ME New Forum Software

[jasonb]

Have you read posts in this thread as they show that at least one Moderator is reading and posting.

If you read my posts here you will see that I have been requesting that the Mortons Staff follow the comments and I have also put this in various e-mails and onto the bug reporting system

Many more requests that he go through the posts on the forum but those of us that give our time freely can't do a lot more

here is an email sent just before lunch, I had not visited here since early this morning

Oh can't put images directly on this forum which is even worse that what can be done on ME so here is just the text

"Disappointed once again that not one bug has been reported by Andy or Darren*. This is despite requests for you to go through the forum comments and pick up all the odd items both large and small. It is once again the Moderators that are filing the bug reports both based on what they are finding and what is being said on the site.

Don't see items from the old report form or the 100s of emails added yet either.

Who can you prioritise what needs doing and who needs to do it if you can't even list it all out."

[Jo]

I would consider all of the posts on this Thread to be providing valuable feedback to enable the ME commercial forum to get up and running and progressing towards making money for Mortons.

Sometimes commercial companies invest in something that has initial challenges which can only be fixed by feedback (difficult to provide if you cannot log on). I wish someone had told Musk rat that changing the name of Twitter to X changed posts from being known as making a Tweet to what looks like sending kisses to every one 

Jo

[Jo]

Oct 27, 2023 12:42:15 GMT jasonb said:

Oh can't put images directly on this forum which is even worse that what can be done on ME so here is just the text

I can:



From various different hosting sites:


It just requires a bit of knowledge about how computers work.

Jo

[jasonb]

Which bit of "Can't put images DIRECTLY onto this forum" can't you read Jo. You just need to be able to read not know how to use a computer.

If you try and do it as an attachment directly from PC, mac, Android etc then you just get the limit has been reached which has been like that for years. Yes it is easy if hosted elsewhere but that is not direct. Yours are even being hosted by the provider of another forum

Many don't want or know how to use external hosting sites. Others don't like the way attachments even if they work put all the images at the end of the text. Others don't want to pay for reliable hosting and have lost a lot of images due to that making old posts hard to follow.

Luckily it is one of the things that actually works on the new forum, simply drag and drop images straight into the post where you want them. Also no silly little size limits like other sites have.

I'm not sure why you are so worried Jo as your long running grudge against Model Engineer Forum and the magazine publishers means you have not posted there for years. But I expect that is why you have chipped up her now.

[Jo]

Jason, you need to use the correct computer science term: You load an image onto a form. This means the forum hosting computer is storing the file locally and retrieving it from there. Putting images on a forum is a meaningless term .

Image size limits are used to help people using a mobile phone see an image when their bandwidth is low.


I do not post on the ME forum as the previous owners claimed copyright and the right to exploit anything posted there for their own purposes without informing the originator before they publish it. I do not know what the current lot are seeking to claim as it is too difficult to find out.

Jo

[jasonb]

Whatever the technical term you can no longer load an image directly to here from your device it needs to be hosted elsewhere.

[Jo]

Oct 27, 2023 18:51:09 GMT jasonb said:

Whatever the technical term you can no longer load an image directly to here from your device it needs to be hosted elsewhere.

Correct. And it has the added advantage that you are not unintentionally/unknowingly handing over the copyright of that image to a commercial company for their exploitation.

Jo

[jasonb]

Well if you had read the terms you would have seen that they may have done that, most people tend not to bother with reading the details of every site they use but don't bear a 12year grudge if the company does what it said it could in it's T&Cs.

I'm just going to reply to those previously active on the site from now on, better things to do.

[keith]

jasonb,

You appear to be the only Moderator from the ME site who does take the time to look at this forum. The problem of getting onto the ME Forum still exists, and at the moment you seem to be providing the only possibility to get this information to the 'designers' of the ME Forum.

Most of the time I (and I guess other people) only want to read the activity on the ME Forum - I usually go in and read the "latest posts" as it used to be. Now if I try to read the 'Latest Activity' on the new forum, I am told I must log in (I think ME is the only one of many forums I read which requires me to log in to see what is happening - why is that)?

When I try to log on, I am (apparently) requested to prove I am not a robot using a Recaptcha. The problem is - there is no method displayed to enter a Recaptcha value. If I enter my name and password and try to carry on anyway, it just tells me I must enter a valid Recaptcha value, and I can go no further.

So I can no longer get into the ME Forum even to raise this problem. And why on earth does the site need to use Recaptcha just to read a forum?

I for one appreciate your efforts to try and get the ME site up and running, but I fear your efforts are being wasted because Mortons and the ME Site designers are paying no attention to you and looking at these problems, Perhaps you could point out to Mortons that any profit they make from the site comes entirely from people who read the ME Forum, so we are in the position of being customers of Mortons - and once upon a time, the customer was always right - although I'm sure that hasn't been true for many years now.

I think also that due to the apparent lack of response from ME, some users are locked out or unable to access the ME site after many years membership (Me for one), and this in turn makes one increasingly frustrated - we can't even raise our problem on the ME Forum itself, resulting in me making my earlier comments in sheer frustration.

Can we take a step back, and try to stop the sort of responses which all too often destroyed ME threads, and are now spreading here - I am a model engineer because its an interesting hobby, not another war.

[jasonb]

At the time of writing this the "latest Activity" is working again, it was giving me problems yesterday. They have also added an extra 5 items, still not enough but getting there slowly. There is a problem with the server that does not seem to be able to withstand having a longer list and it just crashes with the amount of spam and bots it is bombarded with if more is added. It's over my head to understand the details.

For a similar reason you have to jump through more hoops to get in as they are trying to hold back spam and bots, I'm only getting to have to do the captcha 1st thing in the morning or if I switch between my user accounts. closing and opening the site during the day just lets me in as I have ticked "remember me"

The plus side is that since the site went live I have not had to deal with one spam posting, on the old site 10 or so could get through to that stage a day. These are spam posted by humans not the many more automated ones that the system and Cloudflare are stopping. Cloudflare has been turned so less obtrusive than it was at the start.

From email comments yesterday I don't think they have even read the comments on their own site let alone this one so my constant requests for them to do both are falling on deaf ears.

Supposedly a big meeting Monday, not much will change over the weekend and I can't see much changing next week as the main guy at Mortons is on Holiday.

Certainly said that its a downward spiral if members visit less which I think is the case and/or use adblocking software as this will put advertisers off and that is what pays for the site, Already some have pulled their adds as they don't show as well particularly on a phone.

All I can say is stick with it and hope things improve

[keith]

Thanks for that, Jason,

I'll take a look and see how I get on. I for one appreciate the feedback, and clarification of your position - I'll try to have a little more patience. It would be a shame to see all the good work of past editors and staff at ME wasted simply because people won't listen, or get tee'd off because no-one seems to care.

Regards.

[keith]

OK - perhaps I expect too much.

Jason - just tried the 'Latest Activity' again a few minutes after the above post - but sorry - it still has the same problem. Something has changed, because the 'Recaptcha' thing doesn't appear until I click on 'Login' , and enter my login details - then it tells me that I have to enter a valid Recaptcha value, and thats as far as I can get.

Ho-hum.

[Rex Hanman]

If I look at the "classifieds" section this is what I see....



The massive blue section does not go away when I scroll down so I have to view everything through a narrow letter box. I can't even view the whole advert at once.

Is it just me?

I don't have the same problem viewing the forum topics, the blue bit disappears as I scroll down. The problem does apply to all the other options, though, such as "Gallery". Very frustrating!

[jasonb]

What type of device are you using as the width seems quashed?

The blue bar not moving off the screen has been reported

This is what I see on my PC screen, site at 100% eg not zoomed in or out. Enough to just about view two rows of adverts and if you look at the blue bar the headings have space at each end unlike yours which are being forced onto a second line. I can get close to what you show if I zoom to about 160%

The black bar at the top and orange bar are only seen by Mods so a normal member may even get a bit more

[Jo]

Why is it every time I read "freshness" does it make me think about deodorant

Jo

[Rex Hanman]

Thanks Jason.

Yep, for some reason everything on the forum was "zoomed in". Much better now, though of course the print is smaller. That said, I did think it was a bit large!

[jasonb]

Well that s1 problem sorted so just 999+ to go

Not picking you out Rex but I wonder if there are more people with similar sorts of problems, even I used to have the old ME site zoomed in to about 125% so it filled the screen. Some of their issues could be down to something as simple as a setting on the browser

[modeng2000]

For me, the forum pages are too spread out. Why can't they be something like most other forums and have each item spread across the screen in one or two lines instead of a block of short lines leavng much white space?
It would be much better to separate the New topics from the Active ones, having a screen for each. It would then be very easy to look at either screen for items of personal interest.

John

[jasonb]

That is being worked on at the moment. I emailed a draft as how I would like it to look given what they have to work with. New topics will hopefully go as we never had it before which will make room for Active Topics to be spread across the page. Some form of separation between each either a line or subtle alternating background colour. They will try 30 items and when the server is sorted that can hopefully be increased