Shmups forum PHPBB Upgrades

[jonny5]

ban everyone from the UK function

cheers

I don't think bloodflowers would go for that, mate

Cheerio

i was gonna say

[cools]

Between Ghegs and myself (and Twyst) it's .. nearly done now. God what a nightmare, at this point the combined effort is past 48 hours of actual work.

I expected I might have underestimated things a little, but not by this kind of margin.

Well done

And yes, the phpBB forums are quite elitest (like a lot of large open source projects) and documentation isn't great. I like the software though

[Elixir]

ban everyone from the UK function

cheers

I don't think bloodflowers would go for that, mate

Cheerio

I'm kidding, there's no way I would want to see people like Lordstar leave.

[system11]

Well - I /think/ most everything is finished now, there may be small font, alignment or size tweaks needed here and there, but the last of the obvious errors were put right tonight.

There is a test version of the forum on http://shtest.system11.org , it is a migration of all data up until an hour or three ago. Of particular interest would be peoples results using the search which is now backed by the Sphinx search engine instead of using phpbb native.

* It will not look identical *

I'm not sure if that's even possible, but if people could poke around and find any really ugly issues, we'll do our best to tidy them up. Also considering enabling post rankings on topics, how would people feel about that one? We will NOT be implementing any kind of poster ranking feature, or the friends/foes functions when it goes live.

[Icarus]

Well - I /think/ most everything is finished now, there may be small font, alignment or size tweaks needed here and there, but the last of the obvious errors were put right tonight.

Thanks for the continued hard work, fellas.

There is a test version of the forum on http://shtest.system11.org, it is a migration of all data up until an hour or three ago. Of particular interest would be peoples results using the search which is now backed by the Sphinx search engine instead of using phpbb native.

* It will not look identical *

As long as it's functionally identical (aside from the requested extras, tweaks and upgrades), I doubt anyone will mind.

Link isn't working for me, by the way.

Also considering enabling post rankings on topics, how would people feel about that one? We will NOT be implementing any kind of poster ranking feature, or the friends/foes functions when it goes live.

Post tagging/indexing would be a much better feature to implement than post ranking, in my opinion, primarily to make finding threads of similar content a lot easier. We already have the "Worst Threads Ever" thread for archiving particular trainwrecks. ^_-

[croikle]

Link isn't working for me, by the way.

The comma was included in the link. http://shtest.system11.org works.

[Elixir]

So apart from upgrading from a different software and having it look almost identical, what new is going to be added? Different themes, bigger avatars, that sort of thing?

[Herr Schatten]

Why would you want bigger avatars?

This forum is nice, and clearly readable. Not allowing big sigs and huge-ass avatars is one of the best things about it.

[adversity1]

Bigger avatars would be nice. Not massive, but bigger.

Really wanted a different theme...

But thanks so much to the people putting in the work to upgrade the forum. It is appreciated.

[Elixir]

Why would you want bigger avatars?

This forum is nice, and clearly readable. Not allowing big sigs and huge-ass avatars is one of the best things about it.

It was just an example. If the upgrade only benefits the mods or admins, it isn't really an upgrade at all.

[system11]

Why would you want bigger avatars?

This forum is nice, and clearly readable. Not allowing big sigs and huge-ass avatars is one of the best things about it.

It was just an example. If the upgrade only benefits the mods or admins, it isn't really an upgrade at all.

Well what did you expect? It's a forum, you can post and .. read, and .. post?

*) Avatar sizes will not be increased.
*) There will be another theme, but it's a 'lite' version of this one with all the stars turned off. That's what I'm currently working on. It seems certain versions of Windows and IE really struggle to render the pages, while Firefox renders it just fine on the same machine.
*) Search results appear to be faster, and vastly improved in relevance.
*) Instead of having to apply much more restrictive rules to off-topic, which was certainly a possibility, we will now be able to issue looser guidelines, and ban people specifically from off-topic if required.
*) We will probably get a thread rating mod in, it's on my list of things to investigate once the lite theme is done.

[cools]

Had a quick look around

Glitches/nit picks/obvious differences:
PM "Topic Icons" are enabled.
Some of the text colours are hard to read - dark red/green for mods and "online/offline" status. The latter probably not an issue if you're disabling friends and foes.
The "report this post" button likes to wander around. Looks in an odd place too.
Menu bar at the top has logout and UCP on the wrong sides
Usernames are centred in the column next to posts, rather than left justified.
The gap between sig + buttons is huge.
Last but not least - on the "brighter" blue there are subtle dividing lines.

But it feels much, much faster

(Oh, and search is vastly improved)

[worstplayer]

*) There will be another theme, but it's a 'lite' version of this one with all the stars turned off. That's what I'm currently working on. It seems certain versions of Windows and IE really struggle to render the pages, while Firefox renders it just fine on the same machine.

Excellent. Stars in new theme look a bit messed up, so it's a great idea.

[Elixir]

Yeah the new theme sounds good. One of the things I don't really like about this current theme, and never have, is that everything is transparent and you can see the stars throughout. There's no consistency in this at all and it makes the forum feel very outdated.

Very geocities, 1998 outdated. Just a simple theme with basic colours would be fine.

[cools]

/me votes for neon colours everywhere.

[gabe]

*) Avatar sizes will not be increased.
*) There will be another theme, but it's a 'lite' version of this one with all the stars turned off. That's what I'm currently working on. It seems certain versions of Windows and IE really struggle to render the pages, while Firefox renders it just fine on the same machine.

Thanks!

When browsing at work, I generally like my screen to be occupied by as few stars, and giant avatars as possible.

[system11]

Well the lite version initial work in progress is up - it's literally the backgrounds being turned off, and solid colours being put in. It's sort of ugly but, eh - I dunno, maybe someone prefers it. You can try it out in the control panel, SpacePilot3k-lite.

One problem the PHPBB starred theme has is some of the table structures are very different, and now you've got cases where the background tiles much more rapidly, spoiling the effect. I was going to try to fix it in a few places. We did manage to kill the strange fine lines through lighter coloured posts though.

[system11]

Had a quick look around

Glitches/nit picks/obvious differences:
PM "Topic Icons" are enabled.
Some of the text colours are hard to read - dark red/green for mods and "online/offline" status. The latter probably not an issue if you're disabling friends and foes.
The "report this post" button likes to wander around. Looks in an odd place too.
Menu bar at the top has logout and UCP on the wrong sides
Usernames are centred in the column next to posts, rather than left justified.
The gap between sig + buttons is huge.
Last but not least - on the "brighter" blue there are subtle dividing lines.

But it feels much, much faster

(Oh, and search is vastly improved)

PM Topics icons are due to be disabled (indeed all topic icons), it's a migration and theme testing board - they're on the list though when we actually go live. Ditto for mod/admin colours, that's something you set in the ACP and not in the theme. Friends and foes is being switched off anyway.

Report post button - any chance you could make some screenshots? It seems stable to me? Menubar I'll fix when I get home, ditto name justification. Any chance of a screenshot of the sig+buttons issue? I did struggle with spacing, the original version had masses of space everywhere, even the quotes had loads of wasted space. Where are you seeing the dividing lines? I thought I'd got rid of most of them, but some probably remain, I was sure they were gone in topic viewing, tell me exactly how to replicate.

Thanks for feedback, I'll get on to fixing it all if possible tonight.

[cools]

The dividing lines aren't present, but they're present in the current theme Was just me wondering what stood out as different.

Screenshot

[Elixir]

Wouldn't it be better to center avatars if you're going to center names?

Yes, I think it would.

[cools]

Or align the names to left, to match the avatars and the current look

[system11]

Right I see what you mean now. When logged in as a moderator that report icon is next to 3 others so it doesn't look as strange. I'll see what I can do.

[system11]

I've fixed most of the stuff you mentioned, although the smaller icons don't quite line up right vertically - this will be fixed tomorrow, they need to be 2 pixels taller with a dark shade on the sides.

[GaijinPunch]

I've fixed most of the stuff you mentioned, although the smaller icons don't quite line up right vertically - this will be fixed tomorrow, they need to be 2 pixels taller with a dark shade on the sides.

Linux + Firefox = micro font.
I have to use the Zoom in feature twice to make it readable, but it zooms in on the JPGs as well and makes them look like a turd.

[robivy64]

*golf clap*

I'm glad I could help.

[system11]

I've fixed most of the stuff you mentioned, although the smaller icons don't quite line up right vertically - this will be fixed tomorrow, they need to be 2 pixels taller with a dark shade on the sides.

Linux + Firefox = micro font.
I have to use the Zoom in feature twice to make it readable, but it zooms in on the JPGs as well and makes them look like a turd.

Can you screenshot it for me please? Linux / Firefox is what I'm reading with /right now/ and it looks fine to me. If you could have an avatar on screen at the same time so I can get an idea of scale that would help.

[Khan]

i honestly prefered it before these changes

[system11]

i honestly prefered it before these changes

Tell us what's broken/wrong with it, please post it in the sticky at the top of off topic, and we'll see what we can do.