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Community Feedback: New Forum Software Is Live!

61179 Views 1592 Replies 155 Participants Last post by  BobHall
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We are excited to announce that we are live on our new forum platform!

It’s been a long time coming. Let’s face it. Sometimes older forum technology lags behind other parts of the internet. Although seeing the same format for a long time is comforting, the member experience shouldn’t include dealing with outdated, unsafe, slow software.

The transition to a new platform will never be 100% smooth but the days of dealing with out of date forum software are over. We have teams dedicated to building a world-class community for you. The development has been steady with regular software releases since May 2019. Asking members for feedback and coming up with ideas for improvement is what we want.

Speed and Reliability Are Key
No one should have to wait for information. This site has been built to be much faster and more reliable, period.

New Homepage Experience
Our algorithm will serve a personal customized feed based on your prior engagement with content on the site. If you’ve liked and or commented, or are following certain topics that are of interest to you, similar content will appear at the top of the homepage.

Search
We have introduced new search algorithms, powered by an industry-leading AI platform, to help you find information faster. We plan to roll out new features to continue improving search, and to power many additional areas of the forum.

Due to the volume of content, our search platform may take some time to complete indexing over the first few days after migrating. During this process, you may see a limited number of posts until indexing has been completed. We appreciate your patience.

Finding Your Way Around
We have made the design clean and simple to use. Near the upper right-hand corner of the community, you will see navigation icons.

The first icon is for what’s new on the site.

Clicking on it, by default, will take you to new unread posts. On that page, you can click on additional tabs as well, such as Popular, if you prefer to view active topics.

Clicking the list icon next to “NEW” will bring you to the full forum listing.

Clicking your avatar will give you a drop-down menu for all things related to your account.

You can also navigate more by clicking the 3 vertical dots.

Dark Mode
We have introduced Dark Mode. One of our favorite features allows you to access the site with a power-saving, and easier on the eyes dark mode. You can access it in the drop-down menu under the 3 vertical dots.

Save Bookmarks
Now you can save your favorite discussion threads and posts! Bookmarks are a handy way to remember and easily find great content or stuff you want to read later.

We also wanted to make it easier for new users to understand the lingo of forums. We have cleaned up various language to more commonly recognized phrases including:
  • Following - Thread subscriptions, and Watched are now known as Following
  • Conversations - Private Messages or PMs are now conversations and can be accessed from the user avatar drop-down in the main navigation
  • Showcase - Showcase is designed for users to "showcase" items/projects through the use of uploaded images, text descriptions and custom content categories. It’s a way to visually and textually provide detailed information on the content you wish to share. The showcase would be similar to a catalog, whereas the gallery would be like a photo album. It can be accessed from the drop-down menu with the 3 dots.
Take a tour and look around! Check out the Help section for some quick FAQs about the new platform.

Please keep all feedback, questions, concerns, requests for help, etc. regarding the new platform right here in this Feedback thread. This will help us make sure not to miss a request for help and also let us pass along your thoughts to our Product team. The Admins and I will be here to help along the way taking note of your comments.

- Community Management Team
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I will be here during your transition to the new platform, to help with any questions, help with navigation or how to do things, and to listen to your feedback so please don't hesitate to holler at me. I want to help. You can also check out our FAQs.

I do want to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Cricket. When I was born, my father told his friends I was the ugliest baby he had ever seen, and that I sounded just like a cricket (I was born with the hiccups.) so yes, I have been Cricket for a very long time now. I live just outside of San Antonio, Texas. I spend most of my free time out in nature and exploring the back roads. During late autumn when it starts to finally cool down, I disappear from the world for a bit for camping trips and hiking.

Please don't be afraid to explore and test out things to see how they work on the site. :)

Although you can certainly use the "insert image" icon to upload an image to your post, you can also just drag and drop it to the text editor or even copy/paste it into there!

You can easily share videos just by adding the URL directly into the text editor!


Gif links from sites like giphy.com will display automatically just by adding the gif URL directly in the text editor. Try it!


I am a huge fan of the dark mode for the community. What is your favorite feature?

The new forum software is still a work in progress.

We will be seeing regular updates, which are largely fueled by community feedback. While that doesn't mean we can action every request, it does mean we will be actively listening to the feedback and sharing it with the developers. We do ask that you keep any questions, thoughts or feedback about the new forum software here in the Community Feedback thread to help us keep all the information together, so we don't miss anything.

There is still some work going on behind the scene so you may notice some changes as we work.
  • It can take 24-48 hours for the site to finish indexing, so it may take a bit for search results to return proper results, including showing all your threads/posts under your profile.
  • We will continue to clean up the order of the sections on the full forum listings page, so you might see some stuff move around.
  • We are reviewing permissions and special permission sections so let us know if you notice any issues so we can look into them.
I won't always know the answers to your questions, but I can find someone who does, as needed. ;)

- Cricket
Glad to see things have a new plan. I have been here since the start and have not been active in some time due to upload problems. See you again soon.
  • The review section is now impossible to browse by most recent since it is all now under a category. I liked seeing when someone posted something new about an item that I might not have known about. Now you can't do that. It would be nice to have the option to have a main landing page for reviews that showed the top XX newest and then directs you to the more specific section if the user wants to go that direction.

Questions
  • Is there a way to change the project section from a list into a gallery like it used to be? Thumbnails on a 25" display is way to small compared to the text size. The text size looks good by the way.
  • Will there be featured projects again or is that gone forever?
  1. If you use the "New" button in the top right by your user avatar, you can go the "News & Articles" tab to see the newest reviews across categories (not a very intuitive name for reviews, but like you said, we're now on a more generic forum setup) News & Articles
  2. Not that I've found yet either, and I do think the thumbnails could be bigger as well
  3. That I don't know
When viewing Showcase, why are the category and filter mutually exclusive? For example, if I want to find Peteybadboy's workshop, I cannot first select the Workshop category and then enter Peteybadboy in the created by field. When I do, it resets the category to all.

EDIT to add: If I manually add the search term (?creator_id=107527) to the URL that results when I select the Workshops categories, it gives me the desired results:

Yeah, I had posted that mutual exclusive thing somewhere else too, that alone would help some things quite a bit
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Not sure if I read it right, however, I think if you read a new blog and don't mark it, it may be "lost" and then youe have to go and search (for the "what was that thing/topic again").
I believe you’ve read that correctly. For that matter, most of my blogs are “lost” because I wasn’t set to follow any of them in the transition.
However, one aspect I liked of the old Lumberjocks was the absolutely flat hierarchy. We were all each others' equals. Now I see titles assigned to various members. Jeez, like junior high cliques.
Amen!
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When I go to my profile I can find a list of my projects in the section titled "Showcase"

There is no link to see the blogs I have created. Will there be one?

A work around is to go to the Blogs forum section and filter by the ones I created. That gets me there but it is not intuitive. I have friends that come here when I link a project on Facebook. Occasionally they take some time and look at my other projects and blogs. They will miss out on blogs because the work around will not occur to them.
I wish we had been told in advance that we would lose all of our "project" favorites. That is a major loss for me and one of the main reasons I liked this forum so much. Hopefully you can find a way to get them back.
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I select based primarily on respect, attitude, and kindness.
How do I find who is following one of my projects or show cases? The old program listed it above the project.
So is there no way to bookmark or save a project? Or am I missing something? I can bookmark a post about "wordle" or the "weather", but not a woodworking project?

If there is no way to retrieve old favorite projects, so be it. But not to be able to bookmark projects in the new format is a huge disappointment.
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Does anyone know how to view who has added my projects to their favorites and where to find my favorite products?

How do I edit my profile and change the date I signed up?

I started taking woodworking in 2017 and posted my first project here then but my profile states I singed up in 2014.
Thanks for you help.
I'll check it out and get back with you later
what date do you want to show as "joined" ?
Thanks John. I joined on Sep. 28, 2017.

Any thoughts on how to find who has chosen my projects as one of their favorites? And where to find my Favorite projects?
What’s a reaction score?
Sorry James, I can't change join dates at my level. Next week, maybe Cricket can assist you.
From what I remember, we can't tell who "tagged" our photos or projects. Several very fine members are working tirelessly on a lot of issues with the migration.
The "reaction score" is the amount of "likes" that you have received or given.
From what I remember, we can't tell who "tagged" our photos or projects.
Yes, you used to be able to click on the "Favorited x times" that was at the top of the project page and it would show you anybody that had favorited it.
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Definitely not a fan of the new layout. I used to be able to see several projects without scrolling. Now all I can see is 2 unless I scroll. It was a good run, but I doubt I'll use this site as much as I used to.
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I don't get why on the main page in the middle is the picture "Projects in Progress" when you go to it, it's closed. I understand advertising the new forum, but when you click on it you should be taken to the forum as well. Kind of missing the mark IMO
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Whatever method is being used to choose the "Recommended Reading" at the bottom of pages needs some work. For example, the recommended threads at the bottom of this page saw their most recent activity in 2007, 2011, 2013, and 2014. They all deal with features specific to the old web site.

I suggest disabling this feature for now.
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Sorry James, I can't change join dates at my level. Next week, maybe Cricket can assist you.
From what I remember, we can't tell who "tagged" our photos or projects. Several very fine members are working tirelessly on a lot of issues with the migration.
The "reaction score" is the amount of "likes" that you have received or given.
Thanks John. I hope these find members can figure this out.
I one were to build a show case and enter it under the show case section that would be cool.
Do you like following or the old buddy system. I never considered myself a follower. :cool:
Definitely not a fan of the new layout. I used to be able to see several projects without scrolling. Now all I can see is 2 unless I scroll. It was a good run, but I doubt I'll use this site as much as I used to.
Oh no! Just when I got another laser indulger/supporter.

I can't believe I'm saying this... but we should all let Cricket and the techos sort what they can out, before we start to jump ship.
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