Hi folks,
I'll find a better place for this in the near future. In the meantime, please use this thread to post any general comments or suggestions you have regarding the board. If you are having a technical problem with a particular page or function, please also raise that here or via PM to me (or the "Contact Us" page).

Also know that we're currently working on some changes that will address some past suggestions and add a few new features... stay tuned. We may not have time to respond quickly to everything posted here, but having all the suggestions in one place will be helpful so that they can be considered in time.

For any particularly virulent complaints, please use Contact Us...

Thanks all.

bluto,

Thanks for the work/efforts. Looking forward to the updates

Instead of emailing the standard "you've got a PM..." could you also embed/attach the actual PM content? That would let me pick up PMs via my usual email address instead of having to log into this site, which - as you know - can be problematic from an anally retentive workplace.

Some other forum type sites do this, so I suppose it might be possible with the tools you're using.

(Raised by PM already, but here for all to see/comment on)

Thanks for setting up a place to collect these suggestions, and keep up the Good Work.

You know what? The "go to most recent post" link has never ever worked for me. It always sends me to the first post. Any idea why?

Thanks guys... keep 'em coming.



Surprisingly, such a feature is not available "out of the box" on any version of phpBB, so it would involve a "mod" (i.e. modification to the phpBB software). phpbb.com has a listing of user-submitted mods which have been "validated" (i.e. tested by various folks on the phpBB team and deemed stable enough to release). I looked but there seems to be nothing currently available that we would be able to use (i.e. validated for the version of phpBB to which we will be upgrading... oops, guess the cat's out of the bag... stay tuned). I'll keep my eyes open though.

I'd also think making this a user-configurable thing is a must... I'm sure there are people out there who wouldn't want the full text of a PM going in the notification email for whatever reason... ?

Based on my knowledge of how the PM system works, such a mod is likely to be pretty involved. I'd like to get a sense of how many people here really want this so I can decide whether to pursue it. Any time you add a mod, that's one more thing to deal with when upgrading to the next version of phpBB (which we'll have to do from time to time, to keep up with security fixes, etc). Good chance it would break things if we just tried to use the same old mod rather than one validated for the newer version. So this has the potential to be a major PITA, obviously.



At last, an easy one! :-) I believe I just fixed this. Please try again now (with a thread you haven't read yet, to rule out any possible caching issues) and let me know if it works for you.

Bluto

Oh my gosh, I think you may have fixed this after all these years! It seems to work. I'll keep using it and will report any anomalies if they occur, but I'm optimistic they won't. Thanks!

Still working...thanks!

Here's a convenience suggestion. A prominent "find my threads" button. i.e. it does the equivalent of going to the advanced search page and searching for one's own username. I think this would encourage follow up posts, answering questions, and deeper discussion.

Neurosynth -

- you can find all your posts in two mouse clicks: click on your own name and then click on "find all posts by ..." Not a "prominent button, but fairly easy.

- you can be notified of replies to any post you have commented in... Either on a per thread way (check the "notify me when a reply is posted) or you can set it for all threads you comment in by setting it in your profile.

Well those are useful suggestions but not quite as good I think. The two click thing assumes your name is already showing up somewhere. And there's no prompt inviting people to do it. And being emailed notifications for some (me) is just more email that will get in the way more than help.

The best place to put another option might be the links "View unanswered posts :: View posts since last visit :: Mark all forums read" at the entry page of the Message Page. Something like "View responses to your posts" would really stimulate more interaction I think. One guys opinion at least...

phpBB3 makes this easier. With our new board, there will be a link to "User Control Panel" on every page. You would click on that and then the first screen that comes up includes an option to "Show your posts." Like this:



So stay tuned...

And, as suggested, I can always add that same link to the top of the forum index page too (we have room for it) if you think that would help? [EDIT: I'm going to do this... it makes sense to me, and I see it's there on the plain vanilla template I'm working off of anyway.]



"Show your posts" brings up a listing of every thread in which you've posted, which more or less does the same thing, right? Assuming you're not "watching" the topic and getting emails, you'd be able to tell which ones have received new replies the same way you do now (e.g. icon color, number of replies).

Neuro -

I 'ditto' what Bluto said. I run a PHPBB3 board (totally different area of interest) as well and there are some great features in the newer version.

With the new version both the "new messages" and the "active threads" feature is a real winner. ... along with some other great functions.

I can understand what Bluto is going through setting up/testing/prepping the new changes.

Definitely looking forward to see the fruits of his labor!!

e.

Thanks for the attention, Bluto.

The PM-text-in-the-mail feature I saw was on a site powered by http://www.invisionpower.com/products/board/ which I suppose is a commercial product rather than a freebie, so, well, shrug, never mind. Would still be cool if you can easily find a mod to support it.

KUTGW. Keep up the good work.
IJMTU . I just made that up.

- useful abbreviations that I'm sure belong in everyone's dictionary.

New version sounds like it has this covered. All hail Bluto & Co.!

How about a reference forum?

A place mods could place posts  that would be useful in the future

Such as George's sex club post or the Golden Times How To I see re-upped from time to time

It would place all that info in a easily found location and clear many of the featured posts out of the other forums
And ghosts could be left in the original forum so they did not just disappear

Just my .02 euros worth

Sorry to report that I'm still getting dysfunctional behavior from the take-me-past-the-last-viewed-post link icon. Is the last viewed post info stored on the server or in a cookie? I ask because I surf ignatzmice from both my laptop and iPhone.

Anyway, current symptom is the link takes me forward into the thread, but then the next day it takes to that same spot again.

I like this idea and I think we'll implement some flavour of it. I was thinking we are getting a bit cluttered with featured posts in some places, so agreed.



It's really the take-me-to-the-latest-post-in-the-thread-regardless-of-what-I've-already-viewed link icon. If that helps explain any of the unexpected behaviour?



Do you mean it takes you to the last post, and then the next day there are more posts, but it only takes you to the same post (i.e. yesterday's last post)? Any time there are new posts in a thread, the "view latest post" link has to be re-generated. So for example, let's say you loaded the forum index page at 4:20PM. It shows the last post in the "Amsterdam" forum having been made at 3:55PM, along with the link to said post. However, you're too busy smoking a blunt and forget you intended to read some threads, until it dawns upon you at 4:40PM. In the meantime, someone has made a new post (at 4:30PM, say) in the "Amsterdam" forum. But you still have your index page that was loaded at 4:20PM. It only knows about the 3:55PM post, so when you click on the "View latest post" icon, it takes you to the 3:55PM post. Could this explain some of the behaviour you're seeing? Or are you reloading the index page(s) and still not getting the link to the latest post?



I believe the IDs of the posts you've viewed are stored on the server, but I'd need to research it better to give you a definitive answer. Let's revisit this one after we install the new board... it may work a bit differently (hopefully better) there.

Hey there Bluto...

Are we talking about the same thing? I'm talking about the tiny icon next to the thread subject line that looks like an arrow pointing at a page. When it's there it causes the subject text to shift to the right a bit.

I thought it was supposed to do the typical thing...jump to the first post made after the last time I checked. What happens now is that I'll click on it one day and it will, say, scroll down to post #8. Then the next day there will be new posts, but the icon will send me to post #8 again and not scroll down to the first new post.

Anyway, given your upgrade plans, it's probably not a good use of time to dwell on this. I'm happy to just wait and see what happens once you have a chance to install the latest greatest.

cheers,

neurosynth

Ahhh... we are indeed talking about something different, but I was under the impression that my fix would take care of that too. Now that I look a bit closer, it's apparent that it works differently than the links on the forum index page. This one appears to be an actual bug in our version of phpBB2 and not something I can solve just by editing the html templates, so we'll wait and see if the new version resolves it.