Using the New Forums (In Progress) - Please Post Questions and Issues Here !

DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,783
edited February 2021 in The Commons

Basic Navigation

Click on a forum to open it, click on a thread to go to the first new post. Initially all posts are going to be new, the migration from the old system isn't going to track which threads you had already seen (or didn't in testing) but once you have visitied a thread, or marked all read, the thread's link will go to the newest post. If you want to link to the beginning of a thread delete #latest from the end of the URL.

image

 

A lot of the forum functions are in the "gear menus" image - there's one at top-right, just under the account link, and you will see another by at least your own posts for editing.

 

image
Mark Forums Viewed does just that, marks every post in every forum as read.
Categories is the list of forums.
Recent Discussions is the View Threads with New Posst button  -it will take you to a cross-forum list of threads with new posts.
My Discussions is threads you started.
My Drafts (Not shown above as I have no drafts at the moment) is a list of started but not submitted posts - you can delete them by clicking the x next to the draft in the list.

 

image

Your Username will take you to your basic profile, with another gear icon.
Inbox is the PM system - this works more like a chat, and we've lost the ability to organise things into folders.
Notifications is a list of different discussion types and how you wish to be notified when something new is posted to them (This is where you can also shut off or turn on the small "popups" that happen at the bottom of the screen).

You may also get a note of which category (forum) you are in at the bottom of the list, and in some areas of the forum some of the entries may be missing.

 

Bookmarks

Click on the star next to the topic of the thread.
You can view your bookmarks, once you have a thread bookmarked, from the gear drop down and the option of "My Bookmarks".

 

Account Maintenance/Edit Profile (You Username Link Above)

image

NOTE ABOUT USERNAMES/CHANGING YOUR USERNAME:

You may notice that you no longer have your usual name. The old forum failed to enforce uniqueness in screen names, the new forum is stricter. If you have set a gallery name you will now see that in the forum too; if not but your forum name was unique, you will have your old forum name; if you had no gallery name and your forum name was not unique you will have a placeholder.

The good news is that you can now edit your name, for both galleries and forum, by going to your account page https://www.daz3d.com/customer/account/edit/
 

Changing your Avatar - First, select the gear at the top right of the main page and then click on your username. Once you arrive at the next screen, click the gear next to your name again and select Edit Profile and then select Change My Picture. From there, select Browse and browse to the image you would like to use and then select Upload.
Adding a Signature Banner/Tag - First, select the gear at the top right of the main page and then click on your username. Once you arrive at the next screen, click the gear next to your name again and select Edit Profile and then select Signature Settings.
Additional Profile Settings - You can also change Notification Preferences, View/Add to your Ignore List (used for cases where you may not want to read things from specific people), and also change your Quote Settings from within the Edit Profile Section.

 

Conversations/Messaging Another Member (Inbox)

Use the Inbox link on the Main Profile Cog (Shown Above in Previous Section)

 

Posting

We have quite a nice editor for posts.

image

The first block of buttons is Cut/Copy and various Paste option - a standard Paste, Paste without formatting (so you don't get huge or coloured text, for example) and a Paste from Word option (so you can write in Word and preserve formatting).
Next is a spell checker - click for a menu. "Enable SCAYT" is Spell Check as You Type - which is needed as the forum seems to disable the default spell checker, at least in Firefox. On the plus side, you can tell the checker to ignore certain things in Options, set your language in Languages, and set a custom dictionary in Dictionaries. Enable SCAYT doesn't seem to stick, unfortunately. There's also a Check Spelling option if you prefer not to check as you type.
The link buttons allow you to create and remove links, and to set an anchor in the text to which you can link.
After links come five buttons for inserting images, code (for scripting etc.), tables, special characters and smileys. The Image button is for external links - attachments will be covered below.
The Maximise button enlarges the editor to fill the browser window - click again to reset.
The Source button toggles the WYSIWYG mode on and off. The source is in HTML and allows some editing.

 

image

The second row of buttons are standard formatting functions - Bold, italic etc., then numbers, bullets and indents, then two buttons for predefined styles for characters and for paragraphs, text and background colour, and an about box (including a link to the full user guide).
Below the text box is the Attach a file link - click to show a Browse button, click that to locate and select a file. The file, which may be a n image, a zip or a number of DS formats, will upload and an icon will appear. Once the upload is complete you can attach a second file. Hovering over an attached file will show its name, size and a Delete link.

 

Editing a Post

There is a gear icon at top-right on each of your posts, at least those made in the new forum. That has commands for Edit and for Delete.

 

Linking

As noted above, the link from a thread name in the forum list goes to the latest post, or the last post if there are no new posts. If you want to link to a thread from the beginning delete the #latest from the URL.

If you want to link to a specific post within a thread, the time-stamp under the post count and above the Flag link will give a link to the post.

 

Reporting

The Flag link is used to report posts to the mods. (You must be logged in to report a post)

Searching

There isn't currently a way to get to forum search directly from the forum, but this link will take you to page that lets you search the forum:

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/search?Search

Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
«13456776

Comments

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,750

    well... this was a surprise to wake up to.. ;-)

  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,783
    edited July 2015

    smiley We are still working on getting up all the info for everyone. I'll be adding more screenshots etc as the evening goes on. Please feel free to ask any questions not seen in the information above and we will try to answer them for you all as quickly as possible smiley

    Post edited by DAZ_ann0314 on
  • Dream CutterDream Cutter Posts: 1,222

    Nice updates to the forum.  Thanks for the hard work and improving the atmosphere!

  • SkirikiSkiriki Posts: 4,972
    edited July 2015
    Um. Are there any plans for additional skins for the forum? Because right now the current format spends QUITE a lot of wasted screenspace in main, and when it is all over the place, I can't focus but start to wander. Also also, I'm getting tons of errors and I see none of the fancy edit buttons (although it is entirely possible that we can lay a lot of blame down on my browser's feet due to things). But figured that a little headsup is welcome?
    Post edited by Skiriki on
  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,783

    I'm not sure, though I will point the webbies at the thread so they can follow any thoughts or suggestions smiley

  • digitelldigitell Posts: 558

    YIKES! Why does my user name have my first name with a string of numbers behind it insteads of "digitell"??

  • digitelldigitell Posts: 558

    whew..I went in my account and chaged it..it was sorta starteling! LOL!

  • AtiAti Posts: 9,078

    Looks nice! The forum seems more usable now than before.

     

    One problem I noticed: the old forum links (such as the ones in google, for example http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/7965/ ;) no longer work. It will take Google some time to index all pages of the new forum.

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,750

    I can't see a link to get to the last comment made ..

     

    ie.. if there is 60 pages I have to go to the first post then select page 60 ect..

    that means more clicks!!! ahhhhh!!!

    or did I miss something cool

  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249

    Love it on my tablet and phone easy to read ! and finally dark theme !

  • nDelphinDelphi Posts: 1,845

    Are we going to be able to search the forums?

  • his xhis x Posts: 866

    I see that a whole bunch of my bookmarked forum threads are broken.  I do hope this is temporary.

  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,031

    One thing the webbies should address soon - the favicon (the little guy on the tabs) is now the magento icon and not the DAZ icon. I don't care if this is powered by magento, it is the DAZ forum.

  • SylvanSylvan Posts: 2,681
    Test 123 This seems to be working :D Question! Was there any info about the forum update or did DAZ choose to do it silently? And if so, why? This post is also a test to see how my avatar and name will be shown now XD Curiosity
  • SylvanSylvan Posts: 2,681
    To add : it does read better on my Galaxy Note 2 than the previous forums!
  • his xhis x Posts: 866
    edited July 2015
    Ati2 said:

    Looks nice! The forum seems more usable now than before.

     

    One problem I noticed: the old forum links (such as the ones in google, for example http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/7965/ ;) no longer work. It will take Google some time to index all pages of the new forum.

    I'm hoping the old links will be restored.  In the absence of thorough documentation, I have used bookmarks to create a sort of TOC.  I suspect others have too.

    Post edited by his x on
  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,750

    PROBLEM..

    I tried out the hide function on the nuts & bolts and well.. it is hidden and I can't find an option to make it visible again.. ooops no

  • DAZ_JonDAZ_Jon Posts: 582
    nDelphi said:

    Are we going to be able to search the forums?

    Yes, it will be working this week. We are going to swap out the search bar at the top of the page that is normally used to search the store for searching the forum when in the forums. 

    Rottenham said:

    I see that a whole bunch of my bookmarked forum threads are broken.  I do hope this is temporary.

    We are looking at this. This is a completely different forum software and just the migration of the existing threads, images, private messages, etc., for so many posts was pretty rough since a lot of concepts from one system didn't necessarily have a correlary with the new on that could be mapped over. That being said, threads do have a correlary so redirects would be easier.. the harder part is mapping the almost hundred thousand discussions and almost a million comments in a way that wouldn't be super slow without building out a whole new system that sits in front of the forums that just handles redirect for legacy URLs. Basically, there are costs to it and we are investigating what the pros and cons are. It is one of the things at the top of our list in relation to the forums we are looking at. 

  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,783

    *Waves at Jon* I was just going to send you all a link to this thread..you beat me! smiley

  • IceCrMnIceCrMn Posts: 2,103

    I love the new look :) 

  • DAZ_JonDAZ_Jon Posts: 582
    Stezza said:

    PROBLEM..

    I tried out the hide function on the nuts & bolts and well.. it is hidden and I can't find an option to make it visible again.. ooops no

    I'm not sure what you expected to happen that didn't there.... wink

    Yeah, give us a bit on that...

  • JimmyC_2009JimmyC_2009 Posts: 8,891
    edited July 2015

    Is there no time stamp on the posts?

    I hate to be a grouch, but I hate this new forum layout, it is dreadful.

     Looks like I will be starting to learn all over again.   What was wrong with the old forum?

     EDIT:

    I see the time is appearing now, at least that is something :)

     

    Post edited by JimmyC_2009 on
  • IceCrMnIceCrMn Posts: 2,103
    edited July 2015

    Is there no time stamp on the posts?

    I hate to be a grouch, but I hate this new forum layout, it is dreadful.

     Looks like I will be starting to learn all over again.   What was wrong with the old forum?

    it's under your avatar

    Post edited by IceCrMn on
  • DAZ_ann0314DAZ_ann0314 Posts: 2,783
    edited July 2015

    Jimmy, the new forums bring back certain missing features and extend a lot of extra features we didn't have such as better formatting, being able to do inline tutorials with images better, actually add/show code to each other easier and share code snippets for things like DS etc. Obviously, it just went live and, as they get feedback, I am sure they will be reviewing that feedback and tweaking and making changes to make it even better.

    As for time stamps on posts, at the moment it doesn't seem to be viewable to everyone. I am sure they can put that back though in an update :)

    Post edited by DAZ_ann0314 on
  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006

    Issues: cannot edit posts, keep getting this:

    • ValidateLength
    • ValidateFormat

     

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,858
    edited July 2015

    When I click in the leave a comment box, why does Body and P pop up?  Clicking on either simply highlights the line. Am I supposed to click p everytime I start a new paragraph?

    Testing. Second paragraph but didn't select p. 

    Is there no longer a way to preview? I'm not seeing that upper right gear, is it AFTER posting that it shows up (for the editing?)  EDIT: Yep. So where is the ability to preview first?

    Post edited by Novica on
  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,750
    DAZ_Jon said:
    Stezza said:

    PROBLEM..

    I tried out the hide function on the nuts & bolts and well.. it is hidden and I can't find an option to make it visible again.. ooops no

    I'm not sure what you expected to happen that didn't there.... wink

    Yeah, give us a bit on that...

    In the Catagories I hide the Nuts & Bolts to see if did hide.. which it did

     

    now I want to see it again and there isn't an option to unhide it.. that I can find cool

     

     

  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,070
    edited July 2015
    icecrmn said:

    Is there no time stamp on the posts?

    I hate to be a grouch, but I hate this new forum layout, it is dreadful.

     Looks like I will be starting to learn all over again.   What was wrong with the old forum?

     

    it's under your avatar

    Yes, but notice that the quotes don't give a timestamp of the post they are quoting, which makes it hard to go back and find (for example) the full text with attachments on a busy forum thread...

    Oh, and all the posts from previous days just have the date (unless you run the mouse over the date and it then shows the time too) - this is a disadvantage if you're trying to see which posts in a thread are new since you last visited, unless your memory of what you've already read is better than mine.blush

    Post edited by MelanieL on
  • DAZ_JonDAZ_Jon Posts: 582

    Is there no time stamp on the posts?

    I hate to be a grouch, but I hate this new forum layout, it is dreadful.

     Looks like I will be starting to learn all over again.   What was wrong with the old forum?

     EDIT:

    I see the time is appearing now, at least that is something :)

     

    Timestamp in how it is displayed is contextual. So if it is previous day, it just displays the day... if it is the current day, it gives the time of day. Part of the default behavior of the new software, but I'll put it on the list to look at what it would take to just display a standard date time string (that makes it easier in my head the changing format is harder to consume).

    As for why new forum software, lots of reasons, mostly due to huge limitations or issues with the previous software and legacy issues which never went away but people seemed to eventually get used to but still existed. Basically, the old forum software was really bad, and the new forum software is, from our assessment, substantially better. The layout and display, we'll be updating and improving on it once we get things a bit settled and people are more used to the new software and layout and we can gather broader feedback once the initial kneejerk reactions are over since those are almost always "burn it with fire".

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,858

    Why is the number of posts made by the person wrong?

Sign In or Register to comment.