• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

New Forums - Testers Needed!

Erik

Site Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Apr 27, 2003
Messages
3,588
Location
San Jose, CA
Hello Vintage Computer Forum members.

February has been a busy month! We are currently on our third (and final) host since the beginning of the month and with our new home comes some added flexibility.

One thing I have been meaning to do is to switch the Vintage Computer Forums on to a new, better software system. I have been playing with this for the last few days and think I have what I want.

Now it's time for you to take a look and tell me if I'm right or if I'm crazy. . . (or both!)

I have set up the new board as a copy of this one and have made it available for everyone to play with for a few days. Please go wild and test whatever you want.

All posts, users, forums and the like were copied over.

The copy is a few days old so don't be surprised if something is missing.

If you have a bit of spare time or if you'd like to see the shape of things to come, please head on over to www.vintage-computer.com/vcforumvb and tell me what you think.

Your login will be the same, but feel free to create a new one for testing. It will be lost when we go live.

Be sure to check out "User CP" to configure your options.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a test! I will be wiping the new boards clean and re-copying the old ones sometime in the next few days, depending on how things go. Anything you post over there WILL BE WIPED.

Please use THIS board for our VC related discussions until the transition. I can't copy stuff back from the new boards to here before cutting over.


For reference, the reasons I like the new software:
- More flexibility
- Better interface
- Ability to upload/attach files to messages
- More robust security
- Better support
- Easier plug-in system

Please let me know what you think!

Erik
 
lizart said:
k= I'd gladly give it a whirl if it'd let me log in!

You probably joined after I copied the data over. Feel free to create an account on the new forums to test that functionality. . . ;)

E
 
I, for one, do not welcome our new vBulletin overlords.
The font they're using looks absolutely terrible here, as if the font they've chosen
isn't loaded on my system (using Firefox on FreeBSD).
I'll try another machine later to see if it sucks any less.
 
I'll try another machine later to see if it sucks any less.

Holy crap! I almost chocked on a peach when I read that.

Erik paid a lot of money to get VB to replace phpBB. Having the experence of running a phpBB forum a long time ago, anything else has to be less akward to configure, have less errors, and not have to be updated excessivly. HE PAID for the new forum software. He could have kept crappy phpBB or just left the forum go, but Erik cares.

Last I checked, VB costs $85 to lease and $160 to buy. He spent all that for us to keep our little community. How about a little respect....

-V
 
ahm said:
I'll try another machine later[...]

Let me know if it looks any better. I obvously haven't tried every configuration out there, but I have checked on a few and the new boards look okay and are readable. If they still aren't for you I'll see what other optional skins are out there. Hopefully something will be suitable.

Thanks!

Erik
 
Uh, yeah. Be nice. Erik didn't have to do that. And to quote myself from a long time ago, "I can't control how you see the world. Adjust your browser."

I like it and the file uploading features. And the email. Iposted a little thng about it over there already. Pretty neat! Me Likee!

And I didn't even know I had achieved Senior Member. That was a nice thing to find out! :D
 
Haven't tested it yet because I've been busy installing a cheap chinese ethernet card (not fun) and configuring it, and installing DSL on the box I have most of my archived files on. If it does have files upload on it maybe I'll upload the Atari fdd tips for you and Ahn. If i can get them together before Eric shuts the door.

Lawrence
 
Micom 2000 said:
If it does have files upload on it maybe I'll upload the Atari fdd tips for you and Ahn. If i can get them together before Eric shuts the door.

You may want to wait a few days until I make those boards the active ones and shut these down. That way your upload will be saved for posterity and won't be whomped when we make the switch.

Your call, though! :D

Erik
 
vlad said:
How about a little respect....
You need to calm your bad self down.

Erik asked us what we think about the new board. I went over there, noticed that it looked bad on my machine and I said so. That's a simple statement of fact. No disrespect, actual or implied. And it appears no offense was taken, at least not by Erik.

As for "adjust your browser", I welcome useful suggestions for how to do that, which means you can dispense with the usual frivolities like "remove and re-add it". I'm running FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE with Firefox 1.0.3 on X.org 6.8.2; I look forward to your results.

Erik, if you need a screenshot, I can get you with one. Thanks.
 
I didn't mean to sound smart-aleky or mean. Sorry about that, Ahm. I guess I did come off as kind of brash. Have you had any luck with the fonts and whatever else was making it look bad? I'm using firefox too, but I'm not on a bsd box.

Erik, is there any way to archive the previous posts from this incarnation of the forums? There's a lot of useful information here.

Nathan
 
NathanAllan said:
Erik, is there any way to archive the previous posts from this incarnation of the forums? There's a lot of useful information here.

Everything that's here now will move over. I'm probably going to try to do the cut-over tonight so we'll know for sure soon how certain that is. . . ;) (Expect a few hours of downtime!)

There have been a few "glitches" with the import. I still haven't gotten avatars to move over, for instance, and it appears that PMs all transfer, regardless of their "deleted" status.

But every forum, post and user are moving over consistently, so we should be okay.

Erik
 
I think fonts in X11 in general is a PITA. Often they look blurry, anti-aliased and all sorts of uglyness. I'm not sure, if the included free fonts are drawn in only one size and the system tries to resize them to all kind of dimensions.
 
I'm useing X11 in Sun Solaris, thats even more off the wall than a BSD distro. It looks just like it does when I look at it though Windows and Internet Explorer. Actually the more I think back to the instllation, I chose to use something made by Sun instead of X11. Sun's version of X. My fonts just say "Sans". I also pushed the button to render better for LCD screens, and it makes a drastic difference. That may only be a feature in the Sun version though.


Carlsson,

How can it be blurry if its anti-aliased? anti-aliased is just a fancy way of saying "rendered" that how stuff is made NOT blurry. Fonts in X11 a PITA? I never had much of a problem, it always seemd to do every thing for me. (At lest Sun does) Did you have a problem or do you just not like how it works? Arn't fonts configured by the WM? I mean you don't really see X11 unless you have nothing BUT X, then you get a strange looking window system. Almost everything at least has the CDE, if nothing else.


-V
 
looked great on my iMAC ... I'll try it on the windows based machine latter.
and I didn't have that double log-in problem this time..
 
I miss the BBS days ...

Anyway, I didn't notice anything horribly wrong with the new forum software, but then again I didn't notice anything wrong with the current forum software. So if it changes, I'm not bothered either way .. but I assume there is a benefit elsewhere that I'm not seeing.

In general, I don't like the ability for users to edit or delete posts outright without the system 'marking' the post in an imutable way. If a user posts something, it should stand as posted. If it gets edited, that should be noted too. I noticed that the new software/configuration isn't too picky about edited or deleted posts.

On the forum that I chip in for (and moderate), only moderators can delete posts, and any user edits are noted by the system. Maybe that's too hardcore, but I'm a big fan of accountability. ; - )
 
mbbrutman said:
I miss the BBS days ...

Same here! :)

mbbrutman said:
but I assume there is a benefit elsewhere that I'm not seeing.

There are several. Some just for me and moderators, most for everyone using the forums!

mbbrutman said:
In general, I don't like the ability for users to edit or delete posts outright without the system 'marking' the post in an imutable way. If a user posts something, it should stand as posted. If it gets edited, that should be noted too. I noticed that the new software/configuration isn't too picky about edited or deleted posts.

The system is as picky about those things as I set it up to be. The way it is now you have 2 minutes from the time you post until the post is considered "done." Once it is done you, as the author, can still edit it but a public note of those edits are preserved for all to see (they can't see what you changed, but you can leave a comment. They will see "post edited by XXX on date/time)

I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure posts can only be deleted by the original author (or Mods) and only if there are no replies.

I can make it more hardcore (users can't edit or delete their posts) but I want to allow some flexibility for people to fix errors or change their minds.

E
 
I wasn't aware of the two minute rule - I think that is reasonable.
 
Looks great all, wasnt around for some days- what a suprise :)
 
Last edited:
Back
Top