Salmon Fishing Forum banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

Community Feedback: New Forum Software Is Live!

14K views 189 replies 43 participants last post by  vsadmin 
#1 ·
We are excited to announce that we are live on our new forum platform!

It’s been a long time coming. Let’s face it. Sometimes older forum technology lags behind other parts of the internet. Although seeing the same format for a long time is comforting, the member experience shouldn’t include dealing with outdated, unsafe, slow software.

The transition to a new platform will never be 100% smooth but the days of dealing with out of date forum software are over. We have teams dedicated to building a world-class community for you. The development has been steady with regular software releases since May 2019. Asking members for feedback and coming up with ideas for improvement is what we want.

Speed and Reliability Are Key
No one should have to wait for information. This site has been built to be much faster and more reliable, period.

New Homepage Experience
Our algorithm will serve a personal customized feed based on your prior engagement with content on the site. If you’ve liked and or commented, or are following certain topics that are of interest to you, similar content will appear at the top of the homepage.

Search
We have introduced new search algorithms, powered by an industry-leading AI platform, to help you find information faster. We plan to roll out new features to continue improving search, and to power many additional areas of the forum.

Due to the volume of content, our search platform may take some time to complete indexing over the first few days after migrating. During this process, you may see a limited number of posts until indexing has been completed. We appreciate your patience.

Finding Your Way Around
We have made the design clean and simple to use. Near the upper right-hand corner of the community, you will see navigation icons.

The first icon is for what’s new on the site.

Clicking on it, by default, will take you to new unread posts. On that page, you can click on additional tabs as well, such as Popular, if you prefer to view active topics.

Clicking the list icon next to “NEW” will bring you to the full forum listing.

Clicking your avatar will give you a drop-down menu for all things related to your account.

You can also navigate more by clicking the 3 vertical dots.

Dark Mode
We have introduced Dark Mode. One of our favorite features allows you to access the site with a power-saving, and easier on the eyes dark mode. You can access it in the drop-down menu under the 3 vertical dots.

Save Bookmarks
Now you can save your favorite discussion threads and posts! Bookmarks are a handy way to remember and easily find great content or stuff you want to read later.

We also wanted to make it easier for new users to understand the lingo of forums. We have cleaned up various language to more commonly recognized phrases including:
  • Following - Thread subscriptions, and Watched are now known as Following
  • Conversations - Private Messages or PMs are now conversations and can be accessed from the user avatar drop-down in the main navigation
  • Showcase - Showcase is designed for users to "showcase" items/projects through the use of uploaded images, text descriptions and custom content categories. It’s a way to visually and textually provide detailed information on the content you wish to share. The showcase would be similar to a catalog, whereas the gallery would be like a photo album. It can be accessed from the drop-down menu with the 3 dots.
Take a tour and look around! Check out the Help section for some quick FAQs about the new platform.

Please keep all feedback, questions, concerns, requests for help, etc. regarding the new platform right here in this Feedback thread. This will help us make sure not to miss a request for help and also let us pass along your thoughts to our Product team. The Admins and I will be here to help along the way taking note of your comments.

- Community Management Team
 
See less See more
7
#2 ·
I will be here during your transition to the new platform, to help with any questions, help with navigation or how to do things, and to listen to your feedback so please don't hesitate to holler at me. I want to help. You can also check out our FAQs.

I do want to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Mike D. I was born and raised in SW Pennsylvania and currently still reside in the same small town where I grew up. I come from a large family that grew up looking out for, and taking care of, one another and we still get together quite regularly. I spend a lot of my free time with my family and close friends, mostly watching sports, particularly football, baseball and/or basketball. When able, we do like to try to get to the beach once a year, but that doesn't always happen, lol.

Please don't be afraid to explore and test out things to see how they work on the site. :)

Although you can certainly use the "insert image" icon to upload an image to your post, you can also just drag and drop it to the text editor or even copy/paste it into there!

You can easily share videos just by adding the URL directly into the text editor!



Gif links from sites like giphy.com will display automatically just by adding the gif URL directly in the text editor. Try it!



I prefer the light mode for the community, but I do believe many will prefer the dark mode. What is your favorite feature?

The new forum software is still a work in progress.

We will be seeing regular updates which are largely fueled by community feedback. While that doesn't mean we can action every request, it does mean we will be actively listening to the feedback and sharing it with the developers. We do ask that you keep any questions, thoughts or feedback about the new forum software here in the Community Feedback thread to help us keep all the information together so we don't miss anything.

There is still some work going on behind the scene so you may notice some changes as we work.
  • It can take 24-48 hours for the site to finish indexing so it may take a bit for search results to return proper results, including showing all your threads/posts under your profile.
  • We will continue to clean up the order of the sections on the full forum listings page so you might see some stuff move around.
  • We are reviewing permissions and special permission sections so let us know if you notice any issues so we can look into them.
I have worked with our community support team for almost a year, but I have worked with forums for almost 20 years now. I will do my best to answer any of your questions and if I am not able to, I can find someone who can.

~Mike D
 
#10 ·
Do I have to manually pick every sub section of the forum because that’ll be a pain in the arse. Why can’t I just grab the entire eg Fly Tying section or eg. Rivers section - now I have to click to follow every sub section and take off alerts etc. There must be a better way of doing this. Oh and the icon on my phone is still SAAB pig
 
#12 ·
Do I have to manually pick every sub section of the forum because that’ll be a pain in the arse. Why can’t I just grab the entire eg Fly Tying section or eg. Rivers section - now I have to click to follow every sub section and take off alerts etc.
We have posted a tutorial on How To Keep Your Favorite Forum Sections at the Top of the site. :)
Oh and the icon on my phone is still SAAB pig
Not sure what yu are referring to, can you please explain this a little more?

Thanks,
~Mike D
 
#21 ·
Sadly ive had use of this new layout on the worldseafishing forum which these owners run also and its still as horrible as day one after nearly a year.
The only good thing about this change is dark mode, my boss will be happy though as i doubt ill be spending anytime browsing it while at work now....
 
#23 ·
Thus far, what a bloody disaster. The old forum was easy to navigate. This is just a mess.

On the back of this I'm removing my 'sponsorship' of the TOTM Comp. Thus far can't even find the bloody thing so why the hell would I dig in my pocket to give away an expensive bottle of Malt???
 
#30 ·
If you click on the bullet point icon (I think that’s what it’s called) in the top right hand corner, in-between the new bubble and your avatar.

Scroll down to SFF Competitions and TOTM is there.

The new format is taking some navigating, but we’ll get there 🤞🏻
 
#26 ·
Can the little green alert dot that appears on your avatar in the top right hand side of the page, be changed to the colour red? The new forum theme has a very green bias.
 
#31 · (Edited)
I have no problem with the new format but, that is probably because I also frequent Speypages which. uses the same format as this new one. I admit I get a little confused when I first start using a new format but eventually I figure it out. In this format the most annoying thing is if you want to edit your post you need to click the three dots in the top right corner of your original post. to get to the edit function.
 
#34 · (Edited)
Not a fan of Dark Mode, to many shades of grey.

Also, all the members on my ignore list have been reinstated.

Two-Step Authentication had also been switched off.
 
#39 ·
Think I'll pass for a few weeks and come back then for a look?
Not having the last post clearly shown in the header is a bad idea for me anyway?
Reserving judgement just now, but I certainly will be using the forum a lot less now
unless the basic fundamentals of the previous format are re-instated?
 
#40 ·
Multiple images not loading or displaying in order chosen.
No ‘ who’s online ‘ on home page that I can see
”New " function most certainly wasn’t working earlier this morning
No most recent post title in each category displayed on home page

The list goes on , and on , and on……
 
#49 ·
Multiple images not loading or displaying in order chosen.
No ‘ who’s online ‘ on home page that I can see
”New " function most certainly wasn’t working earlier this morning
No most recent post title in each category displayed on home page

The list goes on , and on , and on……
The images should appear in the order in which you add them to your post.

To see who is online, there is a green dot that shows next to a member's username to indicate they are online.

Click on the Kebab (3 vertical dots) in the upper right-hand corner of the site. Then, within the drop-down menu, select Members.

This will bring you to the Members page with left-side navigation, including Online Members.


For recent posts, you can try filtering as described below.

From the navigation icons, click on NEW near the upper right-hand corner of the site.

This will open a new page of new posts for you. On the new page, click on filters.

You can adjust the filters to your personal preferences and save them as the default. Click the Filter button to save it at the bottom.

~Mike D
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top