Suggestion

All in favor of ending the debate

  • Stop the Madness, Its Pointless

    Votes: 2 66.7%
  • Keep Stirring the Pot, It Needs It

    Votes: 1 33.3%

  • Total voters
    3
  • Poll closed .
Thanks for the feedback, Steve! I'll tackle these one at a time. :)

Steve said:
When on the "Home" page it would be nice if "previously viewed" posts in the "Last Post" column were not displayed in bold typeface.
The "Recent Threads" Section of the Home page does not base itself on whether or not you viewed the threads - only on what threads were most recently posted. If the forum were idle for a week and you checked in every day, the same threads would still be listed.

That said, I'm inclined to agree - bold face font on those links is excessive. I'll adjust the templates to normalize them shortly.

We're still using a lot of the default settings for vBulletin and the CMPS Portal, so any look and feel adjustments are more than welcome as we continue to tweak the site to give it its own distinct look and feel. :)

I'm still trying to determine the least keystroke method for determining which posts are new in threads I'm actually interested in and minimizing the potential for stumbling through previously viewed posts (this is just a declarative statement).
If you enter a thread by clicking on the thread topic, you will be taken to the top of the post list. You should find, directly under the
reply.gif
button, a "First Unread" button
firstnew.gif
. That button will take you to the first post you haven't read before in that thread based on your last visit. You might also find alternate methods of displaying threads helpful, using the Display Mode menu at the top right of the thread menu (the controls directly on top of the thread vs. the menu bar at the top of every screen). Personally, I hate the threaded and hybrid modes...but some people may like them. :)

Maybe I just haven't found the right menu, help file, or radio button yet, but I would like an option to change the number of posts displayed per page since ideally I would like to display all posts in a given thread on one
User CP -> Edit Options -> Thread Display Options -> Number of Posts to Show Per Page should do the trick.

track of what I am looking at and can more readily tie a given reply post to its related "parent" post especially when the thread starts getting the creeps and it doesn't look like this software has the ability to display "nested" threads, i.e., replies that are replies to replies to replies that may or may not be within the scope of the original post.
As mentioned above, see Display Options - either Hybrid Mode or Threaded Mode.

Thanks for the suggestions!
CH
 
Steve,
In my total experience of 1 day here (well, going on the 2nd now), here's what I've found (YMMV). I use the "Quick Links" menu above and select "New Posts". I also change the "Display Mode" to "Threaded". Now, in the first box, the new posts in the thread have an orange colored folder icon while the read posts are blue icons.
 
gkainz said:
Steve,
In my total experience of 1 day here (well, going on the 2nd now), here's what I've found (YMMV). I use the "Quick Links" menu above and select "New Posts". I also change the "Display Mode" to "Threaded". Now, in the first box, the new posts in the thread have an orange colored folder icon while the read posts are blue icons.


I log on, go to "forums", go to the "quick links" tab and select "new posts." I open the new posts in a new tab (using Firefox). After reading it I close the tab and "refresh" the page which makes removes the bold type from the thread I just read. I use the hybrid mode so I can see which are the new posts so I can scroll to them faster. If it's a short thread I use the arrow by the thread title to go directly to the most recent post.
 
Steve said:
The initial impression is a willingness on the part of the forum providers to at least be polite enough to go beyond mere lipservice in addressing user concerns in a timely manner and offer hope that the forum's long term viability will be ensured by maintaining it as a flexible, dynamic environment able to adapt as new possibilities for improvement are identified.
Thank you - we hope so too. :)

It would be nice to be able to customize the personal preferences to have the site open upon login to a page that lists only unread posts without having to go through the upper tier forum post listing page initially,
snip
Maybe there is a way for me to do this outside of the website using my browser settings, but at my age I'm lucky to find that little blue "e" on my desktop when it comes to getting around on the internet.
To make the "New Posts" list the "Point of Entry" or POA, add this link to your favorites or bookmarks: http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/search.php?do=getnew

That link, exactly as it is, will tell POA when you click it to get the list of new threads since your last visit. (More on Last Visit below)

Oh, and one other thing....the time and date displayed for "My last visit" seems to be the time and date of my current visit, not my last visit before my current visit...sort of like the problem I have with people saying "next weekend" vs "this weekend"...but what do I know. :confused:
Now you've hit on one of the biggest weak spots, in my opinion, of how this particular software works.

To use the AOPA software by comparison: When you visit the AOPA boards, you read posts, and then you mark them read. You can come back a hundred times from the point when you marked them read, and the same "Starting point" applies - until you mark them read again, at which point, the starting point is updated.

By contrast, the vBulletin software behaves...well...not nearly as nicely. It takes the point of your last visit - 15 minutes ago? 3 days ago? 3 months ago - doesn't matter - it takes the point of your last visit and uses it as the starting point.

Here's the kicker: vBulletin UPDATES your 'last visited' info every time you visit, after 15 minutes of idle time.

So if you visit the home page, don't look at any new posts, and then walk away from the computer to make breakfast, when you come back and hit "New Posts" - there won't be any.

I don't like this behavior - and vBulletin has made it clear that it understands that almost NOBODY likes this behavior - and they say they have a plan to improve the behavior in the next *major* release of vBulletin - but when that release will come, they won't say. So far they've had a lot of minor releases...up to 3.0.7 so far...but no word of major releases.

Now - that means that if you're going to sit down to read the boards, you either need to be ready to do it all in one sitting, OR you need a way to keep your 'unread list' from resetting.

I find one of two means most effective for this:
- Open New Posts IMMEDIATELY and then right click each thread you want to read, and click "Open in New Window" - and read the post, reply, etc, then close the window and go back to the new post list in the first window and proceed to the next one.
- Open New Posts, read the threads, and then use the browser back button to go back to the new post list - this can be less effective, however, because search results will eventually time out.

You can also try to ensure you don't "Idle out" for more than 15 minutes - hit new posts - read a thread - hit new posts again - read another thread - but be warned - if you spend 15 minutes writing a reply, the web server considers that 15 minutes of idle time (idle means you haven't sent a request to the server, even tho you've been typing and typing like mad for 15 minutes) - and will reset your last visited date.

This is a nuisance - and to new users its a big one - but unfortunately its not something we can do anything about right now and from an administrative angle, the benefits of this software tend to outweigh the negative.

I'm sorry I don't have better news about that right now, but I hope that it won't deter you from being a regular. :)

CH
POA Mgt. Team
 
Steve and Chuck,

I am so glad you addressed this New Posts/Last Visit issue, because I am always going away from my computer to make breakfast or something, and when I come back, I can't find the new posts. Thought I was even less adept at this software than I usually am!

I'm also still having trouble navigating and finding what's new, what's old, and what's related to what else I've read, but I'm working with the different views and hoping I find something compatible and easy. For me, I need easy. It doesn't take me long to become frustrated if I can't find what I'm looking for.

Here's another thing I haven't figured out: when I want to quote someone in my reply, and I hit the "quote" button, I get not actual quotes, but words in brackets, like [/QUOTE]. Something like that. And my reply ends up looking sloppy -- no nice, gray boxes like the ones other people have, with the quote embedded, just text that could be mistaken for my own words. I don't always want to quote their whole post, just a little part, but when I slice out a part, it ends up looking like it was written by me, unless I remember to go up and put " marks around it.

I am now going to maximize my threads-per-page. That sounds simple enough. :) Chuck, thanks for all the time and energy you are putting into this! It's very much appreciated. This will be a great community as it evolves.
 
Toby said:
Here's another thing I haven't figured out: when I want to quote someone in my reply, and I hit the "quote" button, I get not actual quotes, but words in brackets, like /QUOTE . Something like that. And my reply ends up looking sloppy -- no nice, gray boxes like the ones other people have, with the quote embedded, just text that could be mistaken for my own words. I don't always want to quote their whole post, just a little part, but when I slice out a part, it ends up looking like it was written by me, unless I remember to go up and put " marks around it.

The vBulletin uses 'tags' to format text. When you want to quote someone, you have to give a beginning tag and an ending tag. A begin tag is a word like QUOTE with [ and ] wrapped around it. An end tag is the same word, but with / in front of the word. So [ QUOTE ] and [ / QUOTE ] (without the spaces) make up the begin and ending of a quote tag.

The easiest way to quote someone is, of course, to quote them fully. This is a good starting point when you want to prune someone's quote down.

Start by clicking the Quoted Reply button
quote.gif
on the post you want to reply to. You will then come to the entry screen with a pre-populated quote block like so:
PHP:
 [QUOTE]Someone's long original Message[/QUOTE] 
You start typing your reply here.

Say you wanted to break that into two quotes. You can do that by inserting an end quote and a begin quote.

PHP:
 [QUOTE]Someone's long [/QUOTE]
You start typing your reply here.
[QUOTE]original Message[/QUOTE] 
And continue typing your reply here.

That ends up looking like this:
Someone's long
You start typing your reply here.
original Message
And continue typing your reply here.

The quote button I think you've been pushing is this one?
quote.gif


When you push that, quote tags are inserted in your current edit box. The idea behind that is you can copy text from somewhere in the post (which is fully listed below the entry screen when you are making a reply - just scroll down), and then you paste it into your editor, then you highlight it, and click that button. Then vBulletin wraps the quote tags around the desired text for you. :)

Play around with it - you won't break anything - thats the best way to learn in my experience. :)
 
Steve:

I understand what you mean about taking longer than 15 minutes sometimes to reply to a post. Some of my longer ones, and I can post some doozies, take just as long.

Here's a tip that might help. The 15 minute timer resets itself back to another full 15 minutes every time you do SOMETHING that accesses the POA site. If you hit new posts, reply to one, and spend 15 minutes typing your answer, thats it the timer runs out, and your new post list gets reset.

BUT - if you hit New Posts, and then bring up the messages to which you want to reply in a new window, start your reply but refresh the first window every five minutes or so, every time you refresh the first window, your "timer" resets and you get another 15 minutes before your new post list gets reset.

At least, it should work that way, if I understand it fully. :)
 
:D

I am glad you are here, Steve. I do hope you stick around.

Is that your new plane?
 
Hey SS,

Really glad you're here. Now there's someone who writes longer posts than I do. :)

I hope to hear a lot more from you on this board.

Chip
 
I don't like this behavior - and vBulletin has made it clear that it understands that almost NOBODY likes this behavior -

Well my last attempt to post this message, via the "quick post" method at the bottom of the page was lost.

Anyway, add my name to the list of individuals that dislike this behavior.

If this site is intended to grow to anywhere near the size of the AOPA posting community, it will be simply too cumbersome to re-read entire threads to find the newest posts, just because the software has determined "nothing is new" because I have been on site for more than fifteen minutes.
 
mdreger said:
Well my last attempt to post this message, via the "quick post" method at the bottom of the page was lost.

Anyway, add my name to the list of individuals that dislike this behavior.

If this site is intended to grow to anywhere near the size of the AOPA posting community, it will be simply too cumbersome to re-read entire threads to find the newest posts, just because the software has determined "nothing is new" because I have been on site for more than fifteen minutes.
Keep in mind that the timer is based on INACTIVITY for fifteen minutes, not just fifteen minutes period. If you're wandering around the site, the timer resets every time you click to somewhere off the page you're on.

I visit a woodworking site using this software with over 4,000 active members and 150,000 posts. It just takes a little practice but it's not overwhelming after a while.
 
Steve said:
I guess there is hope for me and my evil twin.
Steve, how are those trees doing? Do you need to stop and smell the trees?

Hope to see you at OSH (or Gaston's)

:)
 
Steve said:
A Forum dedicated to Airshows and Expos might be useful for them that like to congregate at such things

Hey, good luck with that one! Do you know how hard I've been trying to get a separate forum for places to fly, and for aerobatics? I've even made false promises. ;)

Steve said:
And does mounting a jet engine on a Suzuki dirt bike qualify as an airshow act. Inquiring minds want to know.

Only if it takes off, or races a Citabria :)
 
Steve said:
Not to appear as ignoring or ignorant of comments from the friendly natives I just want to say thanks, Dr. B., Carol, Chip, and Toby. I can already tell the neighborhood is kind to dumb animals. And yes, that is my new airplane. It flies great, but the monthly rent on the aircraft carrier hangar deck is outrageous.

S


If that's your new plane then the hangar rent costs would be incidental :)
 
Steve said:
Now what would be nice is to log on to the message board and get a really pretty female voice like Kathleen Turner saying "Welcome Back, Steve...
If you can get Ms. Turner to record the soundbyte, I can set it up. However, I think our other users would be confused to hear Ms. Turner calling them Steve...


A Forum dedicated to Airshows and Expos might be useful for them that like to congregate at such things and compare notes on which T-6 did the best Cuban-8 or whether Air Force blue or Navy blue is the truest blue when they do their 6 ship delta diamond photo pass. And does mounting a jet engine on a Suzuki dirt bike qualify as an airshow act. Inquiring minds want to know.
We are considering adding a "Cool Places to Fly" forum to cover topics like good $100 hamburger joints and fly-ins, air-shows, museums, etc. There is also our Links Database, accessible via the Home page (and soon via the Quick Links menu, but that's not set up yet), which will take you to our ordered listing of aviation related links. I don't think we have an "Air-Shows and Fly-In's" category - yet - but we might need to add one. :)
 
Steve, you've lost me.

The "Nifty little box in the upper right hand corner" reference I assume refers to this portion of the page:
welcome.jpg


Which has me confused because that appears on ALL pages of PoA, all the time.

Am I not understanding what box you're talking about?
 
The last time I saw a help request like that, it turned into hours of PC-Duo time ...
 
Ok, I think what is happening is IE is Caching pages so it doesn't have to reload them. When you log in, you should show as logged in on every page.

In IE, click Tools - Internet Options, then in the Temporary Internet Files section, click Settings.

Under "Check for Newer Versions of Stored Pages", set it to "Every Visit to the Page".

Click OK to close that dialog, and then OK again to close the first dialog.

Let me know if the behavior improves.

CH
 
I don't either - it might be a cookie issue - and by that I am afraid I do not mean the kind that comes out of a bag or a box or even out of an oven of any kind...
 
Ok, Steve, I think you nailed it - the missing www in the front of the url made a difference in the cookie definition.

I've applied a change to the way the forum works so that the cookie will work now for both www.pilotsofamerica.com and just pilotsofamerica.com - but you may need to clear your cookies and log back in before that change takes effect.

To clear your cookies:
Tools - Internet Options - Delete Cookies and press OK.

This will log you out of POA.com - so you'll have to relog in - but then you should find things working properly. I hope. Maybe... :)
 
But we all remember you, Steve, and that's what counts.


Hey Chuck, hear anything yet from Kathleen Turner?
 
:) Mozilla, Mozilla, Mozilla, Mozilla,Mozilla, :) Mozilla,

Or....
Netcaptor,Netcaptor,
Netcaptor,Netcaptor,
:) Netcaptor,Netcaptor,:)


No Mo' IE


:mad:
There, I feel betterer......:p
 
Steve said:
I've tried the mozilla lizard, the netscape (started by a fellow MS'ian who donated $100 Mbucks to Ole Miss not long ago), the firefox, the mosaic, the opera, even the safari and I've managed to get them all to lock up eventually. MS gets picked on because it holds something like 90% of the market share. Hackers would do the same to apple/linux/unix/atari basic if they were similarly prominent.
Not necessarily. MS gets 'picked' on by leaving wide, gaping holes between the browser and OS integration in an effort to make the web an extension of your desktop.

To paraphrase Sir Gates' dream a few years ago (ala Win98 SE rollout): I want to make the line between the desktop PC and Internet disappear. You'll pull files off storage servers on the Internet, 'rent' applications from app servers on the Internet, and won't know when you're local and when you're not.

IE's loose integration and pipes into the operating system (along with the holes) was founded on this idea. As things moved along, holes have been closed up (for the most part) but several still exist. Other browsers don't make an effort to do this level of integration because they realize that they're browsers...not operating systems in themselves.
 
I've debated changing the sort order of the New Posts, but came to the conclusion that, personally, I like having the New Post list sorted by forum because it serves as a way to categorize the posts. That lets me zero in on threads of a higher priority to me first - like support oriented threads (like this one:)).

However, if there is a general demand for New Posts by Date vs. New Posts by Forum, then Date, I can look into adding that option as well.
 
FWIW, as long as we can only "Mark as read" an entire forum, rather than each thread, I like having all the forums listed together in the "New Posts" view. That way I can open all the new threads in new Tabs/Browsers, mark the Forum as read with reasonable confidence that no one posted a reply in the few seconds it took me to open the new threads. Then I can read and reply to the aforementioned "new posts" at my leisure.
 
And the way "New Posts" are displayed now a lot of the results really aren't new to me and so I can do just as well going through Forum by Forum using the path at the top of the page to find New Posts, which may or may not have a boldface font just like the non-New Posts to find the posts that are new to me.
Are you remembering to mark forums as read after you finish reading them?

Until you mark a forum read, every post made since the last time you marked it read will still appear, no matter how many times you've read it.

The bolding of the post is, sadly, something I can't modify - I tend to disregard that in favor of keeping my mark read status current. :)
 
Oh - yeah - and World Hunger isn't this sites department. ;)
 
(Hang on, I'm about to get even with you for your verbosity by going ultratech on you. :) )

Yes - if you want to use the "New Posts" link vs. the "Recent Activity" link, manual action on your part is required. This is similar to the way the AOPA web board works - you actively mark a Forum as read. Threads will show up as "New" until you mark them as read, at which point the software hides the thread from the New Post list.

Both AOPA and POA use a date/time setting to maintain this info. The difference is - when a new post is made after you mark a forum read, AOPA shows the thread, but hides the older posts. This software redisplays the thread and shows ALL the posts in the thread, not just the ones posted since you flagged that forum.

Basically there are three ways a forum system can track what you've read:
1) Track individual threads for individual users. This is resource prohibitive. It requires a number of database entries equal to the number of users times the number of threads. With 247 users and 466 threads at the time of this posting, that's 115,102 database entries, with exponential growth over time. This would kill performance any forum system that achieved long term success.

2) Track individual forum status for individual users with manual intervention. Capture a date and time for each user for each forum when the user specifies. This is much less painful - we have 16 forums (3 of them are not visible to normal users). That's only 3,952 entries and you only add 16 entries per new user. Much more manageable and when you prune old, inactive users, you can remove their entries too. This is what both AOPA and our newer "New Posts" system does. Where we differ, to repeat myself, is that we do not hide older posts in threads which have new activity, and AOPA does.

3) #2 but do it automatically instead of manually. The *OLD* system, now called "Recent Activity" does this, using a combination of a single record in the database per user (Last Visited) plus a set of temporary information stores (cookies) on your computer. This is very high performance but horrible behavior because if you spend more than the allocated time replying to a post, all your unread threads get marked as read.

The hack we applied to the software added #2 - but some features of the software still use #3 - and one of the features that still uses #3 is the adding of bold face type to threads that have had recent activity. This is why threads can appear on your New Post list as bold or not bold - generally speaking, if it isn't bold on your new post list, it *PROBABLY* has been read before... but because its based on an automatic timer, it might not have been, so don't trust bold vs. not bold. Use New Posts, read a forum at a time, and then mark that forum read when done. :)
 
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