Jump to content

Things you need to know about the new forum


JohnCh

Recommended Posts

After a number of false starts, the new forum software is finally live. Although the user experience differs from vBulletin, it's a much easier to use interface and addresses a lot of the frustration many of us have felt over the past few years.  Help Guides are available to show how to do common functions.  If something there is unclear, or not covered, please post your question to the thread: In the new forum, how do I…?   To see the list of known issues and to report new ones you uncover, please go to the report post migration issues thread so we can investigate and keep that information in one place.

 

A few things to know:

  • It can take several days for the migration to complete.  Although you can safely use the forum now, you may notice some temporary issues while the background processes finish up.  These include:
    • The site is not as responsive as expected.  This is a function of the server resources being used to complete indexing and other boring work. 
    • Random photos in some migrated threads may initially be missing but slowly appear over a few days.
    • Some old PMs may not display properly at first.
  • Paid Club Members
    • If you are a Paid Club Member, first, thank you.  Your support helps keep the lights on.  Second, Invision handles membership subscriptions differently than vBulletin.  Although your paid status migrates over correctly, your end date does not.  Fixing that requires a manual process that takes several hours to complete and will result in you receiving an Invoice email.  That invoice does not mean you've made a new payment or that one is due.  It will also incorrectly show your membership end date is 1 year from the date you receive that email, and it will include a bogus billing address.  Please disregard that information.  Once I complete the manual updates, your subscription end date shown in Store > Manage Purchases will be revised to the correct date.
    • Work is still required to turn PayPal back on for the new site.  I expect that will be completed by the end of this week.
  • Images/Attachments in posts
    • Invision resizes images in posts to meet specific parameters, then discards the original, larger image.  This means that we can safely lift the size limitation for an image from 2MB on the old forum to 20MB without impacting performance or storage costs.  Keep in mind that if you attempt to upload five 15MB images to a single post, it will work, but depending on your upload speeds, it could take several minutes.
  • Gallery Images (go to Browse > Gallery)
    • Although Invision does auto-resizing for images in posts, it intentionally does not do this for Gallery images and there is no way to change that through the control panel or custom code.  That means if you upload a very large image, we will need to store it at that size regardless of the displayed size.  Because of this, we must limit the file size of uploaded images in Galleries to preserve performance and control storage costs.  Paid Club Members may upload 6MB images, while Registered Users are limited to 3MB.  Paid Club Members also have the ability to store more images than Registered Users: 3 albums vs. 1 album, with all albums maxing out at 25 images.  We will revisit these limits in the future.
  • Downloads Section (go to Browse > Downloads)
    • Thanks to the generosity of several members and some distributors/dealers, we have a massive library of downloads that range from magazine articles to trouble shooting guides.  It will take quite a while to upload the current library, but in the interim, you can browse through the navigation structure in Downloads to get a sense of what's coming.  We'll try to complete one section at a time to make it easier to figure out what's newly added, and as a teaser we've completed two sections for launch: General Articles (3 downloads) and Technical > Engines (also 3 articles.)
    • If you have a download, preferably a PDF, you wish to donate, please use the support interface: click Support, then the New Request button, select Download Submission from the Department dropdown box, complete the form and click Save to submit. 
  • Articles (go to Browse > Articles)
    • We have big plans for this section.  Currently the content is limited to the help guides, but we will add articles on the various se7en brands, buying a se7en (new or used) track days, tours, and other items over the coming months.  The article submission process is similar to Downloads above, but choose Articles Submission from the Department dropdown box.
  • Help section has changed
    • A new forum means old forum help threads no longer apply.  The Help section is now called Forum Evolution & Issues and is comprised of three child forums:  Issues & Help which is the place to raise issues with the forum software and to get help; Forum Evolution for feature requests and general discussion about possible forum changes; Testing where you should feel free to test various posting options.  Threads in the Testing forum will be deleted on a regular basis.
  • Support
    • The forum has a support ticketing system.  It is used to submit content for the Downloads and Articles section as described above, and it may also be used to get assistance with an account issue.  For general help requests on how to use the forum, please post to the Issues & Help forum.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hopefully we won't find any other issues than those I outlined in the issues thread, but...well, Murphy was an optimist, so I'm not putting money on it :classic_biggrin:

 

-John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Checking in. Everything looks great! Will test out some features. 

 

Highlighting a specific part of the thread for a quote is a great one to start! Looking forward to testing and utilizing new image/upload options. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let m know what you find.  I'm slogging through the invoice fun, but it appears I have paypal working.  Croc found a great, free batch image resizer on the Windows Store called Pixillion.  It's dead simple to use and helps the forum out by storing images that are more consistent in size to what is displayed in Galleries (maxes out at 1600 px).

 

-John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've finished updating all the Club Member expiration dates.  If anyone thinks their expiration date is wrong, please contact me and Ill check the vBulletin records from PayPal.

 

Thanks,

John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It ain't done yet :)  For those who noticed the site went offline overnight, it was due to a simple server change the hoster made to address an alert in the Invision Admin panel.  Lesson learned on my part; when dealing with a hosting provider in a time zone 8 hours ahead, avoid requesting seemingly innocuous changes before you go to bed.

 

-John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its looking great so far.   The galleries are well worth browsing.  Once I take a break tonight I will have a crack at uploading the technical downloads section so there will be new areas to explore later this week.

 

VBulletin did us well for close to 15 years.  Invision really will lift the forum to the next level.  

 

John deserves beers for this one! (oops...the "cheers" emoticon did not make the jump)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Invision automatically adds that shield to the profile of anyone in the Administrator group.  And before anyone balks at the fact that Croc is now an Admin, he's promised to wield that power fairly, and more importantly, to not touch any settings in the admin control panel.

 

-John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The updated site looks great. Not a small task by any means. 
Thank you JohnCH.

 

Jack Banker

Carmel, Indiana

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The member galleries are already up here, and you'll see placeholders for Birkin in the Downloads section.  Hopefully those downloads will be in place within the week.  Unfortunately, we couldn't migrate over the mails.  They don't lend themselves to forum threads based on the mail format, and they were full of PII: names, email addresses, and phone numbers.  That was fine on a Yahoo Group that was closed, but not in an open forum.

 

-John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...