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Community Feedback: New Forum Software Is Live!

61670 Views 1592 Replies 155 Participants Last post by  BobHall
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 Although seeing the same format for a long time is comforting, the member experience shouldn’t include dealing with outdated, unsafe, slow software.

The transition to a new platform will never be 100% smooth but the days of dealing with out of date forum software are over.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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Can no longer attach photos and clicking an attached photo gives Cloudflare error and also embed photo gives error saying to contact site admin. I will attempt to attach photo of errors

View attachment 3857927
Cloudflare is having issues at the moment. I am expecting this to be resolved soon.
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Edit - didn't see Cricket already responded with the report
I wanted to find the post that gave the details on the internet way back site to try to find my favorites. I had favorited one of them to make a Christmas present and now can not find them. I think Scrooge must have hidden my favorites.
Here is one place where I gave some pointers for using the way back machine to see if you can find your old favorites.

Thanks for the help..unfortunately only a few of the pages were available.
Here is one place where I gave some pointers for using the way back machine to see if you can find your old favorites.

With all the queries, that should be in the FAQ...
With the demise of Favorites, I still want to be able to collect projects or even blogs that I want to save for future reference. I really do not care to save a zillion bookmarks.

I suppose, I could print off to pdf and save in a folder on my computer. Maybe some smart, creative person has a more elegant solution. I would really like to hear any ideas. Favorites was an important part of the LJ experience and would like to find some replacement.
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With all the queries, that should be in the FAQ...
there are a lot of "should be's" with this new forum duckie :rolleyes: :cry:(n)
Can no longer attach photos and clicking an attached photo gives Cloudflare error and also embed photo gives error saying to contact site admin. I will attempt to attach photo of errors

View attachment 3857927
This should already be resolved.

Testing image below.
Daytime Building Infrastructure Window Font
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there are a lot of "should be's" with this new forum duckie :rolleyes: :cry:(n)
I have asked multiple times now not to pile on comments like this.

Do not pile on the same feedback over and over again. If someone has already provided the feedback, quoting and agreeing multiple times does not help, it simply makes it more difficult for the members to find the answers to the questions they have asked.
Thank you for understanding.
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What about copying the URL into a spreadsheet on your desktop. Then you can attach your own comments about the project or blog you are saving.
I would like a way to quickly see the newest reviews in a list without looking at the last posting dates.
Thx
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I found this in WikiHow and will try.

There are also some apps to do similar and I am looking at those such as Pocket and Instapaper.
You can use a word processor like MS Word or Google Docs or MS Notes. Save it to your desktop or in the cloud (and bookmark it) for easy access. Just paste a link into the document and if you want a picture, right click on one of the thumbnails or full sized images in the project, select copy image from the popup box and paste that into the document as well.
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I posted a project yesterday with pictures. One picture ended up at the last of the post in a "gallery". Not sure what or how. My bad I'm sure.

edit: actually wished that I knew how to just add pictures to this gallery instead of having all of them be full size. Seems it would have been cleaner.
You can use a word processor like MS Word or Google Docs or MS Notes. Save it to your desktop or in the cloud (and bookmark it) for easy access. Just paste a link into the document and if you want a picture, right click on one of the thumbnails or full sized images in the project, select copy image from the popup box and paste that into the document as well.
As much as I dislike this option (way more work than simply clicking "Favorite") I can't think of a better way.

Ideally I would set this up as pages of images and titles with urls attached to the titles.

For me the best thing about favorites was scanning through images and finding things you didn't even realize you were looking for - stuff you forgot you saved. Url's and titles don't enable this (for me).
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I posted a project yesterday with pictures. One picture ended up at the last of the post in a "gallery". Not sure what or how. My bad I'm sure.

edit: actually wished that I knew how to just add pictures to this gallery instead of having all of them be full size. Seems it would have been cleaner.
The Gallery and Projects are 2 totally different things. Can you explain more, please?
I am not getting notified when a buddy posts a new project.

I looked at my preferences in my account settings, it's not an option.
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Hi Cricket,
All I know is that after posting some pictures in the Project I was posting, at the very end, a picture showed up as a Gallery. It is in the workbench/track saw cutting table post I made.
Wished there was an edit button in projects for the original poster to use.
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