EDIT: the migration is now complete. Welcome to the new Discourse forums!
I just wanted to announce that we are soon upgrading the forums to the Discourse software, so don’t freak out if the forums suddenly look very different. All the existing posts and links will still work, and your account will still be intact.
Discourse provides a more modern interface than phpbb, and is also accessible on mobile. It will hopefully also help us better manage incoming spam. It has become quite a popular system for discussion boards in recent years.
You will be able to log into your account using your existing phpbb password, but you can also choose to log in via a GitHub or Google account, provided that the e-mail address matches.
Well, this is fancy! It will take a little getting used to, I think, but it looks decent enough overall.
One thing that I don’t like is that the top-level forum categories no longer show the time and date of the last post, which I found convenient for checking without logging in–but that’s fairly minor.
Otherwise, I think that it’s mainly going to be a matter of figuring out where everything is now, which is proving straightforward thus far.
It looks good, is functional, we’ll see how good it is when it comes to spambots. Thing are different, but not bad. The only downside I see so far is the clipped nose on my shark-in-a-hat avatar …and look at all them emoji
@Thaumaturge hmm, you’re right, that does not seem to be a thing. However, you can set that you are “Tracking” each category, which will make it show the number of unread posts since your last visit. You can also opt to set the Latest page as your default, which you can set to show the threads with most recent activity at the top including how long ago the last activity was.
I’m enjoying the new forums so far. I especially like the fact that the new forums are much more flexible at setting up browser/e-mail notifications, and that it’s usable on my phone.
Also, we finally have syntax highlighted code blocks! To use it, write your code like:
```python
# Code goes here
base.run()
```
The administrative tools for managing spam are also much better. For example, spammers can be temporarily silenced either when they use specific keywords, or when a certain number of their posts are flagged by users. And it takes only a single click to delete and ban a user if they have been flagged.
Nice new forums! Especially being able to choose a dark theme is a plus .
Some of the code formatting has become messed up though, seemingly depending on the placement of the original ``
`` tags relative to the code.
This has happened to my own code and I wanted to fix some of it, but I can’t edit any of my posts (neither replies nor original posts). However I trust this will just be a temporary problem, right @rdb ?
EDIT:
Yes indeed, looks like I can edit new posts just fine . I do hope I’ll be able to edit old posts as well, eventually.
I’ve just removed the time limit for the ability to edit old posts. It was previously set to 2 months.
The abilities of users increase as their standing in the community (via “trust level”) increases. This is a function of number of likes given and received, helpful flags, activity, etc. The higher the trust level, the more the users are able to do; at one point they become able to edit other people’s posts (to fix formatting and spelling issues) as well.
Fair enough. Those features do look useful, thank you. I also see that, when logged in at least, new threads seem to be highlighted, and that the point of one’s last visit seems to be marked, which is neat!
These don’t seem to help much with browsing without logging in, but I suppose that it just calls for logging in every so often if I want to look at recent activity.
It is now possible for a topic poster to mark a post as “accepted answer”, which will put a checkbox before the topic title in the overview to indicate that the thread is solved, as well as highlighting the solution so that it can be easily found by others. This applies only to threads within the Scripting Issues, C++ coding, Compiling or Editing the Source, Pipeline and Installation boards.
Apologies for the brief downtime earlier, the forums were being upgraded.
However, I took the opportunity to install the math plug-in, so you can now put in math expressions by enclosing LaTeX inside $ symbols (inline) or $$ (block). Useful for formulae and other types of math notation, for example:
\begin{bmatrix}
a & b \\
c & d
\end{bmatrix}
=
\begin{bmatrix}
8 & 1 \\
7 & 6
\end{bmatrix}
After some time of using the new fora I have two issues:
Some of the code posted is hard to read when the lines are too long, and it’s also hard to copy the whole script if it’s long. I’d like to see a ‘open in a new window(tab)’ option for scripts and a ‘copy all’ button.
The other problem is on mobile - my on-screen keyboard hides the text I’m typing in, or if the reply box is stretched I can’t see the posts I’m replying to, because the box is glued to the bottom of the page - to be honest I’ve no idea what layout would work, I suppose I can type in portrait mode.
.
?
. I do hope I’ll be able to edit old posts as well, eventually.