Forum Upgrade

[old squirmydad]

Jun 6, 2013 7:58:33 GMT -9 aaron said:

I had to do the same stuff to my form when it was converted so if you need help editing photos or what have you let me know I'm pretty good at it now LOL

Thanks, I appreciate it.
I'm having trouble posting images....the old version "[/img]" still works for the older image insertions, trying to insert an image now opens a little dialogue, and then my images aren't showing up. I'll keep poking at it today.

My recommendation for the future is that members upload files and images to an off-site service (Flickr, Dropbox, Photostream) and link back to them in a post. That should help a bit with exceeding the attachment limit.

[kiladecus]

Well, I have read through all of this again (including my own comments).

I see now that the "Releases" boards are gone, now, too. I guess that isn't a big deal, because as my pal Mesper, pointed out, I was posting my new releases in the Industry News and announcements AND the Grey Matter Games releases section... that is not only redundant, but it duplicates itself and is just the same thing over and over...

I hope that the powers that be realize that we DO appreciate this site. We are just having a hard time dealing with the new changes. I personally feel that if the kobolds with floydski's wizard were on the banner, we might feel a lot better. It is like going to McDonald's and not seeing the arches (maybe it's just me). If you can get that fixed, Squirmydad, I would sleep better at night.

Ok, once again, I am not saying much of anything here... except once again, thanks guys for offering this FREE forum. YES, it is different. YES, we need to get used to it. This is a MUCH better option than the alternative.

I am kiladecus, and I approve of this message. Thank you for your attention.

[old squirmydad]

Jun 6, 2013 11:20:55 GMT -9 kiladecus said:

I see now that the "Releases" boards are gone, now, too. I guess that isn't a big deal, because as my pal Mesper, pointed out, I was posting my new releases in the Industry News and announcements AND the Grey Matter Games releases section... that is not only redundant, but it duplicates itself and is just the same thing over and over...

They're not really gone, they've become "sub-boards". Click on the kiladecus's PROJECTS board and look above it. You should see this;

[old squirmydad]

Okay, it should look cheerier now, hit refresh if it doesn't. Now taking requests for colors.

BBcode in signatures enabled, Quick Reply box enabled, added a plugin for "Add image to post", which seems to work better than the default "Insert image" button.

I'll tackle attachments tomorrow. They haven't gone anywhere, they're just disabled. That'll be fixed tomorrow.

[spaceranger42]

Honestly, having that banner image back makes a big difference in the feel of the board

[Parduz]

Thanks a lot, Squirmydad! (color apart )


About me, i like a lot dark background and calm colors for the text (being a programmer loosing my sight on screens, i just set any program/window/background RGB(0,0,24) and text green). But i know that i'm in the minority

I dunno what you can do but, in lieu of that "new" button, could we have an "unread messages"? or a button set to search the post of the day?

Thanks anyway

- edit -
Well, i don't know how i reached it, anyway i've bookmarked this link:
cardboard-warriors.proboards.com/threads/recent
which seems to be what we needed

[Dave]

So mauve won out over chartreuse?

I vote that you change it weekly, just to keep us on our toes.

[old squirmydad]

Jun 6, 2013 15:06:42 GMT -9 Dave said:

So mauve won out over chartreuse?

I vote that you change it weekly, just to keep us on our toes.

I couldn't remember what the old color was, I'm color blind, I thought this was blue.
If you give me a hex number I can use that to change it.

[cowboyleland]

Yeah for colour! I feel so much better. Thanks Squirmydad, you rock!
Edit: Did I just loose my avatar?
Re-edit: nope, it is here now

[emergencyoverride]

Awesome work Squirmydad! Already feeling much more like home!!

[Vermin King]

Bless you and yours to a thousand generations. Looking so much better.

Thanks

[Parduz]

I have this tool bookmarked: colorschemedesigner.com/
I dunno what we (well, what Squirmydad) can change and what not, but it's a nice tool to try some color sets.

[wyvern]

Rhannon: Sorry, I do seem to have misinterpreted some of what you wrote. Your English seems perfectly fine to me! I guess it's down to me trying to read and assimilate too much before replying "on the fly".

Squirmydad: Yes, yes to everyone's postive remarks here about your efforts to get the Forum closer to normal operations!

The loss of storage capacity is unhelpful, and it does indeed seem expensive to go for the next option up.

Nice to know ProBoards had mentioned in advance they were going to change things. Pity they didn't bother doing so where anyone using the CWF would notice it - otherwise why would we have had so many disgruntled postings here?

Couple of other things. When I use the "Reply" facility, I don't seem to be able to quote directly from previous messages anymore without hopping back to the original topic on the Forum. Thought that might just have been a couple of days ago, but it's still the same today. If I hit the "Add Quote" button on the "Reply" page, it just adds the HTML "quote" codes, and doesn't let me insert what I wanted to.

Also, the "Thread Summary" for multi-page topics - as this one now is - only seems to cover postings from the page you're on, as all the earlier postings aren't shown here while I'm typing this. Irritating, especially when, like me, you can't remember who said what and when...

And Yay! Welcome back Kobolds!

[hackbarth]

I chose to wait a little before giving my cents, as it wasn't clear in the change was from our guys or that whole pro-boards update.

Now I'm happier that something like the old look and feel are back. I'm not a great fan of the old blue colors, but that gray board was cold! Now we're back to something more familiar, I even like this light purple thing. (No, I don't know what "mauve" is, or "lavender". I was told that the male of our species only sees 16 different colors and I believe it)

[Rhannon]

Thank you very much, Eric. It's much better now.

wyvern: don't worry, wyvern. I know that often my "spaghetti" english creates problems in understanding. But you are all good guys ... Thanks. ;-)

I'm a compulsive collector, so no loss is acceptable. :-D

[bravesirkevin]

Jun 7, 2013 5:47:54 GMT -9 hackbarth said:

(No, I don't know what "mauve" is, or "lavender". I was told that the male of our species only sees 16 different colors and I believe it)

Quick sidetrack: Women do see a greater variety of colours as a result of having twice as many red receptors on their retinas. This is unrelated to the amount of colours we can identify and distinguish between however. Our brain compartmentalises different colours according to their names, rather than what they look like so if we can name a colour, we can tell it apart from other similar colours and recall it as being distinct. In a particularly extreme example, if your language had no word for the colour "orange" and you called it red or yellow depending on which side of the spectrum it was on, and you were asked to remember what colour a traffic cone is and pick that colour from a swatch book, you'd likely pick a red swatch rather than an orange one. Women, who stereotypically take an interest in decorating and in fashion tend to have an extensive list of names for colours so they can tell the difference between subtle shades of purples and blues that men would stereotypically just think of as generic purple or blue. I for one, tend to think of colours primarily as they are named on the old GW paint bottles, and secondarily by the common names used on tubes of artist's paint, and at a stretch by the CMYK combination that would give that particular shade, so I can perceive and recall literally thousands of unique colours. The CW theme is clearly a shade of Warlock Purple!

[old squirmydad]

Attachments are back on line due to a generous donation of funds from Mayhem in Paper.
Okay, I only bought the Copper (500MB) plan, so it's a bit of a band-aid as we are at 444MB in used storage space right now. I'll be managing attachments for a while to convert huge photo attachments into smaller photo links to help conserve storage space for actual downloadable items.

Wyvern: I'll try to see why your forum experience is poor but I'm not seeing any of those issues either in my Firefox or my Chrome browsers. What browser are you using?

[oldschooldm]

Jun 7, 2013 8:26:17 GMT -9 old squirmydad said:

Attachments are back on line due to a generous donation of funds from Mayhem in Paper.

Thank you Mayhem in Paper - we all know who you are! :-)

[Deleted]

Jun 7, 2013 5:47:54 GMT -9 hackbarth said:

I was told that the male of our species only sees 16 different colors and I believe it)

I knew it - Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarotti, Modigliani, Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Cezanne, Picasso, etc. - just a bunch of MUTANTS!!!


*OK just joking;

[Deleted]

Jun 7, 2013 8:26:17 GMT -9 old squirmydad said:

Attachments are back on line due to a generous donation of funds from Mayhem in Paper.
Okay, I only bought the Copper (500MB) plan, so it's a bit of a band-aid as we are at 444MB in used storage space right now. I'll be managing attachments for a while to convert huge photo attachments into smaller photo links to help conserve storage space for actual downloadable items
...

Just an idea...

Perhaps publishers (commercial content providers) should somehow support CWF in case if they are using attachements (note: attachements - not linking images located on their own websites or third-party storage providers) ?

This obviously shouldn't count forum's free content (Hoard, individual thread/post, member-to-member suggestions etc.)


EDIT:
------
New Edit Post didn't work for me... after 2nd Preview I was unable to write/edit the post so only option was to send/publish it...
I'm missing spell checker but being not able to preview, change/correct and preview again and only then finish the post is much worse.

[old squirmydad]

Hmm, not sure where the spellcheck function is, I'll go look for it.
I find the site has trouble loading for me at times, not sure why, could just be teething. I'm going to create a basic forum account to go around and try to break things as a new user, it may be that my admin status is preventing me from seeing some of the difficulties that you lot are encountering.

[ChuckConroy]

Hmm, as a new user (not really) I'm not having difficulties editing posts repeatedly, I'm able to quote just fine (it's the big button next to the thumb), and I get a red underline when I misssspealll (misspell) something. Not sure why you are having difficulties...I'll keep trying though.

[Parduz]

Jun 7, 2013 13:18:29 GMT -9 mesper said:

Jun 7, 2013 5:47:54 GMT -9 hackbarth said:

I was told that the male of our species only sees 16 different colors and I believe it)

I knew it - Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarotti, Modigliani, Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Cezanne, Picasso, etc. - just a bunch of MUTANTS!!!


*OK just joking;

Well, i won't say that Picasso saw the world as i see it

[cowboyleland]

First off, the suggestion that da Vinci, Van Gogh et al were mutants is laughable, obviously they were aliens.

Secondly, besides watching out for attachment sizes, could there be a donate button so members could chip in a few bucks once a year to keep everything running smoothly? We could even have "membership drives" just like PBS.

[wyvern]

Jun 7, 2013 8:26:17 GMT -9 old squirmydad said:

Wyvern: I'll try to see why your forum experience is poor but I'm not seeing any of those issues either in my Firefox or my Chrome browsers. What browser are you using?

Internet Explorer; no idea what version, but something fairly recent (it doesn't like to tell me nowadays), as I don't seem to have these problems elsewhere (this assumes it's a browser thing only, of course!).

I started this message simply using the "Quote" button on your message, Squirmy. It shunted me off to what looks like the full "Reply" page, where, as before, there aren't any "Quote" buttons on any previous postings - plus as yesterday, it only shows the postings from Page 2 of this topic.

And now we run into a related problem, because I wanted to quote from another message of yours, so had to return to the topic to collect it. On trying to return to the "Reply" page though, I've lost everything I'd already typed, including the quote from your earlier message! However, as I'd already found this little "delight" a few days ago, I'd copied & pasted it all into a Notepad file before doing that... Didn't somebody once say computers were intended to make life easier?

Maybe next time I should experiment with the "Quick Reply", as that's on the topic page. But perhaps by then, hitting things with your HTML wrench repeatedly will have solved all

Jun 7, 2013 13:55:32 GMT -9 old squirmydad said:

I find the site has trouble loading for me at times, not sure why, could just be teething.

I've found it can be slow to load, and occasionally seems to do a "double-take", i.e. it seems to have loaded the page, but then does it again before you can scroll down - and that applies to the homepage or individual topics. However, I found the "old" CWF could be slow to load too, so that doesn't seem much different to me. You might think though that would have been one of the issues addressed by a genuine "upgrade".

Jun 7, 2013 18:21:52 GMT -9 cowboyleland said:

...could there be a donate button so members could chip in a few bucks once a year to keep everything running smoothly? We could even have "membership drives" just like PBS.

OK, so this suggestion is just for voluntary contributions, which is fine. However, if I'm going to be asked to pay for something, then I expect to get a say in what that service will be. Right now, ProBoards seems to be pretty good at creating unwanted problems (AmBoards? VeryAmBoards?). I've seen no strong evidence they've improved anything significant by this "upgrade" for me as a Forum user, so I'm unimpressed about contributing cash to their cause. Everything that's been done to make things better has come from Squirmydad, applying himself rigorously to solving problems that shouldn't exist. Supporting the continued existence of the CWF is a definite yes; that doesn't mean it has to be with ProBoards, if it means paying for it with this kind of poor service.

Rhannon: From my experience of trawling through the Forum, as a relative newcomer, your postings regularly stand out as being among the most useful and informative, and you seem to find free paper mini material on the Web few others have in places; keep up the good work!

[aaron]

Jun 7, 2013 18:21:52 GMT -9 cowboyleland said:

First off, the suggestion that da Vinci, Van Gogh et al were mutants is laughable, obviously they were aliens.

Secondly, besides watching out for attachment sizes, could there be a donate button so members could chip in a few bucks once a year to keep everything running smoothly? We could even have "membership drives" just like PBS.

or we could make it like deviant art where if you want all the good toys you have to get a premium membership. like 30$ once a year or something like that. this would give the forum enough money to have all the stuff we need.

[Parduz]

mh.... i feel my spine cold when i see the advent of donation/pay per content buttons.
This is not 'cause the idea behind it, but 'cause what i've seen happening after that.
Nothing stop a user from buying 10 copies of the same set if he want to support the forum. The problem is that he can't know if the money goes to the forum fund or to the owner pocket.
(I'M NOT SAYING THAT THERE IS ANY REASON TO HAVE THAT DOUBT, AS I'M NOT SAYING THAT IT IS NORMAL TO HAVE IT, BUT JUST THAT SOMEONE COULD THINK THAT WAY AND COMPLAIN LATER IF FORUM FUNDS BECOMES A PROBLEM)
So, if the opinion from a burned man about the fire have any value, i'd let the owners and the admins do what they think is right.

Guys, i hope you get what i mean in the right way, because i'm more scared by this comment than if it was about religion, politics, weapon regulation or naked miniatures.

[aaron]

wait what's wrong with Politically religious naked minis holding guns? those are my favorite kind.

really though I don't see the problem with the money going to the owners pocket if there is superfluous. after all they create , edit and mod the forums so a little compensation shouldn't be a bad thing.
I don't think it will get out of control with this group? do you?

[cowboyleland]

My suggestion comes from the fact that Squirmydad/Mayhem in Paper just paid $35.00 to get us a copper membership and therefore our attachments back but we are already at 90% of our limit. I don't know what the next step up is, but we have more than 1700 members. Only a small percentage of us would have to give a dollar to afford Platinum or whatever and we could continue to enjoy the forum as we always have. I don't want to reward pro-boards for this poorly implemented "upgrade" but we have been using their services for years without paying anything and I don't want Squirmydad to shoulder more financial costs as well as donating his administrative time.

I suggest a donation rather than a membership fee to avoid excluding anyone who does not have a credit card or who just doesn't feel they have the money. It is true there is no way to know that Squirmydad won't spend some of the money we send him on beer, but after paying out of his own pocket as well as putting in the work to keep this forum running I would be happy to buy him a pint and since he now has a "history" of paying the fees for this forum I figure it is a pretty good bet he would do it again if we could figure out a way to get him the money.

I'm thinking of it as crowd sourcing for forum expenses.

[Rhannon]

I am in complete agreement with "aaron" and "cowboy". There is no problem if there will be some extra buks. For the owners, for the forum for the admins.

But I would like to emphasize a point. Eric isn't the forum owner. It is an admin. A nice guy who has only obligations and who spends his time to manage the forum and all forum's problems. Owner is Sanity Studios ( other two really good guys ).

Many forums and websites have a "donate" button to pay for operating costs. ( eg www.seven-wonders.co.uk/paperfriends.html )

Others ask for producers' voluntary donations ( eg bennosfiguresforum.com/ )

...

I don't use it in my forum, but because my world's psychotic vision leads me to believe that there aren't in the natural world "free" and "democracy". So I can handle an endless "italian" discussion  with a permanent ban, and with no regrets.

But "donate" is a very good system, imho.