# Why was the design of the website changed? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [November 17, 2020, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828 "2020-11-17T22:10:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2020, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/41 "2020-11-24T18:09:15Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > But for most of the rest of us who’ve been here ~5 months and have picked up on how to operate this thing, there is NOTHING that was better about vBulletin. Infinite scroll is still a bad idea. But other than that, I agree. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2020, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/42 "2020-11-25T19:51:56Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > there is NOTHING that was better about vBulletin. Here’s one thing I miss about vBulletin: the listing of threads in each forum had icons to indicate which threads you had posted in. I haven’t found that function in Discourse, and would love to see in restored or implemented. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2020, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/43 "2020-11-25T20:04:17Z")
There isn’t exactly that feature that I’ve found. But you can dupilicate it exactly if you want, at the expense of losing another possibly useful feature. See below. From the category listing you can tell which ones you’ve read by the different color. In my theme those are sorta subdued = grayed out whereas the ones I haven’t read are full brightness. That doesn’t differentiate between ones I’ve posted to vs. only read. You can perform a search for your posts within a category and the results come back with newest on top. So the first few are the recent ones. You can also limit that search to just the e.g. last week, month, 3 months, 74 days, whatever. You can adjust your preferences so the Unread page only shows threads you’ve posted to that have new action on them. But doing that has the effect of losing track of threads you’re following only to read, not to post. If that’s a tradeoff that works for you, go to your user control panel, then Preferences, then Notifications. Set the second dropdown “automatically track topics I enter” to “Never”. That means reading without posting won’t add that thread to your Unread page. Make sure the next dropdown “When I post in a topic, set that topic to” is set to “tracking”. That way all posted threads will be on your Unread page. That is the Discourse default, so it’s probably already set to that. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2020, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/44 "2020-11-25T22:24:32Z")
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it, but it really isn’t a great alternative to the way vBulletin handled it. ISTM that rather than this workaround, just looking through one’s own history is simpler and more comprehensive. ---
**Author:** ![FigNorton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fignorton/32/5619_2.png) [@FigNorton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FigNorton)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/45 "2020-11-26T02:43:40Z")
There’s gotta be some way for what you want. When I go to a “forum”, it has a blue dot with a number in it which I think is number of posts since I visited the thread. Sometimes, there’s a gray circled number that means … something? I think it’s only happens on threads I talked in. eta: I am using the “Straight Dope Light” skin. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/46 "2020-11-26T03:00:29Z")
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#): > > I’m curious how you got vBulletin to save a page for offline reading. The only way I could figure to do that was to copy the page to another document. Copying the link would require an internet connection. If you were doing that, you could copy posts the same way here. I used to do that all the time when I was reading a long thread on an airplane before takeoff. Just load the page in my browser, then click to load another page in a new tab of the browser, and so on until I had loaded all of it. Then, after putting my phone in airplane mode, I could finish reading the thread. > [@Briny\_Deep](#): > > but the worst thing is the infinitely scrolling non-pages. Yup. Hate that. But it’s the second worst thing. The worst thing is that nothing in this software is well organized by location. It’s just not designed for a spacial thinker. > [@GreenWyvern](#): > > > [@Godwin](#): > > > > this one doesn’t even allow page-saving for offline reading > > I just found out that you can easily save a whole topic offline. Great discovery! 😀 > > **Press Ctrl-P** to save all the posts (or a range of posts) in a topic to a PDF file. > > It has a preview and various settings. Takes only a few seconds and couldn’t be easier! Cool, will play with that. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/47 "2020-11-26T03:07:06Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > I just checked, and if I switch to mobile view, then I get an item ‘Desktop View’ on the hamburger menu rather than ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’. How do you switch to ‘mobile view’? What is it and how is it different from ‘desktop view’? ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/48 "2020-11-26T04:54:25Z")
> [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > How do you switch to ‘mobile view’? If you’re on a phone or tablet, you should get it automatically. There’s no advantage at all to using it on a desktop/laptop. If you want to try it on a desktop go to [https://boards.straightdope.com/?mobile\_view=1](https://boards.straightdope.com/?mobile_view=1) You can switch back by going to the hamburger menu ☰ and clicking ‘Desktop View’, or the same link as above with ?mobile\_view=0 ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/49 "2020-11-26T05:32:13Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > Here’s one thing I miss about vBulletin: the listing of threads in each forum had icons to indicate which threads you had posted in. I haven’t found that function in Discourse, and would love to see in restored or implemented. This might help. You can get a listing of all the threads you’ve posted in. Click on the link in the post below and then bookmark it. They’re not by forum, but you can do a bit of a sort by views, activity, etc. I miss **codinghorror** He had a lot of great tips like this and could probably answer a bunch of these questions. > [@Very happy with Discourse](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/very-happy-with-discourse/919602/48): > > It is rarely used but [https://boards.straightdope.com/posted](https://boards.straightdope.com/posted) is similar to what you’re asking for. Just because you posted in a topic doesn’t necessarily mean you are watching or tracking it, but it usually does. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/50 "2020-11-26T05:50:09Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > Here’s one thing I miss about vBulletin: the listing of threads in each forum had icons to indicate which threads you had posted in. I haven’t found that function in Discourse, and would love to see in restored or implemented. One thing you can do is bookmark all the threads you post in. You have to do it manually, but then you will get a bookmark icon next to the thread. Either use the button at the bottom of the thread, or press B. ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/51 "2020-11-26T06:05:18Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > One thing you can do is bookmark all the threads you post in. Cool! Adding **codinghorror** ’s suggestion to yours, people wanting to have that function could use the link [https://boards.straightdope.com/posted](https://boards.straightdope.com/posted) to find the threads they’ve posted in, then bookmark all of those to get a visual from the bookmark icon to see the threads they’ve posted in glancing down the page of a forum. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/52 "2020-11-26T12:31:50Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > One thing you can do is bookmark all the threads you post in. Yes, but then i have too much bookmarked to use the bookmarks as… Bookmarks. When i get a new update to OOTS I want to be able to find that thread to post the update. And without bookmarks that’s very hard. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828/53 "2020-11-26T15:18:49Z")
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#): > > This might help. You can get a listing of all the threads you’ve posted in. Click on the link in the post below and then bookmark it. They’re not by forum, but you can do a bit of a sort by views, activity, etc. I miss **codinghorror** He had a lot of great tips like this and could probably answer a bunch of these questions. > > > [@](#): > > > > It is rarely used but [https://boards.straightdope.com/posted](https://boards.straightdope.com/posted) is similar to what you’re asking for. Just because you posted in a topic doesn’t necessarily mean you are watching or tracking it, but it usually does. This isn’t bad, and is a little more convenient than going to my posting history in my profile. But still not as nice as vBulletin’s icons. > [@GreenWyvern](#): > > One thing you can do is bookmark all the threads you post in. > > You have to do it manually, but then you will get a bookmark icon next to the thread. > > Either use the button at the bottom of the thread, or press B. This is much better, and would be perfect if I could find a way of going back and automatically bookmarking all 6,500 of my posts over the past 18 years. 😁 But I might start bookmarking the threads I post in from now on. Thanks, all, for the tips. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-the-design-of-the-website-changed/925828.md?page=2)