Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's New Boards Features!

Here's a thread for anyone who wants to:

• Tell us what you like about the new boards
  
• Tell others about some nifty new feature you've discovered
  
• Post a workaround for an initial glitch
• Suggest a new way of doing something where the old way no longer works - eg decide on a posting icon for a new story part since the blue arrow is gone
  

Let's all help each other adapt to UBB the 2013 version!

If you've got a question about something that's missing or not working, check out the Known Issues thread first. If your issue isn't listed there, then please submit a report to the Ticketing System so that it will go into a queue to be worked on.


Wendy

Excellent. I've been planning to post something like this all day but didn't get there.

I'm shallow enough to love that Admins show as red when they post and Mods green. What? It's cute!

Also love that we can now see how many people view a thread, not just how many reply. A real eyeopener!

And that I can now access the control panel direct from the mbs instead of having to bookmark it seperately. And the new control panel itself is much easier to navigate.

Also love the little flashing flag that notifies me when a PM comes in.

LabRat

As for the missing blue arrow - I think Lynn's idea of using the red exclamation point is a good workaround.

Notifications

I'm very exited about the new Watched Topics feature making it over here, too. Before, you could only watch threads you started your self. Now, you can also watch threads someone else has started in response to your story and you will never miss an FDK post again

Also, if it's the same way as in zoomway's boards, the notification mail will also contain the actual FDK posted in the thread. Particularly nifty if you are in a place where you would check your online mail account but not the boards.

Michael

Search

The new search is (I think so from what I've seen/remember) much more powerful. But you have to be mindful to clear out both of the "newer than" fields if you are looking to fix the old TOCs.

Michael

Some workarounds:

- Links are no longer color-coded to indicate whether they have been viewed. Instead, one can look at the images to the left of folders/threads to see whether they are in grey (already read) or colored (new unread items). As was pointed out to me (I won't cite names since I didn't ask permission to quote this individual), one can also see how many unread posts there are in a given thread by looking at the red parenthesized number in the "replies" column.

- In lieu of a blue arrow to indicate story posts, one can use the posting item of the yellow exclamation point inside the red multipointed star that I am using for this post.

- If you wish to use graemlins, you can do so by clicking on the smiley face in the formatting tools row immediately above the area in which you are typing the main body of your message. If you are replying to a previous post, you need to switch to the full reply screen to see the rows of graemlins to see the formatting tools row.)

- If you wish send someone a private message, click on their name to the left of their post, and you will have an option to send them a PM.

- I, too, love the column indicating the number of views a thread has had.

Joy,
Lynn

I like that when you receive a "Watched Topic" e-mail that it has the content of the email included instead of just the link. I also like the new Spoiler feature. That will be fun to play with.

Aww, you don't need permission to quote me, Lynn. But thanks anyway. Wow, I almost forgot how nice and considerate FoLCs are.

Elena

Any chance of making a suggested list of how to use these thread icons?



I know we've gone for the Red circle with exclamation for new story part. How about designating just a couple more? Maybe a TOC, or a challenge thread, or something.

It's just an idea. I'm not saying we make it too complicated, but just a few ways of distinguishing things we do quite often ... I know most of the icons are funny smiley faces, but some of them stand out.

Red circle with Exclamation: New story part
Light Bulb: TOC
Thumbs up: FDK (hopefully all FDK would be positive anyway)
Whistling face or winking face: Challenge thread

That's only 4. But if you think that's 3 to many to care about then shout at me to go away.

I usually use the lightbulb for Challenge ideas. But I like the idea of designating a different marker for FDK and Story. I'll miss the blue arrow though.

I'm not opposed to it per se but...why would we need a light bulb for new TOCs? New TOCs automatically go to the top of the thread and the only thing in the TOC forum are TOCs so the new ones aren't getting mixed in with anything else. How could new ones be missed?

You're absolutely right. I'm just bouncing out ideas ...

Virginia suggests light-bulb for challenge. *shrugs* That makes sense. (But I just liked the hinted at 'evil-ness' of the other two as challenges can be evil.)

I guess the only reason I put TOC in there was, not for when you are looking though the forum itself, but for the 'Active Topics' list. Just distinguishing it somehow.

As I said. Shout at me to go away ...

WHOA! I've got nfic posts showing up in my Active Topics. They never showed up before. I had to go into the forum itself.

YAY!!!!

Maybe I am missing some things but I cannot seem to get the new search to do the default of the old search and that is require that all of the Keywords be there to pull the post into the results. I wanted to see just how bad Virginia's TOC for Wrong Clark was and so I used +Wrong +Clark +TOC and got 200 posts of the story and FDK posts. I thought I saw in the advance search that the + made the keyword required. There was not one post with TOC in the Subject only in the first 4 pages. I can submit the issue if I am not doing anything wrong.

thanks

Mike

What is the Calender?

Did we have something like this before? I never noticed if we did.

Can we use it to some advantage?

No, I wasn't trying to dissuade you, Katherine, just puzzled as to the benefit. I never use the Active Topic feature but if that kind of distinguishing feature would be useful there, then, as I say, I'm not averse to using it.

Labat

I think you're searching in the FanFic Forum instead of the FanFic TOC forum. I did a search with no date limitations and my name in the "Display Name" section and was able to get all of my TOCs and nothing else. I haven't yet tried to search only using keywords / titles in the search. But you can find the Wrong Series: Book 2: Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC here. (I've only had a chance to update the most recent links for Part 169 and Comments.)

Delete post
FoLCs are now able to delete own posts. Will count as feature until Labby turns it off.

Michael

I was just wondering about that. I'll turn it off.

Or not. <g> I thought about this and had a word with Annette. Neither of us can recall why this feature was turned off originally. I guess there was a good one back then. You guys though are fairly reasonable and we figure you can be trusted to use it responsibly.

If you turn out overnight to be wild, irresponsible monsters, willfully deleting posts by the score ;), we can always turn it off again.

So, for now, you can delete your own posts as well as edit them.


LabRat

One change I've noticed is that the MB is apparently keeping track of which posts we've seen. In the past, if I looked at posts on one browser/computer and then looked at the site from another browser/computer, the links for said posts appeared unviewed. Now if I change browsers/computers, the viewed/unviewed distinction travels with me.

I guess its a trade-off of privacy vs. convenience. And in this particular case, it seems to me that the trade-off is well worth it.

Joy,
Lynn

Handy feature--I think I've posted maybe three 'posts' on here since the switch-over...and would you believe, the first post I posted was 'wrong'? Yikes--yeah. Bad start. Instead of directly clicking on 'ticketing system' to leave some info, I selected 'reply'...and proceeded to leave my info in the thread.

Anywho...totally randomly I tried to delete the post--thinking it would never work--and low and behold, gone! Cleared up a nice lil mess I had made...

Again, nice feature
Laura

Maybe I'm just dense and didn't see it in the old boards, but I discovered the "Active Topics" link for skimming through recent posts, and that's pretty handy!!!

There was something similar in the upper right hand corner which read "Today's Active Posts" or something like this. I like the view better in the upgrade and that it also includes Nfic (for those of us Nfic Readers) and can be set to longer time periods than 24 hours. I agree it's handy, especially so now that the links change color once you've read them.

My links aren't changing color. Is there a setting to check for this?

Meadowrose, in the above quote from Wendy, the embedded links should be Orange* until you click on them (I recommend clicking on "Known Issues Thread"), then it should turn Blue. It's most noticeable when you're looking at the "Active Topics" (seeing what's new). Once you've clicked on one of those it becomes underlined, as well as changes color. Test it out and see if it works for you.

*If these aren't Orange, I recommend you scrolling up until you find one that is. I know that Shayne has a link in the FDK for his Homecoming 12, you can use, too.

Good luck, and let us know if it works.

It's changing color only while I am on the boards. As soon as I leave, it goes back to the original color.

I love the new way to follow a thread (just click on the Topic Options drop down menu at the top left hand side of the top most post and click on Add Topic To Your Watch List). It's so easy! And not just for the people initiating threads anymore. I also like that when you want to go directly to that thread, you can click on My Stuff, scroll down to Watch Lists and find the thread you're looking for easily.

It does that to me, too, Meadowrose. I think that has to do with remembering cookies on what you've looked at and what you haven't. I erase all my cookies whenever I log out of the Internet, but while I'm on (which is mostly all day), I can see new posts at a glance.

I love the "ALL" option for viewing posts (like this one!) that have more than one page of replies. It's super handy to just have one page to scroll through. (Though it was confusing at first because it still says I'm on page "1 of x" instead of "viewing all" or something.)

Sara

How do you switch to "ALL" view?

Below the title of the thread for topics with more than one page there is a page icon followed by page numbers and the word all. If you click all you will see the posts all on the same page.

It took me a minute to find what you were talking about. I didn't realize you meant under the list of threads within a given forum. I thought you meant while already looking at a thread. Found it! Thanks. That will be helpful when looking for a particular quote.

It's not actually a cookie issue; it's a browser history issue. If your browser is set to delete the history when you close it, this would happen.

I bow to your expertise, Mrs. M. I, actually, think I have my browser to set to clear both history and cookies upon closure.

I just had to post that I love, love, love the new feature that lets us see how many times a thread has been looked at. I posted a story last night and am amazed at the number of hits it has received already. I knew that there were lurkers on the boards and that the number of people who read the stories was probably somewhat higher than the number who provided feedback, but I had had no idea just how different those numbers would be.

Joy,
Lynn

My topics aren't changing color after I read them. Should I change something? Is there some setting for this? It's very confusing and often I click on links that I've already read or miss new postings.

Andreia

I'm away from my main desktop computer and working off my laptop, so everything feels different. But for some reason, I can't figure out how to find my old Private Messages on the new boards without going through the link supplied in the email. Can someone be my brains for me by pointing out the way? Thanks.

Virginia,

Click on My Stuff and then on Messages.

Joy,
Lynn

Thanks, Lynn. I swear it wasn't there when I looked earlier!

I accidentally stumbled upon a new board feature. I updated my avatar on a different forum to look like this - and it seems I got the same avatar here without doing anything about it. (For the record, I was just trying to update my avatar when I found it already updated.) It's not exactly a big problem, but strange anyway.

Or do you people see me with a different avatar than the one I linked?

I see you with the same tragically timely avatar in both places.

- Lynn

Strange. Really strange.

How about stranger still. On my iPhone your avatar was a dragon. Here (on my computer), it's the same as the link.

That might be a cache issue with your phone, though. Can you do a "hard refresh" on your phone?

No idea how to do that.