Changes to the forum

While there are still some formatting I need to address (specifically the post/reply area), the bulk of the updates to the forum have been made. I originally intended to update the software then design a new template, but little did I know the update would completely break the old one. So I bascially remade the old template to work with the new software well enough to tide us over until I manage to do the redesign. There are some nice new features in place though:

* RSS Feeds (woot!)

* Index page now shows a summary of the various fora (just 3 at the moment, but more may be added) including unread messages and new threads for each, with links to the RSS feeds. It can also be reached by clicking the "Forum List" link at the top of the pages or in the menu.

* Better privacy options. In the Control Center you can now modify your privacy settings, particularly whether your e-mail address is shown (an oft-requested feature).

* Improved search including the ability to search by author.

* Improved Private Messages with the ability to keep a buddy list and sort messages into folders.

* Improved File Attachment handling and management

* Better administration including the ability to merge threads, leave notes for moved threads, ban users through a variety of methods, and lots of other stuff that will make my life easier.

* Lots of other little things I'm forgetting like the ability to set your time zone.

Ultimately, I've completely moved away from the mods and hacks that ELF had by either integrating them through proper hooks that have been added or because the features were integrated into the software. I'll be adding more features and mods in the future, but if you see any problems, please let me know.

Thanks for all of your hard work!

Age,

Again, thank you so much for all your work!

FYI I noticed some formatting problems on page 2 of the Recruits thread. You may want to check it out.

Can we go back to having the title bar of each post being red? It is easier to tell the separations between posts that way. Thanks

Jacob '06
Can we go back to having the title bar of each post being red? It is easier to tell the separations between posts that way. Thanks

That would be nice. But judging from what Age wrote above:[q]So I bascially remade the old template to work with the new software well enough to tide us over until I manage to do the redesign.[/q]I think he's not so much worried about all of the appearance details right now and will get to that later as time permits.

can I ask a stupid question? what's RSS? and why are we so excited about it?

Dpperk29
can I ask a stupid question? what's RSS? and why are we so excited about it?

Everytime someone uses a TLA of which I've never heard, I thank him for his effort and assume it doesn't apply to me. Of course, there' always wikipedia...

[en.wikipedia.org]

Jacob 03

Dpperk29
can I ask a stupid question? what's RSS? and why are we so excited about it?

Everytime someone uses a TLA of which I've never heard, I thank him for his effort and assume it doesn't apply to me. Of course, there' always wikipedia...

[en.wikipedia.org]

The entry is good, but to briefly summarize what RSS is and why people on the forum might like it:

RSS is a file format for syndicating web content. You could pull it into your own website easily, but the thing that most people will want to do is use some sort of RSS reader in order to get elynah posts delivered to them. You can add RSS to "My Yahoo" so that your homepage can have the most recent Elynah posts, or use a purpose-built RSS reader on your machine (like Sharp Reader (PC), NetNewsWire (Mac) or Bloglines (Web)) to read blogs and other news, including this forum. I think collegehockeynews.com also has RSS feeds.

You can also add RSS feeds to Gmail, now, too

Age, just wanted to chime in and also say thanks for the site and upgrade and all.

As for Macs, Safari does RSS in Tiger.

Opera does RSS on both Mac and PC, too. But if you're a Mac user with Tiger, Safari RSS is probably the way to go.

Just to add a little more to the "My browser is cool too" discussion, Mozilla Firefox's Live Bookmarks feature for RSS feeds is pretty handy.

Hmmm. I think I see what evertone else sees here at work, but at home, when I click on forum, I only get the red bar on the side - no text, no links, nothing. Windoze something with Internet Explorer something (I forgot to check, but it's a very new laptop, so it's definitely up-to-date). I think these changes are not yet an improvement!

Dunno. Can't replicate it on a current version of IE on a current version of Windows here. It shouldn't be doing anything especially funky to cause that. Might I suggest Firefox in the meantime?

You can also add the "Sage" extension to Firefox, which provides a lot more detail on RSS feeds to which you've subscribed than Live Bookmarks do. This is a terrific new addition. Thanks, Age.

Thanks, Age.

I especially like the "Mark Thread Read" option.

I was stimulated to hit the "PayPal Donate" button again, but that seems to be broken.

Age, nice touch there on the "spelling guide"

That's been there since before the update. Was wondering how long it would take someone to notice

FYI, the 'more' next to smileys doesn't work anymore. I just get a blank window with 'Smiley Code' 'Smiley Image'.

A small request -- when I clicked on the BillHoward's attached photos (CU/NU postgame), the images came up in the main window. Can you add target="_blank" like you do for links?

Thanks. Will get on both of those when I get back to work on Tuesday.

Can we get a 2005 Ned Harkness Cup?

Pre tags aren't working.

Underlines are though...

jtwcornell91
Can we get a 2005 Ned Harkness Cup?

Why? Did we lose the first one?

You can also add RSS feeds to your google homepage...

What? You don't have one? Here you go: [www.google.com]

Any chance you could add College Hockey News to the standard left-side menu? If for no other reason, AdamW isn't writing for USCHO anymore. [www.collegehockeynews.com]

Did the forum updates cause all the options to get reset? I had to go back and reset most of my default viewing options, including the "hide my email from other users" feature.

Any chance the "previous thread"/"next thread" links can be restored to the bottom & top of the threads? I used these all the time when I read threads in flat view and I'm guessing others do as well.
Thanks...

[q]Can we get a 2005 Ned Harkness Cup?[/q]Hey, if the sidebar is going to list mid-season tournaments as "championships" (New Harkness Cup), then shouldn't it also list the following:
ECAC Holiday Festival - 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1975
Nichols School Invitational - 1968
S*IT - 1969, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1997
Cornell Holidat Festival - 1978, 1979
Broadmoor Classic - 1981
Thunderbird Invitational - 1986
Phoenix Mutual Classic - 1987
Yale Hockey Classic - 1988

Yes, I am being a smartass.

I had always liked to see how many posts people had by looking at their profiles. I know I can still look at my own number, but I can't see others'. Is this part of a de-emphasis on competitive posting, or is it possible we could have this feature back?

Thanks, though, Age, for the new design.

KenP
Any chance you could add College Hockey News to the standard left-side menu? If for no other reason, AdamW isn't writing for USCHO anymore. [www.collegehockeynews.com]

Certainly. Once I get over my flu and back to work

Chris 02
Did the forum updates cause all the options to get reset? I had to go back and reset most of my default viewing options, including the "hide my email from other users" feature.

It's possible. As far as I know some of those features didn't even have an effect before. The update made significant changes to the database and I don't know how much info was retained.

cornelldavy
Any chance the "previous thread"/"next thread" links can be restored to the bottom & top of the threads? I used these all the time when I read threads in flat view and I'm guessing others do as well.
Thanks...

Yep. Meant to do that. Guess I forgot.

ebilmes
I had always liked to see how many posts people had by looking at their profiles. I know I can still look at my own number, but I can't see others'. Is this part of a de-emphasis on competitive posting, or is it possible we could have this feature back?

Had no idea that went away. Thanks for pointing it out. I'll try to get it back shortly. Keep the feedback coming.

KeithK
[q]Can we get a 2005 Ned Harkness Cup?[/q]Hey, if the sidebar is going to list mid-season tournaments as "championships" (New Harkness Cup), then shouldn't it also list the following:
ECAC Holiday Festival - 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1975
Nichols School Invitational - 1968
S*IT - 1969, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1997
Cornell Holidat Festival - 1978, 1979
Broadmoor Classic - 1981
Thunderbird Invitational - 1986
Phoenix Mutual Classic - 1987
Yale Hockey Classic - 1988

Yes, I am being a smartass.

Niagara Cup 2005

Age - I think the update to the forum are great. I'm new to RSS feeds. Is there a way to collapse RSS updates from the same thread?

For example if 2 new posts show up in the same thread, the RSS feed will only put out a single message that says the thread is updated?

Is this possible with a specific browser / plug-in option? I'm using Firefox.

Nope. Sorry

David Harding
Thanks, Age.

I especially like the "Mark Thread Read" option.

I was stimulated to hit the "PayPal Donate" button again, but that seems to be broken.

Hey everybody! The DONATE button is working. Give it a try. You don't even have to use PayPal now.

I'm considering upgrading my server to a new box with more storage and RAM which should help performance considerably. It's (ugh) even more than I'm paying now, of course, but it's about the same as I'd be paying if I purchased upgrades for the current box. At this point, I'm looking into transfer strategies to minimize downtime, but there will be ample warning before any possible interruptions. OK, now get back to work.

Sorry for the lack of warning on the downtime. It was a bit of a disaster. They were out of the server I wanted on Monday so they started building one for me, but that was taking forever so when more became available today, I canceled the other order, but it turned out they didn't, in fact, have more, so I just had to wait for them to finish building mine. After a few more stumbles, I finally got it about 1pm today and got everything rebuilt fairly quickly. but the DNS changes took a long time to propagate.

Anyway, welcome to the new server! Faster processors, 4x the RAM, faster drives, 7x the capacity, etc. Let me know if you experience any oddities, and thanks for everyone's support.

As you were.

CowbellGuy
Sorry for the lack of warning on the downtime. It was a bit of a disaster. They were out of the server I wanted on Monday so they started building one for me, but that was taking forever so when more became available today, I canceled the other order, but it turned out they didn't, in fact, have more, so I just had to wait for them to finish building mine. After a few more stumbles, I finally got it about 1pm today and got everything rebuilt fairly quickly. but the DNS changes took a long time to propagate.

Anyway, welcome to the new server! Faster processors, 4x the RAM, faster drives, 7x the capacity, etc. Let me know if you experience any oddities, and thanks for everyone's support.

As you were.

Age,

Thanks for all your work on the site. I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we really appreciate elynah and all the work you put into it.

-Rob

Is it just me or are the timestamps on the posts an hour "off" (EST)?

It's you. Unless you posted at 9:02 PM EST

No...The timestamps are definitely running on central time.

redhair34
Is it just me or are the timestamps on the posts an hour "off" (EST)?

View your "Forum Settings" under "Options" in "My Control Center" to change your time zone.

CowbellGuy
Anyway, welcome to the new server! Faster processors, 4x the RAM, faster drives, 7x the capacity, etc. Let me know if you experience any oddities, and thanks for everyone's support.

As you were.

Want to give us any idea of how much that ran you? So we can compensate you appropriately using that handy dandy Donate button?

Heh. That's cause that's where the server's located. Thanks for catching that. I'll fix it in the morning.

You don't want to know. It's a monthly lease, for all intents, so it's a gift that keeps on giving.

I recently noticed that the file attachments are restricted to GIF, JPG, TXT, and PDF. Can you please add PNG to list of allowed formats? PNG was developed ten years ago as a license-unencumbered and improved replacement for GIF, so should really be a standard option by now.

Edit: Nevermind

I don't know if this has anything to do with the changes but I don't see where else to report technical issues.

I no longer get a note at the top of the screen telling me when I've been PM'd. I only noticed because there were messages in my inbox when I went to PM Ari for information about O'Byrne's real reasons for leaving.*



*Yes, I will continue to beat that dead horse until it is no longer even recognizably equine.

You can also change your forum settings so that it sends you an e-mail to notify you when you've received a PM.

Not a big deal, but when I do a search asking for it to be restricted to "this forum", the search covers multiple forums anyway.

Okay, so I think Age needs to either a) make it easier for admins to delete multiple messages at once or b) eliminate non-member posting so the spambots can't pile on.

jtwcornell91
Okay, so I think Age needs to either a) make it easier for admins to delete multiple messages at once or b) eliminate non-member posting so the spambots can't pile on.

There are other solutions to stupid spambots that still allow for anonymous posting. I sent some suggestions based on my own experience to Age.

Kyle

krose

jtwcornell91
Okay, so I think Age needs to either a) make it easier for admins to delete multiple messages at once or b) eliminate non-member posting so the spambots can't pile on.

There are other solutions to stupid spambots that still allow for anonymous posting. I sent some suggestions based on my own experience to Age.

Kyle

Just to play devil's advocate here...what exactly is the advantage of having anonymous posting be available at all?

Will
Just to play devil's advocate here...what exactly is the advantage of having anonymous posting be available at all?

Ease of joining the community. Someone is more likely to post the first time---and consequently, to become a long-term contributor---if the barriers to entry are very low. On my metal forum, I have put probably a hundred hours worth of work into the software simply to allow unregistered posting while filtering out spambots and other kinds of abusers.

The ability to post without registering makes a huge difference in how welcoming the community is, but IMO only if the abuse filtering is effective: too much spam can lower the signal-to-noise ratio enough to cause people to leave, which is a lot worse than requiring registration. So there's a certain minimum amount of functionality required to make unregistered posting a net gain... but that gain is not achievable any other way, which is why it's worth the effort.

Cheers,
Kyle

krose
The ability to post without registering makes a huge difference in how welcoming the community is, but IMO only if the abuse filtering is effective: too much spam can lower the signal-to-noise ratio enough to cause people to leave, which is a lot worse than requiring registration. So there's a certain minimum amount of functionality required to make unregistered posting a net gain... but that gain is not achievable any other way, which is why it's worth the effort.

How about permitting anonymous posts by typing one of those funky alpha-numeric codes that are supposed to elude the bots' character-recognition capabilities? Registering would then obviate the need to type the code. It would be a barrier, but it would be easy and you could see your post immediately.