hit the desired format button ... and the cursor jumps to the beginning of edit/composition window ... without applying the desired formatting ...

Something else I haven't experienced. I can select a word by dragging the cursor or by double-clicking the word, and then do a CRTL-key combination or select the style icon, and whatever is selected changes accordingly.

The whole thing with renaming Private Messages to "Conversations" is a real hoot as well ...

That's already been discussed, publicly and privately, with the appropriate amount of sardonic comment.

BTW ... is the mobile app for iOS available yet ... or are we still waiting on Apple to do their thing ?

Not sure, but I think the iOS version has been updated.

There are a few new features that might not be readily apparent. One that's been discussed elsewhere is the user tag, where you can tag a user with the @RLENT tag so the user will get an Alert that they were mentioned in a post.
Another new feature/UI thing is the Insert icon on the toolbar. It's the icon immediately to the left of the camera icon. It adds easier quoting, but also the strikethrough style. The BBCode for it is:

[s]strikethrough[/s] will display as strikethrough

And it adds the Spoiler option. You can type SPOILER inside brackets the same way to hide text, so that it must be clicked on to be read, or simply type in a word or sentence or paragraph and highlight it and click the SPOILER option under the Insert icon..

Spoiler: Click at your own risk

This obviously comes in handy when you don't want to post a spoiler.

When you insert it with the Spoiler option, a window will pop up asking you for a spoiler title. You can leave that blank or give it a title.

Spoiler

If you don't give it a title it'll just say Spoiler.

Another thing to be aware of in this editor is, if you highlight a word, sentence or paragraph, you can left click-n-drag the highlighted text and move it to another location in the text box. A handy feature, but one that if done by mistake can really mess you up.

You can also highlight text in someone's post and a little "Reply" link will pop up. If you click Reply, the highlighted text gets quoted into the reply text box below. That's kinda nifty.

I've also put in a request to have Multiquote turned on. When it's turned on, it makes quoting multiple quotes, even from different threads, a breeze.

 

[Turtle]

If I had worded it any more appropriately it wouldn't have made it past EO's internal censor ... and probably would have gotten me me banned ...

Expressing displeasure with the changes is one thing, but suggesting that whoever is responsible for those changes be taken out back and assaulted is a little inappropriate.

 

[JoshM]

Thanks Turtle for answering most of those questions.

The iOS forum update has been out for a few weeks, go into your App Store to update it.

I'll say for the showing tags in the editor, that's just not a part of this software and we can't change that. I understand that it's frustrating that things have changed, but the way the vBulletin was functioning we had no choice but to jump ship. It's different software, so of course there will be features that are no longer here and features that are added, but the real answer is we just don't have a choice. And there will always be bugs when you are launching a site as big and full-featured as EO.

We appreciate the continued notification of issues you run into – we will always fix what we are able to.

 

[RLENT]

The iOS forum update has been out for a few weeks, go into your App Store to update it.

Ok.

I'll say for the showing tags in the editor, that's just not a part of this software and we can't change that. I understand that it's frustrating that things have changed, but the way the vBulletin was functioning we had no choice but to jump ship.

Really ?

I'd be real interested in hearing more about that ... although realistically I don't expect to.

It's different software, so of course there will be features that are no longer here and features that are added, but the real answer is we just don't have a choice.

One always has a choice.

And there will always be bugs when you are launching a site as big and full-featured as EO.

LOL ...

Josh,

I spend most of my time on another (non-expediting) forum site these days - it's run on vBulletin software - that makes EO pale in comparison.

To give you some idea of the magnitude, the forum has over 268,000 registered members and has over 324,000 threads containing over 4 million posts. And no apparent limits on how many PM's one can have in their inbox (I would have inserted a rolleyes smiley here at this point but when I attempted to do so the software failed to do so and just moved my cursor to the beginning of this reply)

One thread alone - about a home a guy built himself in the woods - has over 875,000 views and contains over 5,800 posts/replies.

I'm on there on a daily basis, and generally speaking, the site works flawlessly ... while supporting fairly heavy user traffic (there are over 7,000 users currently online there)

We appreciate the continued notification of issues you run into – we will always fix what we are able to.

Don't fix what ain't broken ...

 

[Turtle]

I'm on there on a daily basis, and generally speaking, the site works flawlessly ... while supporting fairly heavy user traffic (there are over 7,000 users currently online there)


Don't fix what ain't broken ...

Broken may depend on perspective. Over the years with every vBulletin update it has become more and more of a resource hog for the server (particularly after vBulletin was bought out and most of the original developers left). While it certainly supports large user traffic, it's doing so at a cost. What may seem "flawless" to the user may be anything but behind the scenes. There are plenty of articles and forum posts out there, many with hard numbers, comparing thissoftware versus thatsoftware, vBulletin versus thatsoftware specifically, that show vBulletin's shortcomings in its performance. It's not all that different from carriers in that there's no best one for everybody, and while one may be great for this person it may be a nightmare for another person.

 

[Lawrence]

VBulletin is sadly dying. Sites that use it haven't been able to get a stable update in a while. It's bloated, it's slow and all the best developers and engineers have left VB and are now supporting the program that EO is now using. The biggest communities on the web are leaving or have already abandoned VB. We never thought that day would come - we invested heavily in it, however - things changes.

 

[Turtle]

Here's a good read:
vBulletin review - how Internet Brands have killed off vBulletin

"The conclusion - vBulletin is already dead"

 

[Lawrence]

VB5? What a train wreck. We tested it on a fairly active community and it killed it in 90 days.

I'll add this...this was one of the reasons we delayed the launch of EO by a few years, we were hoping that they'd get re-focused and correct their development problems, sadly that never happened. Moving forward - for the last 4 years we've had our own php development team in-house and are creating our own software for our own products. We won't have to wait on anyone else next time.