The Linux.uk Community Forum

Ok, so I'm partly testing polls here to see how they look on the new version. Note, if you look in your profile you can change your Theme. I've uploaded 4 for now, let me know if there's anything on the SMF mods page you like the look of.

i'll side on the positive, it's different and changes how I used to find posts and read replies. time will truly decide if it's easier or harder; but unless we're writing our own forum we'll always be a slave to somebody else's view of "better". i notice we've lost some personalisation - messages etc, but perhaps those have just moved and I've not looked .

the upgrade has worked well, and feels smoother/slicker on my phone, being my main device for this.

I'm more thankful to the forum in general, and the fact it exists outside of the social media giants who have swallowed so many similar groups, and to its community of users.

I'll assume that any annoyances can be mitigated, or dwindle with time as I forget the old interface.

it's a thumbs up from I!

Personal messages are on the Envelope, left hand column .. 

All looks OK to me. It is more difficult to find find the latest posts when just browsing ( star icon not available ) but easy when you have logged in.

Ok, so we used to have some "Portal" software which provided the summary page(s), but unfortunately this wasn't compatible with the new version of SMF. It it's deemed useful I could add one of the alternative Portals that is compatible with SMF 2.1, although someone would need to spend a little time configuring it.

The "best" one I can see looks to be;
Tiny Portal (https://www.tinyportal.net/docs/)

Thoughts?

Just added a "like" button to each post, also on user profile pages there is a "posts I liked" link which will take you back to a list of "liked" posts .. seems useful for bookmarking stuff 

This "quick reply" feels to be a handy addition, but where is the "like" I can't see anything obvious?

Ok, I've attached some screen-grabs of what I see for Star and Like .. note Star won't appear on Polls (this thread is off a Poll) but most normal articles it should show. Like seems to appear everywhere ...

Ok so there was a permissions issue with some of the new mods .. have now tweaked. The starts plugin, only senior members and mods can set the rating, but everyone will be able to see them if they're set. 

G,

Just to confirm that I can "Like" and see&set the Star rating - but once set, I'm unable to change said rating.

Ok, after a little research I've remove the star rating mod, it does look like you can't change the rating (by design) when set which (let's face it) is either really lazy or .. forum protocol prevents me from commenting further (!) The "like" sort of achieves the same thing and you can get at your likes posts with;
https://linuxforums.org.uk/index.php?action=profile;area=mylikedcontent;u=2
(Profile -> Profile Info -> Posts I liked)

I'm not sure of the use case, but I see we can change the icon that appears beside our name post date/time, at the top of each of our posts....

I quite like it!

Have noticed that quick edit doesn't seem to work, while 'more->Modify' does.

For anyone who wants to keep track of posts / recent posts, the forum does support an RSS feed (XML) which you can get at with the following URL;
https://linuxforums.org.uk/?action=.xml&limit=100

This is for everything, most recent 100 .. if you access via a board, you can get individual boards, and of course change the number of items. I've attached a screenshot of the forum RSS when views through a reader, in this case "Feeder" which is an extension for Google chrome.

Also (!) "Tapatalk" is now working properly again if you want to use on a mobile ...

Upgrade?

It's AWFUL.

Sorry. It wasn't broken and didn't need fixing.

Please, Mad Penguin, tell me how to change to another theme. The default hurts my eyes. Just as everyone else is offering dark mode we suddenly get glaring white!

Mmm, actually it was broken, quite badly in fact. As you will notice the site had endured in it's previous form for over 12 years so you would have noted a distinct resistance to unnecessary change (!)

I get that it's different to the previous look, you can change it by going into "Profile" (3rd down on the left) , hover over "forum profile" and select "Look and layout".  Then select the "CHANGE" button on the right next to "Current theme". This should list the available themes with some screenshots .. click "USE THIS THEME" for the one you want.

There are ways to "enhance" the display and provide more indexing etc using "portal" add-ons, for example; https://custom.simplemachines.org/index.php?mod=97 .. but this needs people to (a) want it and (b) contribute. Currently my time extends to keeping the thing running, other than that I'm pretty busy with other stuff. 

Unfortunately in this day and age re; Internet security, there are limits to "not" upgrading.