Community updates June 2017

[#1]

Hello everyone,

Our next update to the Community forums is quite a big one and something we have been working hard to get ready to go live. Firstly, I would like to give a shout-out to our Staging test users who have been using the latest version of the community and have informed me of anything that needed changing. Thanks everyone!

Our forum software and base skin has undergone a very big update so a lot has changed and I will do my best to list as many changes as possible.

Big updates:

• Community search - The search page has been completely updated and is a lot simpler to use now. The search results will give you an option to view replies to a main search result so you can see conversations following that reply. The user search and private message search has also been updated to provide more clear results.
• Private messages - The look and feel of the Private Messages pages has been updated to be a little simpler and private messages no longer look like posts on the forums. The 'New message' button will now change to a 'Back to inbox' or 'Back to sent messages' depending on your location.
• Leaderboard pages - These have been reworked to include a little more information about the type of leaderboard and have been styled in a way where the leaders position is more prominent.
• New icons - A new set of icons have been implemented on the Unread pages. The groundwork has gone into creating new icons and more work is going to be done to incude further icons to identify the type of 'unread' item that it would be (for example - a new reply to a topic you have subscribed to).

Medium updates:

• Profile pages - I have given the profile page a bit of work so now your avatar is contained in a standardised circle and the edit button is clearly visible. Also the contact buttons on a users profile have been updated so that they fit the area neatly. Online and Offline status are indicated by a green (online) or gray (offline) circle - users who have set their privacy options to never show online status will always be shown as offline. This also applies to your friend list.
• Page titles and breadcrumbs - I have standardised every page to have a title and breadcrumb in the exact same place wherever you are in the community. No more page jumping up and down between pages!
• General tidy up - While going through the software/skin upgrade I took the opportunity to do some general tidying up of as much as I can. You will notice less whitespace on some pages, notification messages no longer hugging the top of the parent containers and much more.
• Mod tools - I have created a few enhancements to the system that will allow the mods to identify spammers quickly. I will not share any details about this publicly but this was all discussed in private with our moderation team and a plan came together to better help them keep our Community safe.
• Footer - In line with changes to our main website, the footer will now use scalable vector graphics (.svg) files that are smaller than the ones we currently use and will display a much sharper icon for our social media channels.

Bug fixes:

• The 'Who thanked this post' component had a bug where it was not taking into account raised Thanks weight (Superusers). This has now been fixed.
• Disabling the Thanks on a post created an error - this has been fixed.
• Updated the Community text for the search bar as it was using a javascript replace function that would flash up the old text breifly on page load.

This is a very big update and my traditional tools to publish have been disabled due to extra processes needed to get it live. We are now working with Lithium to get this upgrade live (they have to do it) and I will provide details when to expect the changes to go live as soon as I find out when. When the changes are live, I will be able to make changes as I did before without intervention from Lithium.

Please feel free to let us know of any problems after going live over on the Community Feedback board so I can take a look and fix if needed.

Thank you for your continuing participation in our Community, it is our users that make this a great place to be for advice or a freindly chat.

Many thanks,

Jack

[#2]

All changes will be live on Wedneday (28/06/2017) at around 10am.

Thank you everyone.

[#3]

Thank you very much for the feedback following the latest update. I have a hotfix to apply after fixing up some little bugs:

• Unread topics page - 'new' counter has got a bit of space added around it so it is no longer fiddly to click
• Floated images in posts - there was a bug where floated images in a post would cause a users signature to wrap around the side of the images. This has been fixed so images should no longer do this.
• Registration dates on user stats on posts - Registration date is now shown but would only show the date. This has been changed so that a relative date is shown instead if the time was within the last month.
• Subject links on the board view - the colour of the links to topics was not changing to blue when hovered. This has been fixed.
• Editting a post page - when editting a post the 'current version' panel under the editor was not lining up correctly with the page. This has been fixed.

These changes will go live this afternoon.

Thank you for your feedback so far.

[#4]

A hotfix has just been applied to fix up a couple of minor bugs.

• Notification icons for groups has been fixed.
• Some duplicated titles in some areas have been removed.
• Relative and absolute dates on a users registration time now obey your specific settings to display correctly.
• A new FAQ in the help section for the forums has been added about how to request the deletion of your community account.
• Plus a few minor CSS issues have been tidied up.

Thanks