Renamed: Upgrade Discussion Thread

If there are serious security issues that are addressable only by the upgrade, then so be it; it's a necessary thing but if not, then why is it necessary? Who really benefits? Was this honestly the best use of the valuable time of the engineering staff--who's work I'm not knocking, but who's aesthetic preferences I can't deny that I take serious issue with.
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This was exactly the situation. We don't spend hundreds of hours and (not to mention euros, pounds, and dollars) and shut the forum down for a week in order to have a new theme that many of US (staff) don't even like. Its not a matter of our aesthetic preferences, its a matter of how vBulletin 4 is designed and the choices we were left with at this point.

I understand that you don't like the new appearance and certain new features, but suggesting that we should leave the entire forum and userbase at serious security risk for purely aesthetic purposes is just unrealistic. We'll always protect our users as best we can, and thats what we've done in this case.

As has been said before, if you've some magical way to conjure up the old skin in a compatible form for vB 4, please present it. Likewise, if you'd like to purchase a skin you feel is better, we can forward that to the engineers. Otherwise, it is what it is.

Furthermore, this isn't just a matter of not digging the color scheme; not everyone is working with a top of the line machine or a great deal of bandwidth. And one of the things that I always really liked about the site was the clean and elegant interface, a notable contrast to a number of sites in our genre, and now it's gone, although at least we haven't gone the way of garish colors and black background. Of course, the most important thing is the content, and not the aesthetics; but honestly, it's important, especially if now it becomes an issue of the forum being difficult to use for some.

Frankly the new look gives me a headache, it is distracting, and makes it more difficult for me to read the discussion that is going on. It is just way too busy, which leads it to be harder to navigate, which detracts from the ability of people to interact with the forum in a natural way, which is the core of having a successful community.

Is this all petty? Maybe. I still have love for the admins here, but really, I think the change, unless totally mandated by security needs or something of the like, was a bad one, and I think "New Coke" is a succinct and accurate comparison.
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The slowness described by the original poster was likely related to other issues corrected earlier today (and addressed in another thread in this forum.) Usability should not be an issue.
 
to all the skin complainers. Once you choose a forum's software there really isn't any way to escape the fact you have to take what comes when it comes to upgrades. the other option which isn't particularly secure either is to keep the old forum locked and start from scratch but then good info gets lost to the old board. it took another board I use a good while to get back to the skin that had had previously for phpBB after upgrading and that's an open source one that anyone can grab and play with though I think they did their skin themselves which may have been the issue. so while I think this skin is a bit mickey mouse I'm not going to complain too much.

edit: for some reason I got logged out during posting this reply. maybe the remaining logged in time out is set too short or something.
 
Hey guys, instead of complaining about the new look, start playing around with features and tell us what the annoying little glitches are.

The report button is on the upper right by the way, it's a disadvantage that this is slightly less obvious now, since using the report button for inappropriate posts IS very encouraged. So, just tossing it out there that that's where it is now.
 
^^ Good call hun, thank you :)

Just so everyone knows, the Report Post button is the little piece of notepaper icon in the top ^^ right hand corner of your post.

SKL said:
The old setup wasn't broke
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As dokomo has also said, we had to upgrade to a more recent version of vBulletin, on which the old skin was no longer available.
This new skin was by far the best out of all the choices we had, by the way! :D

skillet said:
I thought it was a bit bulky too, but if you zoom out once or twice in firefox it helps.
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Good idea! How would one go about doing this? I've only just changed my brower to firefox and I can't see where to zoom out.
 
n3ophy7e said:
Good idea! How would one go about doing this? I've only just changed my brower to firefox and I can't see where to zoom out.
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I use firefox and I'm on a Mac, but for me it's Command and either the - or + key for out and in. I noticed that if I don't zoom out to the point it's not easy to read it sorta chops off part of thread titles also, but I'm not sure if this is a "you're on a mac and have everything set larger than most people do in the first place" sort of thing or an actual issue...
 
Thanks for the update guys, i didn't realize just how expensive vBulletin was not to mention the prices of skins! It's still a bit slow in navigating the forum, but it's the first day so im expecting while people flood back to the forum it'll be a little choppy.

skillet said:
I thought it was a bit bulky too, but if you zoom out once or twice in firefox it helps.
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Awesome, thanks for the tip! I just zoomed out twice and it brings the text and layout format more or less back to the size the old forum skin was using.
 
^You can also hold ctrl and scroll up or down on your mouse and it will do it too.

Hey, with the quick navigation it seems that I have to scroll to the lounge when I try to use it instead of just clicking it. Maybe I am doing it wrong but is that how its gonna be now?
 
Sorry Cane2theLeft, i misinterpreted your emoticon.

also, some varying ways to adjust the zoom: for firefox users you can also click "view" at the top of your browser, and then click on "zoom" and adjust the controls there.

i have a fairly new laptop, and doing that thing with your fingers as you would on an itouch or iphone to adjust the zoom also works on the touchpad for adjusting zoom as well.

purple_cloud said:
Hey guys, instead of complaining about the new look, start playing around with features and tell us what the annoying little glitches are.
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this.

looks like we're stuck with what we got for now, so might as well spend some time trying to find the bugs we can fix.

also, is there even a way to view the way the old forum looked, so that if one were to go about trying to make a skin they could use it as a reference?
 
o8dvld.jpg

everytime i try to upload any picture i get that. (when trying to use the toolbar image loader)
I can still post pictures but like i said earlir I have to use the [.img]picture.jpg[./img] style.
 
purple_cloud said:
Hey guys, instead of complaining about the new look, start playing around with features and tell us what the annoying little glitches are.
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This. Very much this.

The 'look' isn't want it used to be, basic fact of the upgrade. Sorry we have to pull you kicking and screaming from something over 5 yrs old (and no longer supported). The fact of the matter is that for the site's stability (ie, searches that don't time out, server crashes HUGELY reduced, etc) and security (patches stop being offered if your base s/w is too old, and the exploits become very commonly known) - for site stability and security we HAD to do this upgrade. Mission one was to get the upgrade in place, and get us to a point where we could make the site available to you members again ASAP.

Making it pretty is not the primary goal (obviously). Making nifty skins that still look retro, or trying to keep doo-dads in the same locations you're used to looking for them, these things were not the primary goal. They aren't ignored, but they also aren't critical to getting this site available to the public. We very much want to get to these kinds of things, but we can't as yet. I'll point to Chr1.5 and hoptis as having done far beyond what anyone else has on this site for the past several years in terms of trying to ensure BL remains online and functioning for the public. It took a whole freaking week and then some just to make the site function. Not look pretty, just function.

At this point we need to keep our focus on functionality - does this work, is that broke, etc. At some point, we'll be able to look into making things 'pretty' or more like we used to be in terms of appearance, feel, etc. But for now, you'll all have to accept the look has changed to what comes out of the box, while we get used to the changed (added, modified, deleted) functionality and any odd quirks we have in our set up. PLEASE, help us find the bugs so we can get the 'functionality' where it needs to be, so that we can then take a look at the feel of the site. Thank you.
 
As for functionality of getting back to your forum listing when you're done reading a thread....does the BACKSPACE key not do this?



and while I just railed against 'it looks icky' remarks, I will state the new forum jump at the bottom right of each thread annoys the funk out of me. Moreson on mobile :| But I'll live with it (for now), because it works. But I don't like a lot of things about the new look, just like you guys.
 
The forum is now moving faster... Also, zooming out looks to be the best alternative to the bulky theme.

A few other things: there must be a way to edit the color and location of the Report Posts button? I bet you'll see a big decrease in the amount of reported posts based on its discreet color. Also, I don't see why it isn't down where it was before, as there is clearly room for it. As it is, the Reply/Quote... buttons being spread out is unnecessary and ugly.

Otherwise, I think this update is generally a success.

Oh, except for the yellow auto-save thing, which is very annoying. Can you turn off the notification but keep the feature?
 
The way the text wraps in the box vs hyphenating or moving the word down to the next line is also annoying. There is no option to change this in Settings...
 
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