Craig
TS Administrator
Hi all,
So a bit of an announcement from us - we'll very shortly be migrating the forum to Xenforo 2, a new version of the current forum software.
This will result in some downtime tomorrow, Friday evening (25th February) from 7PM, but will bring a number of improvements compared to what we have at present.
But first, a quick team announcement. Many of you will know @Joel from days of old, and I'm pleased to say he's making a return to the team in a technical capacity. He'll be managing the forum migration along with the new hosting it'll be running on.
Key Changes
There's a lot of changes within the new forum, but I'll point out a few key ones below:
Refreshed look
@Ian has worked incredibly hard alongside Joel to get a look which still manages to maintain the familiarity of the current design yet still be more fresh and modern.
A new post editor
We’ll have a new post editor which will bring improvements in how you compose and preview your posts:
Although we have Discord, we know people still like to have the Shoutbox. So we’re saying goodbye to TaigaChat and moving to a new Shoutbox which is more integrated into the forum. It’ll allow for user tagging, audio notifications (if you want it) and will also allow you to open the Shoutbox in a separate window if you’d like to keep a check on it throughout the day.
Meet up RSVP integrated into the forum
As our meets revolve mainly around our forum members, we’re moving meet up RSVPs into the individual meet up topics. This should make it much easier to view who’s attending and for you to say you’re coming along too.
What other changes are there?
The new software does bring some other changes which you'll need to be aware of as some current features won't work as they did:
Circular Avatars
The new forum design incorporates circular avatars, rather than the square ones we have now. So get editing/designing your new ones! Avatars should be 400 x 400 pixels minimum to ensure they're good quality.
Unread post count
The small red unread post icon that showed next to new posts won't be part of the new forum. This was an add-on on the current forum, but we're not happy with the performance of a replacement add-on in Xenforo 2. The new posts option is still there, just the number of unread posts won't appear next to it.
Swear Filter
We're going to trial disabling the swear filter, as we're unable to enable it on a per forum basis under the new software. However, the same rules laid out in our Member Expectations still apply i.e. we ask that you refrain outside of the Tavern. We're trusting members to police themselves on this, but we will take action on posting rights if anyone is seen to be going against this.
Content Tagging
We're disabling the content tagging function. This was only used by a few people when posting new topics, so wasn't really of much use. Moving forward, the search function does as good a job at finding relevant topics.
Member Expectation Changes
We’ve made an update to our Member Expectations to cover the changes. We've added reference to image and text lines limits in signatures, and added height guidance for them too. With the addition of GIPHY integration and with more videos being embedded into topics, there's now a new section covering media using media in your posts:
Migration Information
Testing and existing content
We've been busy performing some extensive testing over the past week or so, and we're confident that we've ironed out most of the issues and problems. We'll be migrating all content from the current forum to the new ones, so no posts will be lost.
Speaking of testing, we'd like to say a huge thanks to , @AT86, @Matt N, @Danny, @Alsty, @John, @pluk and @Rick for their help in providing valuable feedback and pointing out any bugs and issues that we've missed.
When is this happening?
We're aiming to migrate the existing forum over on the evening of Friday 25th February. The forum will be locked and unavailable from around 7pm, and will later be password protected until migration and testing has completed. While the forum is down, TowersStreet Chat will remain available, and we'll aim to complete the migration as soon as possible.
What if I have a problem after migration?
We know there's a possibility that some bugs might have been missed, or there might be some issues with individual accounts. We'll have a topic in Guest Services on the new forum to report any problems. If you're unable to post in there, please either shout up in TowersStreet Chat, or drop an email to newforum[at]towersstreet.com
Finally, I just want to say a massive thanks to Joel and Ian for the substantial amount of work they've put in to get this migration done. While we've been thinking about the new forum for a while, the bulk of the work has been done in the space of pretty much one week, far faster than initially envisaged!
Hopefully that covers everything for the time being, but if you have any questions feel free to shout up
.
So a bit of an announcement from us - we'll very shortly be migrating the forum to Xenforo 2, a new version of the current forum software.
This will result in some downtime tomorrow, Friday evening (25th February) from 7PM, but will bring a number of improvements compared to what we have at present.
But first, a quick team announcement. Many of you will know @Joel from days of old, and I'm pleased to say he's making a return to the team in a technical capacity. He'll be managing the forum migration along with the new hosting it'll be running on.
Key Changes
There's a lot of changes within the new forum, but I'll point out a few key ones below:
Refreshed look
@Ian has worked incredibly hard alongside Joel to get a look which still manages to maintain the familiarity of the current design yet still be more fresh and modern.
A new post editor
We’ll have a new post editor which will bring improvements in how you compose and preview your posts:
- Easier post previewing and editing: Previewing your posts is now much more slick, and more editing is done inline. The whole thing is much less clunky than the current setup.
- Hosted Images: We’re now in a position to allow your images to be hosted directly on the server. So no more hunting around for an image host!
- Emojis: We can now (finally!) support standard emojis as well Xenforo’s standard Smilies, which have also been improved.
- GIPHY Integration: Yeah, we may regret this one, but we’ll also have GIPHY integration right from the post editor.
Although we have Discord, we know people still like to have the Shoutbox. So we’re saying goodbye to TaigaChat and moving to a new Shoutbox which is more integrated into the forum. It’ll allow for user tagging, audio notifications (if you want it) and will also allow you to open the Shoutbox in a separate window if you’d like to keep a check on it throughout the day.
Meet up RSVP integrated into the forum
As our meets revolve mainly around our forum members, we’re moving meet up RSVPs into the individual meet up topics. This should make it much easier to view who’s attending and for you to say you’re coming along too.
What other changes are there?
The new software does bring some other changes which you'll need to be aware of as some current features won't work as they did:
Circular Avatars
The new forum design incorporates circular avatars, rather than the square ones we have now. So get editing/designing your new ones! Avatars should be 400 x 400 pixels minimum to ensure they're good quality.
Unread post count
The small red unread post icon that showed next to new posts won't be part of the new forum. This was an add-on on the current forum, but we're not happy with the performance of a replacement add-on in Xenforo 2. The new posts option is still there, just the number of unread posts won't appear next to it.
Swear Filter
We're going to trial disabling the swear filter, as we're unable to enable it on a per forum basis under the new software. However, the same rules laid out in our Member Expectations still apply i.e. we ask that you refrain outside of the Tavern. We're trusting members to police themselves on this, but we will take action on posting rights if anyone is seen to be going against this.
Content Tagging
We're disabling the content tagging function. This was only used by a few people when posting new topics, so wasn't really of much use. Moving forward, the search function does as good a job at finding relevant topics.
Member Expectation Changes
We’ve made an update to our Member Expectations to cover the changes. We've added reference to image and text lines limits in signatures, and added height guidance for them too. With the addition of GIPHY integration and with more videos being embedded into topics, there's now a new section covering media using media in your posts:
Member Expectations said:
Migration Information
Testing and existing content
We've been busy performing some extensive testing over the past week or so, and we're confident that we've ironed out most of the issues and problems. We'll be migrating all content from the current forum to the new ones, so no posts will be lost.
Speaking of testing, we'd like to say a huge thanks to , @AT86, @Matt N, @Danny, @Alsty, @John, @pluk and @Rick for their help in providing valuable feedback and pointing out any bugs and issues that we've missed.
When is this happening?
We're aiming to migrate the existing forum over on the evening of Friday 25th February. The forum will be locked and unavailable from around 7pm, and will later be password protected until migration and testing has completed. While the forum is down, TowersStreet Chat will remain available, and we'll aim to complete the migration as soon as possible.
What if I have a problem after migration?
We know there's a possibility that some bugs might have been missed, or there might be some issues with individual accounts. We'll have a topic in Guest Services on the new forum to report any problems. If you're unable to post in there, please either shout up in TowersStreet Chat, or drop an email to newforum[at]towersstreet.com
Finally, I just want to say a massive thanks to Joel and Ian for the substantial amount of work they've put in to get this migration done. While we've been thinking about the new forum for a while, the bulk of the work has been done in the space of pretty much one week, far faster than initially envisaged!
Hopefully that covers everything for the time being, but if you have any questions feel free to shout up
.
