Community Input Requested V2

[Nanshork]

There have been some discussions on Discord about the site but I'm posting it here to make it "official" (and also Discord is a terrible place to try and reference old information from).

Our website doesn't look great on phones and this is not a new issue.  I'm going to be looking into alternative themes for the website that are more mobile friendly which will end up probably including (among other things) a small visual overhaul, but it's going to be a little bit of work because some things like our fancy tables are extras that Prime coded into our existing theme.

While I'm doing things anyway, are there any other issues people have noticed with the board that should be addressed?

Is there any functionality that you think would be good to add that other forums have? (For example GitP, I don't have an account there so I don't know if they have features we don't.)

Is there anything you wish you could do while posting or browsing that you can't? (From a technical perspective, not a mod rules perspective.)


Here is a working list of things that I'm going to look into:
- New website theme that is mobile friendly Done, edited current theme
- Integrate Discord into the site better than the News link Sort of done
- URL pop-up input for the link button (might require changes to the post editor) Done, post editor changed
- Snazzing up the website header area? Not easily doable so not happening.
- th table code from here (might have to go in table2 options) Doesn't seem possible

[Stratovarius]

I suppose the obvious one is embedding the discord chat somewhere on the forum so that visitors can comment via the website rather than having to click the link. Especially now that much of the activity is on the discord.

[Nanshork]

I can definitely look into discord integration, a quick search shows that we've got a few options!

[Draco Dei]

Being able to use Ctrl-B, Ctrl-i, and Ctrl-u to respectively bold, italicize, and underline the text you currently have highlighted when creating or modifying a message would be very nice.

Working header codes [/hr] for tables would also improve formatting and make cross-posting stuff from GitP much easier. This might give you an idea what I am talking about... unfortunately when GitP tried to update to this system from something in-between that and what you seem to have here it broke a lot of tables, but that might have been a processing-power thing with the size of the database of posts and the traffic for the site?

Oh, and when trying to turn a highlighted thing into a link with the button, a pop-up to entier the URL in would be nice.

That is what I can think of off the top of my head.

Thank you for working to make this a better place for me to escape what I don't like about GitP (not so much the modding policies, although those contributee to the problem, as certain aspects of the culture)!

[Nanshork]

I can bold, italicize, and underline using the standard keyboard shortcuts, so if you can't I think that's a browser issue and not a forum issue.

For the tables I'm not really sure what you mean by using hr because the only time I see someone actually using the code [ hr] it is in a post that links to another thread where they talk about changing hr to be horizontal line (which is how we use hr).  I honestly don't understand what their header code is supposed to do but if we change what our hr code does then it will break a bunch of our stuff because here hr is this.

Making a pop-up show up to input a URL with the URL button might be possible.  I'll look into it, if it is possible it would probably require big changes to this whole post editor interface.  That wouldn't automatically be a bad thing but we've got so many customizations running around that I can't make any promises.

And you're welcome!  I don't have a gitp account specifically because of the culture over there so if we can get this place modernized and competitive with them enough to lure more people over here I'd count that as a big win.

[Draco Dei]

I can bold, italicize, and underline using the standard keyboard shortcuts, so if you can't I think that's a browser issue and not a forum issue.

Well, if I ever have a really big thing to do, maybe I will risk using Firefox instead of Chrome for the job... or build it on GitP without posting and then copy it over here.

For the tables I'm not really sure what you mean by using hr because the only time I see someone actually using the code [ hr] it is in a post that links to another thread where they talk about changing hr to be horizontal line (which is how we use hr).  I honestly don't understand what their header code is supposed to do but if we change what our hr code does then it will break a bunch of our stuff because here hr is this.

Gah... I should have listened to my gut and double-checked I had the code right... I mean [th][/th], which I would THINK wouldn't break anything since the old can still be used even for the "header" rows of the table.

Making a pop-up show up to input a URL with the URL button might be possible.  I'll look into it, if it is possible it would probably require big changes to this whole post editor interface.  That wouldn't automatically be a bad thing but we've got so many customizations running around that I can't make any promises.

And you're welcome!  I don't have a gitp account specifically because of the culture over there so if we can get this place modernized and competitive with them enough to lure more people over here I'd count that as a big win.

I am praying for your success!

[Nanshork]

I am guilty of using Firefox.  Today I confused a tech support person because I use Firefox and don't even have Chrome installed on my personal computer (I was having issues getting registered on a website). 


Okay, got it.  You want the th header code from here which automatically bolds and outlines the cells.

Hmm, that might actually be possible.  It'll require some coding adjustments but from what I'm looking at for our fancy table2 coding this should be something I could do.  I won't be adding all of the options in that thread but if th is the most important one that should be possible.

[Draco Dei]

Yeah, that is the most important one. Cell merging would be nice... but NOT worth it for the amount of fuss and bother I would think it would be to implement.

[Power]

I'm a bit leery of any UI overhauls done to implement greater mobile support. I think it's probably best to implement a stylesheet that will do special things like relocate the profile sidebar when viewed from mobile and change the page width instead of messing with the existing page layouts. I've seen a lot of modern mobile-friendly forum UI overhauls and I have to ask that you please do not do inflict drastic changes on the normal forum UI like that. As far as table display on mobile is concerned, I think we will largely have to just accept the tables be, since most mobile users would probably sooner prefer to have to zoom in than deal with broken tables. If we are still inflicting page resolution limits for pages with tables, we should probably implement horizontal scrollbars for tables while also adding a special option to expand the table back to full size (raising the page resolution), since it can be a real nuisance to have to mentally piece together the entire table since you're only seeing small pieces of it at a time.

As for Discord integration, please don't. Aside from real concerns over user-tracking behavior, Discord has a tendency to consume a lot of CPU and RAM (especially when run through a browser) as well as unnecessary bandwidth (This is rather relevant if you are using a cellphone's internet connection.) and I can confirm that having discord active makes old computers run slow as molasses. This will essentially ruin the usability of the website for anyone on a slow PC (you know, the ones with slow CPUs and only 4GB of RAM) so I strongly recommend against Discord integration. Make a new, snazzy discord banner if you prefer, but right now this website actually runs very well on older and slower computers, so let's not ruin that by bundling discord into the webpages.

As for implementing a URL pop-up for the link and mailto buttons, I certainly support that and my recommendation would be to actually just use the easiest and laziest solution, which is the good old javascript prompt() function (like prompt("Please insert link URL:")). Pretty much every browser supports it and it's certain to appear properly and work right regardless of your browser's particular UI needs, without futzing with divs and css and resolution-specific concerns. Really, it does the job and there is no need to overcomplicate it.

As for snazzing up the website header area, I have no strong opinions on this and go right ahead if you prefer, but I do recommend not enlarging the overall header area, since that just consumes valuable screen space that would be better spent on letting people see more of the page proper. I also think it's best to make the new header not something too demanding for attention since that will just become a minor nuisance and an unwelcome distraction from reading the page contents. Other than that, my major recommendation is actually to try to reduce any empty vertical space in the header area so that there is more screen space for the more useful page contents below.

On the subject of adding more table code functionality, I'm all for it so long as it does not become a breaking change, but if need be we can probably just make new table tags. Really, I'd only consider it a problem if it either breaks existing tables or makes existing habits of creating tables suddenly not perform as expected.

[Nanshork]

Yeah, that is the most important one. Cell merging would be nice... but NOT worth it for the amount of fuss and bother I would think it would be to implement.

Fair enough.  We do have cell merging and some other table functionality that is in the GitP thread, it just is implemented differently so you'd have to adjust the table coding if migrating a table over.  I'm less likely to be interested in coding up a second way to do something we can already do so I'm glad you don't think it's worth it, heh.

I'm a bit leery of any UI overhauls done to implement greater mobile support. I think it's probably best to implement a stylesheet that will do special things like relocate the profile sidebar when viewed from mobile and change the page width instead of messing with the existing page layouts. I've seen a lot of modern mobile-friendly forum UI overhauls and I have to ask that you please do not do inflict drastic changes on the normal forum UI like that. As far as table display on mobile is concerned, I think we will largely have to just accept the tables be, since most mobile users would probably sooner prefer to have to zoom in than deal with broken tables. If we are still inflicting page resolution limits for pages with tables, we should probably implement horizontal scrollbars for tables while also adding a special option to expand the table back to full size (raising the page resolution), since it can be a real nuisance to have to mentally piece together the entire table since you're only seeing small pieces of it at a time.

Implementing a new stylesheet would mean downloading an implementing an existing SMF theme because I do not want to manually code up a new stylesheet.  Table display on mobile has never been a specific issue for me more than just the site in general, what you're talking about with scrollbars and an option to expand the table is not really an option as we have two different types of tables coded up and so I'd have to actually code up that solution which applies to both and that's not going to happen.  The table navigating experience might improve by moving to a SMF theme that was actually designed after everyone started using their phones as primary internet browsing devices however.

As for Discord integration, please don't. Aside from real concerns over user-tracking behavior, Discord has a tendency to consume a lot of CPU and RAM (especially when run through a browser) as well as unnecessary bandwidth (This is rather relevant if you are using a cellphone's internet connection.) and I can confirm that having discord active makes old computers run slow as molasses. This will essentially ruin the usability of the website for anyone on a slow PC (you know, the ones with slow CPUs and only 4GB of RAM) so I strongly recommend against Discord integration. Make a new, snazzy discord banner if you prefer, but right now this website actually runs very well on older and slower computers, so let's not ruin that by bundling discord into the webpages.

Your position against Discord is known and has been re-noted.

As for implementing a URL pop-up for the link and mailto buttons, I certainly support that and my recommendation would be to actually just use the easiest and laziest solution, which is the good old javascript prompt() function (like prompt("Please insert link URL:")). Pretty much every browser supports it and it's certain to appear properly and work right regardless of your browser's particular UI needs, without futzing with divs and css and resolution-specific concerns. Really, it does the job and there is no need to overcomplicate it.

The easiest and laziest solution is to install an SMF add-on that adds the functionality. 

As for snazzing up the website header area, I have no strong opinions on this and go right ahead if you prefer, but I do recommend not enlarging the overall header area, since that just consumes valuable screen space that would be better spent on letting people see more of the page proper. I also think it's best to make the new header not something too demanding for attention since that will just become a minor nuisance and an unwelcome distraction from reading the page contents. Other than that, my major recommendation is actually to try to reduce any empty vertical space in the header area so that there is more screen space for the more useful page contents below.

All of this would depend on the SMF website theme we move to.  The website header snazzing up request was by someone on Discord who clearly had a 180 from your opinion so no matter what I do I'm not going to be able to make everyone happy (which isn't really news).

On the subject of adding more table code functionality, I'm all for it so long as it does not become a breaking change, but if need be we can probably just make new table tags. Really, I'd only consider it a problem if it either breaks existing tables or makes existing habits of creating tables suddenly not perform as expected.

Making new table tags is what I'm going to have to do, it's the only way to add the requested functionality (there's no add-on I can install for that).  Since I'm the one doing the current hands on management of the website I have no interest in breaking anything we already have because then I'd have to find a way to fix it.


I want to make it clear that I do appreciate the feedback, just know that the only parts of this website that are manually coded are some functionality that Prime32 added because he either wrote it up himself or grabbed it from somewhere (like the table2 functionality).  We're not so old that the site was made from scratch, heh.

[Power]

I'm a bit leery of any UI overhauls done to implement greater mobile support. I think it's probably best to implement a stylesheet that will do special things like relocate the profile sidebar when viewed from mobile and change the page width instead of messing with the existing page layouts. I've seen a lot of modern mobile-friendly forum UI overhauls and I have to ask that you please do not do inflict drastic changes on the normal forum UI like that. As far as table display on mobile is concerned, I think we will largely have to just accept the tables be, since most mobile users would probably sooner prefer to have to zoom in than deal with broken tables. If we are still inflicting page resolution limits for pages with tables, we should probably implement horizontal scrollbars for tables while also adding a special option to expand the table back to full size (raising the page resolution), since it can be a real nuisance to have to mentally piece together the entire table since you're only seeing small pieces of it at a time.

Implementing a new stylesheet would mean downloading an implementing an existing SMF theme because I do not want to manually code up a new stylesheet.  Table display on mobile has never been a specific issue for me more than just the site in general, what you're talking about with scrollbars and an option to expand the table is not really an option as we have two different types of tables coded up and so I'd have to actually code up that solution which applies to both and that's not going to happen.  The table navigating experience might improve by moving to a SMF theme that was actually designed after everyone started using their phones as primary internet browsing devices however.

In that case whether or not it's a good idea will depend on the theme in question. May as well mention a few themes and see what people think of it. Me, I'm perfectly fine with switching to a nicer theme than what we have going right now. I'm really just worried about those odd "modern" forum layouts that seem to be the rage these days where either the entire forum becomes a massive eyesore or they try ridiculous things like a full vertical scroll cellphone UI even though that's awful on desktops.

As for Discord integration, please don't. Aside from real concerns over user-tracking behavior, Discord has a tendency to consume a lot of CPU and RAM (especially when run through a browser) as well as unnecessary bandwidth (This is rather relevant if you are using a cellphone's internet connection.) and I can confirm that having discord active makes old computers run slow as molasses. This will essentially ruin the usability of the website for anyone on a slow PC (you know, the ones with slow CPUs and only 4GB of RAM) so I strongly recommend against Discord integration. Make a new, snazzy discord banner if you prefer, but right now this website actually runs very well on older and slower computers, so let's not ruin that by bundling discord into the webpages.

Your position against Discord is known and has been re-noted.

Hey, this isn't the same as that. I want to be clear here that the browser performance concerns are actually serious (as are the user-tracking concerns, but I know most people, especially Discord users, tend not to care about that). On slow, low-end computers, browser-mode Discord really does cause significant and frustrating performance issues. That is not an exaggeration. And integrating Discord chat would single-handedly take this website from something that runs fast, smooth, and lightweight on old computers to a performance-hungry site that makes an uncomfortable and irritating browsing experience without newer and stronger computers.

As for implementing a URL pop-up for the link and mailto buttons, I certainly support that and my recommendation would be to actually just use the easiest and laziest solution, which is the good old javascript prompt() function (like prompt("Please insert link URL:")). Pretty much every browser supports it and it's certain to appear properly and work right regardless of your browser's particular UI needs, without futzing with divs and css and resolution-specific concerns. Really, it does the job and there is no need to overcomplicate it.

The easiest and laziest solution is to install an SMF add-on that adds the functionality. 

Yeah that works too, although the pedant in me wishes to note that the difference in difficulty is probably minimal.

As for snazzing up the website header area, I have no strong opinions on this and go right ahead if you prefer, but I do recommend not enlarging the overall header area, since that just consumes valuable screen space that would be better spent on letting people see more of the page proper. I also think it's best to make the new header not something too demanding for attention since that will just become a minor nuisance and an unwelcome distraction from reading the page contents. Other than that, my major recommendation is actually to try to reduce any empty vertical space in the header area so that there is more screen space for the more useful page contents below.

All of this would depend on the SMF website theme we move to.  The website header snazzing up request was by someone on Discord who clearly had a 180 from your opinion so no matter what I do I'm not going to be able to make everyone happy (which isn't really news).

Oh, I'm fine with snazzing up the website header. I'm really just saying not to make it one of those loud, obnoxious, huge headers. That and that I prefer headers to be on the smaller side of things.

On the subject of adding more table code functionality, I'm all for it so long as it does not become a breaking change, but if need be we can probably just make new table tags. Really, I'd only consider it a problem if it either breaks existing tables or makes existing habits of creating tables suddenly not perform as expected.

Making new table tags is what I'm going to have to do, it's the only way to add the requested functionality (there's no add-on I can install for that).  Since I'm the one doing the current hands on management of the website I have no interest in breaking anything we already have because then I'd have to find a way to fix it.

Yeah I doubt anyone would have a problem with that. Better table support sounds good.

I want to make it clear that I do appreciate the feedback, just know that the only parts of this website that are manually coded are some functionality that Prime32 added because he either wrote it up himself or grabbed it from somewhere (like the table2 functionality).  We're not so old that the site was made from scratch, heh.

I'm well aware. It's not my first time on a Simple Machines Forum site. The major reason I recommended the manual implementation of a prompt() javascript was because I assumed there was some kind of incompatibility issue stopping you guys from implementing this many years ago.

[Nanshork]

Too many quote pyramids for my taste so I'm starting over.


On the theme, I give it a 50/50 that I'll have some sort of poll about themes.  I don't even know what a "modern" forum layout looks like because this is the only one that I use.   

On Discord, I don't even know if Discord integration with the website is something that is possible for me to do in a free and easy to implement way.  Anything that gets done is something that will be tested, but Strat was right when he said that most of our activity is over there and that's why there is barely any posting here anymore so it is something I need to look into from various angles.

On the header, I can pretty much guarantee that our header won't be bigger than it is now.  It's not like we're going to start putting up banner ads.  And hey, at least it's smaller than GitP's! 

On tables, yeah I don't expect anyone to have issues.  I just want it to be clear to everyone that I refuse to just break all tables like GitP did that one time in order to add fancy stuff (and not breaking stuff is why we have two different ways to code tables).

On not implementing things in the past like a url popup box, honestly I doubt it was something that the mods ever thought about because it was never requested (I'm speaking of post-BG mods, as far as I remember the BGs just had a friend who did maintenance sometimes and they weren't technical so once things were set up they just left it alone).  Prime got proactive about implementing some things but I think he just went after what he used the most (like all of his work on tables) or was actively requested to look into, and personally I've gotten so used to manually entering in the url code after all these years that I never thought about it.

The only thing that should have to be manually coded is the table code.  Everything else that's on my list is something that can be done just through existing SMF supported stuff if it will be done at all (because right now I'm still gathering information, I've started some basic digging into the feasibility of some things but haven't wanted to go further than that yet).

The theme will probably be first because it will break at least some things and so I want to get that out of the way first so that I only have to fix what we currently have in place instead of what we have now plus whatever new stuff gets added.

[ketaro]

Whats wrong with how the site looks on mobile? I've exclusively been viewing and posting via mobile for a couple years now. Everythings fits and looks orderly to me. *shrugs*

Also voting against implementing a live discord chat directly into the forum. Just have a standout banner for it probably near the top.

[Nanshork]

Threads look fine on mobile, boards definitely do not with everything scrunched to the left side and a bunch of empty space where other columns should be displayed.

The mobile site resizes things horribly and just cuts pieces off.

[ketaro]

Hah, never noticed that.

[Power]

Lucky you. I've seen some forums do some truly awful redesigns as they either upgraded forum software, decided to do things the Modern Way™ (basically doing the opposite of "If it ain't broken, don't fix it." with precisely the sort of results that make people say that), or decided to become more mobile-friendly by ruining the desktop site in the process. But the way you're describing it it doesn't sound like there'll be problems.

[Nanshork]

Status Updates


I have been digging into themes off and on, I want to get that sorted out first because customizations (which we have a handful of) can edit the theme and I don't want to have to do extra work re-implementing things above and beyond what I'm already going to have to do.

My options are whittled down to a number I can reasonably test, the basic layout of the site will stay the same, but some things will change like colors and mobile friendliness and parts of the homepage.  I doubt there will be a poll but I will accept complaints when a new theme is implemented.

Embedding discord chat directly in the website would be a giant pain in the butt that would require changes both in Discord as well as to the site and so that pretty much won't happen unless Strat makes me.    However, we are going to be able to get more integration than what we have now (which is just a link that says "Join our Discord!". 

Other plans include changing the post editor interface (which will also add a pop-up for the url button if it works as advertised), and some other minor stuff that I don't really expect people to notice.

[bhu]

Will the site have downtime?

[Nanshork]

Will the site have downtime?

It won't have downtime during the testing, I can test a theme by changing it for me but not for anyone else.  It will probably have downtime during the actual theme conversion. 

It might have downtime during some of the non-theme related changes.

I don't expect any of the downtime to be longer than a few hours (like the downtime that happened during the updates).

[Nanshork]

I'm not happy with the theme options so I'm going to go about this from a different direction.

Are there any mobile issues besides the fact that it looks like this?