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Topic: Migrated to a new forum system (Read 77978 times) previous topic - next topic
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Reply #25
Better post separation would be nice. Also, the yellow member rank dots clash with the overall bluish color scheme.
Other than that, I'd prefer for the layout to scale to the edges of the screen instead of having a max width. Wastes precious space for nothing, essentially.

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Reply #26
I'd prefer for the layout to scale to the edges of the screen instead of having a max width. Wastes precious space for nothing, essentially.

I was in the same impression; though wondering whether it had anything to do with the mobile compatibility thingy.

Other than that, it is shaping up to be a nice HA 2.0.
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução

Trying a little something something

Reply #27
To Kode54:  Thanks for the very thorough answer about why the forum technical stuff is being changed.  I didn't realise all that work was happening behind the scenes.
Be a false negative of yourself!

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Reply #28
Blue header sections and non-white post backgrounds feeling more HA, nice changes

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Reply #29
The new forum is also quite functional, responsive, and also works on mobile devices. I could even integrate Tapatalk support, if it pleases a handful of users.


Tapatalk support would be a welcome addition.

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Reply #30
TOS and Wiki links need to be at the top of every page.

Apparently no longer an option: topic descriptions (subtitles)? Icons indicating which topics are "hot"?



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Reply #31
It's looking a lot better now!  Keep up the good work. 

There's a lot of empty space at the top and bottom of each forum entry.  Is there a way to reduce the font size of just the empty space so more topics fit on the page/screen ?
Be a false negative of yourself!

Trying a little something something

Reply #32
I'd prefer for the layout to scale to the edges of the screen instead of having a max width. Wastes precious space for nothing, essentially.

I was in the same impression; though wondering whether it had anything to do with the mobile compatibility thingy.

Other than that, it is shaping up to be a nice HA 2.0.

It is apparently easier to read if you don't have to scan horizontally an awful lot for each line of text. Then again, I have gotten used to reading 5 mile wide paragraphs on my 2560x1440 HiDPI display. I have disabled the max 90em width attribute.

The new forum is also quite functional, responsive, and also works on mobile devices. I could even integrate Tapatalk support, if it pleases a handful of users.


Tapatalk support would be a welcome addition.

I have a Tapatalk implementer's account, I'll see if there's a package for ElkArte.

TOS and Wiki links need to be at the top of every page.

Apparently no longer an option: topic descriptions (subtitles)? Icons indicating which topics are "hot"?

TOS I can do, and I'll have to fix the TOS again next time I import. (Which I'll bother doing again once Open Importer has achieved IPS 2.x capability.)

As for wiki, which one? The Hydrogen Audio Wiki, I presume, so I'll just link that there, too.

It's looking a lot better now!  Keep up the good work. 

There's a lot of empty space at the top and bottom of each forum entry.  Is there a way to reduce the font size of just the empty space so more topics fit on the page/screen ?

Forums list, or topics list? I can reduce or even remove the padding on the forums list, if it pleases you. Thankfully, I won't need to make the theme tweaks again if I re-import.

Trying a little something something

Reply #33
What I'd want after a quick look and not reading the whole thread yet, is a bit smaller font, or possibility to change its size.
Also there seems to be more screenspace wasted (too much padding).
I'd also like to have as much of the color scheme migrated as possible.
It's hard for me to pinpoint what exactly is wrong, but current HA design seems more elegant/tight/tidy/professional, yet. An amount of work needed for migration must be appreciated of course.

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Reply #34
What I'd want after a quick look and not reading the whole thread yet, is a bit smaller font, or possibility to change its size.
Also there seems to be more screenspace wasted (too much padding).
I'd also like to have as much of the color scheme migrated as possible.
It's hard for me to pinpoint what exactly is wrong, but current HA design seems more elegant/tight/tidy/professional, yet. An amount of work needed for migration must be appreciated of course.


The font size is the same as it is currently. Any smaller and I'd probably need new glasses  As for the post padding it actually looks like there is less space wasted since the member post count/join date/number is hidden so the posts aren't extended further than the text itself.

Needs some adjusting to but styling is easy enough to change anyway, and I'm sure it will only improve. Wouldn't be surprised if someone worked on a classic theme once everything is settled.

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Reply #35
Hydrogen for me is most likely the most watched page over the years. I will miss the different shades of blue.
No joke is that for a rough calibrating of monitors by eye i just fired up this page. These lovely blue shades burned into my brain

btw. thanks for bringing back the banner action kode54
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Trying a little something something

Reply #36
I'd prefer for the layout to scale to the edges of the screen instead of having a max width. Wastes precious space for nothing, essentially.

I was in the same impression; though wondering whether it had anything to do with the mobile compatibility thingy.

Other than that, it is shaping up to be a nice HA 2.0.

It is apparently easier to read if you don't have to scan horizontally an awful lot for each line of text. Then again, I have gotten used to reading 5 mile wide paragraphs on my 2560x1440 HiDPI display. I have disabled the max 90em width attribute.

It probably is, so maybe another solution would be to have two themes, one with and one without the padding.

The theme is looking much better now, and the alternating post background helps the readability a lot - thanks.
What still kind of sticks out is that the topic crumb bar and the different buttons are more of a deep turquoise than blue.

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Reply #37
It is apparently easier to read if you don't have to scan horizontally an awful lot for each line of text. Then again, I have gotten used to reading 5 mile wide paragraphs on my 2560x1440 HiDPI display. I have disabled the max 90em width attribute.


Nice work but hopefully the index page can be tweaked to fill the space also - see the red rectangle in this pic...

http://i.imgur.com/bbWjz4v.png

Thanks for everything you've done so far.



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Reply #38
The existing header section is more compact than the new version, depending on resolution the new version takes up almost half of the screen (until get to the posts).

Also the new version limits the width, so if you have a wide screen, the forum is squashed into the middle. For most sites this is needed to maintain an aspect ratio, however for a forum it is not needed as these side bits can show more text on screen.

If you can emulate the existing color scheme, it will feel more like home

When you are ready to move over I can stick up a new virtual machine with the latest CentOs 7.x

Trying a little something something

Reply #39
What I'd want after a quick look and not reading the whole thread yet, is a bit smaller font, or possibility to change its size.
Also there seems to be more screenspace wasted (too much padding).
I'd also like to have as much of the color scheme migrated as possible.
It's hard for me to pinpoint what exactly is wrong, but current HA design seems more elegant/tight/tidy/professional, yet. An amount of work needed for migration must be appreciated of course.

That may also be related to being a free and Open Source project, which may or may not be as professional as something designed by paid developers. Time will tell if we can replicate almost the same style. Do remember that I'm only duplicating colors and tweaking things so far. I have not attempted to duplicate it 100%.

The font size is the same as it is currently. Any smaller and I'd probably need new glasses  As for the post padding it actually looks like there is less space wasted since the member post count/join date/number is hidden so the posts aren't extended further than the text itself.

Needs some adjusting to but styling is easy enough to change anyway, and I'm sure it will only improve. Wouldn't be surprised if someone worked on a classic theme once everything is settled.

Style changes are welcome suggestions, as long as they are accompanied with exact CSS changes, and any template PHP changes needed to make them work. I can provide access to a raw copy of the template files, up to date periodically, if anyone wishes to help shape the default forum theme.

Hydrogen for me is most likely the most watched page over the years. I will miss the different shades of blue.
No joke is that for a rough calibrating of monitors by eye i just fired up this page. These lovely blue shades burned into my brain

btw. thanks for bringing back the banner action kode54

I have tried to bring back the same lovely shades of blue, at least for the post backgrounds' alternating rows, and for the quote/code blocks' colors.

It probably is, so maybe another solution would be to have two themes, one with and one without the padding.

The theme is looking much better now, and the alternating post background helps the readability a lot - thanks.
What still kind of sticks out is that the topic crumb bar and the different buttons are more of a deep turquoise than blue.

I can duplicate themes, but again, I'd like to provide the working theme as a Git repository, against which I'd accept forks and pull requests, or possibly suggestions to use a variant as an alternate theme.

Nice work but hopefully the index page can be tweaked to fill the space also - see the red rectangle in this pic...

http://i.imgur.com/bbWjz4v.png

Thanks for everything you've done so far.

I have since eliminated this padding, by making the post view most of the width.

The existing header section is more compact than the new version, depending on resolution the new version takes up almost half of the screen (until get to the posts).

Also the new version limits the width, so if you have a wide screen, the forum is squashed into the middle. For most sites this is needed to maintain an aspect ratio, however for a forum it is not needed as these side bits can show more text on screen.

If you can emulate the existing color scheme, it will feel more like home

When you are ready to move over I can stick up a new virtual machine with the latest CentOs 7.x

I have also merged the login boxes and search bar into the same row as the logo picture. I removed the 90em width limit from the theme itself, so now the only limiting factor to the width is a global setting in the theme settings page, which I've left at the default of 90%, which should be fine for most screens. The original intent of the 90em width limit was to ensure easier readability, as on widescreen monitors, there will most likely be more scanning horizontally.

I have also hand edited the Terms of Service page, which I will save before attempting to import the whole forum again, since it was quite some work performing the HTML to BBCode edits, including newer iurl and anchor tags. Yes, users are free to create named anchors, which are named starting with letters, then optionally any numbers, and will be prepended with "post_" when processed. iurl links to #anchor will similarly be processed to #post_anchor links in the resulting pages.

So far, the server setup looks pretty simple, and something I should easily be able to transfer over to a CentOS 7.x server. It just needs PHP 5.5 or newer, the GD extension, the pspell extension (for server-side spell checking), something to do with BCMath if we wish to enable OpenID login support.

Oh, and I've taken the liberty of setting up Sphinx search indexing as well, which does a full index every 24 hours, and a delta index every hour. That should be easy enough to set up on a CentOS 7.x machine as well. Probably just needs a repository addition, and install the packages needed. ElkArte generates its own configuration file for insertion, it just needs to be configured with the correct server paths and port numbers for the file, save, generate, then install the sphinx.conf and restart searchd. Then add the indexing items to root's crontab. Although technically, I guess Sphinx could be configured to run as a non-root user, since it doesn't need privileged ports, just access to its index files, and obviously is configured to access the forum database using the forum's own credentials.

Oh, right. I'd also like for this server to be using MariaDB, if at all possible, since it seems worlds faster than vanilla MySQL. I'll take care of that as well, when the time comes.

Naturally, tweaking is important, so I'll continue making changes to this script on my server, and I'll use my server for the initial import, unless @Spoon doesn't want me to transfer another database backup outside of his network and back again, to save bandwidth.

Remember, no final conversion and re-setup will be taking place until at least such time as Open Importer finishes their Invision Power Board 2.x importer. I don't want to go through a two stage conversion again, and I don't trust SMF's importer to handle the BBcode and HTML posts properly. Not to mention, I am apparently not supposed to be inserting break <br> tags into the posts for the newlines, as those somehow show up in the SphinxQL search results, or at least show up in ElkArte's search results pages.

I am also waiting on feature requests for some of the things I've already done manually to some of the code. For instance, the portal, Simple Portal, originally did not use a style class on the Recent Topics/Posts table row <tr> tag, so it did not support my nth-child(even) style addition to the theme.

For another thing, I'm waiting on the Simple Portal adding optional Go/Search button to the Recent Topics/Posts blocks, so we can replicate the searching functionality that is already hardcoded into the current forum. The current search feature is also semi-broken in this respect, as using the date range scope forms on the search results page drops the forum scope rules that keep foobar2000 and other forums' results out of the main portal's search scope, and keeps the foobar2000 portal from searching outside the foobar2000 forums.

I am also going to put in a feature request for optional post icons for the portal, and possibly also the main forums indexes themselves, but I think those changes will only require tweaks to the theme itself, and not to the forum script.

E: I have thrown a Git repository up with the theme files, if anyone wants to help with actual code and not just words.

https://github.com/kode54/hydrogenaudio-elkarte-theme

E2: I'm not totally sure about Tapatalk support. There is only a mod for SMF, not ElkArte. Plus, ElkArte's default theme supports mobile and smaller displays. SMF 2.1 also does, but it's an unstable beta product still.

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Reply #40
Bandwidth is not a problem (it is unmetered).

When you are ready to do the transfer to final, pm me and I will create the server.

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Reply #41
Personally, I really like the verbosity of the "Latest Topics" in the portal of the current forum. It's my main way of checking the forum and all the presented info is relevant for deciding which topic to read (or skip). The new forum is lacking in this regard.

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Reply #42
I have tried to bring back the same lovely shades of blue, at least for the post backgrounds' alternating rows, and for the quote/code blocks' colors.

Thanks! Good enough to me for feeling home.

Personally, I really like the verbosity of the "Latest Topics" in the portal of the current forum. It's my main way of checking the forum and all the presented info is relevant for deciding which topic to read (or skip). The new forum is lacking in this regard.

Me also, if the "More..." option on the Portal search can be brought back it would be a big plus.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Trying a little something something

Reply #43
Holy God, kode. Give me some time to digest this and I might have more usefulness to share... Massive change. :applause:

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Reply #44
Personally, I really like the verbosity of the "Latest Topics" in the portal of the current forum. It's my main way of checking the forum and all the presented info is relevant for deciding which topic to read (or skip). The new forum is lacking in this regard.


What is the difference between the new Recent Topics box and the current Latest Posts box?

The new one shows a few fewer posts, but it's exactly the same otherwise.

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Reply #45
Me also, if the "More..." option on the Portal search can be brought back it would be a big plus.


Just increase the number of Latest Topics to 30 and yer done.

I wonder if that's a personal setting in the new forum?


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Reply #46
Just increase the number of Latest Topics to 30 and yer done.

I wonder if that's a personal setting in the new forum?

I see no such option and besides that an option only available while logged in is far from the old public "More..." option.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Trying a little something something

Reply #47
What is the difference between the new Recent Topics box and the current Latest Posts box?

The new one shows a few fewer posts, but it's exactly the same otherwise.

Stuff which I'm missing:
Topic starter: Let's you know what to expect if the topic is started by a notorious regular.
Number of replies: Zero replies? Maybe I can actually contribute.
Number of pages: Gone up from 40 to 50 since last visit? Must be one of those furious battles.
"Hot Topic" indicator: Well, must be a hot topic. Take me to the newest post, flaming icon!

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Reply #48
What is the difference between the new Recent Topics box and the current Latest Posts box?

The new one shows a few fewer posts, but it's exactly the same otherwise.

"Recent Topics" will show recently created threads, while the existing "Latest Posts" shows posts on new and existing threads.

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Reply #49
Recent Topics in the new forum updates with new posts, so it's equivalent to what we have now.

Quote
Stuff which I'm missing:

Indeed.