Author Topic: Am I the only one who really struggles with this forum software?  (Read 7703 times)

bounceswoosh

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Maybe I just haven't figured out the right way to navigate this forum, or it's a PEBKAC issue and I need to be set straight. I would participate a lot more if I found it easy to use. I wonder how many other listeners may have just given up - as I've done periodically. Tapatalk made it less frustrating, but then they changed things up and I moved away from it.

Some things that frustrate me:
I haven't found a "show me all the things that have new posts since I was last here" link. I assume it must exist, since Tapatalk provided exactly that view for me.  (If someone could point me to how to do this, that would address 80% of my difficulties)
Redirect to the main forum page when I post. Hey, I was still mulling over that thread! And anyway I opened a bunch of topics in separate tabs - this redirect does nothing for me.
No way to quote multiple messages at the same time.
No way to highlight a section of someone's post and just quote that piece.
The "go to past where you last read" (or is it "go to most recent post"?) button is tucked away on the far right where it's not very obvious.
And, just discovered, the "list" button does not work as expected when you highlight several lines (separated by newlines).

I've worked around the "show me all the things" issue by subscribing by email to entire boards, but this is clunky, and then I still have to click through each email and explicitly subscribe to the new topic.

Sorry if this has been discussed before - I didn't see any topics that jumped out as being related. And apologies if this directly hurts the feelings of whoever runs this board - I just really do struggle with wanting to participate vs. just finding this forum software too much of a pain to bother. And wondering if this place would have a lot more traffic with a better (to me) interface.

In case it's relevant, I do donate on a monthly basis and have for years ... and would consider a larger one-time donation to fund a migration effort.

So much is changing in the Escape Artists world. The forum shouldn't be left to languish.



Ocicat

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Just addressing the "show me all the things that have new posts since I was last here" bit.  I use these links at the top of the page pretty constantly:

Show unread posts since last visit.
Show new replies to your posts.

They post from all sub-forums in chronological order, so it's pretty easy to get to where you last logged in.  Also, use the "MARK READ" button at the top level of each forum to prevent them from showing that content to you again.  Admittedly clunkier than it should be, but so it goes...



bounceswoosh

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Just addressing the "show me all the things that have new posts since I was last here" bit.  I use these links at the top of the page pretty constantly:

Show unread posts since last visit.
Show new replies to your posts.

They post from all sub-forums in chronological order, so it's pretty easy to get to where you last logged in.  Also, use the "MARK READ" button at the top level of each forum to prevent them from showing that content to you again.  Admittedly clunkier than it should be, but so it goes...

Thanks. It doesn't seem to me that these links actually do what they claim to do. For example, due to not wanting to click into tons of places, I only ever look in the "Episode Comments" subfora .... but the first link doesn't show nearly as much as it should. At least I'm assuming there's more than one or two posts across EA every day.



Bdoomed

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The "go to past where you last read" (or is it "go to most recent post"?) button is tucked away on the far right where it's not very obvious.

The "new" graphic right next to a forum thread with a new post in it is a link that will take you to the newest post.

Quote
Redirect to the main forum page when I post. Hey, I was still mulling over that thread! And anyway I opened a bunch of topics in separate tabs - this redirect does nothing for me.

There's an option in Profile>Look and Layout Preferences that says "Return to topics after posting by default."  That should be checked.


What forum software would you suggest?  Do you have a specific one in mind?  How easy is the migration of the old topics, archived topics, group settings, userbase, etc?

There's a lot to be considered when mulling over a forum migration. 

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


matweller

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What forum software are we talking about here? PHPBB or the software you're using to view it?

If you mean PHPBB, I'm not sure Ive ever come across a forum system that I thought worked better, in a more stable manner, more securely. So my preference would be status quo with the possible exception of moving to a Facebook-driven system only because it puts the onus for security on them, but I know a lot of people shun Facebook the way they do many other things Internet, and of course they are all right.

If you mean your method for looking at the forum, I personally don't enjoy using Tapatalk and I rather resent the fact that I'm encouraged to download it every time I come to the forum on my phone. My solution to that is to not come here on my phone except in rare cases of need, and in those cases I ignore the invitation and just use the forum through my phone browser, which involves a bit of push & stretch navigating, but I suffer through.

Mostly I only come here on an actual computer, use the "Show unread posts since last visit" link as Ocicat mentioned, and it works exactly as it should through Safari & Firefox.



kibitzer

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One thing on my to-do list is to upgrade to the newer 2.x version of the forum software. That should address some of the issues as they've a greater focus on mobile computing.


bounceswoosh

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The "go to past where you last read" (or is it "go to most recent post"?) button is tucked away on the far right where it's not very obvious.

The "new" graphic right next to a forum thread with a new post in it is a link that will take you to the newest post.

Quote
Redirect to the main forum page when I post. Hey, I was still mulling over that thread! And anyway I opened a bunch of topics in separate tabs - this redirect does nothing for me.

There's an option in Profile>Look and Layout Preferences that says "Return to topics after posting by default."  That should be checked.


What forum software would you suggest?  Do you have a specific one in mind?  How easy is the migration of the old topics, archived topics, group settings, userbase, etc?

There's a lot to be considered when mulling over a forum migration. 

Thank you for the pointers. I've turned on "return to topics" now!

I'm hesitant to suggest, because I know it's a pain to migrate anything, and I am not an expert in the area. I participate actively in two communities that use XenForo, and I like the way it works - with the exception that when quoting, it doesn't include the full history (ie, if you quote someone who's quoting someone else - you only see the latest person's text). I don't know if that's configurable. But I have no idea if it's easy to migrate to.

I realize it's not super helpful to come in with complaints and not a lot in the way of solutions, but in this case I don't have a lot of (any) experience running fora - I just know that as a user, I don't find this as comfy a place to hang out. And I really do think it comes down in large part to the handling of unread threads.

What forum software are we talking about here? PHPBB or the software you're using to view it?

If you mean PHPBB, I'm not sure Ive ever come across a forum system that I thought worked better, in a more stable manner, more securely. So my preference would be status quo with the possible exception of moving to a Facebook-driven system only because it puts the onus for security on them, but I know a lot of people shun Facebook the way they do many other things Internet, and of course they are all right.

If you mean your method for looking at the forum, I personally don't enjoy using Tapatalk and I rather resent the fact that I'm encouraged to download it every time I come to the forum on my phone. My solution to that is to not come here on my phone except in rare cases of need, and in those cases I ignore the invitation and just use the forum through my phone browser, which involves a bit of push & stretch navigating, but I suffer through.

Mostly I only come here on an actual computer, use the "Show unread posts since last visit" link as Ocicat mentioned, and it works exactly as it should through Safari & Firefox.

I gave up on Tapatalk after a big software change a while ago. I've been interacting with the site directly, via laptop.

Maybe "since last visit" is my issue, as I just want to "show unread posts." Does the site mark everything read once I've visited the forum?]

One thing on my to-do list is to upgrade to the newer 2.x version of the forum software. That should address some of the issues as they've a greater focus on mobile computing.

That would be cool, but nothing I was complaining about relates to reading the site on my phone.

BTW I realized in this thread that I *can* quote multiple messages at the same time. It's not as smooth as XenForo, where I can highlight portions of each post as I'm reading through and then order them as I wish when I get to the reply box, but it's possible.



matweller

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What forum software are we talking about here? PHPBB or the software you're using to view it?

If you mean PHPBB, I'm not sure Ive ever come across a forum system that I thought worked better, in a more stable manner, more securely. So my preference would be status quo with the possible exception of moving to a Facebook-driven system only because it puts the onus for security on them, but I know a lot of people shun Facebook the way they do many other things Internet, and of course they are all right.

If you mean your method for looking at the forum, I personally don't enjoy using Tapatalk and I rather resent the fact that I'm encouraged to download it every time I come to the forum on my phone. My solution to that is to not come here on my phone except in rare cases of need, and in those cases I ignore the invitation and just use the forum through my phone browser, which involves a bit of push & stretch navigating, but I suffer through.

Mostly I only come here on an actual computer, use the "Show unread posts since last visit" link as Ocicat mentioned, and it works exactly as it should through Safari & Firefox.

I gave up on Tapatalk after a big software change a while ago. I've been interacting with the site directly, via laptop.

Maybe "since last visit" is my issue, as I just want to "show unread posts." Does the site mark everything read once I've visited the forum?]


I had some confusion for a while where if I came into the main forum page, it would show new posts in, for example, 6 subforums, but when I went to "Show unread posts since last visit" nothing new would appear. So it was like it knew from the past that I had already seen some things and dismissed them so they wouldn't show up in "Show unread posts..." but since I hadn't actually viewed them, they were still showing up as new in the main viewing. it ended up not being a big deal, just a matter of understanding how it was working.

Similar to your other comment, yes it takes a minute to figure out how to do multiple quotes in a post, and it's annoying on a phone screen, but since you're on a laptop and have it worked out, you should be in good shape.

Happy commenting!