New website - feedback and ideas

[700newtons]

Hello all,

There will be a lot going on in the next few days, and we will need to prioritise help for getting Club members logged in.

However, feedback is useful and if you have any non-urgent comments or ideas then please list them below.

Once the dust settles we can turn our attention to them.

Many thanks,

Simon.

[SteWi]

It would appear that you can create new topics without being signed in to the site.  There's at least one post already that looks dodgy.  I've also tried creating a new topic when not signed in that appears to work, although I have not tried submitting it so as not to add more clutter.

Steve

[Jonathan Kay]

What Steve says: a lot of guests posting in Cyrillic!

Jonathan

[Skipper555]

I've reported a few of those Cyrillic posts. Amazing how quickly they turned up. Seems to be one on each sub-forum

[700newtons]

Thanks for your quick flagging up. The permissions changed on the import (now fixed and spam removed).

[Gavel]

Non-urgent, but please can you validate an RSS feed for the forum.

[deanjenkins]

Well done website team.

I haven't been on here for a very long time.

Where's the 'Morning' thread?

[Alan Reeves]

 When one hits a topic it opens the posting  below the last post on the topic so one has to scroll back  to find the start

of the posting to find out what the full question is ? The old version was the opposite so you read the heading and the topic message and thne scrolled down through responses

 

Is there a setting to adjust this 

[cobar]

25 minutes ago, Alan Reeves said:

 When one hits a topic it opens the posting  below the last post on the topic so one has to scroll back  to find the start

of the posting to find out what the full question is ? The old version was the opposite so you read the heading and the topic message and thne scrolled down through responses

 

Is there a setting to adjust this 

Click on your username in the upper right-hand corner, then Account Settings, then Content View Behavior on left side of Settings page, then select Take me to the beginning.

[Edzup Ezzer]

Congratulations on the new website.  I have not the slightest idea how much effort it takes to deliver (some understatement) it but well done to all those involved!  

Familiarity with a new website takes time and popular and useful new features may not be found or go unnoticed without a bit of handholding to lead us around our nice new 'home'.  One item that has migrated successfully is the Forum User Guide, which probably now needs a rewrite (quelle surprise!).  Further than that, a simple idiots guide to help us 'senior' users learn our way around might be useful (I'm sure someone has thought about this, or does it exist already, if so I've missed it - apologies for stating the obvious).

Edited October 18, 2023 by Edzup Ezzer
Additional text, omitted on first send

[Alan Reeves]

1 hour ago, cobar said:

Click on your username in the upper right-hand corner, then Account Settings, then Content View Behavior on left side of Settings page, then select Take me to the beginning.

that worked , ta

[SteWi]

Members' benefits are available without sign in.

[admin_RJ]

23 minutes ago, SteWi said:

Members' benefits are available without sign in.

Thanks that has been rectified.

[cobar]

The unread dot before a thread title in Activity Streams is showing correctly, however, read content continues to show in bold text there and within the Forum view.  Default behavior for Invision is to unbold read content, making it easier to spot unread posts, so I'm not sure if this is a bug or an intentional choice.

[admin_JM]

Thanks for the comment John. I'll take a look and see if its something we can control.

John

[admin_JM]

8 minutes ago, cobar said:

The unread dot before a thread title in Activity Streams is showing correctly, however, read content continues to show in bold text there and within the Forum view.  Default behavior for Invision is to unbold read content, making it easier to spot unread posts, so I'm not sure if this is a bug or an intentional choice.

John, I can see that read content does have a lesser weighting to it. Unread content is very bold, read content less so. So the Invision logic is working. Maybe we could tone down the font weighting for read content - but that's a longer term theming issue.

John

[cobar]

On my device, they are effectively identical.  But I'm sure there are a lot of other things on your plate that are a much higher priority, and this would get bundled in with any other theme changes you want to make based on user feedback over the next few weeks.  

[admin_JM]

Just now, cobar said:

On my device, they are effectively identical.  But I'm sure there are a lot of other things on your plate that are a much higher priority, and this would get bundled in with any other theme changes you want to make based on user feedback over the next few weeks.  

Out of interest, what device are you using. I'll see if I can replicate on something similar. 

As you can imagine, we're compiling a to-do list, so this will go on the list.

John

[cobar]

Windows 11 Dell Laptop and Dell monitor.  I tried both Edge and Firefox. I also tried an iPad and had the same results. Screenshot from the laptop below. The top item has been read and the second item has not.  I can empathize with the to-do list.  I moved a forum to Invision a few years ago.  

 

[Ivaan]

In the "Areas and Groups", Area Blog option, how do you create a Blog?

Could this be a way one member notifying the others in the group that they're just heading out on a Blat should anyone else want to join them?

How are the "Followers" notified of new Blog entries?

Thanks in advance, Clive ( aka Ivaan )

 

[admin_JM]

2 minutes ago, cobar said:

Windows 11 Dell Laptop and Dell monitor.  I tried both Edge and Firefox. I also tried an iPad and had the same results. Screenshot from the laptop below. The top item has been read and the second item has not.  I can empathize with the to-do list.  I moved a forum to Invision a few years ago.  

 

Ok. Thanks.

[admin_JM]

5 minutes ago, Ivaan said:

In the "Areas and Groups", Area Blog option, how do you create a Blog?

Could this be a way one member notifying the others in the group that they're just heading out on a Blat should anyone else want to join them?

How are the "Followers" notified of new Blog entries?

Thanks in advance, Clive ( aka Ivaan )

 

Only ARs can create blog entries in the Areas and Groups section at the moment. And yes, there's a lot of options for communications in that feature, but we're taking it slowly at the moment and only allowing ARs to create blog posts. This is all good feedback.

Followers are notified by email (by default). If you click on the bell icon (notifications) on the top menu bar then there's a notifications settings option in there. You can configure how you get all your notifications.

John

[Ivaan]

Hi John,

I suspected as much, but it's a shame, as there doesn't seem to be anyway a "normal" member can communicate with the others in the group. WhatsApp seems to be the only way of doing this and that takes a lot of traffic off of Blatchat.

Cl;ive

[OldAndrewE]

Just a minor issue but on the old site you could click on a member's name in a post and see where they are located (if they have put that info in their profile).  Useful if they are selling/buying or needing assistance.  Avoids the need for the 'Where are you located?' post.  Unless I am missing it the location does not show now

[Purplemeanie]

14 hours ago, OldAndrewE said:

Just a minor issue but on the old site you could click on a member's name in a post and see where they are located (if they have put that info in their profile).  Useful if they are selling/buying or needing assistance.  Avoids the need for the 'Where are you located?' post.  Unless I am missing it the location does not show now

Thanks Andrew. That will need a bit of thinking about. This new site does allow that sort of thing but we’d have to be careful not to provide too much detail. Added to the list of things to look at. 👍🏻