Geeklog Forums

I've just installed a new version of the forum here for testing. Most are all UI related enhancements.

Please test and review - I'd like to get some feedback on these changes

• Front page block: Now will goes to the top of the topic by default. There is a small icon in the lastpost column that will take you to the last page - Thanks Matthew (aka nurseryboy) for that idea.
  
  
• Removed the top Navbar and relocated most of these functions to your "Forum Options" screen - found in your Userblock.
  
  
• Re-did the way I was creating the breadcrumb style links at the top of the fourm or topic view. Topic subject is now in the link chain and you can more easily navigate.
  
  
• Added sortable colums when viewing the forum topics. Able to switch Sort order and Sort field. Your current selection has the missing image or direction arrow. I think this is quite handy.
  
  
• Re-layout of the Topic header and forum listing header to reduce complexity and number of icons. Added links instead to make it easier to understand - hopefully
  
  
• Overall updating of templates and tweaking of CSS. All core theme were updated on this site
  
  
• Category description was not being displayed - is now
  
  
• Forum Members listing - accessible under Forum Options in Userblock now has a link by user to show last 10 posts for this user
  
  
• When creating a post and using the [ code ] or [ quote ] BB tags, the logic will now trap for missing tag.
  

Please report any problems as I had to change or effect most programs and templates.

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Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com

When previewing a post, the preview says I'm "Anonymous: Dirk". The actual post then shows my usual details, though.

bye, Dirk

Doh

Ok that's fixed - let me know if you find anything else.

BTW, it's ok to say you don't like the changes or better yet really do like the changes

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Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com

I love the changes. This is perfect now. The level navigation at the top is very intuitive, perfect. And exactly as i wished, the page numbers are at the top and bottom, also perfect.

Thanks Blaine, this is great. I would definately pay for this update. Just let me know a price, or does 30 bucks sound good?

oh one more thing, when you post a reply would it be possible to have it take you to the last page in a thread, if there are pages that is.

I agree, the forum is becomming nicer and nicer. I really should upgrade that site I made with the forum on it

geKow

Blaine,

Couple snuaffu's I've found with this site/the pre-release you sent me.

#1: There's no "New Topic" button unless you go into a current topic. Them menu you had in the original pre-release of forum 2.3 has home, popular, sub's, pm's, members, newtopic.

#2: After submitting a post, go back and edit it. Once edited, click the preview button. The preview shows the edited post, however, the textarea below still shows the original unedited post.

#3.a) (not sure if this is intended or not) in "Text Mode" if you preview then submit the post, smilies do not work. instead they just show the code for the smiley. eg.
#3.b) if you have smilies in the post and are currently in HTML mode, check "Text Mode" and w/o perviewing click submit, the actual HTML code will be shown in the post.

/me crawls into a corner to hide from Blaine.

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-- destr0yr
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -- Douglas Adams

I would say that it is a small over sight, since he moved the menu items to the forum options. Easy enough to fix, by putting the link back into the template file.

The other possibility, Blaine is secretly tring to eliminate people from posting, so there is more time to play.

*ducks Blaine's flying keyboard*
Another easy fix/suggestion (that i did on my site). Adding a page navigation to the top of the page as it currently exists only at the bottom.

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-- destr0yr
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -- Douglas Adams

It's on the top for me.

Thanks destr0yr, some good catches there.

1) Added the "New Topic" link and icon to the top of the forum view page. Missed that when re-organizing the layout.

2) Makes editing rather painfull - not sure why I did not see that one Fixed now - resulted from me fixing something else

3) Not sure if Text mode is really used that much anymore that HTML mode and the code tags work better. I've designed Text mode to not interpret any HTML so smilies should not work either. If editing a HTML posted message and you covert to Text mode - the smilies should be reverted to the emoticon.

Try that out here now and let me know if you see anything else.

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Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com

[Note: This is the anonymous Tulkas from before.]

Blaine, the changes are really looking great! I only have a couple suggestions (these are all from the Smooth_Blue layout, but they might appear in the others as I haven't checked):

1. I like the added feature of choosing which column on which to sort, but I think that the currently selected column and direction should have a red arrow, or some such visible marker. I find it confusing that the current sort merely lacks any visual confirmation.
2. A minor oversite, but the "Mark Topics as Read" icon appears in all of the legends, but should probably only appear on the legend of the main forum page, since that is the only place it is located. Maybe it would be helpful to also have this button placed on each individual forum page?
3. The "next" text between the arrows is confusing. I would drop it and just leave the arrows.
4. In multi-page posts, it would look a lot better if the page links above and below the posts lined up. It's kinda weird to have the top ones left aligned and the bottom ones centered
5. When posting, the "Options" box looks messed up. The text and the options boxes near them are really misaligned (I'm using Firebird, if that matters).
6. The topic review I am looking at right now only has your first post in it. Then, at the bottom (in black font over a dark blue background is the text "4 Next".
7. Just a small, personal preference, but the purple boxes in this layout would look much better in a gray, as the current coloring scheme seems to clash
8. I personally find a "By" field after "Last Post" to be very helpful to show who was the last person who posted, and have implemented it on my own site. But, that's just my opinion.
9. Also, after posting it would be nice if you were auto-redirected to the last page where your post is now located.

That's really all I can think of. This is turning out better and better each time you update it! Thanks!

Wow! This is all looking awesome! Great work Blaine!

I wonder if it would be appropriate to request a modification to the behavior of the front page block now, while you are working on the new release?

Would it be possible to have a configurable option to show recent posts from a specific forum that corosponds to a story topic? I think it would be similar to how we can set a static page to display only for a particular topic as a centerblock. It would be great to click on the "Security" topic on this site and have the forum block display the most recent posts only from the "Security" forum (if there was one).

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~Brian

Turias,

Thanks for the feedback - and glad I'm meeting your expectations.

There are many ways to implement the sort navigation and I'm not yet done playing with it. The hard part is done, now it's just some tweaking.

Most of the other items are pure template related and site admin's and designers can tweak these as they please. I'm not yet tweaking them myself. I had to change a lot of code to add these last enhancements and wanted to get some testing in.

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Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com

Thanks for the comments, I've got more ideas and keep wanting to try alternative ways to enhance the UI and features. I believe we are getting closer to a better product.

Regarding your enhancement request: Thats not a minor item and not really related to the centerblock. Relating a forum to a GL topic is not on my list currently. If you need that , you can contact me for a custom mod. I may be looking at doing this as part of a integrated suite offering but it won't be a general release item. It would require too many custom changes.

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Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com

I did not real all this. But if it has not been asked. I want to ask it.

On the mebers pic. Can you make the size take over geeklogs size also. And can you make the pic size limit non fixed. Say I set it to 70pix. and someone uplodes a 50pix. I don't want it all streched. lol

Also when you reply. Can it go to the last post. Not the first.

Almost dune. Can you put a mark read in the sub forum. And have it take you back to the main forum.

Last. Blaine you Rock! I wish I had your brain. lol

I am probally going to add a screen after posting that offers you a choice (via 2 links) so that you can go back to view your post (last page) or view the forum index. This will timeout after a few seconds and take you to the last page.

Regarding the avatar, I can look at adding some image mgmt calls to check image size. I'm concerned about adding additional overhead when displaying the posts. The better way is to not have to check the size at all and have the image size determined by GL when the avatar or user photo is uploaded.

Enable imagemagicK or netpbm so the image is resized automatically when a member uploads their image. Set the image size to the same size you want to see in the forum. Now, I could add logic that if you enter 0's in the forum settings for the avatar size -> then don't restrict or add any HTML size tags to the image as it's being displayed.

I'm not too sure about your last item - subforum's.

We have Main index - categories - forums - posts.

Cheers

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Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com

Blaine,
I have noticed that when searching from the main forum page, links have the highlight HTML code embedded in the URL.

If you perform a search on Calendar you will see what I mean.

Thanks for a fantastic plugin.

ok first off I just found a problum.
I hit reply and was going to comy some of your post to reply to. Will in the box it was on the 1st sowing the first post made. Not the last. Will I was thinking you mave set it up to start from the first post. So I went to the end of the post in the box to change the page number. It is showing the page number of the last page. I had to click the link to the first page to get to the last. lol

ok now to my reply.



Thats cool.



I realy think it just need to be left with GL. No reason to have 2 realy. Or maby if you want the forums to work on things that are not GL. Make it a choice in the Admin. So I think the 0 comand will be best over all.



in each forum. The reson is. Say like when you go to my site. I at times will have 8 or 9 people all posting at the same time. Just like chating. Well you lose track. But you don't want to mark the hole Categorie. Just that 1 forum so you can find your place. And sometimes you just see post that realy not something you care about. You can mark that forum and go to the next. And when you are dune with the next. You can see if someone put a post in the last forum you was in.

I've updated the code and themes here again for the forum to complete a few more items.

• Sort now shows a color arrow for selection
  
  
• When posting a reply, the preview now properly allows you to navigate - change pages to see history. It defaults in the preview to showing the lastpage
  
  
• After posting your message, it will default to going back to last page of the forum topic
  
  
• Added the option to return to the forum index after posting. Option presented after posting
  
  
• Cleaned up legend - now only shows information for appropriate icons
  
  
• Fixed formatting problem that only was showing up in the clean theme with the option boxes in the the create post form
  
  
• Found and fixed a few bugs with the handling of quotes when site has magic_quotes enabled
  

All: Please let me know if you see any other problems. Thanks again for the feedback.

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Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com