2000 AD Online Forum

Hey All,

Hopefully the transition over to the new forums will be as painless as we hope!

To help you direct your issues to the right person:

Wake has been handling post and user transfers from the old forum so that everything should be the same as before, except with the new layout and functionality of this forum. If you have any problems with posts or your username and can't solve the issue then post here and Wake'll help out.

I've been sorting the design and permissions for users. While the design is still undergoing changes you may experience text that's difficult to read or some interesting colours. Although you'll have to bear with us on that, if there's any part to the site that needs changes then give me a shout.

Other than that, welcome back!  

At the moment, I can't stay logged in as Wake, so I've had to create a new account for myself. I'm hoping this problem won't affect anyone else.

Not complaining! The new site looks great and even the Luddite in me is warming to its charms already. That said...!

Some older posts don't seem to recognise the apostophe. Here is the cut and pasted text from a random (and great!) thread...


"Local lad Brian Denninger is up next and we wonder if heâ??s the tea boy in the Dreddlines office. Heâ??s also a fan of Satanus but goes onto suggest that the generally accepted weak run for the Megazine has been â??truly greatâ??. The "

Those double question marks and funny 'As' can't be right. Also when I click on a link to a previous thread it only takes me to the board home page.

Minor tweaks I know but there'd be no sense of achievement if no one complained!

Also is there a spell chck? I know we could write our musings in Word and copy them over but it'd be great if this were a one stop shop.

Thanks again for your great efforts so far.

Hey buttonman, you're right about those odd characters, noticed those too. Will be the encoding from one board to another, will look into it as soon as I can.

Additionally, there already is a spell check, so if you hadn't noticed I can only presume you're a great speller  

Fantastic job Wake, looks grate

Well done Wake and all who helped set up this new version as it looks very user friendly and much more inviting than the old one. I'm very impressed with all the work you must have done to transfer all the posts (being the philistine that I am I presume there was an awful lot).
All that work is very much appreciated.[/color]

I've just managed to sort out my original username. Because my old user_id was 1 the board was confusing me with the default anonymous user.

Quote from: "Buttonman"Also when I click on a link to a previous thread it only takes me to the board home page.

I've just fixed this with some code in the holding page to redirect to the correct thread.

Excellent stuff!

Oh boy. The board is back.

Phew!

Hah you did have the same username then as the 2000 AD Review one (looking at posts during all the hulla-pallava)

Cool, welcome back

Oooh shiny new board.

At least we get something out of the recent downtime.  Good Work Fellas!

Like the board designations :twisted:

Thank god, I was in danger of getting something done.

No problems here with anything.

 Its a bit bewildering as the messageboard seems to have expanded.

 I miss the white page with all the Icons and posts etc.

 Not a criticism as such just a case of getting used to a new format.

 "We dont like change round here !...."

 There isnt an emoticon for just being very mad without being evil.

 I may well appear here a lot less as i am up to my neck in it elsewhere online but its good to be back.

 Thanks for your efforts .

Just picked up the link to this from 2000ad review's site, Im really liking it, sooo much better than the previous format.
(I love the pic of Dredd with the Mk1, my preferred weapon of choice)
looking forward to seeing whats being done with the main pages !!!
Daniel.

Test posting
in bold
with italics
and a //http://www.2000adonline.com/forum link
***
and an edit too

Quote from: "ukdane"and an edit too

Which I hope you'll find is time limited.

Quote from: "Wake"

Quote from: "ukdane"and an edit too

Which I hope you'll find is time limited.

Yup it's gone now.

Hello?

Wow.

Fancy new forum!

Lots of neat new bells and whistles!

I LIKE IT!

I've found the equivalent of the Killfile (it's Friend or Foe).

I'm going to resist using it for a while.

But I still on't like the terminology.  I suppose FOE is better than KILL but I'd still rather it was just called Filter or Ignore or something.

QuoteThere isnt an emoticon for just being very mad without being evil.

Good point will grab you one...

:angry:

Actually- I know many folks don't do smilies, but why can't we design some specific 2000ad related ones?

A little tharg head with various frowns, smiles etc?

Best thing ever is the 'view new posts' button- but is there a way to see it from every page, rather than having to navigate back to the main index for it?

Lazy I know- but hey! I'm a lazy type of guy.

Good idea, Bolt. Nigel Dobbyn has already shown us the way forward with my ace Stronty Dog icon (not that he designed it personally for me, or anything.)

Where is everybody? Only a few posting on the new forums. Maybe Tharg needs to send an email to all the users. Promise them a free 2000AD if they log in.  

I imagine a lot of people buggered off during the site's downtime, and will eventually trickle back. As for the forum itself, I'm happy enough with the functionality of PHPBB, but I dearly wish someone would turn off signatures (they often end up totally ruining forums, because you have short posts and massive image- and text-based signatures that wreck the flow of a conversation). I can live with the smilies, abhorrent as they are.

Good to know the visuals aren't done, either. I find the current incarnation of the forum really uncomfortable from a visual standpoint—very hard to use. I'm not talking about general aesthetics, however—it looks nice from a graphic design standpoint, but my eye ends up flitting all over the place. The most likely issue is that the eye tends to follow black, and with the hard black borders flanking the central content area when posting, the eye's likely to flit all over the place, rather than being able to 'rest' on the forum content itself. This isn't really the case when reading, because there's less contrast between the blue and black. Perhaps setting the backgrounds of the text fields to a slightly lighter blue than the background would help.

Oh, man. I'm turning into Jakob Nielsen in my old age...

As I posted in another topic, if you go into your control panel and look at the display options you can turn off smilies and signatures if you don't get on with them.

Still playing with the colours, just don't have the time to finish up yet.

Cheers

QuoteI imagine a lot of people buggered off during the site's downtime, and will eventually trickle back. As for the forum itself, I'm happy enough with the functionality of PHPBB, but I dearly wish someone would turn off signatures (they often end up totally ruining forums, because you have short posts and massive image- and text-based signatures that wreck the flow of a conversation). I can live with the smilies, abhorrent as they are.

Nothing wrong with smilies - they help to convey how someone feels.

I'm sure people will moan about the new forum but I can't see much or anything wrong with it. Change often leads to moans but I reckon within a week or so people will forget the old forum and embrace this one. I use other forums and I've never seen one quite as basic as the old 2000AD forum. You couldn't even edit your posts.

w3b-B0Tv2—aha! Yes, sorry. I entirely forgot about PHPBB's new 'kill those damn sigs' option, so thanks for reminding me!

Quote from: "nameuser"I'm sure people will moan about the new forum but I can't see much or anything wrong with it. Change often leads to moans but I reckon within a week or so people will forget the old forum and embrace this one.

To clarify, I'm not stomping my little feet and whining—I'm just providing what I consider constructive feedback about the way the forum is at the moment. Generally, I can see this forum being more useful and extensible than the old one. Most of my problems with it are down to usability issues, most of which will likely be fixed. Obviously, I can't really comment on what might be in the future, though, so I can only say what I think about things now. And since the place is still in a state of flux, surely it makes sense to make such comments now rather than when some overworked droids pipes up with "Finished!"?

QuoteI use other forums and I've never seen one quite as basic as the old 2000AD forum. You couldn't even edit your posts.

Personally, I like basic. When Wire asked me to do their forum, I went straight for Vanilla. Partly, that was because PHPBB's popularity makes it an obvious target for hacking, but mostly it's because I liked the streamlined nature of Vanilla—it's all about the discussion.

I think Wake's original thinking about editing was pretty good, too—it's all too easy to go back and change posts, which can cause problems when 'proving' what someone had to say at the time. The five-minute rule here (for sorting typos, or whatever) is a great compromise, obviously.

QuoteNothing wrong with smilies - they help to convey how someone feels.

As a writer, I'm... biased, but I largely disagree. I think people have become reliant on smilies, rather than reading what's expressed through the actual words. Yes, you can sometimes misinterpret something said online, but with a good-natured board, such things can usually be cleared up quickly. However, in this knee-jerk age we now live in, it's all to common for someone to post a good-natured jibe and for someone to get all huffy, literally because a smilie wasn't appended. Little does it matter than said people may have 'known' each-other for ages...

Smilies also come attached with a rather nastier component, which I'm seeing increasing use of. They're basically a means of getting away with posting something nasty, by hiding it under the pretence of a 'joke'. For example:

I think that IndigoPrime is a total and utter f——-headed w——er.  

When rumbled, you'll then get "I didn't mean it! Look—I added a smilie!" Mm. Right.

QuoteI'm just providing what I consider constructive feedback

Quite welcome! At the end of the day everyone's different and I may end up slapping PYE until we can sit down and do a basic skin as well for all the people that have given up trying to make a transition!

QuoteBest thing ever is the 'view new posts' button- but is there a way to see it from every page, rather than having to navigate back to the main index for it?

Edited - found the function on the main page.

There isn't a delete message function. Some forums allow you to delete your message. For example, if you post the message twice and want to remove the second one.

yesterday i kept having to re-sign back in.. but thats okay today.

also i'd prefer the sort by descending, but it won't default to that so each thread i have to scroll to the bottom & tell it to sort by descending not ascending by which time i've scrolled & seen the new post and... anyway..

for an old person who hates change i think i've going to get used to this one quite quickly... ie; i shall committ to a thumbs up...

where did you say the spell checker is ? but surely crap spelling is my signature ?

Glad you approve  

If you go into your control panel you can set how the posts are displayed, which includes ascending or descending. It'll remain permanent that way. The spell check is there as you type, it'll underline things in red, similarly to Word and you can right-click to change it to one suggested.

QuoteThere isn't a delete message function

There is, you just can't do it for the same reasons as editing and removing things you've said etc etc

QuoteNothing wrong with smilies - they help to convey how someone feels.

cough - language - cough.

Personal preference I suppose, but can't be doing with such juvenilia in an erudite and serious forum such as the... uhhh... 2000AD message board.

But it's good to know I can enable the SEP field via the Control Panel.  

How do spoiler tags work, oh wise ones?

AAAIIIEEE!!!!!!!!  :shock:

So any way hope every one is hoop and froody

excellent !  and thanks to the patience of Mr Web-Bot with our many questions. hersds me spellin delibratly trong to test ... where oh where is that red line ?  nope can't see it

I hate it. It's awful. I'm a luddite, yeah? I can work the 2000ad reviews website, which, admittedly, is similar to this one, but in this one a) I can't easily find what I'm looking for, and b) if I don't see it I probably don't even know it's there to look for it. So far the most useful thing has been the little drop-down menu in the bottom right-hand corner from which you can select headings like 'general chat'.

Using this website is a bit like playing with a Rubik's cube, and I never found that to be fun.

Oh - well, how quickly I've come round to it!  :D

I used to take the Rubiks Cube to bits and reassemble it as complete as i didnt have the patience for it.

 I have one real problem with the new look etc.

 Its nothing to do with usability either more to do with visuals.

 I dont like not seeing the icons next to the name of  the last boarder who posted on the thread.

 I find the opening board index sort of lacks character because of this because the icons add so much to the index page rather than just the name plus they add a splash of colour and variety.

 Plus an icon is instant recognisabilty rather than reading a name.

 I dont know why but somehow the pics on the left and right of the page distract from the main content of the page.

 I cant quite say why but it might be the colour of the background being too similar to the rest or the empty space above them.It would look better to repeat the pics 2 more times to fill up the space.

 Apologies for the pedantry but small things make al the difference to me

 Everything else is A1+.

WOW, I like what you done with the place. :o

Admiring my title of 'Battle hardened War Robot' and noticing that atleast two other regulars that have been here longer than I have, only have 'Stacking Droid.'????????? :lol:  

Is there a mistake, or is that all true. ;)

Regarding hiatus of the messagebaord itself. I've been meaning to take abreak from it at this point anyway. Spending to much time on this board and probably posting to much SPAM.  :)

Even after only nearly a month!  

Hey all,

Really interesting to hear all your feedback on what you like and think needs changing.

Quotewhere oh where is that red line ? nope can't see it

My bad, it seems that was either a IE or Firefox plugin that was helping out. I'll look into sorting one for everyone haha...doh!

QuotePlus an icon is instant recognisabilty rather than reading a name.

I can certainly see where you're coming from with this. Funny that one person might say "too much" and another say "needs more" we can certainly add that and see how it goes

QuoteNoticing, I have actaulley posted here over 3000 times according to the forums new calculator

Mega-Extreme-Waffler? Should be right but I'll take a looksee...

The clock here seems to be about 15 minutes out.

To the admin bots - I don't think the RIP thread should be in the 2000AD General section. I think it should be placed in the Off-Topic section. I was searching the forum, looked in the General section and read about people dying. Put me off my breakfast.

I didn't know it it was back, I actually breathed a sigh of relief when I this new swanky looking forum up and running. My working days have been so long over the last few weeks. Now, gotta get cracking....

Is there any way of disabling the little quotes (sigs?) people have at the bottom of their posts? I can't stand them, they're totally distracting. Besides that, well done on the new forum, very much appreciated.

Quote from: "radiator"Is there any way of disabling the little quotes (sigs?) people have at the bottom of their posts? I can't stand them, they're totally distracting. Besides that, well done on the new forum, very much appreciated.

User Contol Panel - Board Preferences - Edit Display Options - Display signatures

Looks nice. Maybe I was doing something wrong but the old version was probably the strangest looking forum I've seen.

I'm noticing a few weird glitches with colours momentarily overlapping other sections, similar to what happens on Myspace sometimes, but apart from that it seems to work fine.

Quoteweird glitches with colours

looks up from tweaking - Wha..? Who..? Cough...

Kudos to whoever changed the message boxes from blue to white - much less squinting needed now!

Quote from: "w3b-B0Tv2"

Quoteweird glitches with colours

looks up from tweaking - Wha..? Who..? Cough...

It's only noticable on the board index. The blue forum boxes flicker to black and sometimes stick that way. There may be a plugin I haven't downloaded since a recent reformat but it's nowhere near irritating enough for me to bother.

Oh ok, that's not me then...herm...possibly a plugin yeah, maybe check your Java version.

Blimey! It looks smart but it'll take some getting used to!
I'm glad it's back though!

;)

I like it but its a bit to get used to will report back any sugestions

CU Radbacker

Apologies for some of the link colours still being off, will get on that later today...

Quote from: "Radbacker":D at last, well I'm a bit dumb and had no idea this was sitting on the bottom of the maintanence page, thought it was still down like the site.

It took me a week before I bothered trying that myself.

You still get the apologies page for a second when you enter this website.

 Lets hope the droids responsible for this fiasco were indeed sent to Mek Quake for reconditioning and were taught a lesson they will never forget,

Sometime sthe thread title is white on white meaning I have to hover over it (when it turns black) to see what the thread was about.

I have had 3 posts disappear now in the last 2 days.The last being about 2 minutes ago on the "spare a thoughtETc " thread.

 Its a bit like having my comments censored on Youtube in the sense that they have been submitted yet dont appear onscreen.

 On second attempt they are usually submitted and do appear on screen.

 ?

QuoteI have had 3 posts disappear now in the last 2 days

I found that sometimes I used to hit 'save' rather than 'submit' which doesn't post it. Not sure if that's the case with yourself, but can look into that further to see if something else is going on...

I just had it happen again !!

 This time on the Meg -Information sent to subscribers thread and it was a long post.

 Its annoying but i am not having a go at you as you are doing your best and it may be my fault.I am not sure.It may be that i am not allowing enough time for the post to be processed before moving away from the page and it somehow gets lost ?

 In future i shall do it more slowly and cut and paste the text just in case and see how that goes.

 If i monitor it as well then perhaps that might help.

What Id like to see is what thread is being posted on in the last post section, so that I know if its a thread Im interested in without opening the section.  Just a suggestion like and it may just improve things,  

I just posted on the same thread again.

 The first time i was told that "the submitted form was invalid - try submitting again" so i saved it and then went back again and resubmitted it without alteration and it was fine.

 I cant say how i retrieved the saved post as i dont know where it was stored but i did something and resubmitted it successfully so provided i can save my text which i can then it isnt really that much of a problem at all.

 It seems best not to do anything while the post is uploading as it is possibly interefering with the upload.It takes about 3 seconds so i will sit back and let it do its thing and that seems to work [i think].

I am 99% certain that the posts not uploading was my fault not the websites.

 I dont want to waste anyones time with this .

 apologies for my needless harping.

 I will keep you posted !

Right getting Mr Slippery out the way:

QuoteWhat Id like to see is what thread is being posted on in the last post section

You mean on the front page? We've done that with another forum, so you get the topic title as well. That's not a problem, although someone else wanted the picture icon of who was doing it which might completely screw things. Still, all about trying things out eh?

Mr Wolf:

QuoteI am 99% certain that the posts not uploading was my fault not the websites

The thing is, you're getting used to change like everyone else, so don't fret about it. Wait after you've hit submit, to the part where it says "view your post", if at that point it vanishes then we know we have a problem (counting on the fact that you haven't hit save   )

See how it goes!

I think i am 100% the problem was mine.

 Everytime i wait after posting until the post comes up onscreen after uploading there is no problem at all.

 I was clicking away from the page too soon after posting.

 So no worries !

Cool!  

Quote from: "w3b-B0Tv2"Right getting Mr Slippery out the way:

QuoteWhat Id like to see is what thread is being posted on in the last post section

You mean on the front page? We've done that with another forum, so you get the topic title as well. That's not a problem, although someone else wanted the picture icon of who was doing it which might completely screw things. Still, all about trying things out eh?

Yes thats it.  Id like to see what thread has being posted to before I open the section.  Its just makes things a little simpler as I dont have huge amounts of time to sift through post upon post!  Cheers.

Not sure if this is the right place to raise it, but when I log on the website home page looks all funny. The "general" and "announcements" boxes, and some of the others, are have a black background and blue wiritng and are difficult to read. If you scroll the screen it seems to sort out.

Hey Mr X, if you hit ctrl + F5 for a refresh and see if it still happens, if it does can you send me a PM with a screenshot attached and I'll see if I can do anything.

Will do. Although it's Doctor, not Mister. That PhD in baloney didn't come cheap or easy.

I am not sure how to add a screenshot to a PM, but have uploaded it here.

I don't know the technical term for it, but in addition to the top boxes being discloloured, if a message pops up on-screen then it discolours the website too. It's a bit like the Spectrum's colour clash!

Have you got FireFox installed? If so, try giving that a go out of interest. That looked like an image wasn't being loaded, but I think it is, not sure what's going on there...but then Internet Explorer can be bizzare sometimes

w3b-B0Tv2—looks like you need to investigate some IE fixes for hasLayout.

Yeah that's what I was thinking, what a pain eh?

Good ol' IE!  

Hi, web bot.

I get the same front-page problem as Dr X.

Can I second the call for some sort of index page with the icon used by the last poster? It was the best bit about the old board - you could tell, at a glance, who'd been kicking around.

I like the new feature where you can tell who's online at the time, but felt the images were a nice little feature for this site.

Cheers

- Trout

QuoteI get the same front-page problem as Dr X.

Yeah I imagine if you use IE6 you'll get it, I'll look into it when I get a chance

Like the idea of icons and will defo see if that's possible too!

Quote from: "w3b-B0Tv2"Like the idea of icons and will defo see if that's possible too!

On the old board the icons were displayed on the index at 50% size, i.e. 16x16 pixels so they didn't take up too much room.

Can we have bigger icons now??

Yeah- bigger icons.  And can we change them ourselves now?

Quote from: "Uncle Umpty"Can we have bigger icons now??

At the moment I'm allowing wider but not taller icons. The maxmium size is 128x32 pixels. You have to email them to me to upload to the icon galleries at which point you can select them from the User Control Panel - Profile - Edit Avatar - Display Gallery

Bah!  Rubbish!  The whole site is ruined now...

How do I change my name?

Quote from: "James Werndly Loves You"How do I change my name?

User control panel - Profile - Edit account settings

QuoteAt the moment I'm allowing wider but not taller icons. The maxmium size is 128x32 pixels

Wasn't thinking about anything that big.. something like 64 x 64 would do.

Quote from: "Uncle Umpty"Wasn't thinking about anything that big.. something like 64 x 64 would do.

If you haven't already done so, please vote on thread 22843 (//http://www.2000adonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=22843) for your avatar size preference.