DT Update Log and TODO

[Muirium]

Sorry Matteo, have t had time on my travels to sit down for a live feedback session on the page load issue. It’s still biting me but it comes and goes, making it a pain to pin down on command.

By the way, would it be hard to trigger a warning when submitting a post that you’re about to turn the page? I forever have to go back and edit my posts when this happens:

viewtopic.php?p=434808#p434808

It’d be sweet to have a button to simply add the quote at the vital moment of submission.

[matt3o]

let me explain what is happening.

to move quickly and avoid issues I've used the default phpbb theme and simply reskinned it. There's just so much customization that you can do this way, but you are 100% sure that everything is going to work.

There are dozens of small fixes to do yet with the layout (especially with alignments) but I believe what we have is at least usable and pleasing enough.

That being said I'm not a fan of it. Now that things are settled I can work on a 100% custom theme for deskthority, it might take me a month but at least I have peace of mind that we are not still using a never patched 7 years old codebase.

That said... I'm still not 100% sure we should keep using phpbb. Now I'm pretty comfortable with it, it has a very old-style code, but it's not actually a bad software, the problem is that it is never going to evolve and we will never see features that now we give for understood. The "forum business" is not what it was 3 or 4 years ago, ever the simplest extensions won't be updated because people moved on to other platforms so we cannot rely on third party extensions.

The only way would be code our own extensions and update them when needed, please note I said extensions and not mods or hacks like we did so far. The core of phpbb should always remain untouched. That would mean more work for me, because I doubt anyone would want to work on phpbb extensions. So that is not gonna happen, at least not in the short run.

Alternatively... change forum platform. And that is a new form of pain completely.

[kakan]

tbh I really dislike the current layout and there is many things I think is wrong with it. But moving away from the platform even if it would take a very long time and effort I think it would be worth it and if help is needed through different means I also think we would come together and make it happen.

[matt3o]

Today I added the last missing piece to the new server and we can finally say that we are transitioned to the new system (namely we are on nginx).

We should be at 99% of the system performance. I still need a little optimization here and there, but the server seems pretty stable now. As always let me know if you notice errors both in the wiki and the forum. I don't know about you, but the server is a f(*$ing rocket now!

Now that things are settle I'll thing about the next steps.

[XMIT]

In the Spy, if the last update to a particular sub-forum is prior to the update, things look a bit odd. Maybe have a look at the Spy?

[matt3o]

In the Spy, if the last update to a particular sub-forum is prior to the update, things look a bit odd. Maybe have a look at the Spy?

not sure I understand. odd how?

[XMIT]

Sorry. The forum overview, not the Spy.

Anything before the update appears different in the right most column.

Screen Shot 2019-01-14 at 3.27.44 PM.png (710.51 KiB) Viewed 17172 times

[matt3o]

oh yeah I gotta fix that too

[scottc]

Two things about email notifications:

- the emails are now from mech@ instead of info@ - this is pretty minor, admittedly
- the emails no longer include the text of the PM

[Muirium]

- the emails no longer include the text of the PM

Which is a pretty major problem for DT's other robot!

[elecplus]

Please, pretty please, fix the messages! There is no way for me to tell on desktop or mobile which have been read or not. Neither the intensity of header color, nor the color itself, nor some other indicator tells me what I have read or not. Right now it says I have 2 unread, but damned if I can find them!

[matt3o]

- the emails are now from mech@ instead of info@ - this is pretty minor, admittedly

no a bug. email actually changed.

- the emails no longer include the text of the PM

apparently it's not possible without a hack

[matt3o]

Please, pretty please, fix the messages! There is no way for me to tell on desktop or mobile which have been read or not. Neither the intensity of header color, nor the color itself, nor some other indicator tells me what I have read or not. Right now it says I have 2 unread, but damned if I can find them!

This should be fixed now

[mind_prepared]

what happened to my thread? did you delete it? other-f61/ibm-model-m-bluetooth-usb-hyb ... controller

Where do I turn to inquire about technical issue on DT?

[andrewjoy]

let me explain what is happening.

to move quickly and avoid issues I've used the default phpbb theme and simply reskinned it. There's just so much customization that you can do this way, but you are 100% sure that everything is going to work.

That said... I'm still not 100% sure we should keep using phpbb.

Alternatively... change forum platform. And that is a new form of pain completely.

Theme does need work but the website is working amazingly well, thanks for all your effort on this .

If we could just get the more compact layout back, and the catogory colours that would be amazing! Oh and names on left if you can .

Moving to something else is a idea but i dont think there is anything else out there thats decent , classic forms are dying out so not that much support for them anymore.

If you could organise Discourse into classic topic sections rather than stupid tags i would say go for that. First time i used it i hated it but its grown on me ( apart from the stupid tag system)

[matt3o]

what happened to my thread? did you delete it? other-f61/ibm-model-m-bluetooth-usb-hyb ... controller

Where do I turn to inquire about technical issue on DT?

okay that's what happened. On the previous version we had a system that automatically moved old posts in the market into a sort of "archive" section. To do so there was an auto pruning feature, unfortunately I didn't notice that until it was too late and the pruning already happened. Now it's fixed but some of the older threads are gone. It wouldn't be a big issue since I have the backup and technically it would be possible to restore them, but being the market I didn't bother since usually posts on the market have a very limited lifespan. Sorry, about that. Let me know if I can help you in any way to restore your data.

@andrewjoy category colors is in to-do. Today I'm working on something completely new, I hope I'll be able to post it later. Discourse would be quite a jump in the dark, I don't believe we would even able to restore what we already have.

[ball00n]

usually posts on the market have a very limited lifespan

They do have a short lifespan, but at the same time I think that some articles on the wiki have references to sale posts.


There is also an issue I found, I'm not sure if it was present before, but DT is accessible through links with "wiki." appended to the URL e.g. https://wiki.deskthority.net/viewtopic. ... 63#p434963 , although there is a certificate problem. Some search results on google already reference deskthority posts through that domain.

[matt3o]

There is also an issue I found, I'm not sure if it was present before, but DT is accessible through links with "wiki." appended to the URL e.g. https://wiki.deskthority.net/viewtopic. ... 63#p434963 , although there is a certificate problem. Some search results on google already reference deskthority posts through that domain.

thanks, I'll fix that right away

[matt3o]

Today I'm experimenting with "featured posts" (at the moment news/reviews only but could be actually anything).

Screenshot_20190115_200110.jpg (69.14 KiB) Viewed 16997 times

The good news is that everything is done without hacks, using default forum functionalities. Basically if we "pin" a review, that review will be featured in homepage and a picture from the post taken as poster image. The picture can be selected by commenting it "featured". The image must be hosted on DT (no external sources).

We can have probably 4 or 6 featured articles.

Tomorrow I'll try to put them in a side bar, for today I've done enough

[Muirium]

Looks sharp with just a pair like that. Nice work.

[pansku]

I dislike that on mobile as it takes so much vertical space. Haven't seen it on desktop thou ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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[JBert]

Moving to something else is a idea but i dont think there is anything else out there thats decent , classic forms are dying out so not that much support for them anymore.

If you could organise Discourse into classic topic sections rather than stupid tags i would say go for that. First time i used it i hated it but its grown on me ( apart from the stupid tag system)

Ugh, Discourse is so busy with reinventing the wheel that you lose and get different features every other week (a slight exaggeration, but still). It also tends to be a resource hog, even if it delivers a bunch of different features.

If you want something reasonably modern I recommend looking into NodeBB, though there would also be the problem of importing everything. Another downside is that it comes more as a construction kit than a fully-fledged forum, though that does mean it supports tinkering.

[Muirium]

Let me just put on my fuddy-duddy hat here…

What do we need so much that's not already present in phpBB, again? Besides Cindy's request for a forum internal e-commerce suite (which I do not understand) I don't know what we're lacking. Another migration would be a whole lot of work, and for what?

Forums may be crusty, but that's kind of our thing!

Meanwhile, about these misalignments:

Screenshot 2019-01-15 at 5.53.30 pm.png (10.67 KiB) Viewed 16911 times

IMG_0673.jpg (6.38 KiB) Viewed 16911 times

[kbdfr]

Couldn't the "Spy" page be modified so as to somehow more look like the "News" page?

Here's a side by side pic of both covering the same first items:

DT Spy and New posts.jpg (499.28 KiB) Viewed 16885 times

[kbdfr]

I also miss the previous function which allowed to display a pic at its original size by just clicking on it.
Now a (left) click simply has no effect at all, you have to right click and select from the context menu.

[matt3o]

Discourse is a great software, but I feel is more for product/service support than for a community like ours.

NodeBB is indeed very nice, but I need to check if it can be bent to our needs both in design and structure.

What do we need so much that's not already present in phpBB, again?

there are two aspects to consider.

First are micro-features like @-mentions that I find extremely useful, but also tags would be helpful even for internal purposes (#featured, #gallery, ...). Also that idiotic "one-subject-per-post" thing, or even a visual editor. phpbb is a great software but it will never evolve, this is what we get forever and ever.

Second. We cannot "compete" with social medias. There are new better ways to ask questions and get instant gratification. The role of the forum must change, I feel that the only way to survive is to create and value original content. Create a community around content and not a community around a community. The "what keyboard is this?" or "what switch is better?" or "look at my new keycaps!" are all better handled elsewhere.

What Deskthority must provide is something that people can't find elsewhere, which is original content. We have a huge backlog of incredibly interesting material, not to mention the wiki. We probably need to get a little stronger on the "news" department, though.

That is my biased opinion. I might be wrong but that is direction I intend to take and PHPBB doesn't help even a bit on that.

I also miss the previous function which allowed to display a pic at its original size by just clicking on it.
Now a (left) click simply has no effect at all, you have to right click and select from the context menu.

yeah I'll work on that too.

[kbdfr]

And then there's the issue that clicking a thread in the Spy simply never displays its last post as expected,
but apparently a random spot in the thread although the URL window does show the correct post no.
Refreshing the page has no effect, "cursor in the URL window and Enter" works though and shows the last post.
(64-bit Windows 10, Firefox)

[matt3o]

And then there's the issue that clicking a thread in the Spy simply never displays its last post as expected,
but apparently a random spot in the thread although the URL window does show the correct post no.
Refreshing the page has no effect, "cursor in the URL window and Enter" works though and shows the last post.
(64-bit Windows 10, Firefox)

I believe that happens only when there are pictures involved. if you try to click on a link you already visited, it should work. I believe I can fix that, but it's something that the engine should take care of.

[andrewjoy]

The highlighted topics section is pretty cool.

I would leave it at the top where its noticeable.

[Techno Trousers]

Apologies if this has already been asked and answered. I've been primarily interacting with Deskthority via Tapatalk for the last few years, mainly for convenience and consistency with other forums, but especially for the timely push notifications. It's now completely broken as of the latest changes. Any chance this will be addressed, or is Tapatalk support ended for good now?

On a positive note, I do like how the site works on mobile now.