New Website Forum – Discussion Topic

[Chris EParticipant @chrise]

I am not sure if it is connected at all but this screen, or one very similar to it, flashes accross the screen as I join or move around the site.

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

I am getting that too Chris, some sort of glitch I imagine. There is a meeting at Mortons today to discuss the various problems, see Darren’s post.

Colin

[Colin Bishop]

On Colin Bishop Said:

I am getting that too Chris, some sort of glitch I imagine. There is a meeting at Mortons today to discuss the various problems, see Darren’s post.

Colin

It was reported during initial testing as FOUC (Flash of Unstyled Content), otherwise known as ‘Web Flicker’.  Not been fixed, perhaps because it’s not awful and had lower priority than other problems.

Caused when a web page overloads the browser by sending it more than it can process and display in the blink of eye.  Scripts, style sheets, images, icons, plug-ins etc all take time to load and activate, and if done slowly the user gets to see the basic text links used when the bells and whistles don’t work.  Normally, when they fire up, the text links disappear, and it should happen faster than the eye can see.

I’ll report it again.

Dave (Model Engineer/MEW Moderator)

[Chris EParticipant @chrise]

Might this be associated with my “connection has timed out error”? It should be noted that I am getting that problem much less frequently than I did.

I also have a problem in that as previously explained when I access the forum I am never logged in. If I find a topic that I want to post I thus need to log in and that takes me back to that silly screen that asks me if I want the forum or my profile (why anybody would want to look at their profile frequently is beyond me). It then takes me back to the top forum topics page & I have to get back to the topic that I widh to post to. Can’t logging in just leave me where I was but now logged in?

Somehow at the moment this forum is much less desitable than it used to be.

 

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Darren at Mortons seems to be making some headway with a better indication of latest activity with more detail. It is currently being trialled on the ME/MEW site. Hopefully it will be possible to finish this next week and apply the improvements to this site.

Colin

[Dave ReedParticipant @davereed72029]

Just noticed that if I click an image in the gallery, I get taken back to the homepage. Presumably not the intended action.

 

Dave

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

No, that has been flagged up for attention.

Colin

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

The Gallery feature seems to have problems at the moment, (Sunday evening5th Nov). Also the Model Engineer website appears to be down completely.

I expect Mortons to be sorting this out tomorrow morning.

Colin

[Chris EParticipant @chrise]

This is the “sometimes” problem that I reported previously:

 

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Chris,

Yes, there does seem to be something choking response times in areas of the site and the Galleries problem hasn’t been fixed yet although it is on the list. The ME/MEW version is working though.

However, for information, the Mortons IT people have been focussing today on improving the latest posts facility and trying out various options on the ME/MEW site. The latest setup looks quite encouraging and I and the ME/MEW moderators are suggesting that we run with it and apply it to the Model Boats site and  then get on with addressing the many other outstanding bugs.

It’s been a busy day behind the scenes but I think useful progress is being made.

It’s not just a question of getting the software right but also enabling it to run efficiently. The ME/MEW forum is much larger than ours and more prone to being slowed down by accessing and processing the much greater amount of data it contains. The activities of the webspiders in indexing all this data are not helping things either.

Colin

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

I have to say Colin the ME forum front page is looking a lot better and the latest posts list is looking a lot more useful.  I’d be happy with that as a layout, although I’m sure there will be a wide range of other opinions!

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Yes, I agree Richard. They seem to be getting there. As long as it works people will get used to it.

Once they get the ME site stabilised they can port it over to Model Boats. I’m in the communications loop.

Fingers crossed,

Colin

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Latest Replies Facility

Further to the last two posts above, the improvements to the Latet Replies facility being trialled on the Model Engineer forum are now avaialable to us here on Model Boats. There are still some minor inconsistencies to fix but the feature is now workable.

To see it, go to the Forums home page and you will find a Latest Replies button top left above the list of subject headings (forums). This will take you directly to the last 25 posts which actually sit at the end of the subject headings list. You can also get there by simply scrolling down to the bottom of the headings list. The button will also appear on other pages (but not all for the moment for technical reasons).

25 posts are intended to give an indication of recent activity but at the end of this list there is another link, bottom left, which allows access to earlier replies if you want to go back further.

This essentially replicates the latests posts list on the old forum although it is presented slightly differently.

There may be some further layout changes later on but at least we now have a workable latest posts function.

Colin

[Chris FellowsParticipant @chrisfellows72943]

I hope that web flicker issue can be fixed soon!

Chris

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

That looks a lot better already!

[Chris EParticipant @chrise]

I agree with the above. The forum, and in fact the whole site, is now working much better.

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

The Webmaster has just updated the outstanding issues list, see below.

Colin

Re the web flicker,:

The brief unstyled content was noted when doing testing.

This is down to the type of theme and plugin being used to server the plugin. Some of the style sheets are loaded at the same time as the page, rather than at the start. The plugin used controls anything about the out of the box forum like moderation, quotes, etc. so we can’t change this.

The unstyled content is more noticeable on slower connections or when the site is under strain but is typically about a tenth of a second.

I have a dialog going with the developers of the plugin so will raise it with them to see if they can put something in place to pre-load the CSS.

Re the banners:

The banners bring in a lot of subscriptions where they haven’t been sold, and revenue where they have been sold. I know they aren’t popular but the alternatives would be charging people to not see them or just for use the forum, which would be more detrimental to it’s survival I believe. If there are any other suggestions as to how we cover development, maintenance and hosting costs, and promote magazines subscriptions we are happy to explore them.

[Bob WilsonParticipant @bobwilson59101]

I quite like the new forum layout, and easier posting of images.   But the gallery baffles me completely, I can oly find three galleries.   Also can’t figure out how to use “Search” at all.

Bob

 

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Bob,

The Galleries feature isn’t working properly at the moment. The galleries which equate to the old albums are new ones and don’t display properly. This is being worked on.

The previous Feature Articles are only partially working as the associated images are stored in different places in the old MyTimeMedia system and are difficult to retrieve. I’m told this will be resolved in due course but it is not an immediate priority as there are other more pressing issues.

Whether the original MTM photo albums will be converted into personal Galleries is problematical as falling into the nice to have but expensive to implement category.

The old MTM system was never intended to be converted into a new format and trying to marry up mismatched data structures has been incredibly complicated.

I’ve not yet tried out the search option…

Colin

[Bob WilsonParticipant @bobwilson59101]

Thanks Colin – No doubt it will all come OK in the end – Bob

[Chris EParticipant @chrise]

Is the preview of the next issue (and the first page of several articles) that used to appear about a week before publication a thing of the past? There is no mention yet of the next issue due in 3 days on bookshelves and digitally tomorrow.

If it has gone it is a pity as I used to enjoy it as an appetizer.

[Chris FellowsParticipant @chrisfellows72943]

Especially as my paper copy arrived yesterday!

 

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Chris,

I got my December issue yesterday!

The preview feature article is something I have been providing on a charitable basis for MTM since before Lindsey’s arrival after they stopped paying me for managing various aspects of the old website in addition to overseeing the forum. I felt it was still necessary to maintain the preview with an image on the website front page and supporting article for which Lindsey and the designer provided the material. Neither of them knew how to use the MTM software and I had all the settings for specified image sizes on my PC plus I could do the job in an hour or so.

If you look at at another Mortons title such as the one below you will see a cover image for the next issue and clicking on this takes you to a brief preview of the contents. A quick look at other titles suggests that the amount of preview material may vary between them and it’s my undertstanding that it is the responsibility of the Editor to upload it.

I believe that belated training sessions have now been held for the relevant ex MTM staff to enable them to do this.  I did receive an invitation but pointed out that I had only been doing the job on an ad hoc basis due to it still running on the MTM software platform and that I had no wish to learn WordPress! I’ve spent enough buckshee hours supporting efforts to get the new forum up and running!

The November MB cover was put up by a Morton’s IT staff member and I understand he will probably put up the December one as well if Lindsey isn’t ready to take over.

Colin

Home

 

 

[Chris EParticipant @chrise]

Well Colin thank you for your efforts in the past.

Let’s hope that Lindsey picks up the tradition.

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

December cover is now displayed with a bit of background info.

Colin

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