Topic: Forum Upgrade - Saturday about noon

[Slack]

Greetings Weenies,

Rivers and I will be performing a forum upgrade sometime around noon on Saturday (MST).  This is a major upgrade and change and so it will probably take us a few hours.  And then we'll need your help in figuring out what stuff still does not work.   

Keep checking back, thanks!

[uncle bud]

Reminder that this is about to occur, should you have trouble accessing the site for the next while.

[Slack]

Yup, just about to take things offline.

[Slack]

Dear Weenies, hopefully you won't be too shocked. 

We've still got some work to do on layout, look and feel, broken links - but we've successfully upgraded the forum and the portal (or front end) of the website. Our old forum software was deprecated and we needed to upgrade in order to retain support and the oppotunity for new features.

Please feel free to point out broken parts, likes and dislikes.

Thanks!

[dj]

Thanks for all the hard work you guys put into this change.

[lindy]

Thanks for all the hard work you guys put into this change.

Double amen on that, thanks for all your work, don't hesitate to let us know when the coffers are nearing empty and need an injection of donations.

Only comment to make right now, and it is very minor: can you somehow give the quotes at the top of the page some more prominence, like putting them in a different typeface or dressing up the box a bit. To my eyes, the quotes look odd/bland being in the same typeface as everything else, and since the quote generator is a real popular feature around here, I think it should stand out just bit.

Lindy

[Mr.OMuck]

Looks good guys! Thanks!

[Slack]

Thanks guys!

Lindy, we'll see if we can make the quotes pop out a little more.  Thanks for the suggestion.

[Richard]

A lot of work, looks really good. Thanks to all.

[Parlor Picker]

A change is as good as a rest! Nice work.

[jaycee]

really like the new look site you both have done a fabulous job.

[lindy]

Lindy, we'll see if we can make the quotes pop out a little more.  Thanks for the suggestion.

That was easy, a border and shading. I've been trying to think of a name for that feature that is more country blues-oriented than "the quote generator," but haven't come up with anything.

Looking forward to playing with the new bells and whistles!

L

[Slack]

Thanks jaycee! 

[uncle bud]

Lindy, we've usually called it the Oracle.

[Slack]

That was easy, a border and shading. I've been trying to think of a name for that feature that is more country blues-oriented than "the quote generator," but haven't come up with anything.

Just trying to make you guys feel more at home. 

We refer to it as the "Quote Oracle" 

edit: I see UB beat me to it.

[lindy]

Lindy, we've usually called it the Oracle.

Oh yeah, I forgot, I hadn't seen the word "Oracle" used in conversation recently.

I just found a little quirk, I don't know if it has anything to do with the recent round of tech changes. I tried to use the search function to find the thread "The Girl I Love," and it wouldn't give me any hits, telling me that "each search term must be more than one letter." That word "I" is pretty common, any way to fix that?

L

[uncle bud]

Don't know whether it's fixable but it has always done that as far as I recall. The way around it is to search such phrases using quotes.

[GhostRider]

Looks great, very nice.

One thing. In the Who's Online" box. When I'm online I'm listed as pyrochlore (my old name) not Ghostrider. Possibly this has to do with the fact that I still have to Login as pyrochlore, even all these years after changing to Ghostrider.

Very minor point. The customable stuff is really nice.

Alex

[Slack]

One thing. In the Who's Online" box. When I'm online I'm listed as pyrochlore (my old name)

I switched to a different Who's Online block, which I think will fix the problem.

The customable stuff is really nice.

I think so too -- we've got other stuff to try, we'll have some fun.

[Rivers]

Some tweaks went up this morning. These include a massive reduction to the white space (which was not a popular feature!), improved header background (force your browser to reload to be sure you get the new version of the background image), reduced wasted space in the 'breadcrumb trail' under the top menu, and a nicer font for titles (for example the one on the dark brown background).

There is more work going on to improve the look, specifically providing a tad more definition to the various blocks by adjusting some underlying background color shades, and to fix the left & right edge 'stairstep' where they meet the heading.