WotF Forum Upgrade

Hope it stays PHPBB...

What does the php part stand for, anyway? People Haranguing People? Poop Has Pants? Pilfering Has Possibilities?

According to Wikipedia: PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.

Get ready! A BRAND SPANKING NEW FORUM IS ALMOST HERE!!!

SHINY!

Dear Writers of the Future Forum users,

Hello, my name is Jason Toth and I administer the websites for the writersofthefuture.com and have been tasked with the job of upgrading the existing forum.

I have been beta testing the new forum and I think from a user experience, after you are used to all of the functions, this is going to be a great upgrade. All discussions and comments will transfer over, so you can pick up right where you left off.

When we go live with the new forum, unfortunately, your passwords will need to be updated. It will require a simple auto-reset, which we will help you with.

I also see there are a number of private messages with story critiques. I am unable to transfer these to the new forum as they are encrypted. So I am asking that if you want to save your messages, please do so in the next couple of days as I am going live with the new forum before the end of March.

You will still be able to send PM messages on the new forum and works, just the old ones wont transfer over.

Know that I will be standing by to help assist with any issues that arise and hope that this upgrade is a great experience for you!

Sincerely,

Jason Toth
Galaxy Press & Author Services Inc.
[email protected]
323 466 3310

Had a little trouble logging in so just testing to see if I can post. Lol. 

I made it! Huzzah!

Took some work, but I finally got it to send me a password reset. WELCOME, ONE AND ALL! Sorry for the startup issues! Enjoy our new look!

Spiffing, thanks Jason Toth. Will there be (or is it possible) to add the feature where clicking a thread takes us to our most recent unread post within that thread? The little icon to the left of the post titles list did this on the phpBB version.

Strangely, I didn't need to reset my password, and my avatar has reverted to an old one. ? 

Posted by: @alexh

Spiffing, thanks Jason Toth. Will there be (or is it possible) to add the feature where clicking a thread takes us to our most recent unread post within that thread? The little icon to the left of the post titles list did this on the phpBB version.

Strangely, I didn't need to reset my password, and my avatar has reverted to an old one. ? 

Alex, There is  a last reply box at the upper left of the topic header, as you will see by scrolling back to the top. Click on that and it takes you to the end. Yes, it's small. And Jason made it bigger, but it's still too small for people to notice easily. @JasonToth  

You have the old set of smilies, and a new blue set that comes with the new Forum!

Let me show you a sampling of the new BLUE MAN GROUP!

Now, can they shoot paint across the stage, create music through crazy PVC pipes, and make giant balloons for the audience to push into the air, Jason? No rush, but we WANT ALL FEATURES!  

Did we always have ratings badges? I'm feeling like I have to prove myself now and I have no idea how. And were there always dancing bananas or the thank-you-Pac-Man-may-I-have-another?-Pony? But the page definitely has plenty of beep boops and bright shinies. I dig it.

Posted by: @babooher

Did we always have ratings badges? I'm feeling like I have to prove myself now and I have no idea how. And were there always dancing bananas or the thank-you-Pac-Man-may-I-have-another?-Pony? But the page definitely has plenty of beep boops and bright shinies. I dig it.

I kind of like being a one-star nothing. Maybe I can be an unknown rogue sent off to do the king's bidding which even my peers don't know about. Maybe that could be what one-star nothing means. 

Here are the rating levels. All based on the number of posts.

Level 0   0 New Member
Level 1   5 Active Member
Level 2   25 Advanced Member
Level 3   50 Bronze Member
Level 4   100 Bronze Star Member
Level 5   250 Silver Member
Level 6   500 Silver Star Member
Level 7   750 Gold Member
Level 8   1000 Gold Star Member
Level 9   1500 Platinum Member
Level 10  2000 Platinum Plus 

This new site design is going to take some getting used to, but I'll get there in time. ? 

@jcunningham "There is now a Level 0." -Master Shefu

New forum, who dis?

I miss my blue haven . On the plus side, I can still visit there, though it's mighty lonely...

Uploading your own avatar is easier now. So that's nice.

You can attach files, but I don't recommend sending stories that way. But it could be good for pdfs or whatever.

Inline images are tough so far. They have to be hosted, then the link button used. I believe Jason is checking if there's an IMG tag. Although I guess we didn't use that too much...

I like the like button.

I prefer post count to ranking, but not sure if both are available. It can still be seen under "members", but who goes there besides me to count his posts? Heh.

Posted by: @disgruntledpeony

This new site design is going to take some getting used to, but I'll get there in time. ? 

I am with ya there, DP!

Oh hey, I’m finally able to update my display name from Nreavis to my author name...neat

Got to this party late I see, but I figured out a new password   12 characters? Raises one eyebrow. 

There are a couple of layout things I'm not a fan of, but nothing heartbreaking, and mostly to do with personal preferences. Probably the one thing I would have liked is the option to change how many posts I can see on a single page, as I personally prefer longer pages on desktop views--but set against that, there are some really neat little details, such as background-saving a draft in progress on a post or reply. That's quite nice.

Also, from a design perspective, I like that the new form is integrated into the main site layout, and feels like it has been aligned and styled to feel like it belongs to it (not always the simplest thing in the world to do well). It feels a little odd, probably because it wasn't that way previously, but it's definitely the way a feature like this should be done, especially with a more modern age of layouts.

Responsive styles look not half bad too, when compressing the view in a desktop browser. I'll try this out on my phone later to see if it functions well there, but my guess is that it'll be a much better mobile experience than the old forum was.

Posted by: @dustin-adams

Uploading your own avatar is easier now. So that's nice.

You can attach files, but I don't recommend sending stories that way. But it could be good for pdfs or whatever.

Inline images are tough so far. They have to be hosted, then the link button used. I believe Jason is checking if there's an IMG tag. Although I guess we didn't use that too much...

I like the like button.

I prefer post count to ranking, but not sure if both are available. It can still be seen under "members", but who goes there besides me to count his posts? Heh.

The new ranking button was curious at first, but then I remembered your post, Dustin. You brought out that Forum members that eventually become winners tend to have the highest post count tallies. As I looked at the current highest rankings, I wouldn't bet against any of them, yourself included. 

What's behind this interesting phenomenon? I think it's participation. Iron sharpens iron. As members engage with one another more and more, they increase and enhance their knowledge. Working up a post makes the knowledge stick, because it requires more neurons to fire, more neural pathways to be built. Finally, the icons give a tiny incentive to participate in the group, instead of sitting in the shadows. Participation is what makes friendships grow, and friendship is what makes this Forum great.

To everyone, please view the membership rank icons as a way to quickly spot and encourage the new. They're also a great way to gauge one's participation level in here, as well as being able to assess how much experience one might have with the Forum and often even the Contest itself. Truth be told, there have been one or two novices that came in and started dishing out Contest and writing advice like they were one of the venerable Contest judges. Without the member icons, it would have been hard for newer members to determine how valid their advice actually was, and they seemed intent on advising everyone. Finally, as you level up and watch others level up, see if the writing also improves. Maybe even to the level that brings forth finalists and winners. 

Thank you all for working with and being patient with the new aspects of this Forum. There's still more tweaking going on. Best of success to each of you!

Wulf Moon

Forum Moderator

I really like the Recent Posts tag. Very helpful!

For the levels, why quantity over quality?  

OK I'm confused. The front page says this forum has unread posts but I can't tell which threads have new posts on them.  I've also clicked on mark all read, way down at the bottom, and nothing changes.

How do you tell which thread has new posts? It was pretty obvious on the old site. 

Okay, so what I think is happening is that since I imported all 13 years of posts from the old forum they all came in as new due to the way it imported. I will review if there is a way to reset this, as currently, you would have to look into each forum, each topic and once you do this the system knows you have seen what was there...

Actually. Just spotted that there is the word "new" in an orange box and the mark all read does seem to work.

I do think there is a surplus of icons though. A tad too much info maybe?