Problem children / punch list for fixes / TIPS AND TRICKS

About This Message Board
1

Hi there, and welcome to the new and improved Straight Dope Message Board.

This thread is to report problems that you encounter as you navigate the board.

If you see a problem already reported you do not need to report it again.

We will keep you informed as we find bugs and work through problems.

Already on the list:

Old spoiler tags do not work and are visible.
Old quote tags do not work and show in plaintext.

Newly made quotes and spoilers tags are operational.

Work is ongoing on fixes.

6.22 1;28 AM Everyone will see ads right now. (Minimal at this point, though that may be changing.) The Dev Team will see what they can do to adjust the ad experience for paying members.

6.22 1:33 AM Where is my UserCP?

Here’s how you find it.

  1. Click on your icon in the upper right corner.
  2. Click on your name.
  3. Select what you want to see/do from the drop down menu.

6.22 1:15 AM Is there a User Guide/Manual/FAQ

A Discourse generic User Guide is available here"

A more specific guide / updated FAQ will be produced as soon as possible.

6.22 1:46 AM 10,000 posts locks thread. FIXED.
6.22 2:47 AM No more than 50 characters in a oost. FIXED.

6.22 3:59 AM How to Change Your Theme (Skin)
Click on icon in upper right corner.
Click on your name.
Click on Preferences.
Click on Interface.
Under THEME select the theme/skin you want.

Thank you. Please check here for regular updates.

Jenny
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator

3

Do Charter Members get ads now? Because I’m seeing them

2 Likes
4

I was wondering about the ads as well.

5

How do we access our profile?

1 Like
6

This - where’s the User CP?

1 Like
7

Click on your Avatar in the upper right, and then click on your username.

1 Like
8

The links at the very, very, very bottom under “Forum Jump” give an error.

9

I made a post in the “trump clusterfuck” thread and got a message that the thread was auto locked because it had exceeded its limit of 10,000 posts.

Also, is there no “go to first unread” function?

10

There seem to be two distinct pages that list all the “categories” (forums).

The default home page,
[url]https://boards.straightdope.com/[/url]
or
[url]https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/[/url]
looks all wrong.

But this page:
[url]https://boards.straightdope.com/c/main/6[/url]
looks much more like the forums index page we are accustomed to.

11

Round avatars. Nope. Should be easy to make them square. See The freeCodeCamp Forum - Join the developer community and learn to code for free..

Seems like Discourse treats all the regular SDMB forums as just subforums of a larger “Main” forum. Other Discourse boards don’t have that issue: see https://forum.vuejs.org/ or Categories - SitePoint Forums | Web Development & Design Community.

Listing the total number of threads in a forum is preferable to listing the number of new threads a week. If you list the number of posts and threads in a subforum, please consider making the number exact; not a vague “about 5K” like I’ve seen on other Discourse sites.

The header needs work. It looks like an ad banner, and the bottom two lines are difficult to read. Maybe it’s time to declutter the logo, and use dark on white text. See https://community.letsencrypt.org/, Sitepoint has a page header that has a dark background across the entire top. See Categories - SitePoint Forums | Web Development & Design Community.

Forum pages show the time from the last post, not the time of the post. (For example, “8d” instead of “June 13, 2020 @ 12:00 PM” or “2020-06-13 12:00”.) If you’re going to show the time from last post, make the threshold just a day or two,

Posts in a thread don’t show the time of post; just the date or “5m”, “8h”, “2d”, etc.

1 Like
12

It’s very… white. No rush, but it would be nice if we could lower the glare factor somehow. Again, low priority, obviously.

And it just logged me out due to “time expired.” What’s that about?

2 Likes
13

There is a “first unread” option that by default Automatically takes you to new posts when you revisit a thread. But remember, as far as Discourse is concerned, this is your first visit to the site and everything is unread.

2 Likes
14

AND furthermore, very old posts (for example, the earliest posts in the Trump Clusterfuck thread) only show the month and year, e.g., “Dec. '16”. What, they couldn’t also show the exact date? Does this board only store dates to 3 significant digits? Can it be configured to show ALL dates and times explicitly? None of this “2d” or “5m” stuff. That’s confusing enough. And, at least in the old vB board, it tended to be wrong across time zones.

15

No post counts? pout

16

If you hover over the “age of post” indicator, you get a popup with the exact time (I do, using Chrome on Win 10, at least)

17

It took me several tries to get my password reset, and I think I see what the problem was – it had to do with confusing instructions in the “Reset Password” dialog that I mis-understood, and I wonder how many others might make the same mistake?

I clicked on “Forgot my Password”, which took me to the “Reset Password” dialog. This had a message something like “A confirmation will be sent to your e-mail”, and an OK button at the bottom. I took this to mean I should wait to get that e-mail, then come back here and click on the button. No e-mail ever showed up.

Eventually, I clicked on the OK button and got my e-mail. So when it says “A confirmation will be sent to your e-mail”, it means “Click on the OK button and THEN a confirmation will be sent to your e-mail”.

18

I’ve been logged out about four times, although oddly the first three times I could click a “Refresh” button and get right back in. Bit of an interruption though. The fourth time I actually had to log in for realsies and do a search for posts I’d posted to to get back to this thread.

19

This one should be the default. Looks WAY better than the other two

20

Okay, cool. It even works with those very old posts (the ones I said only show month and year). Still I think it would be nice if that were the default way dates and times are displayed. Is that a configurable option?

What’s with the blue dot that appears next to the time of post that disappears after a few seconds? This board seems full of blinking lights and appear and disappear, or things that change color, or other busy distractions.