Suggestions welcome

[Orion Pobursky]

All,

If you have any suggestions or requests for topic groups, please don't hesitant to ask.

-Orion

[Philippe Hurbain]

Having a RSS feed for each subforum is a good thing, but could it be possible to have a single general one (or at least one for each main category - General/Organization/programs)?

[Willy Tschager]

Would it be possible to get the messages and its replies threaded in one page. Looks like the settings in the control center do not work.

w.

[Orion Pobursky]

I'm not sure if this functionality's built in but I'll look into this.

[Orion Pobursky]

My concern in allowing users to override the display settings is that threading may be broken. My main goal in looking for a new forum was the ability to have threaded conversations. I'll see if I can enable the selection of hybrid mode but not flat mode posting.

[Willy Tschager]

Also some formatting would help to better structure the different sections:

* Bigger font for General, Organisation, ...
* Bigger and bold font for Announcements, General discussion, ...
* A block with the latests post (header + a bit of content) as we are used to by Lugnet at the very top
* List of who is online visible once I'm logged in

w.

[Roland Melkert]

I was looking for this as-well, It's now in imdb style which 'sucks'. Also ldraw.org is not famous for it's speed so having to reload for each replay will not help that issue.

Otherwise it's a great thing to have a 'real' ldraw org forum.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Another question - is there a possibility to import the whole archive of Lugnet's CAD discussion? I see two benefits,
- prevent losing valuable knowledge in case of a Lugnet closure
- Single place easy searching within old and knew knowledge base.

[Roland Melkert]

Being a programmer/webdesigned I think it's possible, but it will take some work.

Possible ways I can think of at first glance:

'Leech the whole lugnet.com html version content of the CAD section and use some script to strip the raw content and place it in the database of this forum (using a special 'archive' user id or something.)

Same but instead of the html pages use the local storage db of a newsclient whom fetched/cached all messages of .cad

Ask the nice lugnet people of a mysql (or whatever they use) table dump and use that as input for a similar script.

No matter the method there may be some legal/copyright issues and so though.

[Philippe Hurbain]

> No matter the method there may be some
> legal/copyright issues and so though.
Indeed

[Larry Pieniazek]

Hi, another suggestion would be to look into unifying the userids... there are now three sets of them here, one for the main ldraw.org site (parts authoring and review, as well as administrative tasks, plus you need one there to vote), one for the wiki, and one for here.

Unification using Facebook or something similar might be convenient but even seeing if they can be shared across these sites would be nice.

[Orion Pobursky]

Not sure what you are asking for here Roland. This format is the same as Lugnet's in that it has the post you are reading up top and a message tree below. This is the essence of threaded posting. If the formatting can be better, I can work on that but I want to keep the threaded style.

Additionally, I'm hosting this on my own web space that is separate from the server that the main site is on. Is there still a slow down issue?

[Orion Pobursky]

I changed the font sizes. It is better or should I go larger?

I'll see what I can do for the second 2 requests.

[Orion Pobursky]

I think the copyright issues are a bit thorny. If Lugnet ever goes away, I'll try to snag an archive before that happens.

[Orion Pobursky]

I'm looking into this Larry. Right now I'm working on changing the main site CMS so this may take a bit. I wanted to get the forums up and running more.

[Larry Pieniazek]

There is another display style that LUGNET has, and which phpBB has as well, in which one can see the entire thread at once. LUGNET had a way to do this and show nesting, by drawing bars and indenting. Here's an example view

http://news.lugnet.com/cad/?n=17792&t=i&v=a

phpBB does not offer this nested view (which is nice) but does offer a linear view, the posts in the thread are in chronological order. It requires you to discern the threading yourself. Here's a LUGNET example of an analogous view (same thread)

http://news.lugnet.com/cad/?n=17792&t=f&v=a

Heavy users of phpBB tend to quote enough of the previous post so context is clear. A particular phpBB board I frequent a lot even automatically quotes the entire post, and gives you a direct link to that post at the top of the quote. You then remove what you don't want to quote (the way LUGNET enforced you to do).

Hope that helps

[Roland Melkert]

The format might be the same as lugnet, but imho it's easier to read when all posts contents are readable on the same page (flat?), like most forums.

The control center suggests it should be possible but none of the options make any difference.

I didn't realize you serving this forum on a different server, it's fast at the moment indeed. But I just wanted to point you to the additional traffic due to the many page reloads when only showing one message at a time.

[Orion Pobursky]

Ok. I relent. Displays are now user settable. If you post using the flat display, try to make an effort to not break threading.

[Willy Tschager]

Wheee! Looks much better now!

w.

[Willy Tschager]

Orion Pobursky Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I changed the font sizes. It is better or should
> I go larger?
>
> I'll see what I can do for the second 2 requests.

Hmm ... to be honest I cannot see any difference. The names appear bigger (for my taste a big too big) but the main categories look untouched. Since you are there how about removing the underlining from the links? You know the css trick for <a></a>.

w.

[Philippe Hurbain]

> Since
> you are there how about removing the underlining
> from the links?
I am not so fan about that, as it identifies links without question. There are so many webpages nowadays where links are barely visible...

[Jaco van der Molen]

I'd like to see an LPub section under LDraw Programs please.

[Orion Pobursky]

Done!

[Larry Pieniazek]

Willy Tschager Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Wheee! Looks much better now!

+1

THANKS Orion!

[Roland Melkert]

Thanks

[Willy Tschager]

Philo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am not so fan about that, as it identifies links
> without question. There are so many webpages
> nowadays where links are barely visible...

Well does the template allow to move this to my forum settings and leave it to me if I wanna see the underlining or not?

w.

[Willy Tschager]

Any chance for a setting which shows my real name only to people logged in, while the rest will be just see my nick?

w.

[Orion Pobursky]

Not without writing a mod. Not that I'm not willing to do this but I need to bring myself up to speed on exactly how.

[Orion Pobursky]

-- moved topic --

[Orion Pobursky]

I'm closing this thread. Please start a new topic in the Suggestions forum for each suggestion you have.