Message Board update

[Kerry Tobin]

As I've mentioned earlier we are preparing for a message board update. The software I am planning to migrate to was finally released today!

Please make sure the email address in your profile is valid as a new password may need to be emailed to you when we migrate!

We've temporarily disabled the ability to register as a new user while I get ready to attempt to migrate all the messages and users from this system to the new one. At some point soon the message board will be close for the first move attempt (maybe this weekend?).

I'm hoping the migration will go smoothly and I won't need to prune old posts (we've allowed the history to grow fairly large). If there are issues or I am forced to manually migrate we may combine posts or prune much of the history.

Also, thanks to some scripts I was able to write most of the old photo album photos will be imported into our photo album database soon. Once that is complete I hope to add a search capability to the photo album so you can pull up photos from as far back as 2003.

[Kerry Tobin]

Well, as you can see we've got the new software running. I'm hoping to get a template that fits into the overall site design done sometime soon but I also wanted to reduce the downtime for the message board and let you get back to posting.

Test it out! Let me know if you have problems, if you see something you don't think is right, etc.

Happy posting!

[Jeff Boettcher]

Looks fine to me.

[Old Scout]

Kerry,

I Like it. Easy to move around in and personalize.

[Kerry Tobin]

At some point I'll have to give some hints too. I'm still experimenting with things and trying to figure out what all the new features are. I'm also trying to keep things pretty open (I believe at this point you can post a picture if you would like) but at the same time make sure I know where, and how, to turn it off if it becomes a problem later...

So far, I'm pretty impressed with what it can do!

[Old Scout]

Kerry,

It was a lot better last night before you put all the stuff on the left side. It skews the page off to the right and you have to keep moving it back to center so you can read it. Kind of a pain in the ?. That stuff is OK on the main page but when we can just go back I don't think it is needed on the message board.

[Kerry Tobin]

Hmm,

I wonder how many others are running screen resolutions that don't show everything? The general internet standard is moving to wider web pages because most users are using a high enough setting on their screen to show more content.

Well, I'll try turning on a solution for you (couldn't have said that with the old system!). You might want to check back occasionally because I'm going to continue to make improvements to the primary view (I simply got it functioning so far). I also may remove subsilver2 at some point if we make an alternative that will fit the narrower screen, etc.

1. Open the User Control Panel while you are logged in.
2. Select Board preferences under the options
3. Change the My board style to subsilver2
4. Click the submit button

[MedicDVG]

Looks perfect with 1024X768 resolution. Anything smaller though, and the page will break.

Kerry, do you plan to allow us to use PHP code and stuff too?


Oh and Font Colour is spelled in limey lingo...

[Kerry Tobin]

Uh, PHP, probably not! Then you get into the realm of MySpace and the insecurities that go with it... BBCode should be plenty for a message board.

The 'Font Colour' issue is due to the fact that the only language pack available is British English right now. American English is in testing still, once that's available I'll switch the board over to that and those little glitches should vanish.

[Kerry Tobin]

Added one more feature...

Each user has an automatic rank now based on their number of posts. The target post numbers are 1, 10, 25, 50, 100, 500, 1000 and 1500. We have one user who isn't THAT far from 1000 and I'll be amazed to see anyone hit 1500 any time soon but it's there...

Moderators, Administrators and Site Admins also get unique ranks.

[Jeff Boettcher]

Sir,
I don't care for the TL menu board on the left hand side of the board. I can get that stuff from the "Front Page". If I'm cruising the board looking to make a fool of myself replying to a post, the last thing I'm looking for is a menu of TL offerings. Shifting right on the page to see the whole post in a pain in the butt.

Jeff

[KEN]

I , also don`t care for the page being off center. (just my opinion)

[Kerry Tobin]

Here's the thing.

You guys are getting to the web site by going through the front page. The message board is searchable by our friends at Google, etc. so if someone was searching for something that has been discussed here they need to be able to get back to, and find the main part of the site. Because of this the default view should be inside our standard frame.

As mentioned a couple of posts back you can change your personal view. By doing that you switch to one that doesn't have the side bar. At some point soon I'm going to tweak that view too and bring it a little more in line with this one but my hope is to have the message board be full width on that view (keep the logo and links at the top and maybe make a new custom link bar that gets to key things to go just below that.

Well, I'll try turning on a solution for you (couldn't have said that with the old system!). You might want to check back occasionally because I'm going to continue to make improvements to the primary view (I simply got it functioning so far). I also may remove subsilver2 at some point if we make an alternative that will fit the narrower screen, etc.

1. Open the User Control Panel while you are logged in.
2. Select Board preferences under the options
3. Change the My board style to subsilver2
4. Click the submit button

[kmartell]

Hi Kerry,

Your User Control Panel solution works great...thanks!!!