SlotForum banner

Community Feedback: New Forum Software Is Live!

19197 Views 252 Replies 58 Participants Last post by  vs-Admin
7
We are excited to announce that we are live on our new forum platform!

It’s been a long time coming. Let’s face it. Sometimes older forum technology lags behind other parts of the internet. Although seeing the same format for a long time is comforting, the member experience shouldn’t include dealing with outdated, unsafe, slow software.

The transition to a new platform will never be 100% smooth but the days of dealing with out of date forum software are over. We have teams dedicated to building a world-class community for you. The development has been steady with regular software releases since May 2019. Asking members for feedback and coming up with ideas for improvement is what we want.

Speed and Reliability Are Key
No one should have to wait for information. This site has been built to be much faster and more reliable, period.

New Homepage Experience
Our algorithm will serve a personal customized feed based on your prior engagement with content on the site. If you’ve liked and or commented, or are following certain topics that are of interest to you, similar content will appear at the top of the homepage.

Search
We have introduced new search algorithms, powered by an industry-leading AI platform, to help you find information faster. We plan to roll out new features to continue improving search, and to power many additional areas of the forum.

Due to the volume of content, our search platform may take some time to complete indexing over the first few days after migrating. During this process, you may see a limited number of posts until indexing has been completed. We appreciate your patience.

Finding Your Way Around
We have made the design clean and simple to use. Near the upper right-hand corner of the community, you will see navigation icons.

The first icon is for what’s new on the site.

Clicking on it, by default, will take you to new unread posts. On that page, you can click on additional tabs as well, such as Popular, if you prefer to view active topics.

Clicking the list icon next to “NEW” will bring you to the full forum listing.

Clicking your avatar will give you a drop-down menu for all things related to your account.

You can also navigate more by clicking the 3 vertical dots.

Dark Mode
We have introduced Dark Mode. One of our favorite features allows you to access the site with a power-saving, and easier on the eyes dark mode. You can access it in the drop-down menu under the 3 vertical dots.

Save Bookmarks
Now you can save your favorite discussion threads and posts! Bookmarks are a handy way to remember and easily find great content or stuff you want to read later.

We also wanted to make it easier for new users to understand the lingo of forums. We have cleaned up various language to more commonly recognized phrases including:
  • Following - Thread subscriptions, and Watched are now known as Following
  • Conversations - Private Messages or PMs are now conversations and can be accessed from the user avatar drop-down in the main navigation
  • Showcase - Showcase is designed for users to "showcase" items/projects through the use of uploaded images, text descriptions and custom content categories. It’s a way to visually and textually provide detailed information on the content you wish to share. The showcase would be similar to a catalog, whereas the gallery would be like a photo album. It can be accessed from the drop-down menu with the 3 dots.
Take a tour and look around! Check out the Help section for some quick FAQs about the new platform.

Please keep all feedback, questions, concerns, requests for help, etc. regarding the new platform right here in this Feedback thread. This will help us make sure not to miss a request for help and also let us pass along your thoughts to our Product team. The Admins and I will be here to help along the way taking note of your comments.

- Community Management Team
See less See more
  • Like
Reactions: 1
Status
Not open for further replies.
1 - 6 of 253 Posts
It looks nice and, what's more important, it seems to work - great! Nice to have personal gallery feature back as well.(y)
  • Like
Reactions: 1
if it aint broke dont fix it!!!!!! awful!!!!!
Well, it was broke, actually, Viz. the countless posts complaining about aspects of the site not working. I don't pretend to understand the technical reasons for that, but the site most definitely did need a serious update.
  • Like
Reactions: 1
The Calendar seems to have completely disappeared. Granted, it has been pretty much redundant through our times of plague, but events are starting to be rescheduled. it's a very good way to ensure events don't clash. Can we have it back please?
The calendar did get removed in the move, unfortunately in effort to improve security some things had to get removed. I do not think we'll be able to restore this in the same capacity, but if you're missing some of the features I can try to work to build it out.
Many of the clubs run open races, and there are other events such as exhibitions and swap meets. It is very useful to be able to see what is coming up to know, e.g. whether I should enter an event or that there is a conflicting swap meet which I want to go to. And for event organisers, it is very helpful to be able to check whether their proposed event would clash with another similar or geographically close activity. So the Calendar was a very valuable asset for the slot racing community, and there is no obvious alternative. Its permanent loss would prove to be a significant diminution of the SF resource.
How To Quote

When you see a post that you want to quote, click the reply button on that post. It will automatically add the quoted content to the content area where you can add your reply/comments following the code.

How To Multi-Quote

Step 1
: Click the multi-quote icon at the bottom of each post that you want to quote.

Step 2: Scroll down to the text editor where you are going to write your post. Click "Insert Quotes".

Step 3: A small window will pop up for you to verify (or delete) quoted content that will be added to your post. Click "Quote messages".

Final Step: The quoted content will automatically be added to the text editor.

Add your comments and click to post your reply.

Added Notes: You can multi-quote from more than one discussion thread in the forum. You can also simply highlight the part of the text you want to quote. A small popup will allow you to choose the multi-quote option using just the selected content.


- Cricket
It would be very helpful if these "how-to" posts from admin were compiled into a kind of indexed directory manual for the forum home page.
Dick, I've already raised this on the Community Feedback: New Forum Software Is Live! thread - apparently they are working on bringing it back.
1 - 6 of 253 Posts
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top