OT: Anyone else notice the forum software is really, really good?

LavaManLee
LavaManLee Posts: 1,436 Chairperson of the Boards
in MPQ General Discussion
OK. not specific to MPQ but does anyone else go to other forums and wish it was as good as this one?  And I don't mean the content.  I mean being able to jump to the new comments without scrolling through old content, instant highlight of new comments to threads I have commented on, general ease of use.

I go to many forums in a day and wish they all used the software that this forum uses.  That is all.  :-)
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Comments

  • Dormammu
    Dormammu Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    It's not bad. I liked the old forums better.
  • TetsujinOni
    TetsujinOni Posts: 181 Tile Toppler
    No, I have not noticed that this forum software is any good.

    </software engineer hat off>
  • granne
    granne Posts: 852 Critical Contributor
    Nope. Sorry. I still hate this forum software like burning.
  • LavaManLee
    LavaManLee Posts: 1,436 Chairperson of the Boards
    Hmmmmm.....not sure what forums you all see that are better but I like this forum.  Oh, well.
  • JackTenrec
    JackTenrec Posts: 808 Critical Contributor
    Seems pretty typical for forum software, but as MPQ forum software, it's second-class (bring back MPQ character emojis, please).
  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards
    Yes, it's awesome.
    I especially like the gigantic white borders to the left and right when on a PC.
    Such engineering masterpieces.
  • DeNappa
    DeNappa Posts: 1,397 Chairperson of the Boards
    Is this a sarcasm post? :D
  • JHawkInc
    JHawkInc Posts: 2,605 Chairperson of the Boards
    The forums are certainly... serviceable.
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2018
    Lots of wasted space on desktop,
    Minimalist to the point of missing essential features like signatures on mobile.
    Quotes are very hard to manage, especially when nested.  If you're good with html you can fix it, I doubt a high percentage of users are that good with html...
    Never got the old forums nice features like custom emotes and upvotes back.
    https://forums.d3go.com/discussions has broken bookmarks that @Brigby stated 3 months ago require a web developer to fix (https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/69876/forum-issue-stickied-topics-in-discussions#latest) still not fixed and a third has been added to the other two since then...

    Yeah it's great...
  • LavaManLee
    LavaManLee Posts: 1,436 Chairperson of the Boards
    Guess it must be the other forums I am on where I have to constantly scroll to find the latest posts.  This forum lets me know the number of new posts and lets me jump right there.  If others hate it, no worries.  Just my opinion.
  • Moon Roach
    Moon Roach Posts: 2,863 Chairperson of the Boards

    The loss of the Users list, reputation, all the resources we built up (wipes tear from eye at thought of all those PVP and season threads, and the season winners threads), it makes me sad.

    I think something else we lost in the move was registered users.  Sometimes I connect at 9 or 10 pm local (NZ) time, and it's me + 4 guests.

    Maybe @Brigby can give us some figures.  There's an old thread from June 2017 called "PSA: Forum Structure - How Would You Organize It?" where he claims "...over 10,000 members and over 100,000 visitors viewing and posting a week...".  I'd love to know how many active members still log in each week.

  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    Moon Roach said:

    -snip-

    Maybe Brigby can give us some figures.  There's an old thread from June 2017 called "PSA: Forum Structure - How Would You Organize It?" where he claims "...over 10,000 members and over 100,000 visitors viewing and posting a week...".  I'd love to know how many active members still log in each week.

    Just to give you an idea of how many people are active members/visitors to our forum, here are some of the numbers from 3/19 to 3/25:
    • # of Guest Visits: 129,972
    • # of Member Visits: 17,503 
    What I find rather interesting is that the # of Guests Visits hasn't dramatically increased, however the # of Member Visits has, which suggests to me that there are now either more people deciding to sign up for the forum, or existing members are more frequently visiting the forum than there were before!
  • Moon Roach
    Moon Roach Posts: 2,863 Chairperson of the Boards
    @Brigby - any figures on how many members visited during that week?  I connect a dozen or more times a day to check the announcements, just waiting for the glorious, nay, dazzling day when She is finally revealed.
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    edited March 2018
    Moon Roach said:
    Brigby - any figures on how many members visited during that week?  I connect a dozen or more times a day to check the announcements, just waiting for the glorious, nay, dazzling day when She is finally revealed.
    Looking at the analytics, it does in fact say that those are Unique Visits, which I take it to mean they have factored out individuals that log in multiple times a day.
  • Dayv
    Dayv Posts: 4,449 Chairperson of the Boards
    There are a few things the newer software does better than the previous forum, but I'm not convinced it's an improvement, overall.  The mobile site in particular is a travesty, which should really be a higher priority on any site in this "mobile first" era, but especially for a (primarily) mobile game.  The much smaller set of text formatting options is also disappointing.  Text colors, in particular, had some real value on the old site.

    There are some basic layout improvements that can still be done here (this has improved since day one, except for the mobile site), those aren't a function of the software itself so much as its current configuration.

    Really, there's no need for this to have a separate mobile site at all.  The main (desktop) site is already built with some basic responsive design aspects (note how the number of columns on the main page varies if you widen or narrow your browser window) -- those same design principles should be used to deliver a mobile-friendly layout to mobile devices based on their resolution.  Anything on the main site that doesn't work on a modern mobile browser should be considered broken and fixed to work on as many modern devices as possible.
  • Moon Roach
    Moon Roach Posts: 2,863 Chairperson of the Boards
    Brigby said:
    Moon Roach said:
    Brigby - any figures on how many members visited during that week?  I connect a dozen or more times a day to check the announcements, just waiting for the glorious, nay, dazzling day when She is finally revealed.
    Looking at the analytics, it does in fact say that those are Unique Visits, which I take it to mean they have factored out individuals that log in multiple times a day.


    Just spotted this response, thank you for the information.

    How is "unique" defined in this context?  If on Tuesday I connect from work (never happens, honest), on my tablet, and from home, each time automatically logged in as Moon Roach, is that 3 or 1?

  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2018
    One thing I like about this forum is that it saves a draft of my reply frequently. It saved me from retyping long sentences multiple times after hitting the wrong button on my mobile phone.
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2018
    HoundofShadow said:
    One thing I like about this forum is that it saves a draft of my reply frequently. It saved me from retyping long sentences multiple times after hitting the wrong button on my mobile phone.
    That makes one of us.  I would turn it off if I could.  I rarely use it as intended and far more likely run into the following:
    1.  I start to type something, re-read it and go 'you're being an tinykitty' and decide not to send it.  Later I want to reply to the same thread and have to clear it to type something new.
    2.  I primarily use Chrome.  It has the Microsoft style red squiggly line for misspelled words.  However on this forum 9 times out of 10 when I click it to have the spelling fixed the forum instead reloads the last auto save of the conversation (usually a few words ago and the wrong spelled word).  I've managed to change it and speed save before but it's a pain.  Normally I end up instead going to google, looking up the correct spelling, then coming back.  This happens 100 times more frequently than me wanting to actually use the save feature.... 

    If there was a way to disabled the save feature I'd do it in a heartbeat and never look back!

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