Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

crouse · 2007-01-31 08:34:57

Dusty started a thread:
punbb transfer
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=29250&p=1

which was closed by cactus because it was "off topic" ..... and the thread strayed from the OP topic and forum heading it was under ..... I'm assuming this forum is the correct place for this post, please move it to the correct forum if I'm wrong.

So, I'm reviving the gist of the posts that were at issue in the above thread here. Some of these issues warrant discussion, even if it's not a popular topic for the people that converted the forum to punbb from phpBB. In no way am I trying to diminish the effort you put out to convert the boards. I know full well the amount of time and effort that goes into running forums.

I am however concerned about a few things. It seems to me that this transpired very fast with little input from any members. Perhaps the devs/mods wanted something "stripped down of all features", but did the members ? Did we care what the members wanted ? IDK, I never saw any thread asking, I could have missed it I guess ....... I mean, most of the time, if i wanted it stripped down, I'd just subscribe to the mailing lists and be done with it.

1. The "unread posts" isn't accurate. Keeps forums/threads marked unread until you log out. (or at least for a long time) (can this be fixed ? )
2. The "quicksearch" box in the top right hand corner of the page was useful. (This is possible, i've seen it in action)
3. PM's have been removed. (I hope no one had stuff saved there ! ) (What is the policy on the old PM's if someone had something stored there ????? )
4. Email is now the substitute for PM's. NOTE: I changed my email address to one i use for junkmail stuff...... Potential spam problem .... Now requires me to open up my browser to go to the forum and another app to check my email..... ?
5. The format of the forum colors...... no "greenbar" effect..... each post row is the same color. (just a pet peeve of mine, it annoys me).
6. No "mark all posts read" for sub-forums. (Can this be implemented ? )
7. No support for polls. (I guess these were not needed ? )
8. No rss button (should be easy enough to fix that, I think... )
9. http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=24115 <<<< LInks aren't automatic. (Can be changed I think, if wanted)

If we had a poll, I would have voted no on the punbb forums, I liked the old ones better I also realize this isn't a democracy, and that we as members might not have a say in how things are run, but some of the issues i've listed above deserve some thought.

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-01-31 08:59:52

A feature I also really miss is the link for listing all the postings, which were written during the time of absence. It was a nice overview about what happened the last few hours/days/weeks.

Could that be implemented again. punBB seems to be faster, but the stripped features are giving it a bitter smack.

Sigi · 2007-01-31 09:33:52

crouse wrote:

3. PM's have been removed. (I hope no one had stuff saved there ! ) (What is the policy on the old PM's if someone had something stored there ????? )

It was announced to save important stuff saved in the pm-inbox one week before the change to punbb.

A quicksearch would indeed be a nice feature and is possible with punbb.

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-01-31 11:26:06

chaosgeisterchen wrote:

A feature I also really miss is the link for listing all the postings, which were written during the time of absence. It was a nice overview about what happened the last few hours/days/weeks.
Could that be implemented again. punBB seems to be faster, but the stripped features are giving it a bitter smack.

Obsolete. Seems to be implemented again. Thanks a lot!

Dusty · 2007-01-31 12:40:51

The switch to punbb was discussed at some length several months ago. We realized it was time for a change, and the choice was between updating to phpbb3 or punbb. We chose punbb because it fits in with the Arch philosophy and is easier to administer. Several features were discarded because they caused more problems than they solved (polls and PMs are included). Most of the issues you mention were discussed either privately amoungst us or publicly on the forum, and a lot of thought and testing went into the decision.

Punbb is what we're using now. As I say when people complain about something in Arch itself, if you don't like it, you can start your own distro, or in this case, your own forum.

I expect this thread to go degenerate in a hurry, so don't be too surprised if it gets closed again. Its extremely bad etiquette to reopen a topic that has been closed already. We make our decisions based more on the needs of the community of a whole rather than on any one user.

Dusty

F · 2007-01-31 13:56:39

I loved the "Find posts with no replies" feature. Bring it back! (Or help me find it)

cactus · 2007-01-31 15:57:05

F wrote:

I loved the "Find posts with no replies" feature. Bring it back! (Or help me find it)

Scroll all the way to the bottom of the index page.

Show recent posts
Show unanswered posts
Show your subscribed topics
Show your posts

You have a couple of options now (some new ones too).

ozar · 2007-01-31 15:59:25

I've read all the posts in the closed punBB thread and it seems that the majority of posters said they like the change.

Someone is going to be unhappy no matter what it done, so the challenge is to come up with the perfect solution that will satisfy the entire membership. It's simply one of those things that won't ever happen.

That said, the board can always be changed to something else if deemed necessary. In the interim, I'm enjoying it as is.

oz

crouse · 2007-01-31 16:11:33

Dusty wrote:

Punbb is what we're using now. As I say when people complain about something in Arch itself, if you don't like it, you can start your own distro, or in this case, your own forum.
I expect this thread to go degenerate in a hurry, so don't be too surprised if it gets closed again. Its extremely bad etiquette to reopen a topic that has been closed already.
Dusty

The first thread was closed by cactus because This is turning into a phpbb vs punbb discussion, which at this point is... pointless. The subject was on the migration, and this is the 'announcement and advisory' section of the forum.

This thread was NOT started to start a flame war, or in bad taste. I am not discussing phpbb .... and I thought I was moving the discussion to the appropriate forum. I changed the subject line to reflect the posts contents and I don't think I can be the only person that had questions/comments. I didn't figure this would be a popular topic among the admins/mods , but I think it is important for people that have questions about the new forums, and this could answer them all in one place.

I did not intentionally try to "step on anyones toes". I was trying to be helpful.
Personally, I read the boards alot, but I did not see the post that said you should save your PM's we are closing the other board. I'm NOT saying it's not there, but that I must have overlooked it. Again, I apologize if any of you took this thread to be insulting, it was definately not started in that spirit.

Snowman · 2007-01-31 16:27:08

1. The "unread posts" will be handle propery in punbb 1.3 We'll need to live with the current behavior for now: http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?pid=54664#p54664
8. RSS: I think it still possible: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=29279
9. that can be changed. It is currently turned off for some reason.

phrakture · 2007-01-31 16:40:35

For the record, you say that this "was not done in bad taste", though if that were so, you would have started a thread titled something like "features I'd like to see" or "things I miss from phpbb", but instead this thread starts with a big old "hey my thread was locked, so I'm reviving it here". That said, I'll still answer your questions and try to steer things in the proper direction if I can.

crouse wrote:

1. The "unread posts" isn't accurate. Keeps forums/threads marked unread until you log out. (or at least for a long time) (can this be fixed ? )

This seems to bother some people, and I'd guess we should look into it. The way I browse the arch forums doesn't really have this problem though:
* Click "show new posts since last visit"
* Middle click everything I want to read, going through all posts
* Click "mark as read"
* Read posts

crouse wrote:

2. The "quicksearch" box in the top right hand corner of the page was useful. (This is possible, i've seen it in action)

Yeah, a quicksearch might be nice - if you want to help us out here, you might point us in the proper direction for a punbb quicksearch (perhaps a plugin somewhere?)

crouse wrote:

3. PM's have been removed. (I hope no one had stuff saved there ! ) (What is the policy on the old PM's if someone had something stored there ????? )
4. Email is now the substitute for PM's. NOTE: I changed my email address to one i use for junkmail stuff...... Potential spam problem .... Now requires me to open up my browser to go to the forum and another app to check my email..... ?

This is a decision that was made. It makes more sense (read: is more 'KISS') to have a single communication medium that YOU control instead of maintaining messages on our server. That said, this was a conscious choice, and odds are it will not be reverted.

crouse wrote:

5. The format of the forum colors...... no "greenbar" effect..... each post row is the same color. (just a pet peeve of mine, it annoys me).

As for cosmetics, please make some suggestions here. Show us some css or something (The 'Stylish' firefox extension comes to mind) that accomplishes what you want. I know none of us claim to be hardcore CSS people, so if something "looks better", bring it up... show us proof... we can better decide if we want to do it then.

crouse wrote:

6. No "mark all posts read" for sub-forums. (Can this be implemented ? )

Again, see my response to #2

crouse wrote:

7. No support for polls. (I guess these were not needed ? )

Conscious choice. See my response to #3 and #4.

crouse wrote:

8. No rss button (should be easy enough to fix that, I think... )

This one should be easy. Perhaps I will PM neot.... awww I mean email

crouse wrote:

9. http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=24115 <<<< LInks aren't automatic. (Can be changed I think, if wanted)

That's another thing I miss, though I have greasemonkey scripts to fix that.

crouse wrote:

If we had a poll, I would have voted no on the punbb forums, I liked the old ones better

There wasn't a poll because this was a backend decision. It wasn't a "lets use punbb because it's more feature rich and will make users happier" - it was a "punbb will make our jobs easier, and our servers less taxed".

Susu · 2007-01-31 16:50:59

First thing to say: It's faster. That's nice.
Second: I'm not feeling comfortable with it yet (but the feeling may change after a while *g*). I want to explain why. The index page (and though the search or topic pages) look a bit confusing to me with it's big blue squares, and the colums seem somewhat unbalanced. It's hard to find information at first sight. Besides the links "Show unanswered post" etc. should be on top of the page to make browsing a little more comfortable.

Please don't get me wrong. I don't want to flame, but maybe you could work some things up for a better handling.

Thanks a lot indeed, I like the forum..

cactus · 2007-01-31 16:51:40

4. Email is now the substitute for PM's. NOTE: I changed my email address to one i use for junkmail stuff...... Potential spam problem .... Now requires me to open up my browser to go to the forum and another app to check my email..... ?

4. Have you tried the email feature? In your preferences, you can choose to hide your email, but still allow people to send to you. The email is sent from the forum, via a form page. The end user should never see your email at that point (until you reply of course).

Yes, it is 'something else to check'. I think the idea is that most people use email on a daily basis. In fact, I most often discovered I had a PM via the email notification feature of the old forum. lol

Email has antispam controls, blacklists, whitelists, etc. The forum software puts the user's email in the 'from' field..just like if you sent the email yourself. So..if you start getting email from someone you don't want email from, just block it/filter it like you would any other email.

To me, it seems like 'one less thing to check'. Of course, usage varies. This is just another perspective.

stonecrest · 2007-01-31 17:02:48

Is there any chance of getting a 'Mark all topics read' link at the bottom of the forum in addition to the top? Surely there is nothing weird about my style of browsing, where I start at the top forum and work my way down... only to have to scroll back up to the top to mark everything read when I'm done.

(I also second the ability to mark topics read in forums.)

Oh, and it'd be nice if the images at the top of the forum were linked up again. The arch logo used to take you to the main arch website and the archlinux text logo used to take you to the forum index. Maybe this was mentioned elsewhere, I haven't read through all the posts about the punbb migration.

Last edited by stonecrest (2007-01-31 17:06:12)

crouse · 2007-01-31 17:25:16

Phrakture,

Thanks for your reply, that was informative.

For the record it wasn't my thread that was locked, it was dusty's, and I thought it was locked because it strayed off course and was in the wrong forum, not necc. because it was "taboo" to talk about anything.

It appears that the "unread posts" problem will be handled in the next release of punbb.... that's good.

As for the quick search box, it appears to be an easy fix.... http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?id=4485

I had never heard of the "stylish" firefox extention..... nice. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2108/

Stylish allows easy management of user styles. User styles empower your browsing experience by letting you fix ugly sites, customize the look of your browser or mail client, or just have fun. With an online repository at userstyles.org, you don't even need to know how to write styles yourself; just a couple clicks and the chosen style is applied. Stylish is to CSS what Greasemonkey is to JavaScript, and unlike other methods of using user styles, most styles take effect immediately.

Thanks for pointing that extention out, I'll try it out.

cactus, I quickly looked at the email options. I see your point about filtering, it would be easier to filter emails than pm's I suppose, but it's just counter intuitive to me...... when I'm on a forum, messages that pertain to that forum are there......not in my email box. I do see the benefit that phrakture pointed out though... "It makes more sense (read: is more 'KISS') to have a single communication medium that YOU control instead of maintaining messages on our server. " ....... the control is now with you, the user, instead of somewhere you don't control. I hadn't honestly thought of it in that perspective. It's a good point.

Last edited by crouse (2007-01-31 17:26:39)

crouse · 2007-01-31 18:28:45

I think i found what I was looking for in the (alternating post row colors) punbb forums...... http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?id=7278 if anyone ever wanted to hard code it into the forum css. I may give it a go on using the firefox extension and see if it can be done that way.

Marcel- · 2007-01-31 19:40:51

There's one feature I'd like to see: when browsing thru multiple pages in a thread, there are no 'Previous' and 'Next' links, which are far more easier to click (wider) then picking a number in a row.

Nice that images are quoted as URLs automatically and not as inline images anymore.

Last edited by Marcel- (2007-01-31 19:41:48)

Snowman · 2007-02-01 00:16:53

crouse wrote:

9. http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=24115 <<<< LInks aren't automatic. (Can be changed I think, if wanted)

Enabled. Links are automatic now.

dtw · 2007-02-01 16:31:38

crouse wrote:

I think i found what I was looking for in the (alternating post row colors) punbb forums...... http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?id=7278 if anyone ever wanted to hard code it into the forum css. I may give it a go on using the firefox extension and see if it can be done that way.

As I understand it we could have user selected themes. I can't see why a few other versions of the basic CSS couldn't be submitted for users to choose from? We basically had that for months on the old forums anyway.

Susu · 2007-02-04 12:18:33

We really need a "Search in topic" function...

Snowman · 2007-02-04 18:58:54

Susu wrote:

We really need a "Search in topic" function...

We already have that in the search page. In the section "Select where to search" you can select to search in "topic subject only".

manmower · 2007-02-04 21:08:04

I think what was meant was more of a "search for posts within this thread" type functionality. I rarely ever use this in any forum but it does come in handy at times.

rabid_dog · 2007-02-07 14:09:58

Wow! Punbb..
Looks much better and lighter, but have a bit weird (QUITE a bit weird) 'unread' messages behaviour.
No private messages, ant it's right for me - email checking every minute, forum once in 1-3 days.

To forum admin:
How i can change my login name? I cannot just register new - i must use other e-mail address, and i cannot drop old account to free my email..

Dusty · 2007-02-07 16:16:57

I really don't want to condone a flood of "please change my name" requests here or anything, but if you e-mail me with your requested login name, I can change it for you.

Dusty

dtw · 2007-02-08 16:08:36

Heh, I always tried to do that on the QT too...never got that many requests fortunately

Arch Linux

#1 2007-01-31 08:34:57

Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#2 2007-01-31 08:59:52

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#3 2007-01-31 09:33:52

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#4 2007-01-31 11:26:06

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#5 2007-01-31 12:40:51

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#6 2007-01-31 13:56:39

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#7 2007-01-31 15:57:05

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#8 2007-01-31 15:59:25

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#9 2007-01-31 16:11:33

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#10 2007-01-31 16:27:08

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#11 2007-01-31 16:40:35

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#12 2007-01-31 16:50:59

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#13 2007-01-31 16:51:40

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#14 2007-01-31 17:02:48

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#15 2007-01-31 17:25:16

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#16 2007-01-31 18:28:45

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#17 2007-01-31 19:40:51

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#18 2007-02-01 00:16:53

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#19 2007-02-01 16:31:38

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#20 2007-02-04 12:18:33

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#21 2007-02-04 18:58:54

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#22 2007-02-04 21:08:04

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#23 2007-02-07 14:09:58

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#24 2007-02-07 16:16:57

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

#25 2007-02-08 16:08:36

Re: Arch forums - phpBB gone - punbb installed.

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