IRON HEART FORUM MIGRATION - Help Us Make the New Forum Even Better
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@SKT:
Also, is using tapatalk frowned upon?
It isn’t. But this is one of the main reasons for the migration. The forum is great (if archaic), on a desktop browser. But that does not work very well on a phone.
Tapatalk works on a phone but loses functionality. It also lags horribly at times, crashes, throws hissy fits and is generally a bit pop. So it serves a function but only just.
The hope for the migration is that we will end up with a more seamless mobile/desktop interface with parallel functionality.
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[mention]neph93 [/mention]
Definitely does have problems Tapatalk like you said….
It very annoying
But sometimes you go with what it is…
Even it a great idea moving onto a better platform will be better for the future to come..
A lot of forum members know what I mean.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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The forum is absolutely perfect on Google Chrome. I do get the occasional pants down every once in a while.
The only thing I wish for is the ability to resize pictures on the fly (without knowing BB code), maybe code that automatically removes the image in a quoted post. And possibly larger or higher resolution avatars. I have an 8k phone screen and everything is super tiny… I know people told me to get a life, but it's be nice if it was impossible to accidentally mark everything as read too. I do this very often.
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Oooh, I have some ideas!
I am always annoyed with Tapatalk's tagging-people incompatability (with web) but it does a couple of things really well that I miss when I'm using a computer.
One of the things that I love about Tapatalk is that I can very quickly scan through the timeline. That is, I can see all posts across all threads in chronological order. I know that this feature exists on the current forums, but it took me like 7 years to find LOL. Making its placement more obvious would be handy to people who want to catch up with the day's posts, especially for new members.
Another of my favorite Tapatalk features lets me subscribe to folders or threads and quickly see any posts just to those. Call them favorites or something similar. Going along with my previous suggestion, it would make it easy for people to catch up with their favorite topics.
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Because this place is a community, it's only right to run this as a community-driven project. We want your feedback, good and bad, on the forum in it's current guise, and your suggestions on what new features would make this place better both for you guys, but also more appealing to bring new people into the fold.
And not to blow smoke, but I'm pleasantly surprised, time and time again, at how well Iron Heart gets customer service. You guys could've just rolled out some change and ignored the complaints until the people either accepted them or moved on. Instead, you're asking for suggestions and being open about the process. Kudos, IHUK! Kudos!
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I don’t know these specifically but I have thoughts in general.
I think I would opt for the open source option with the best security record and most reliable components in its supported architectures. I’d be really careful about anything with a Log4J dependency at this point (which might mean eschewing Java-based options in general) and would want a much simpler less exploitable component for logging, as an example. If you absolutely must have Log4J make sure it is a patched version, but the product design decisions that went into the recent vulnerabilities in the component have shaken my faith in the whole project, and there have been more flaws uncovered since the first one.
Good luck and thanks for the approach taken here!
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you're asking for suggestions and being open about the process.
This is the thing: We have to change. Those of us who have been here for a long time have learned to live with the format. It isn't a problem for us. However if this community is going to continue it needs a regular stream of new people. The dated desktop format combined with the lack of utility on mobile are almost certainly a put-off.
So while new blood is important to avoid stagnation, we also value everyone here enormously. We don't want to lose anyone when we update. This is the "your" place as much as anyones, so it would be rude not to ask input from everyone.
So, any ideas at all on content, structure, features, appearance. Things you can live without, things that must remain, anything. Please let us know.
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On that front, being able to find and navigate to specific threads more easily would be great. Traversing the hierarchy takes time and sometimes a thread you’re searching for could be in multiple different places. The search function isn’t great (though I assume the new option would inherently improve that).
I think the most common sense way to do that might be to index all the board names and thread titles and include them in type-ahead search as options that pop up when you’re typing search criteria. So I start typing “waywt” and options for that board and threads in that board come up so I can click into them right away. Either a carriage return or a click can take me to paged search results. This search box should present on all pages in the same place, perhaps embedded in the header. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is native to some of these board solutions. If it isn’t , it should be.
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As I mentioned last week in the random questions thread, I'd love to see an improvement in the messaging in the desktop version. Nothing fancy, just would like to click on a message and it opens up that conversation, vs the weird thing it does now. I also would like to maybe see most recent posts at the top when viewing the forum's front page, vs at the bottom like they are now. That one's less important to me, just a thought.
At one point I liked some forums that had a "like" feature, but as social media continues to just get shittier and shittier, I'm becoming more averse to that concept. So, just something to toss out there in case that feature is a potential new one.
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I only browse and post from my desktop using Chrome, so I've never really had any issues. I've been slowly breaking up with my phone for the last year or so, so phone functionality isn't really a concern or issue for me (sending this from my desktop, so don't worry my phone won't see this.)
I tried using tapatalk for a guitar forum maybe 10 or so years ago and really couldn't stand it at all, so have never tried it with this forum.
I guess my only thing that I'd really find useful would be a feature where I could "save" a post or a thread? Like if I was going through buy/sell/trade threads and wanted to save some for viewing and purchasing later? Or maybe favoriting some other threads to have a customized forum with the sections I would mostly want to see. Maybe those things already exist, I've just never really jumped in too much to find out.
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NFT’s, blockchains, crypto currency’s, and more apps than a person can count…The world is moving ahead and I don’t understand it (nor want to).
Not apprehensive about the future, just really happy at my point and place in time.
The migration will turn out great and I hope that it works wonderfully.
Keep up the good work.
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Idk what I'd have to contribute here in experience/knowledge (happy to try out the new system and provide feedback) but, then again, a shortage of either hasn't ever stopped me from sharing my opinion.
