Forum Upgraded

Started by yC, Jun 20, 2011, 02:46 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

yC

Finally, after many years our forum software is upgraded and it is now using SMF 2.0 Final.  As you can see, together with this upgrade there is now a new theme to the forum.  No more nearly out-of-the-box SMF default theme which Riotblade told me it was modified by him (barely ... >_>).  I am not going to say this theme is much better, since it is based off another theme but I'd say it's acceptable and somewhat reminds me of the color of any IPB board lol.

I apologize that I have to take the forum down for a whole day to do the upgrading.  This is because many custom mods that did not cause me problem during my test install did came up with little problems here and there when I am doing the real upgrade.  Otherwise it would take no more than half a day to finish.

Onto the functionality, well it's a forum so expect the usual posting and more posting? 

There you see we have the old shout box back again (we used this version previously if you remember it!).  That's because the one we had doesn't have an updated version to work with this version of the forum.  After some modification I made it as close to the one we had as possible.  Except you will need a little time to get used to the "reserve" shouting from the bottom (more like irc/msn isn't that great?).

Anti-Spam

I turned on many new options to fight spam in this upgrade, these options are useful to have in our case but weren't available in the old version of the forum.   If you find them annoying as a regular user then let me know I'll try to turn them down a little.  Some of the measures put in places are:

- A minimum of 10 seconds must have past before the same IP can make a new post from his/her last post
- Most of the boards are set to require at least 7 words in a post to consider as a "passing" post, with the exception of the off-topic boards.  The requirement is lower.  A word is counted only if it is 3 letters or more.
- New sign up users with no post count will be shown a captcha to verify they are not a bot when posting.
- New sign up users with no post count cannot have an avatar and signature and they are not allowed to send out private message.  Lately, there are plenty of users simply sign up and put an ad in their signature then never come back (I mean unrelated as from furniture to funeral shop ads...).
- For the server seeker boards, users with fewer than 10 posts can still post recommendation but their posts will only show up when approved by a staff.  If this turns out to be bad, it'll go back to the old way.
- For the Paid Section, new topic will only show up when approved by a staff.

Because I have to open the forum again, there are a few things that are left to be done later on.

Gallery:

- The good news is it will come back with more functionality.  I think it's more of a media center now if I can configure it correctly for everyone to use.
- Right now I am hiding it from view until the setup is ready.
- But you can enjoy its auto-embed function already.  Just try paste a youtube, megavideo or any popular video site url link in your post box and preview it.  The url will turn into an embedded video box.  Don't try it reply here, I recommend using the off-topic > multimedia section or Ragnarok Online > RO Graphic, Coding & Media section for RO related videos.

Arcade:

- Again I need time to sort the list of games again and see which one is junk or won't submit score.  It'll come back later, in the mean you can play the few that are there.  Or let me know which game used to be your favorite and I'll process it first.

Shop:

- The bad news is ... I can't save your items.  So your inventory is wiped.  Since we all played some RO servers this shouldn't be hard to handle anyway. Actually the items available in the shop are either too abusive that I have to delete them or too useless that won't serve much joy.  I am having a hard time seeing what could be the use of the shop. 
- The good news is ... your Zeny is still there!  If you have anything to suggest to the shop, please let me know.

Other settings:

- During the upgrade I found the location setting of the server was set so awfully wrong and everyone kind of have to use the time offset to fix themselves including me.  So I put in the right value for the right timezone this time.  However, that means you most likely have to change your time offset again to set the forum time display like your local time.  That's at Profile > Modify Profile > Look and Layout.
- You should also explore other possible settings that are new to your profile while you are there.
- The custom profile fields are now a built-in feature to the forum.  I am afraid those have to be re-rentered.  There are now 4 custom profiles fields:  Current Server, Other Online Game Interest, Rates Interested, Server History.  All editable under your Profile > Modify Profile > Forum Profile and Current Server will show up under your avatar in every post you make.
- Just noticed the topic description field is a custom and that isn't with us anymore.


So I hope you like this new forum setting.  There are still a lot of things to be done, some of which are not mentioned up there.  Please be patient on the currently missing features.  As always, if you experience any error or have a suggestion to make then post it here.

/sleep

deusro

the new forum layout is rockin' YC ! nice job ... i will miss the old one though..brings back so much memories ^_^

DarkDevine

Good job, yC

This was needed

Thanks

(There are not enough words in this post. - so here are some more)
TotalRO - 10x/10x

ChemicalW

It looks really great. Was wondering what all the downtime was about but it was definitely worth it.

Yukino

The new theme does look a lot better as it matches up with the main RMS website more xD. Good job with the updates!
I thought a new theme might clutter up sections and make the board look less appealing as a search/community forum... but I stand corrected.

If possible, maybe the ultimate profile mod can be edited and added =D. I also found that the top banner looks really nice, though the profile avatar gets shifted to the right and doesn't look as nice positioned like that (but I guess that can't be helped?). I suggest adding in the editing colour/style of our board names. I really liked that shop mod.
Friends are special flowers that bloom from trust.

Free Designs by Me: Here!

Impulse

Looks great yC! I like the new RMS logo.


www.gothamro.com - Ragnarok for the Dedicated.

3x/3x/2x
Server Opened on May 26.

Signify

#6
Regarding the shop: I liked the name styling scroll. It would be great if you could add that back YC
Another idea would be a name changing scroll.

:)

Kyroki

It looks really cool!

PETER09


yC

Change display name is one of the abusive item that I removed a long time ago in the old forum.  I am going look for the other custom add-on items used to be in the shop, but can only add them if they are compatible.

Lucian

New theme looks great, good job yC.  :)

Gaypuff

I like it. It's a little more compact than the previous one, so that's good. One question though: I can't seem to modify my first post in my SpriteTemp thread over in the Paid Services section. I couldn't find anything about that--a bug? Or is this something I have to wait for until it's available again?

xyuki

Absolutely love the new design. It looks a lot more inviting! :3

Quote from: yC on Jun 21, 2011, 12:17 PM
Change display name is one of the abusive item that I removed a long time ago in the old forum.  I am going look for the other custom add-on items used to be in the shop, but can only add them if they are compatible.

If that is wanted bad might make it a once a month buyable thing or something like that.
I, personally, wouldn't care, though xD Just one opinion of many.

yC

I put a time limit to how long after posted you can edit the post, now I see it's not a good idea due to our forum's usage.  You should be able to edit now.

Gaypuff

#14
Ah, hah yes that would've prevented me (and quite a few other people) from keeping the topics up to date. Thanks for changing it!

ragnazorg

Quite impressed. Good JOB YC

bleu

Pretty Neat. Very user friendly. But I kinda missed the old "bleu themed banner"

cherryneh

the new layout is good looking than before...but i guess the quick reply is not there or is it just for this section ??

Karuna-tan

I was a bit surprised to see the new layout for the forums, but I do like the way it looks now. The old version was good, but this looks a bit more modern and yeah. Nice job. ~
"Howard, you do know I've got a number of ways to poison you. In your sleep. Your food. You don't want that to happen do you?"

Tom~

Quote from: cherryneh on Jun 23, 2011, 04:20 PM
the new layout is good looking than before...but i guess the quick reply is not there or is it just for this section ??

Quick Reply is still there. You have to change an option in Profile ---> Modify Profile ---> Look and Layout. "Use quick reply on topic display:" is what you should be changing.

And so you killed yourself,
but you killed everyone else around you too.

Love Me

nice new interface for RMS forum  :)
[color=green]Life is nothing without friendship.[/color]



| aeRO Information | aeRO Forum | aeRagnarok Online | aeMU Online |

Usagimimi

Love the forum :]

I think the main page icons are too busy, though. That's just me I bet ~_~

<3

Yukino

I feel like I see too many noodles appearing on the main page at once.
What I like is the navigation bar on top of the banner =D. I just hope the name colour shop mod will be implemented in soon ^^.
Friends are special flowers that bloom from trust.

Free Designs by Me: Here!

Belle.

The new forums look great!


Mid Rate: [100/100/Varied] Low Rate: [10/10/5/3]

yC

Well Yukino I tried =/

The "new items" in another package that does not come with the shop mod are from ages ago with no update.  Basically all file edit test applied come up with a "test failed" result.  I can't install it and won't take the risk of breaking stuff neither.  The shop will have to stay useless.

Yukino

Ah okay, so it's not possible to edit it manually using the old code from before? Good try then xD.
Maybe there's some other mods that you can add later on or from the shop mod site (saw some interesting ones). Most importantly, it's best not to break anything, I agree.
Friends are special flowers that bloom from trust.

Free Designs by Me: Here!

yC

#26
Okay just done with configuring and initializing the Media Center.  You can see the link "Media" at the top in the forum menu.

Now members can embed videos and upload images or documents to the Media Center.  The embedding works for links from most sites such as YouTube, MegaVideo, Facebook, MySpace, DailyMotion, Veoh, plus some more.   The Media Center acts like YouTube anyway except you can't upload video because I want to save resource on converting and streaming etc.  You can make comments, report comments and rate items.  For certain sharing section download is enabled.

I think a video center for RMS was suggested a few times so I hope people will make good use of this new addition.  Many nice RO videos are lost in the sea of YouTube videos and become hard to find, I want the Media Center to help keep track of the videos in categories and what not. 

I am not sure if people are still interested in another sprite/custom sharing platform like the old RUNE, I created a category for people to distribute RO custom work.  Definitely we are not going to lock access to certain level because this forum does not merely revolve around RO customs.

I populated the Media Center a little by linking the LoLs Castles series and some random favourites of mine.  Still I don't have much to show for PvP/WoE videos because it has been ages since the last time I participated in guild wars :'(.  Also if anyone is interested, I uploaded most of my "server caught cheating" screenshots for educational purposes.

Link: http://forum.ratemyserver.net/index.php?action=media 

(Item auto-approval is not available to users with less than 10 post count.)

Eradicate

Is there a way not to automatically embed youtube videos and instead have a link to the youtube page?

Eg. Showing a link >> link2youtubevideo rather than showing the youtube video on the post

Yukino

^ I second that (or have both up there).
Friends are special flowers that bloom from trust.

Free Designs by Me: Here!

yC

Not that I know of.  Part of it is called "auto-embedding mod" so it's ... auto.

Yukino

Thought that there might be a feature to edit that as with some mods I have seen, but I guess not. Oh well. The Media page is looking great regardless =D good job.
Friends are special flowers that bloom from trust.

Free Designs by Me: Here!

yC

Oh, I just saw someone did it.  If you put the link in quote tag or code tag it won't auto.  Like below.

Quotehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiXQHBeC2dI


Outphase

You've done quite a bit with the forums, and it's pretty cool! However, requiring a post count in order to PM a member is a tad bit frustrating when you have been a long time lurker and need to make an account to discuss some stuff. But I do understand, it is to prevent all the spammers and such, so I guess it's okay. ;o

Leigh mia

+1 for new RMS Forum  :)