Move to XenForo software

[nicobie]

Yes it will.

Must be getting close if it's time for the aesthetics.

Would this be a good time for other changes? I wouldn't mind if 'General discussions' gets changed to 'Random thoughts' and 'Off topic discussions to 'Basement biker bar'. That will kind of differentiate between the two 'discussions'.

 

[neptronix]

We're pretty close. The forum design changes are still a question though and will be a separate phase we can talk about later.

I have the thread view almost nailed down, and it has a sticky sidebar now.



I decided to trade a little display density for larger fonts for the coke bottle glasses crowd.
You can see the tradeoff side by side - the xenforo theme's fonts are about 5% bigger, but all the spacing is tightly controlled so the extra size impact is less than 5%.



Justin insists the like button should be different on es and i totally agree. Way too 'facebook'!

I also finished the old phpbb URL redirection so we can keep all the backlinks to our site working properly.

More to come.

 

[amberwolf]

I have the thread view almost nailed down, and it has a sticky sidebar now.

2021-12-17 20_02_51-C__Users_wdev_Desktop_ES work file.png

Will there be a way for users to turn off the sidebar?

(Thats' a huge amount of screen space wasted for me while I'm trying to read and reply, as there is nothing in the sidebar I have any use for at all)

Justin insists the like button should be different on es and i totally agree. Way too 'facebook'!

Maybe something like a battery charging icon? Add more charge for each like?

 

[neptronix]

Don't worry, that sidebar is only present on the front page.

In certain low res situations ( mobile phone, tablet, desktop with boosted display %, laptops with really small screens ), the sidebar will not show.

Justin insists the like button should be different on es and i totally agree. Way too 'facebook'!

Maybe something like a battery charging icon? Add more charge for each like?

That's a thought i had too, but these like/dislike systems can get abused because they end up being a popularity contest.
I think our custom set of reactions should do something else - mark what people think of the thread, not a binary expression of bad/good.

When the time comes we should do a separate thread to discuss all the design decisions and get as much community feedback as we can.

 

[amberwolf]

OK. I don't really know much about how everyone else does it, but I do know that despite or maybe because of my wierdness (since autisticness isn't really a word), I am good at sideways thinking and can often come up with "better" ways of doing things to work around limitations of systems and such, that make more sense to do specific jobs.


Also, I don't yet know much in detail about linux, servers, etc., but if you ever want to take on an apprentice, I would be willing to learn as I go if you have tasks to be done at the most basic level, especially since I am still not back to work. (My medical leave technically ends at the start of the new year but I don't know that my old job will take me back or that I could physically do it if they do. I might be able to get a job as a janitor at Frysfood thru a friend; that's the best opportunity I have at the moment. When I am working again then I can still learn and help you out, if you're willing to teach.)

 

[neptronix]

I am good at sideways thinking and can often come up with "better" ways of doing things to work around limitations of systems and such, that make more sense to do specific jobs.

That's why we like your perspective here.

Also, I don't yet know much in detail about linux, servers, etc., but if you ever want to take on an apprentice, I would be willing to learn as I go if you have tasks to be done at the most basic level, especially since I am still not back to work.

Bring that up in our volunteer thread and i'll respond to it there, want to keep a low signal to noise ratio on this thread.

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=110647

 

[NoFanBoiz]

The working solution - for anyone interested:

//get array
$postData = db::getArray("SELECT post_id, username, FROM_UNIXTIME(post_date), message FROM xf_post WHERE message LIKE '%youtube%' OR message LIKE '%YOUTUBE content=%'");

Redundant wildcard. Better:

$postData = db::getArray("SELECT post_id, username, FROM_UNIXTIME(post_date), message FROM xf_post WHERE message LIKE '%youtube%' ");

 

[neptronix]

Yeah. It's a leftover from early investigation phase of the code to look for the alternate phpbb youtube tag.
It can be removed without any negative effect.

 

[neptronix]

Went on a design binge today.



I need more diversity in color, the title bar should probably be a variant of the medium sky blues that are being used.
The sidebar was dramatically toned down and i took some inspiration from reddit there.

I would call the 'New ES' look about 66% done. The hard part is finding a good injection point for the CSS. I'm using an external stylesheet at the end of the chain because Xenforo too often breaks the look and produces garbage when you try to input advanced CSS.

I'd like to see if i can get the rest sorted out tomorrow.

What do you fellas think?

 

[nicobie]

For what it's worth, I think it looks nice enough. Can always be tweaked later...

Let's just go for it.

 

[neptronix]

I think this is my last revision of the color scheme. The header now has a nice contrast to the other blues and also, the category title is a little narrower to blast you with less color.

I also hijacked the red color that phpbb uses for conversation indicators and think the pinch of red really 'ties the room together'.



It's time to move on to making the post view and post list look cute next.

( agree with nicobie that this is good enough for now )

 

[NoFanBoiz]

Yeah. It's a leftover from early investigation phase of the code to look for the alternate phpbb youtube tag.
It can be removed without any negative effect.

Indeed. It can be removed with a positive effect.

 

[neptronix]

Thread and PM view restyling and compacting is done.



The 'react' system now says 'react' instead of 'like' because that's just too facebook-y.
Not sure what the ideal reaction mixture is, but i have a prototype here as you can see.

 

[nicobie]

Speaking strictly for myself, I don't see the reason behind any 'like/react' feature. What good does it do?

 

[amberwolf]

Makes some people feel better when they see people liked what they posted, so they post more stuff like that to get more of the same reaction.

Same thing people do IRL, just that the IRL stuff comes naturally and feels natural, where the online stuff people have to know what it is and how it works to get anything out of it.

 

[neptronix]

Speaking strictly for myself, I don't see the reason behind any 'like/react' feature. What good does it do?

It allows you to give lesser, but some feedback to a post when a full on reply isn't warranted.
Saying 'that's awesome' is accomplish-able with two clicks without using a 100 x 1200 space on the screen.
This may result in threads being easier to read.
It also may result in posters getting more feedback than they did before.

Another thing it accomplishes is making a forum format more palatable/familiar for the 80% of internet users who use a social media site as their primary method of communicating with others.

That's important in a day and age when social media sites have sucked all the traffic from independent sites like ours.

What i don't want to do is cater to that crowd too much - just enough to get them interested in the high quality, long form discussions we're looking to continue to foster here.

 

[Rudy]

Speaking strictly for myself, I don't see the reason behind any 'like/react' feature. What good does it do?

It allows you to give lesser, but some feedback to a post when a full on reply isn't warranted.
Saying 'that's awesome' is accomplish-able with two clicks without using a 100 x 1200 space on the screen.
This may result in threads being easier to read.
It also may result in posters getting more feedback than they did before.

Another thing it accomplishes is making a forum format more palatable/familiar for the 80% of internet users who use a social media site as their primary method of communicating with others.

That's important in a day and age when social media sites have sucked all the traffic from independent sites like ours.

What i don't want to do is cater to that crowd too much - just enough to get them interested in the high quality, long form discussions we're looking to continue to foster here.

100%, i've seen this work great on another community i'm in The number of "posts" goes down a bit but it helps remove a lot of noise the higher quality posts get more light.

 

[neptronix]

100%, i've seen this work great on another community i'm in The number of "posts" goes down a bit but it helps remove a lot of noise the higher quality posts get more light.

I had a feeling it would have that effect... and that would make our forum easier to read if so.
I noticed this effect on the xenforo company forum.

 

[neptronix]

If there are any xenforo wizards here, i'm hoping to get an answer on this..



This layout is quite annoying and i'd prefer the selected post to be on the same line as the rest of the navigation menu.
Can't find an option to change this behavior and hit my frustration limit on using CSS hacks.

This is a wrinkle in the design i'd like to get ironed after the public release of the new forum. Would be nice to iron it before, though.

 

[nicobie]

Speaking strictly for myself, I don't see the reason behind any 'like/react' feature. What good does it do?

OK, I stand corrected, just so there is a way to give the post a thumbs down as well as a thumbs up. Will Xenforo be keeping a running score of each member's results too? Will we all know who posted the like/dislike vote as Facebook does? I can't see how this will help "keep the peace", sounds like just more conflict between members, but what the heck, I'm game for it if everybody else wants it.

 

[neptronix]

Xenforo has a reaction scoreboard like you're describing by default but i'm going to disable it because that's just one more thing to get stupid about on the internet.

Current thought:

Full battery for upvote
Drained battery for downvote

The other 4 reacts would be for giving a post an honorary title:
Brain icon ( to say a post is smart )
Science man icon ( to say a post is scientific )
Laughing emoji ( it's funny )
Clinking beer mugs together in celebration ( you REALLY liked the post )

..and no more pepper, because that could mean a lot of different things to different cultures and a post being 'spicy' ight mean good or might mean bad.. lol.

 

[markz]

I am in no rush for the cross over to the new format as I am set in my ways, its just human nature but I will learn like everything in life.

I am curious as to when the switch might happen?

Thanks for putting in so much work for a time consuming task, I am not so much computer oriented when it comes to software, programming so anyone who does that or I.T. I am always amazed.

Do you or anyone else have a good night viewing mode for the monitor on the desktop?
I dont have anything for the desktop only a darker background picture, it would be nice to have a button to click on to switch to dark mode. Instead of changing each item over from day mode to night mode (icons, background picture, tiling colors for windows) if that makes sense.

I use Mozilla Firefox on Windows 10 and I just used an add-on feature within the browser called Dark Reader. Its a simple click to change from normal to dark and it works very well for evening and night time viewing while on the internet browser. I want to wind down turn off most of the lights and get into a routine for a great nights rest.

In the beginning I was so used to the the light color blue theme on Endless Sphere then I changed to the dark color blue theme until I realized that the blue colors have an affect on your sleep so thats when I changed to night view mode and its great. The only problem is I can't see the keyboard with the lights very low or off but I manage to get by with not to much of a problem.

To tie all that in, will the new XenForo platform have multiple customization selections for colors, styles and fonts?
Just curious, dont want you to do even more work for style refinement because every person is different with varying tastes and styles.

 

[Dui ni shuo de dui]

Speaking strictly for myself, I don't see the reason behind any 'like/react' feature. What good does it do?

It makes the forum more dynamic.
Often when you post stuff and there's no answer you're never really sure if people just don't care about what you posted. That's kinda make you doubt the usefulness/interest of whatever you posted and in the end you don't feel motivated to keep doing it regularily. I mean if you post stuff you expect it to be useful, otherwise why wasting time doing so?
A like is a good way to tell people you appreciated what they posted. I've been wanting to throw some likes to (many) people who do awesome stuff to show them appreciation for their hard work, sometimes I'll drop a post to congratulate the person but you obviously can't do that each and every time otherwise it quickly makes the whole thread unreadable.
I think it would be a very nice addition to the forum. Don't bother about how to call it, just call it a like, just like every other forum out there, and move on. There's really no need to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of doing something different.

Do we have any idea when these updates will be deployed? As someone stated earlier it doesn't matter if things aren't perfect or if it's ugly (current version of the forum isn't particularily eyes pleasing to begin with so that's really not a problem :wink: ). Only thing that really matters, at least to me, is that we don't lose threads or pictures. Really hope it'll be for soon!

 

[neptronix]

I am curious as to when the switch might happen?

We're not at the phase where we have an answer. After seeing that there's some not-so-easily reversible design decisions to be made, i decided we should wait for the end product to be better-baked before being served.

Yesterday, Justin offered to pay for some professional designer-hours to work with me after i told him i'm uncertain about color balance and could use a set of skilled eyeballs to look over what i've cooked up. This is a big wildcard.

My best guess is that we're looking at 1-2 months to sort out design issues before release. Or at least, that's how long i'd like it to take.. :lol:

Thanks for putting in so much work for a time consuming task, I am not so much computer oriented when it comes to software, programming so anyone who does that or I.T. I am always amazed.

You're welcome!

Do you or anyone else have a good night viewing mode for the monitor on the desktop?
I dont have anything for the desktop only a darker background picture, it would be nice to have a button to click on to switch to dark mode. Instead of changing each item over from day mode to night mode (icons, background picture, tiling colors for windows) if that makes sense.

That's a good idea. Xenforo has a much easier theme-switcher than phpbb. We should include this as a standard feature for those of you who aren't immune from the effects of bright light. You're probably not the only one who wants that feature, so it's worth baking into the plans.

To tie all that in, will the new XenForo platform have multiple customization selections for colors, styles and fonts?
Just curious, dont want you to do even more work for style refinement because every person is different with varying tastes and styles.

Xenforo gives the admin the 'kitchen sink' of visual options, but not the user.

Hey, don't worry about asking for too much. Now is the time to speak up, because some things are going to be set in stone. I want to make sure we're implementing the most commonly requested features by our members, so more feedback is a good thing!

 

[neptronix]

Do we have any idea when these updates will be deployed? As someone stated earlier it doesn't matter if things aren't perfect or if it's ugly (current version of the forum isn't particularily eyes pleasing to begin with so that's really not a problem :wink: ). Only thing that really matters, at least to me, is that we don't lose threads or pictures. Really hope it'll be for soon!

No date yet, but soonish. Much more soon than ~7 years ago when we went looking for the ultimate platform, but only discovered one technologically advanced enough to pull off something like what we envisioned last year.

Don't worry, i've put in around 70 hours of work to ensure we don't end up with 'forum transition artifacts' and also looking through datasets for hours to confirm that these fixes work to at least 99.5% accuracy.

The youtube embed tag translator is more than 100% accurate because it fixes many tags that weren't showing up in phpbb due to a mistype. It was specifically designed as such. There is another process i've yet to undertake which restores some very old corrupt images to an imperfect, but viewable state.

So the stuff that really matters doesn't get lost.

The only thing that i know we lose is:

Per-post thread titles. ( no modern forum system has this feature, and it's rarely used, and creates plenty of visual clutter )
Image captions. ( not in most forum software, and it's rarely used )

I tried to wean people off these features years ago but there was a weapons-grade tantrum thrown over it. I believe the image captions remain as alt text, so the data is either still there, or can be imported and potentially displayed the same way. But the per-post thread titles are going to be a 100% loss.

We hope the upsides of this move far outweigh any downsides at the end of the day.