Welcome to the new Boards.ie platform - Version 1.0 :)

ohnonotgmail

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117644965#Comment_117644965

I made a similar point on another feedback thread. In fact it could have been this one but there is no way for me to search to find out. There was clearly no UX testing done. I'm not even sure they did a test migration at all. There are enough well qualified IT people on boards.ie from all disciplines that an effort to get users involved as volunteers in the testing and migration would have reaped big rewards.

Mickeroo

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117644868#Comment_117644868

What topics do want it separated into?

28064212

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117644643#Comment_117644643

Desktop only. As far as I know, none of the main mobile browsers support extensions allowing for custom CSS

byte

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117644711#Comment_117644711

Excellent! Works a treat (I did use @ohnonotgmail's amendments too).

Hodors Appletart

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117644398#Comment_117644398

AMAZING STUFF!!!!

absolute legend

ohnonotgmail

Might it be an idea to start a thread on the CSS improvements that people have made?

Leg End Reject

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117645118#Comment_117645118

Or get them involved in sorting out the mess!

Posters are not only writing code to improve the site for their own use, but are willingly sharing it with others.

That's a big resource at Boards disposal, but it's being ignored.

Leg End Reject

ETA: Unintentional blank post again. 😱🤯😤

CelticRambler

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117643601#Comment_117643601

😁

I'll claim credit for that! https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117623974#Comment_117623974

But five days later, I still don't understand what all the supposed feverish energy "behind the scenes" is doing. In fact, I don't understand anything about this "upgrade" ... or rather, none of it makes sense. Just about every reason we've been given has been contradicted either overtly by @Boards.ie: Niamh or implicitly by @Boards.ie: Odhran The prolonged downtime was justifed on Twitter by the promise of a new platform that would allow Boards to do everything at their end without further outages ... only we've since had another twice-as-long-as-promised outage to migrate something that still doesn't seem to have been made available to all users ... and in the meantime, we've been told that the Boards developer (and this forum) is apparently totally beholden to Vanilla, their code and their working hours.

And I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the mobile and desktop versions of the site are being (or seem to be) developed as two completely different platforms. I've done my share of website design, and you start with the question: do we need this feature -> if "yes" then where should it go, and what should it look like; and then it gets placed on the site in such a way as to be accessible on any device. Seeing as all the information here is being stored in the same database, how come there are so many features not visible on the desktop version when all that's required is a simple snippet of html? Like those links that have appeared on the profile page. (PS: here's another one, if you want to find your own posts: https://boards.ie/profile/comments/[yourUserName] ) That's not going to crash Vanilla's universe, so why is anyone waiting for a push-me-pull-you requests?

And as someone else pointed out, whatever Boards has bought from Vanilla, it doesn't look like any kind of discussion/forum software. @Boards.ie: Niamh has told us that they've tried really hard to recreate the feel of the old Boards board ... but why was that necessary? The creation of the "other site" has demonstrated that any out-of-the-box bulletin board can look and feel like the old Boards within a couple of days. The constant reassurances that they're trying hard to "fix" all of the problems that came with the Vanilla migration have seriously undermined my confidence in the future of what used to be Boards.ie.

I'm not going to storm off in a huff because the site is barely fit for purpose, but the "other one" is so much easier navigate and use that yesterday I signed up to answer one specific question. I've made five posts over there since; there are a grand total of zero new posts on the thirty-odd threads I've been following on this forum since the migration.

Leg End Reject

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117644859#Comment_117644859

It's not there on mobile, so I'm stuck on the first page.

Nermal

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117642527#Comment_117642527

I don't see any drop down menus. The boards.ie logo in the top left is literally just a link to the home page.

There is a tab for 'My Forums' on the home page, but that's a list of threads in the forums I follow.

I want a list of the forums I follow, not the threads within them - how do I see that?

CelticRambler

Bug report 1 (possibly responsible for speed issue) : using Brave browser/Win10/no stylesheet add-ons, on longer threads, I can see the CSS rules being applied in slow motion, cascading through the page and causing it to jiggle all over the place.

Bug report 2 (also possibly responsible for speed issue) : the automatic saving of drafts makes it damn near impossible to write a reply of more than a couple of sentences before the page/comment box freezes up and waits for some data to come back from the server. I use several different cloud-based platforms for various purposes on this machine, and this is the only site where I have this problem, so the bottleneck is very definitely in the boards-vanilla pipeline. If it disconnect from the internet, the page tries to synch with the server (about once every 60 seconds?), realises there's no connection and lets me keep typing.

Using the this post and the one above for testing purposes, it looks like the problem is exaggerated when there is additional activity on the thread while typing. There is an unresolved issue (reported by others in different terms) whereby a thread is temporarily frozen in time as soon a user starts typing in the comment box, but only for them. When posted, the new message appears for the poster as if they're the only person who's commented since. I think this is creating additional work for the (Vanilla) server as it tries to synchronise several different realities across numerous users and threads (and has the feel of a software package that is not designed to handle the kind of fast-and-furious posting that we used to see on the old Boards.ie)

sydthebeat

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117645420#Comment_117645420

same, i havent seen any drop down menus anywhere on the site

smuggler.ie

@CelticRambler (PS: here's another one, if you want to find your own posts: https://boards.ie/profile/comments/[yourUserName] )

Thanks for this one.

Few filtering option as well as list of pages to jump instead of "more comments" would help big time @Boards.ie: Niamh

Doctors room ghost

Calling a spade a spade.

this new version of boards is a load of sh1te.it should be scrapped and get back the old one.

HeidiHeidi

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117645420#Comment_117645420

I think that's a problem with my terminology!

I meant the tabs, rather than drop down menus.

And the My Forums tab isn't working yet - the recent outage was meant to be to bring it across properly, but it didn't.

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117645298#Comment_117645298

Well said. Not having to deal with two codebases was the point, but they've ended up with a desktop and mobile version anyway.

They should have created a Discord group, invited a bunch of us who program, and gave us a sanitized version of the database with some forums, threads, users, reports, thanks etc. and see what we could do. A different section for each different forum software.

As it stands, my browser has frozen three times writing this message and I've had to reload it because of what I assume is some janky ajax polling. I was optimistic but now I can barely be arsed. I still use a good few different forums and they just work.

Worztron

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117645076#Comment_117645076

Cheers, smuggler.ie. That was a nice workaround. Hopefully the white space gets sorted for both new and older posts. :)

maik3n

@Boards.ie: Niamh Many thanks for the feedback on advanced reply. I'm afraid I still much prefer it over the new post comment box. This comment box at end of page just seems too facebooky for my taste.

Coming back to the thread generally, apologies for possibly covering old ground but rather than read through all 50 odd pages, can anyone confirm if the following items have been touched.

i) Buttons for Jump to top of page/Jump to Bottom of page are needed

ii) Leaving Message when clicking on an external link (Can this be switched off?)

ohnonotgmail

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117645625#Comment_117645625

that second one is really odd. if you type a url but dont press enter you get that annoying leaving message. if you press enter after typing the url you dont. let me just demonstrate

this link should go directly to bbc.com

https://bbc.com

this link should bring up that leaving message

https://www.bbc.com/

HeidiHeidi

Typing my post above (a number to quote would be really handy!) was a bit of an ordeal .....

And this one.

I was posting on desktop on a tablet, but when typing the post, the whole thing just froze for well over a minute, booted my out to the home page, and saved what I had typed to drafts.

The same has happened to me typing this post, except it's still frozen about three or four minutes later on the tablet, so I've had to resort to Touch site on mobile to complete it.

Every minute, the whole thing freezes for about 15 - 30 seconds (someone suggested above it's saving drafts, maybe?).

I've

___________________________________

Something's gone badly wrong in last half hour..... site keeps freezing..... completely unusable atm, both touch and desktop

By the time it’s sorted there’ll be no one around to use it.

sporina

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117645298#Comment_117645298

what's "the other one"? sorry for quoting all of your post but seems I can't edit it - quelle suprise

Johnboy1951

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117645678#Comment_117645678

I check the site once per day now and as it is not as usable/functional as before (I do not mind different) I leave immediately.

I expect I will continue to do this for a short time, before I forget about Boards altogether and find somewhere else to spend my time.

This is not even Alpha, never mind ready for general use.

The change should not have happened until the new site was properly functional.

Padraig Mor

Here's how it SHOULD be done:

https://www.basenotes.net/threads/489258-Basenotes-Update-2021

A fragrance forum, so a bit niche I'll grant you but same background and principle really - they (by which I mean he, the one man show who does the whole lot in his spare time) are moving from vBulletin because of pretty much the same issues as Boards have raised. In their case they're moving to XenForo. See how they've done it though: a full post months in advance explaining exactly what's going to happen and what the changes will be. Forum beta testing already available to established members. Directory beta testing from about now until planned launch in September. A plethora of images showing how the new site will look.

FFS yes, the comment box keeps freezing - I eventually had to open a new window to post this.

Leg End Reject

This is more unstable now than the old Boards.

It keeps freezing and when it restarts it's pot luck where you end up.

Polar101

Thanks for updating the ignore list capacity from 5 to 50, makes reading certain threads much more pleasant (and quicker) now.

Wouldn't mind if it was a bit higher than 50, though. 😀

retro:electro

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117645758#Comment_117645758

That really shows this move up for the shambles that it is

Two surprising things about all of this, how many love soccer, and how many people some put on ignore. One person said 300! Talk about generating an echo chamber.

trellheim

Whatever they changed

a) my forums is my threads so not actually my forums.

b) lads - could ye not please bring back the dropdown - the site is not navigable without it ? I have no idea how to move around without it.