Well done folks!!

Truckermal

I love the new buttons that allow you to Tweet a particular thread I was only thinking about it the other day and now it's here!!!

Well done and keep up the good work.

5starpool

I know they aren't designed for it, but they don't look good on the old (pre beta even) skin.

The Backwards Man

I don't like it, I'm afraid I might accidentally tweet some of my own threads some night and all my legions followers will think I'm some sort of weirdo.

And it's actually not hard to accidentally do, one trip over the mouse and you're away.

P_1

Personally I think that Boards, Facebook and Twitter are platforms that are best left to themselves but seeing as most other sites are doing it these days it must drive more traffic to the site and make more money from advertising so I suppose t'was only a matter of time before it happened here. Hopefully it works and brings some decent new users.

Taltos

What happens if you use these in a private forum?

P_1

Taltos wrote: »

What happens if you use these in a private forum?

Aye good point. Would it cause much trouble to turn the 'Social Media Sharing' buttons off for private forums? It kinda defeats the purpose of having a private forum if somebody can post the threads on FB/Twitter.

Artful_Badger

Taltos wrote: »

What happens if you use these in a private forum?

Was just thinking about that when I seen them. From the looks of it you can share the thread and it will be shared with the thread name, but nobody will be able to access it via the link that doesnt have access.

I suppose since it takes someone with access to share it anyway its no different than someone copying and pasting things outside boards. Just because its there doesnt mean it has to or is acceptable to be used. Just like the report button isnt supposed to be used in private forums.

Orion

Just checked 2 private forums - one I mod and one I don't - buttons don't appear in either.

[edit]I take that back - they do - there's just a delay before they're loaded. This is not good. Get rid of them in private forums.

ibarelycare

I presume that even if you share a thread from a private forum, only members who have access to that forum can read it anyway.

MugMugs

ibarelycare wrote: »

I presume that even if you share a thread from a private forum, only members who have access to that forum can read it anyway.

Permissions would kick in and they won't be able to view it.

pickarooney

Can they see the title though? I imagine there are some thread titles in a particular private forum that shouldn't be shared with the outside world.

GLaDOS

The buttons don't add any new functionality, you could always share private threads manually. Nobody does because there's no point.

Orion

Still no reason to make it easy to do. Fine in public forums but private forums are private for a reason.

same ol sh1te

I'd like to see further Twitter integration like the ability to embedd tweets in posts like most other sites are getting

RDM_83 again

Posted this in AH just there now but decided to check feedback.

My initial thought was

"meh doesn't make a difference its not hard to share a URL anyway"

But this is actually an awful awful idea that could have serious negative consequences, Boards is a discussion forum it already suffers from enough drive by posters and while slightly separate issue there is passionate about one topic/activist style posters as well.

What would happen if a thread starts trending on twitter or such like properly. I can't see it improving the quality and you could have people using it to notify easily groups to jump in on a thread.
I can see an absolute disaster occurring when the Gay Marriage thing kicks off again.

Also I presume it will make moderation even more sensitive to legal issues

mike65

same ol sh1te wrote: »

I'd like to see further Twitter integration like the ability to embedd tweets in posts like most other sites are getting

DIE.

dr.bollocko

#thefutureisnow.

It looks like crap on the old skin btw.

mike65

if you use Opera right click and block content and they vanish.

same ol sh1te

mike65 wrote: »

DIE.

Just because you don't use it, millions do. Other sites integrate it nicely

My name is URL

They can be hidden by adding the following rule to Adblock Plus -

[noparse]www.boards.ie##.social_share_bar[/noparse]

Dades

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Posted this in AH just there now but decided to check feedback.

My initial thought was

"meh doesn't make a difference its not hard to share a URL anyway"

But this is actually an awful awful idea that could have serious negative consequences, Boards is a discussion forum it already suffers from enough drive by posters and while slightly separate issue there is passionate about one topic/activist style posters as well.

What would happen if a thread starts trending on twitter or such like properly. I can't see it improving the quality and you could have people using it to notify easily groups to jump in on a thread.
I can see an absolute disaster occurring when the Gay Marriage thing kicks off again.

Also I presume it will make moderation even more sensitive to legal issues

I don't think drawing new users into debates here is something Boards should be afraid of. The Boards Facebook/Twitter feeds regularly pimp threads here.

Contentious threads will always attract a percentage of dumbasses, whether they are existing users or new ones. It's all about bums on seats.

Harold Finch

Should have been one button that then spread out/uncollapsed to reveal them other buttons.

It'd be cleaner.

TouchingVirus

They're a good idea but a few points:

• The logos in the buttons don't have the same padding top & bottom so the icon is not aligned with the text. This makes the buttons look particularly odd, too narrow at the bottom
• The share link is to http://touch.boards.ie for me despite the fact I'm on desktop right now.
• The buttons are too large - they shouldn't be as prominent as the follow thread button or post reply
• There used to be a section below a thread and above the quick reply with Sharing buttons to outdated sharing sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious etc - I liked that the sharing options were kept to one section, clearly labelled. The placement of them was horrendous which is why they were never used but perhaps a compromise can be found? As a rudimentary suggestion - create a dropdown beside "Thread Tools" in the top post of a thread called Sharing Options. It could have a merger of the FB/Twitter logos if you desire a visual element to attract the eye. Over time you may want to add more sharing options, you'll run out of space fast where they are.
• The buttons overlap pagination at the supported minimum window width - 960px. I have a window that's 1006 pixels wide (verified with $(window).width();) and the Twitter button overlaps the Page X of Y in the pagination.
• I'd echo some concerns over the use of the buttons on private forums since the thread title is visible in the post.

Dav

Hello all,

I just wanted to answer a couple of the points made:

Sharing threads from private forums - If you don't have access to the forum a thread is in, you can't see it. The Thread title is shared by default, a link with no context doesn't make a lot of sense and the title is the obvious thing to include. You're not going to accidentally share something here, there are a minimum of 2 clicks required (on the button and on the pop-over to confirm you want to share it) assuming you're logged in to whichever service you're using. Pretty much every private forum has a rule about not sharing outside of the forum anyway so the addition of these buttons makes no difference to someone's desire to break that rule anyway. It takes 2 or 3 less clicks than copy/pasting a link as is.

Andres did take a look at how easy it would be to to turn off for Private forums. Short answer - MASSIVELY complicated (thanks to VBulletin's permissions system) and we're talking about maybe 150 forums (including Mod only sub sections) out of 1300 forums. It's too much work to have to hack through the templates and set an on/off flag for these buttons based on permissions.

Looks bad on old skins - I say this with the greatest of respect, we don't care Our position on the several anchors around our neck that old skins are has been stated on this many, many times, this is now one more reason to turn the old skins off completely. It's time to switch over folks.

Tweet integration - I like that idea and it's something I'd like to see happen in the far future when we're running completely on our own code - similar to the question that was raised about integrating Soundcloud and so on a few days ago. I'd see that all being a part of the same basic project.

Drawing new people into a discussion - that's our business model folks, more people talking about more things. This is our site's raison d'être

[EDIT]TV posted as I was writing this
Links go to touch. - it's a shorter URL so more tweet friendly. If you regularly browse on the desktop, you'll have a cookie set that'll automatically switch you over to that anyway. I asked the same question myself when I saw it

The other layout issues you mentioned are being passed on, thanks for those. I think we'd started looking at that padding issue already, but overlaopping the pagination at lower resolutions is a big one, we'll wanna get cracking on that straight away, so thank you again for the list.

TouchingVirus

What might work better than a link to the touch site would be to revive a very old 2011 project by Neil - the http://brds.ie shortener, you still own that domain until December 2014. I remember that was one of the original aims of that side project - short links people could share or tweet. It could be an interesting thing to click on the link, have the URL shortened in the background and use that link in your shares. Your cookie would punt you to the correct site as you suggest but it would also save confusion on why you're linking to Touch - win-win?

I hate to be a stickler on the private forum thing but there's likely already some vars available for use in template conditionals to indicate non-standard forums. I'm pretty sure that's how ads are managed for subscribers who request ads be turned off. I understand if you simply couldn't be arsed to do it though, that template system is a pain in the ring and two user interactions (click and then confirm sharing) should be enough for people not to derp out and share things with dodgy titles; how much hand holding do people want? :pac:

Either way it's good to see some fresh UI tweaks in action and thanks for the response

Dav

We were just talking about the brds.ie shortening thing in our Hipchat channel, I've suggested it be a Hack Day project for someone.

On the Private Forums thing, I was briefly looking it over with Andres and thought that the "can view" permission flag for the Registered Users group might be the best way to see it, but I'll ask him to have a look out for the Vars you mentioned there - if we can do it easily, we absolutely will, but the initial investigation looked horrific.

Thanks again for the pro-tips

Slydice

Good to see the sharing buttons. I remember looking for them last year

The only other part of my suggestion would be the ability to share individual posts. This would make it handy to tweet posts from the You Laugh You Lose threads. Sharing a link to the whole (currently 577 page) thread wouldn't work if I just want to share a funny photo someone posted at the end.

MadsL

Slydice wrote: »

if I just want to share a funny photo someone posted at the end.

Funny photo? I thought the Slydice Special was particularly NSFW pics of hawtness?

pickarooney

Slydice wrote: »

Good to see the sharing buttons. I remember looking for them last year

The only other part of my suggestion would be the ability to share individual posts. This would make it handy to tweet posts from the You Laugh You Lose threads. Sharing a link to the whole (currently 577 page) thread wouldn't work if I just want to share a funny photo someone posted at the end.

Just share it directly from Reddit? :pac:

Slydice

pickarooney wrote: »

Just share it directly from Reddit? :pac:

I don't really use reddit. I do (rarely but) sometimes see links to reddit on my twitter stream. Are all the ylyl photos from reddit? Never really saw a ylyl photo showing up in twitter first though.

same ol sh1te

Slydice wrote: »

I don't really use reddit. I do (rarely but) sometimes see links to reddit on my twitter stream. Are all the ylyl photos from reddit? Never really saw a ylyl photo showing up in twitter first though.

99% of the YLYL are from Reddit