Hi Folks - we have set up a test version of Forumosa using a completely different forum software: Discourse
Please try it out and post your feedback here: report bugs and help us build a wishlist/to-do list of things we want to bear in mind as we consider the new system.
NOTE: If you cannot log-in with your usual credentials, use that website’s Reset Password function. You will have to choose a new password that has more than 15 characters.
ANOTHER NOTE: Usernames cannot have spaces - these are converted to under_scores
[quote=“ironlady”]What? Don’t know any words of more than 8 letters?
Seriously. Could you try to help someone out instead of going on about a software setting?[/quote]
I’m not going to type pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis every time I want to log in. Anyway, once you get over 8 letter words the possible words become less and less, so easier to hack if you are depending on a dictionary-based hack attack.
That leaves us poor, muddle-headed Forumosa users with the options of including caps, numbers and symbols.
Try memorizing hoNor1f1c@bilatudin@t@T1bu$
Next problem: typing a 15-letter password. Especially when this has been promised to be a mobile-friendly site. When using a mobile phone, one can’t touch type unless one has very tiny fingers.
I am trying to help, really. Help #1: suggest reasonable length password.
[quote=“ironlady”]What? Don’t know any words of more than 8 letters?
Seriously. Could you try to help someone out instead of going on about a software setting?[/quote]
Mmm. I offered a lot of time to Forumosa last year but it never happened. Am simply too busy right now to test the beta, but the password restriction doesn’t make sense & should be changed. Seems good feedback to me.
The ‘adding underscores to usernames’ also seems odd & won’t look pretty.
Looking forward to hearing your review of beta, IL.
I hope to get there sometime in August.
[quote]…choose a short, memorable phrase. And that’s it. Instead of turning the phrase into a one-word password, just use the whole phrase as your password. For instance, Mitt loves when Barack makes waffles. That’s a memorable phrase. It’s also an extremely strong password just by itself—stronger, even, than a password made up of that phrase’s initial letters. Instead of shortening the phrase, just type the whole thing in as your password. That’s easier than typing a jumble of symbols and uppercase and lowercase letters, and it’s easier to remember, too.[/quote]I noticed the 15-character password request when I hit the Password Reset function on the test website when I wanted to login using my existing account. I also noticed that if you start a brand new ID there, the password requirement drops to 10 characters.
I will look into whether we can change the setting. We probably can. The question left will be, should we really be changing the software to make it less secure?
Either way, please keep the feedback coming.
I have also noticed that certain BBcode isn’t recognized (yet). So, for example, youtubeBB3 doesn’t work - which kinda throws a shadow over the whole Youtube Video forum we have here.
Another hiccup - we are going to have to re-do access for the Women’s Forum (and all the other private areas). I did manage to figure out how to create Groups, and how to give forum-specific access (on Discourse this would be described as “category” specific) to a Group. So that will have to be re-done.
Also, Discourse categories only go 1-level deep - so our Sub Forums (ex. Substitute Teachers) - will need to be re-located, replaced, or re-visited altogether.
I think some people are already familiar with creating secure passphrases, but my feeling is that they’re just overkill for forumosa, for the most part.
Most people don’t have that much to lose on here, apart from an e-mail address.
The option should be there to have a long password, but I just don’t see the need to make it mandatory .
it asked me for a 10 character password. it’s easy to come up with one, but i’m relying on using the keystrokes of a Chinese input to create the password. if all the hiccups can be fixed, I actually digging the new site’s user experience.
I wonder if it’d be possible to parse through old posts and remove all youTubeBB3 tags, or modify youTubeBB3 tags to do nothing but spit the youtube link back out. Maybe that way all the videos show up nicely?
[quote=“Hamletintaiwan”]How do I go to the end of a very long thread immediately?
Edit: Found it, however navigating through long threads is not very convenient.
I like a certain number of posts per page better.[/quote]
The design is completely different (perpetual scroll vs pagination), so it will take a little getting used to, but I do not think the learning curve is so bad.
In mobile, when you scroll down a little bit, a blue rectangle appears in the bottom right corner of your screen, this will enable you to jump to the last post.
In desktop, long threads have a timeline that appears on the right margin, and you can use it to quickly move around a long thread.
Some kind of “kudos” function
Make it available to Tapatalk[/quote]
Each post has a little heart shaped icon that you can use to like it. And there are many ways to reach the most popular, most liked, most viewed, etc, posts from the top navigation. And all of those top lists can be defined by time period (ex. past year, past week, today). I am looking forward to these becoming more meaningful when we have real traffic in place on a Discourse forum, but this already looks promising to me.
Hang on about what I said about finding the Like Top Lists. You can press the Like button on each post that isn’t your own, but I haven’t yet found where this stuff is available and usefully presented
Folks. We are ready for the migration to Discourse.
This weekend, we will shutdown this website, and no longer allow posts to be made. You should still be allowed to login to access your PMs.
In the meantime, we will take 3 days to migrate the database to Discourse and set up the new website. This will include making adjustments based in the feedback you give us in this thread.
I will post a link at the top of this forum to the new site.
Part of our transmogrification process will involve moving or re-thinking some forums, especially sub-forums.
For example, instead ofna self-pruning substitute teacher forum, i want us to try using a “Substitute Teaching Job” Tag instead. We make sure the tag URL is easily accessible from thw Teaching English Category (nee Forum)
.