Heads up: forum upgrade Sunday am

[squamish climber]

We're going to upgrade the forum February 20/11. While most settings including pswds and usernames will not change you will notice a different look and great improvements.

Thanks
Dave

[squamish climber]

So the upgrade went well. You might have noticed the forum is getting more spam. If anyone is interested in being a moderator so we can catch and delete the spam sooner, let me know.

Here are some of the new features of the community forum

• You can save your post as a draft until ready to submit
  You can edit your posts up to twelve hours
  You can follow topics by bookmarking them or subscribing (you are alerted when there is an update)
  Better search functions

Avatars are allowed. Unfortunately they did not cross over from the old version. You will need to repost the link in your personal options.

You should check out the FAQ at the top right of the page for more info on these and other features.

[psi4ce]

The forum upgrade is definitely an improvement. There are some cool new features and usability enhancements.

And, since all many of us ever do is lurk on the SquamishClimbing.com community forums, we can use a few enhancements every once in a while.

Here's a little feedback if you'd like.

The main problem I am having is that I find it difficult to tell the difference between unread posts and posts that I have already viewed. The reason for this is that the circular "text" icon changes to a pale shade of red when there are unread posts in a thread. This shade, I find, is difficult to distinguish compared to the "normal" pale shade of blue. Previously, unread posts were marked with a big, solid, bold, blue, asterisk icon. For me, the unread posts feature is far more important than, say, the save drafts feature. I suppose this is more of a "nag" than anything.

What do those circular text icons mean, anyways? Of course it is obvious that if it shows animated scrolling text, there are multiple pages of posts. But, some show scrolling text, and a little red asterisk as well. This asterisk does not seem to be related to unread posts at all. Does it mean the topic is "hot"?

Another problem is that nobody seems to have been able to restore their avatar icon. Where in the User Control Panel do we have the ability to do that?

Anyway, good work, thanks!

[squamish climber]

I need to look into this to find the answers to some of these questions. Making the colours of read posts bolder should be doable. There is a link from the board index to view new posts and unread posts. You should find this link near the top left of the page. Avatar settings occurs in the user panel.

And yes the red asterisk means the topic is 'hot'.

[psi4ce]

I really like the "view unread posts" link. That's cool. Never noticed it before. Or maybe it is new?

Speaking of noticing things, I've looked twice for the avatar settings in the control panel. Um... where exactly?

[squamish climber]

To insert your old avatar or insert a new new one: in user control panel, click on the profile tab. Then on the right margin will be a list - Edit avatar is the the third one down the list. There may be your old avatar image showing, but you need to repost your avatar url. Just a reminder, please keep it within 100 x 100 pixels. It helps to keep the forum formating neat.

If you don't have an avatar image and want one, it's easy to do. I recommend signing up for picasa web albums. This is great way to back up some of your photos on your hard drive and it's a great way to participate in the forum by including some of your pictures. From picasa there is a way to create an url link that can be pasted into your user control panel settings. If anybody wants some help with that let me know.

Incidentally I was looking at the bookmark feature which is new with this version - here the are instructions:

Bookmarks, much like subscriptions, are topics you've chosen to watch. However, there are two key differences: 1) only individual topics may be bookmarked, and 2) an e-mail will not be sent to inform you of new posts. To create a bookmark, visit the topic you would like to watch and click the 'Bookmark Topic' link located at the bottom of the page.To remove a bookmark, check the box next to the bookmark you would like to remove and click the 'Remove marked bookmarks' button.

[staven]

User Control Panel, Profile Tab, Edit Avatar