Announcement Forum Software Upgrade 11/08/2020

[GazHyde]

This have been threatened this a couple of times now, but the day is finally here! So set a date in your diary that the forum will be closed on Tuesday 11/08/2020 for upgrades. I'm not giving an ETA for completion, so best assume it's going to be off most of the day.

We are moving to the latest version of XenForo 2.x (currently running 1.x). It's going to look and feel very different despite it having the same name! It was a ground up rewrite of all the code base, and they've taken some things in a subtly different direction. There are some fantastic new features which once you've got used to you should really enjoy.

Initially when the forum is reopened it will be in the "out the box" default theme, that's likely to be a bit of a shock for you all. In the background I'll be working on some customised Zorg themes to replace it, and also a "dark" version for those who prefer.

I'm paying a company to carry out the upgrade, and I've bought some license upgrades for some key features such as the themes - some of this has been covered by the forum slush fund (part donations/part sales). This represents a significant investment in the ongoing running of the community.

I'll try and highlight some features that will go, and some of the nifty stuff coming in. Also, and I'm saving it for another day as I don't want the noise right now, something that's getting reset to zero...

So, watch this space.

 

[gookah]

A donation sent to help out via PayPal.
Worth every penny

Cheers Gaz

 

[GazHyde]

Thanks for the rather generous donations, they will really help push the upgrade along

 

[GazHyde]

Update #1 - let's get some of the things you won't have once upgraded out of the way. I'm like to find more things as I do further research.

There are a couple of reasons for this happening, and primarily down to the difference between "core" and "add-on" features.

• Core - something which exists within the system as designed by the developers.
• Add-on - something which is provided by a third party to cover functionality or a feature not provided in the "core".

Apologies for the large amount of times I use both these terms in this post....

I'm trying to reduce reliance on third party code to simplify the management of the site moving forwards.

Post Ratings:

In version 1.x this was provided by a third party add-on. This has now been added as a core feature within v2.x, and there is no way to migrate the current ratings in to the core. The current rating add-on hasn't been developed on the new version, and we would have to switch to another third party add-on from a developer I have no experience of. So the decision has been made to start off fresh.

The new system still works pretty much the same, but it's called Reactions. There's still a leader board, and a 'score' is shown on your profile. Everyone will start off at zero.

Bookmarks
This is something that a site supporter gets access to and is a third party add-on, this is now core. Same issue with the post ratings in that I can't import your existing bookmarks in to it. I'll be looking in to making the new bookmarks a Supporter only feature again.

What's New? count

The red box with number - not found a replacement for this as yet. Best to assume it's gone.

Quote in Conversation quick link

Annoying, but this will go. However, hovering over the username has a Start Conversation button on it now. So not the biggest problem.

 

[Lee]

Really looking forward to this. Will bring the site into the 21st century

I’m assuming it has phone support ?

 

[mwpe]

Really looking forward to this. Will bring the site into the 21st century

I’m assuming it has phone support ?

I haven't entered the 20th yet.

 

[GazHyde]

Really looking forward to this. Will bring the site into the 21st century

I’m assuming it has phone support ?

The site is mobile friendly already, but they've made it more compliant with modern phone browsers. One example is it now takes in to account the iPhone "notch" along with some other things I'll cover later!

 

[spurs fan in a coupe]

Looks great, do you take cheque like @Geoff Crispin ?

 

[t-tony]

Thank you for all you do Gaz, and whatever we end up with we will all adapt and get used to, and enjoy, it. Even an old Technophobe like me.

Tony.

 

[Geoff Crispin]

Looks great, do you take cheque like @Geoff Crispin ?

??

 

[spurs fan in a coupe]

??

didn't someone offer to buy your z3 with cheque recently?

 

[Grumps]

Thank you for all you do Gaz, and whatever we end up with we will all adapt and get used to, and enjoy, it. Even an old Technophobe like me.

Tony.

Are you sure your going to manage Tony?

 

[GazHyde]

@t-tony - don't worry it's not more complicated, just things will be different. In a lot of cases much improved.

To be fair it's people like @Grumps I worry about, but that's just generally that you need to worry more about guys like Grumps...

 

[Grumps]

@t-tony - don't worry it's not more complicated, just things will be different. In a lot of cases much improved.

To be fair it's people like @Grumps I worry about, but that's just generally that you need to worry more about guys like Grumps...

Thank you Gary! Still need that emoji

 

[Geoff Crispin]

didn't someone offer to buy your z3 with cheque recently?

Andy yes but did/do not get the connection
He is looking at another car today and will let me know if he is still interested but he will have to up his offer and do a bank transfer
It was good to here that the chaps garage friend thought my Z was very good all round

 

[GazHyde]

OK peeps! Time to start showing you some of the goodies

Greatly-enhanced mobile-friendly style: The new XenForo 2 style is the first thing you will notice in XF2. The entire style has been redesigned with a fresh new appearance, but also with mobile browsing at the forefront of the design. When the viewport shrinks, on-page content shrinks, shifts and reorganises itself automatically to optimise the browsing experience for small displays.

A sticky header automatically activates when the window is scrolled, allowing the most important navigation controls to remain available at all times.

Emoji support: No longer restricted to the default emoji's provided by the forum. You can pretty much use any that your device is able to natively support.

Enhanced message editing: Rather than opening an overlay, editing messages is now done entirely in-place, with the content of messages replaced by a full-fledged message editor that allows the complete range of editing and posting actions, including attachment management.

Alerts in favicon: When new alerts or unread conversation messages are available, the site icon (shown in the browser title bar) will have a badge added to it, showing that there are items waiting to be viewed.

Member tooltip: XF1's member card has been replaced with a new member tooltip, which appears on the first click on a member's name. A further click will load the member's full profile page.

Attachments shown in previews: Content previews, such as those seen when hovering a thread title on the thread list page, now include attachments for a more complete and integrated preview experience.

What’s New and Find Threads:

To aid in content discovery, XF2 includes a brand new 'What's new' system, which can fetch new content from all sources across the system, including threads and posts, profile posts, media items and resources. The architecture of the system is fully extensible, so add-on developers can hook into What's new in order to add their own content types to the results.

Additionally, a new Find threads system provides quick links to unanswered threads (with no replies), threads you have started, and threads in which you have posted.

Quick thread

Quick Thread is a brand new system for XF2. Above the list of threads on a forum page you will find a title entry box. Focusing this box and starting to type a thread title will load a quick message editor, in which you can post the content for the first post of your new thread. Hitting the save button will then post the thread, leaving you on the forum page rather than redirecting you to the thread page. This makes the process of creating a new simple thread extremely quick and easy.

Thread prompts: In conjunction with Quick thread, Thread prompts allow the title input box to display a configurable prompt, giving members a hint as to what kind of content they should be posting in any given forum. Multiple prompts may be defined and assigned to forums, and an applicable prompt will be selected at random to be displayed to the user when the page loads.

 

[GazHyde]

Small quality of life change for those of you with fat fingers...

Show password field when logging in

There is nothing quite so frustrating as that feeling you get when you've typed your password and you just know you somehow hit an extra key somewhere. You know the password will fail, but you can't check the password because it's obfuscated. You just have to start again.

I'm sure I made a mistake when typing out my super secure password...

Fairly self explanatory

In XF 2.1 you simply click the "Show" button, to reveal the password:

Just make sure no one is watching over your shoulder

 

[GazHyde]

What on earth is URL unfurling?

I'll just show you. It's easier!

When a URL is inserted into content and that URL exists on its own line within the content, we will "unfurl" it to a richer preview which includes the page title, metadata logo, description and favicon. Such rich previews add more context for users as to what the link contains. URL unfurling can be used anywhere that accepts BB code currently.

New emoji/smilie picker

Emojis are everywhere and each year the already vast selection of them increases more and more, but smilies still have their place, right?
But, at the same time, it's important that we make both smilies and emojis as accessible as possible. So why not keep them together?

We've replaced our existing smilie tray with an all new combined smilie/emoji pop up. Not only does it contain smilies categorised as it did before, but it also includes all of the emojis categorised too. Even better, it's fully searchable!

 

[GazHyde]

A BUMP AND REMINDER TO FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO ON TUESDAY 11TH AUGUST!

 

[abh29]

This is all beyond me ,i am a luddite