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Our forum software (phpBB) was badly out of date.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more and more prone to security vulnerabilities and potential hacking attempts as well, as it happens when one runs an out-of-date software.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
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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:
July 11th
- Quoting someone from the "composing post" view now adds the correct ID, link and timestamp to the quote, making it possible to alert someone without specifically quoting them from topic view
July 1st
- Made several new changes to polls to make them easier to read/use
June 30th
- There are now icons next to post titles to show you whether you've read a post or not.
- Icons now much easier to see for colorblind folks.
June 16th
- Text in profile form is now centered; has a more uniform appearance
- Made some more minor tweaks to fix things on mobile and tablets
- Made post title size slightly larger
- Control panel watched forums/topics are now less fat
- Fixed some strange button coloration issues
- Fixed control panel "manage notifications" fatness
- Control panel "view profile" text area colors now consistent
- Control panel "view profile" now much more compact; no more scrolling three pages just to hit submit (instead it's just two!)
- Fixed some remaining issues with PM lists
- Searches now display the date of posts! Hurray!
June 15th
- Fixed fatness issues related to registration
- Fixed textbox coloration issues related to registration
- Fixed form fatness issues related to login
- Fixed various issues related to forum moderation
- Fixed a few fatness/clarity/coloration issues related to viewing profiles
- Fixed many style/fatness/coloration issues related to the advanced search form
- Fixed some fatness issues related to PM view
- Changed position of post date
- Altered font size of post date
- Changed link color in "view profile" form
- Search page formatting now looks appropriate
- Page formatting for "show user posts" looks the way it should now
June 14th
- Removed underlines from links (they were actually borders, who knew)
- Hacky fix/workaround for broken image links
- Fixed strange formatting for "people have posted stuff while you were being a slowpoke" warning
- Fixed strange formatting in "search user posts" form
- Removed rounded corners on images
June 13th
- Avatars in PMs sized appropriately
- letter-avatars in PMs sized appropriately
- Names in PMs sized appropriately; readable now
- Icons in navbar are now actual images instead of fonts. Should work properly for everyone and anyone.
- Icons in navbar are re-centered.
- Navbar breadcrumbs now have visible separators
- Navbar icons should hopefully preload now, so no more weird pop-ins Still trying to figure this one out
- Made some final tweaks to the poll html; everything looks nice-ish, suggestions welcome
June 12th
- emojis are smaller (will hopefully be able to get rid of them completely)
- clickable icons for unread topics are now centered in board view
- Post/view count text in topic view shrunken slightly for better information density
- Post/view count text in forum view shrunken slightly for more cohesive appearance
- EMOJIS ARE DEAD. LONG LIVE EMOTICONS AND SANITY.
- Nevermind, emojis are back again. Power to the people!!
- Polls look much, much better, although they still look somewhat fat.
- Other assorted minor changes.
June 10th
- The mobile version works as it did on the old forums
- Defaults to Sans-serif if other fonts are not installed
- "hr" dividing lines are functional again
- Added a "back" button above the page number list to thread pages
- Made various links green instead of white
- Hovering over threads/boards no longer changes the "have not read" icon white
- Added a little padding outside quotes to break up text better and make things less confusing
- Cut down on padding inside quotes to make things a little more compact
- Changed the size of some elements on the main page to make them less "fat"
- Edited post action buttons slightly to give them subtle borders
- Edited posting buttons slightly to make them stand out a little more/look nicer
- Made the post date just a little bit bigger/easier to see/read
- Made the post action buttons easier to see/read
- Properly centered icons in PM list
- Altered bounding frame for PM check marks to make them clickable in most (all?) situations
- Properly centered PM selected message check marks
- Made PM view slightly less "fat"
- Made control panel menu less fat
- Topics and boards should highlight appropriately
- Spoilers now have green text on the "Show" button
- Page buttons on boards are shifted to the right instead of the left
- Page buttons on boards have hover highlights and are more easily recognizable/visible
- Posts are slightly closer together to get rid of excess unused space
- other small adjustments on post boards to get rid of unused space
- secret easter egg addition
- navbar scrolls with you now
- "Who is online" page is a bit more compact/less "fat"
- Fallback fonts fixed again
- Preview/draft/submit posts for messages are now properly aligned/sized
- Linking to posts works again, and properly, with the scrolling navbar
- Links are not all bold anymore
June 9th
- Selected page shows up in green on the topic number list
- Topic number list icon is darker for the selected page
- Bookmark/watch thread icon is visible without hover
- Posts are divided from sigs more cleanly
- Darker lower border added between post actions and sig
- User post links are green
- "Read/Unread" icons are larger and more visible
- Unread forums show up as green
- Topic titles are green within posts
- Quotes are much improved, with darker text and nicer borders
- Quote colors alternate for nested quotes
- Background stands out a little more from post content
- Post content more cleanly separated from avatar
- "User is online" bubble is now round instead of oval-shaped
- Header text is moved to the right and no longer blends in with the background
- Header image scales according to screen size