Forum and Site Bugs

[John Forrister]

I also have a question: will we ultimately be able to add personal photos to our profiles? We all look the same and that's kinda boring.

Yes! You can add a photo or avatar to your profile now. At the top of any forum screen, click on your name, select My Profile. When the profile page opens, hover over the avatar area in the upper-left, above your name. You'll see Edit Avatar. Click that and you can select a photo. I just added one with the family dog.

 

[Barb]

When I hover, it doesn't work for me. And that's your dog??? I couldn't honestly tell what that was!! Good picture of you, though, John. I'm laughing. I really DO need to wear my glasses!!

Today, I can post my pic. Will work on something more recent!

 

[Oogiem]

The not seeing posts display right away happened to me on Version 6.1.1 (8537.73.11) on Mac OS X Mountain Lion rev 10.8.5

And it appears to be an intermittent error. This post posted right away but a post in another thread didn't.

 

[Oogiem]

SO you can't roll back without losing all the other site features.

Then why didn't you make sure the forum was the same in functionality and appearance?

We lost so many critical functions in this "upgrade" that the entire forum system is less useful. That is the primary benefit of Connect for me, so changes that affect my workflow with the forum are very disruptive and they are still not working properly.

 

[mcogilvie]

Hi GTD Connect members,

The question about "why not roll back?" to the previous version of the forum has come up several times. The software that the forum runs on is called vBulletin. We were using version 4, and upgraded to version 5. That upgrade is integral to the overall new site. The new site is not just a change in design. It's an entirely new content management platform (WordPress rather than Drupal), and still has lots of custom coding. The vBulletin upgrade wasn't optional -- it was a requirement to have the forum integrate with the new site. There isn't a way to roll back to vBulletin 4 without rolling back all the site changes. The forum is definitely where most of the bugs are. Since the forum is one part of GTD Connect, and one part of the overall site, we're still on the path to fix bugs and improve the forum usability.

And, there are new features members have asked for, that we'll be introducing in this version of the forum, including more personalization, social media integration, photo/video support, and more.

So keep the feedback coming, and thanks for your patience during the transition.

Best,
John

Without commenting on my perceptions of the changes themselves, let me enumerate what was changed:

- software: vBulletin v4 to v5
- platform: Drupal to Wordpress
- design: new colors, new logo, et cetera
- organization: new layout, new menus, et cetera

Any one or perhaps two of these would be a significant project for a website with as much content as this one has. To change all of them at once with no possibility of rolling them back is not something that would be considered a best practice. The number of problems reported indicate that insufficient testing was performed as well. Strictly from a software engineering perspective, it reflects badly on the organization.

 

[SiobhanBR]

I hadn't had that problem until I read this post! I just tried to post on the Weekly Review thread and it isn't showing up even after refreshing and going out and back. Although, it is showing on the Forum page, even clicking the "go to the last post" button under my name doesn't show the post. I can only assume that it will show up at some point...

I also got the same error as Barb when trying to add a smiley - I had to delete it and try again.

 

[vbampton]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I'm sure if DavidCo plans anything like this again, they'll be much more aware of it. We've all made mistakes at times, and the team are as human as we are (even if they are wonderfully organized!)

So let's focus on bugs and usability issues... what's still broken?

 

[Barb]

Very well said!

 

[Oogiem]

I've had a long conversation with Mike Wallace about the entire process. I feel a bit more confident that there will be a better way to report bugs soon, Also that we;ll have more visibility on what is being worked on and what is part of the new SW that can't be changed. I appreciate the time he spent talking to me about all my concerns with the entire process from what went wrong to how to try to recover now to what might be done in future to prevent this sort of fiasco again.

 

[GTDmw]

Mike Williams I really enjoyed our conversation, too. Thank you again for sharing your time with me.

 

[Oogiem]

OK Some more bugs. Some have been reported before but they are still here even with all the changes

1. Can't log in to connect forums with Tapatalk
Tried using the tapatalk app to read the forums. Can't get logged in to connect forums with it at all I keep getting errors of invalid username or password yet I know it's correct.

2. Still no reverse sort of threads

3. Still no way to mark individual forums read as a single click. Actually I can't figure out how to do it at all. Not obvious. Wnat a mark forums read back on the header for each forum

4. Comments not showing up in timelines

5. Color orange is poor choice too bright and jarring.

6. No distinction between forums with new posts and those without. the Orange color stands out no matter the status of the forums

7. Font sizes are an issue, too small, and change when you click on a thread to view it.

8. On iPad and iPhone the main menu of site is half in the grey barn underneath making it almost unreadable.

9. Bug about noit seeing posts as you put them in is still here in intermittent form. SOmetimes I see my posts as soon as I send them sometimes I have to leave the forum and come back in to see it. No consistency as to when or why it works or doesn't

10. No info on how to change the skin of the forum so we can adapt the display to be what we had before. This new format is painfully bright and hard to read

11. Space issues. I used to be able to see much more of a thread on a single page without scrolling, the new display is smaller fonts with more white space and MUCH harder to read. It takes up more screen real estate for less information.

 

[mcogilvie]

Hindsight is 20/20, but for things like this foresight is much more useful. While I would not consider myself an expert on web design, I have quite a bit of experience with computers, and supervise our departmental computing staff. I've fired people not for being in over their heads, but for being in over their heads repeatedly and not knowing it. Compiling a long bug list would just increase my unhappiness, so I will check back in a week to see if significant progress has been made.

 

[vbampton]

John, I'm seeing some posts marked as unapproved, as if they're dropping into the moderation queue. The last two posts in the WR thread are an example. I'm approving them as I see them, but it could explain Oogie's missing posts bug.

 

[Oogiem]

Another bug

There is no post header. I didn't realize how much I looked at the headers in a thread for each post before focusing on individual posts to read in detail until now when they are all gone.

 

[Oogiem]

Sometimes the location of the cursor while writing and editing posts is not where the insert or deletion actually happens. It's as if the location gets lost. Where the system thinks the cursor is and i does the editing is not where the cursor appears on the screen. Makes it difficult to make sure you are editing the proper word or location. appears to be related to taking a while to write a post.

 

[Oogiem]

I just created a long detailed post on the weekly thread. I went to post it and got a message working. Then the screen cleared and the entire post was lost completely! And it's not showing up at all.

 

[Oogiem]

Worse, now I can't post into any thread I did not start. System looks like it's posting but nothing shows up at all. No error message

Brief update. A few of my messages got posted finally. The rest, particularly everything in the weekly review thread is gone. And now I can't post into threads I didn't' start. Problem started with my very long post that got a message working for a while then cleared the screen but never posted.

 

[Barb]

I was trying to comment on a post in the WR thread the other day and kept getting thrown into "moderation" hold. And I wasn't using bad language, just in case you wondered.

 

[Barb]

Oogie, I have some issues but not like you are experiencing. A comment on the orange color: that's part of their brand so I don't think they will just pick another color. BTW, it looks fine across my various platforms--not too jarring.

 

[Barb]

I see a post from you in the WR thread, as well as the post about cleaning in the thread about meal planning. So your problem is intermittent?