Had intended to post this at the two month mark, actually ^_^;

Anyway, after using the new STC forums for a few months now, are there any major issues you have with the new system, or features you think should be added?  I know some of you had some issues before but I wanted to allow some time for everyone to try things the way they are for a while before deciding on any new alterations.  Plus I wanted a break!

We have the Golden Week holiday coming up here in Japan, during which I hope to spend some time on the site, so if you have any lingering issues or suggestions speak up!

I think it's great!  I can't think of anything that really needs to be added.

The only thing I find myself wishing for on occasion is a direct link to the forum index on the right-hand side of the page (under the "Forums" listing).  That's not even a terribly major concern.  Also, I seem to recall recently seeing someone complaining that they couldn't put images in their posts.  To that I say PLEASE do NOT add that ability.  The text-only nature of these boards is something I rather like.  I shudder at the thought of nearly every other forum out there that's just filled with gigantic pictures and signatures and things I don't want to see when I'm looking at the forums from work. 

Anyway, great job on the new forums.  I'm quite happy with them and glad that you're keeping with it after all these years. 

I have to agree with Qui Gon, here. Part of what made the old STC forums so great was its simplicity, and that aspect has made the transition from then to now wonderfully. I still prefer the old forums to anything, but never let it be said that these ones haven't been growing on me!

The only thing I'd like to see at this point is a way to prevent new posts/topics you haven't clicked on from being automatically marked as read after a certain period of inactivity.  For example, if there's, say, 20 topics with new posts and I go to the first one and start writing a reply, if I take more than a few minutes to write the reply, it will mark all of the other topics that I haven't read yet as read and then I have to go back manually and check the posting times to figure out what I need to read.  To combat this, I hit "Preview" every couple minutes when writing a post, but it'd be nice if I didn't have to do that.

:-)

Yes.

YES.

Way to go, Joe. I agree with this post entirely. I HATE those forums that have huge sigs and pictures all over the place. I feel like I'm reading OPM every time I click on over to GFF for one reason or another; there are bright pictures everywhere, shit flashing all over the place, and there's about a seven words per picture ratio. Some of those sigs are big enough for me to use as my wallpaper at 1024 x 768.

But yeah, the forums are just dandy the way they are, save for a general "Index" or "Home" section in the right frame. I'm a big fan of simple colors, and the black on white works surprisingly well. Three cheers for simplicity.

That would be an easy but useful change, indeed. Also, I'd like to see a "New posts" link at the top of the page too; less scrolling that way.

Seconded.

The only thing I can think of is adding a notice to the post form telling the poster that he can use the BBCode (color=white) (replace with square brackets) to hide spoiler texts. I find it odd to still keep seeing the old schoole  "SPOILER!!! (insert a whole bunch of line breaks and then the spoiler in clear text)" notice this regularly.

I would say axe the retailers forum and maybe just make a comprehensive stickied post for the major retailers in the marketplace forum. Realistically, that's all the ten or so posts in the "retailers" forum are anyway.

And do consider re-adding the polls forum. Now that we can bump threads, it would be more interesting. This was always an STC standby I miss.

I agree with this. And PLEASE keep pictures OUT of the forum, as a couple others have said.

Then of course is still that weird problem of people's names not showing up that I was supposed to have sent you a screenshot of.... ^_^;;;

I don't think anything beats the old forum, but hey, I'm quite happy with this one. 

cheers,

-avatar!

ps How many registered users do we have?

278 (including admins and banned people) according to the users list linked below the topic header. That's quite some lurkers watching us.

It is very good aside from the major downside of not releasing tranquilizers into my system whenever I am about to post.

Oops, had meant to add that a long time ago

If I ever allow images in posts it will be limited to moderators only, and even that is somewhat unlikely.

Yeah that is a completely reasonable request.  Unfortunately as that functionality is not included in the base forum script whatsoever it would take some doing on my part, which would be better spent on other aspects of the site.  Good suggestion though, will keep it in mind.

Until there's a fix in the forum itself, you might try opening the various topics you want to read and reply to from the "New Posts" page into separate tabs or windows.  That way as long as you don't refresh the New Posts page none of the new posts will disappear.

I suppose that's doable but I usually click the New Posts link from the forum index page, and it's short enough that I only need to page down once at most (depending on the PC I'm using) to get to it.  If some other people request it will look into it though.

Actually one change I very much do hope to make is to add a "spoiler" tag to the BBCode that handles that automatically, so that if I ever change the bg color the text will still be transparent.  Thanks for the reminder

That is a valid point, but putting all the retailer discussion in a single topic would get a bit unwieldy I think.  And having separate stickied topics for each retailer in the Marketplace forum would bump all the other posts pretty far down.  If the Retailers forum doesn't grow much over the next few months might follow your suggestion though.

Hmm I prefer having polls in the various forums of appropriate topic myself.  Thought I might eventually implement a separate icon for posts with polls and leave it at that.  But if anyone else really misses having a separate polls forum speak up!

Yeah I guess that didn't magically disappear, did it.  Was hoping your employer may have moved along with the times and changed to a different browser than Mac IE.  No luck?

On my to-do list

Thanks for the suggestions thus far.  Keep 'em coming!

I don't see anything wrong at ALL with having the retailers forum be so postless. Since most of the other forums ARE active....well...

-Joshua

I realize you already addressed this Adam, but I wanted to add that this is exactly what I was talking about before - *I* want to be able to tell a forum whether I've read the thread or not. I would still like the "mark all forums read" link back.

Edit: Otherwise everything looks great, heh.

Welllllll......it has been hinted that we will be upgrading OS's. ^_~ But anyway, the inability to see member names actually isn't that big of a problem for me...It's an annoyance, but not a make-or-break situation.

It'd be great if members had the option of receiving notification via e-mail each time someone replies to a topic of particular interest to them.  For example, this option is made available in the forums at www.soundtrackcollector.com (mainly a film score fanbase and database), and although their forums are quite inferior to this one in most respects, that is a really cool feature.  As the author of a topic, you automatically receive an e-mail every time someone replies to your topic, and there is a link at the top of each topic page where any member (that is logged in) can click to receive an e-mail every time another member posts a message to that thread.  The e-mail sent contains the newly posted thread message as well as a direct link to that topic page if you wish to post a reply.

I'm too lazy to read through the whole thread, but I think a post count would be really nice.  It could have an RPG theme... each post is like an experience point and as we keep on keepin' on we eventually "level up".

Well, don't mind me, just runnin' off at the mouth... 

I think the post counts are better left off because it encourages people to post a lot just to raise their count/rank/title.  If you want to know post counts, you can look them up under the users menu.