The new forum is.. Ugh!

Seriously? It’s near impossible to find anything as the organization makes very little sense. Resources are on the old forum? Where are they here? It’s f they are ALL here, I can’t find them. Items that I’ve posted over the past weeks aren’t here, or at the least, I can’t seem to find them. (Maybe it’s me :frowning:)

I don’t really understand the necessity and the urgency. Basically, you’ve dumped this on us. Some of us were “asked” for input re Discourse software, but I’m not sure the powers that be listened at all.

My suggestion would be to roll it back to what we had. It was working except for last November’s debacle and most of us have updated and reposted the resources anyway.

Thanks a lot

Phil

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^^^^^ Yes, this. ^^^^^

Will the new forum be tweaked and pulled into shape over the next few days, or is this it?

Yup, pretty different from any other forum I frequently visit.
Guess I’ll get use to it or not… :anguished:

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Its not the end of the world, or is it?
Nope its just a new forum.
I’m sure we will get use to it and we all see it will be, well, as right as rain :slight_smile: HAHA

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No, not the end of the world, just the usual, incomplete stuff I’ve learned to expect. Why the big rush? Couldn’t SS have rolled out something that was at least 98% complete? Like I says… where is everything, if it IS here, I can’t find it. If it IS here, how us it organized.

And PLEASE users… don’t jump all over the moderator. It’s not his fault.

Hello, Phil!

The existing resources aren’t here; they’re still available at the “archive” forum. The private messages aren’t here either. We couldn’t port them over because of issues with the software version.

We tried making the gap clear in the announcements - specially in the one located in the old forum.

I’m sorry for the confusion. The old forum’s software is not in a good state - it’s a sisyphean task to keep it secured, troubleshooting was getting harder all the time, and moving out of it - be it to update or to move away - was becoming harder by the day. I’m glad you didn’t have any issues with the old forum - except the November incident (November Rains? No?)

There were many rough spots with the old forum, though. The drop that spilled the glass in terms of maintenance was a bug where e-mails would not be sent; weeks were spent trying to fix it, yet we realized that the maintenance burden was only going to get worse with time.

Having no one able to receive email notifications, and a Damocles’ sword dangling above us in terms of there coming a day where we wouldn’t be able to keep the forum secure, or even functioning, is was caused the rush.

Looking back I think this could’ve been handled with more finesse, so I do regret that and apologize for all the inconveniences.

Discourse was chosen for a few reasons - a very important one is that it’s an open source project, which means that we’ll have a better chance to keep it secured and updated.

We’re in this for the long haul, and making the move was a tough choice with positive ramifications that may mostly remain invisible: the sad fate of averting a bad outcome is that stuff “just working” is an invisible (albeit valuable) state of things.

Please accept our apologies - for the confusions created by this move, for the inconveniences this may be causing.

-Irving.

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This is the functionality of the forum. It is different than most forum software existing out there. I believe the change is for the better in the long run.

In the meantime, if there’s anything I could help you with, please reach out. You can click my avatar and choose “message” from the top right corner of my profile to send a PM.

I would suggest that a good place to start is to make absolutely 100% clear what IS available and what is NOT available. I’m already getting emails re my resources.
Next… more importantly… a complete, easy to read, operating manual. Even experienced users are getting baffled by this forum. VERY difficult to understand how the comments are sorted? Example… if by date, where are the more recent posts? Is stuff missing?
Again, I think you might consider pulling back from this until you have everything sorted out. This is reminding me of the issues with BBM. It’s still very buggy. So is the “new” forum. Sorry to be a “downer” but it is very frustrating.

Phil

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Like most things, newness takes a bit to get use to. Give it a chance.

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Sorry…not a matter of getting use to it. I’ve been in IT , both teaching and development for 35 years. I know when something isn’t particularly user friendly.

We will be tweaking it - we wanted to launch sooner rather than later so as to not lose any posts made over the weekend.

EDIT: I’m working on a quick guide to the new forum as well as a quick run down on our road map for the forum and user created resources - stay tuned, it’ll be up by end of day tomorrow.

Did you take the comments in this topic: http://forum.mybeatbuddy.com/index.php?threads/what-is-your-opinions-on-switching-the-forum-to-discourse.9049/ in consideration for the switch to discourse?

This forum has a completely different feel. This will have an impact on the number of active members and activity.
I don’t think putting up a quick guide and a road map will do much help. This community is a group of people that want easy information and files for their Beatbuddy. I doubt that they are going to put much effort in learning different forum software.

Usability is important. Switch to forum software that has the same feel, or stick to the old software.

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We knew the different feel of the forum would require a little adjustment, but ultimately we think that this new forum will be easier to use.

To everyone in this thread - I changed the homepage design a bit - is this better for y’all?

You did?
(Filler to reach 20 characters so I can post my reply…)

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We did; yet it seems it wasn’t the change you wanted to see :slight_smile:

It would be nice to know in what direction you’d like to see the look & feel going, or what specific issues the current look & feel is causing you, so that we’re able to address it.

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Are there any other themes/skins other than ‘light’ or ‘dark’. Small thing, but part of what I don’t care for is the lack of a definitive ‘box’ around posts. Perhaps a theme or skin with a different color scheme would contrast each post better.
Note… I tried the dark theme, but the main header logo ‘Singular Sound’ disappeared into the darkness which clicking on appears to be the only means to go to the main categories from within a thread.

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Thanks a ton for the feedback!

Custom themes are one of the reasons we moved to Discourse, so we can definitely make that a reality. In just a quick search I found a theme that already accomplishes this effect which we can use as a base and further tweak to our liking, What do you think?

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Yup, that would be an improvement.!!

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Yes that looks better

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