[ FORUM UPDATE ] : Feedback, Known Issues, Etc.
Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 2:09 am
Greetings LT member from the future! If you're receiving this message it means that I've unlocked the forums and not everything is broken! Congratulations to both of us
I'd like to put out some general information about this upgrade. But if you need the TL;DR, here it is: this is still a work-in-progress, I know it's not the old forums, I know you hate parts of it, we will make it better over time; report issues that you find or things that annoy you (keeping in mind that this is a WIP, so it should be a 'major' annoyance)
On to the what where why and how.
Why?
Our forum software (phpBB) was badly out of date. This had a lot of implications. We were prone to bot attacks, since we didn't have reCaptcha like we do now. We were becoming more and more prone to security vulnerabilities and potential hacking attempts as well, as it happens when one runs an out-of-date software. And, to be frank, phpBB is garbage. But it gets less-gabagy with each update. Turns out 3.2, the newest (and what we now have), is really a lot better than the old version.
No, I mean, WHY????
Ah. You mean "why does it look so different and in many places broken, stylistically-incoherent, or just..bad?" That's because this upgrade to the new version of phpBB is not backwards-compatible with old styles. You can thank them for that, I didn't make the decision I had to go hunt down a decent-looking theme (and there aren't that many decent-looking themes yet that support this new version). I spent a longggg time modifying this theme's various bits to make things look at least somewhat familiar (you can also thank Talvieno, who pointed out a lot of good CSS changes to make this better). But alas, I grow tired of writing web-related code and would now like to get back to writing real LT code. So I'm going to open the forums.
What (...to do if you find something broken or terrible)
Obviously, if you find something that's broken in a big way -- especially if you run into any kind of hard server error that spews words like 'php or MySQL' -- please report it here. The small stylistic issues are mostly known. I haven't been able to go through every part of the forums and change them to be coherent. So far I have focused mainly on the front page and the topics listing views. Soon I'll dedicate more time to making viewing an actual topic's posts a bit more pleasant. It'd be helpful if people reported not only bugs, but big 'quality of life' concerns. I can see pretty clearly when things look bad or are stylistically incoherent. I'm good with graphics But plenty of you guys spend more time on the forums than I do, and if this upgrade has made this place less pleasant, I want to know about it. Especially if it's something that I can fix easily.
The good news, despite this whole process being a major PIA, is that I now have a lot more control over the forums. It was...sort of out of necessity.....that I had to learn a whole lot about phpBB in a very short period of time.... But the major upshot of that is that I'm pretty cozy with the forum code now, and can change things that need changing.
Where are the 'view new posts / active topics' buttons!?
Find your profile icon in the top bar. To the right, there's a button with three horizontal lines. Click it. It should bring down a menu that includes all of those handy links that used to be at the top of the forums. Yes, this is an example of something that I know needs to be fixed :V
---
Yeah...so..that wasn't really a lot of information. Nor did I make a 'known issues list.' Look guys, I'm tired and I want to get this bad boy back online, ok? So deal with it for now I promise this place is only going to get better and better!
<3 Josh
Hey guys! Talvieno here.Josh has given me a special style to develop on, and I'll be updating it regularly as I bring the forum's appearance back to where it should be. If you want to access it, click your avatar button in the bar at the top right of the screen, and select "User Control Panel". From there, navigate to "Board Preferences" and select "DevRavaio" from the "My board style" dropdown.
Edit June 11th: Josh has integrated DevRavaio with the normal board style, and it no longer exists.
Edit June 12th: Josh has given me access to re-integrate DevRavaio. If you don't mind some weird stuff happening on occasion, you could check it out to help with development.
This "patch" fixes a great number of things - perhaps most importantly, how the site looks on mobile. Here's a full list of the changes:
I'd like to put out some general information about this upgrade. But if you need the TL;DR, here it is: this is still a work-in-progress, I know it's not the old forums, I know you hate parts of it, we will make it better over time; report issues that you find or things that annoy you (keeping in mind that this is a WIP, so it should be a 'major' annoyance)
On to the what where why and how.
Why?
Our forum software (phpBB) was badly out of date. This had a lot of implications. We were prone to bot attacks, since we didn't have reCaptcha like we do now. We were becoming more and more prone to security vulnerabilities and potential hacking attempts as well, as it happens when one runs an out-of-date software. And, to be frank, phpBB is garbage. But it gets less-gabagy with each update. Turns out 3.2, the newest (and what we now have), is really a lot better than the old version.
No, I mean, WHY????
Ah. You mean "why does it look so different and in many places broken, stylistically-incoherent, or just..bad?" That's because this upgrade to the new version of phpBB is not backwards-compatible with old styles. You can thank them for that, I didn't make the decision I had to go hunt down a decent-looking theme (and there aren't that many decent-looking themes yet that support this new version). I spent a longggg time modifying this theme's various bits to make things look at least somewhat familiar (you can also thank Talvieno, who pointed out a lot of good CSS changes to make this better). But alas, I grow tired of writing web-related code and would now like to get back to writing real LT code. So I'm going to open the forums.
What (...to do if you find something broken or terrible)
Obviously, if you find something that's broken in a big way -- especially if you run into any kind of hard server error that spews words like 'php or MySQL' -- please report it here. The small stylistic issues are mostly known. I haven't been able to go through every part of the forums and change them to be coherent. So far I have focused mainly on the front page and the topics listing views. Soon I'll dedicate more time to making viewing an actual topic's posts a bit more pleasant. It'd be helpful if people reported not only bugs, but big 'quality of life' concerns. I can see pretty clearly when things look bad or are stylistically incoherent. I'm good with graphics But plenty of you guys spend more time on the forums than I do, and if this upgrade has made this place less pleasant, I want to know about it. Especially if it's something that I can fix easily.
The good news, despite this whole process being a major PIA, is that I now have a lot more control over the forums. It was...sort of out of necessity.....that I had to learn a whole lot about phpBB in a very short period of time.... But the major upshot of that is that I'm pretty cozy with the forum code now, and can change things that need changing.
Where are the 'view new posts / active topics' buttons!?
Find your profile icon in the top bar. To the right, there's a button with three horizontal lines. Click it. It should bring down a menu that includes all of those handy links that used to be at the top of the forums. Yes, this is an example of something that I know needs to be fixed :V
---
Yeah...so..that wasn't really a lot of information. Nor did I make a 'known issues list.' Look guys, I'm tired and I want to get this bad boy back online, ok? So deal with it for now I promise this place is only going to get better and better!
<3 Josh
Hey guys! Talvieno here.
Edit June 11th: Josh has integrated DevRavaio with the normal board style, and it no longer exists.
Edit June 12th: Josh has given me access to re-integrate DevRavaio. If you don't mind some weird stuff happening on occasion, you could check it out to help with development.
This "patch" fixes a great number of things - perhaps most importantly, how the site looks on mobile. Here's a full list of the changes:
Spoiler: SHOW