New opening forum screen
 

I like the new look when you enter the forum. Greeted with a personal welcome is a nice touch.....:TU:
Ralph

Glad you like the changes. :) Morgan and I will be trying to update and improve the look and functionality of the forum. At times we may need to close the forum for a few minutes here and there, but it won't last long. Over the next few days you might see some more changes. Post all comments here.

Jav, have you made some changes about the "log-in time"? The other day I had to log in again and again while writeing/post. How many minutes do I "stay inside" after logging in?

Not sure I like the number of users online under the New PM's, but other than that it looks great.

Today the forum has been up and down as I've been making changes. If you were getting "timed out" a few days ago, do you have any cookie blocking software running?

No, no cookie blocking. Its better today, no time-out so far. But is there a limit before we have to log in again? Asking because I have serveral browser windows open, and surfing the net at the same time.

I have never had to log on unless I delete the cookie. I've gone MONTHS without having to re-logon.

Somehow your account got set not to remember passwords. I switched it.

ok, thank you, butler. :)

Yes I Love the new welcome . Makes me feel importent .

Nobody noticed that I hot-wired the clock and got it correct? :D

I had to make about 100 changes spread over 30 files but I got it working. :)

It's the little things, right Jim?

Yep

How come no one has commented about the new PM statistics yet? Keep looking, there will be more to come. :) And if you have any suggestions, PM them to me or post them. We will be happy to consider all of them. Seriously, what we want to do is add functionality and convienence for all our users, with a touch of flair thrown in for good measure. I will be spending alot of time in the next few days going through tons of available add ins and considering them for inclusion. If you know of something worthwhile, I might be able to find it.

Jav,
the PM statistics is great(very conveniently located). Love the Welcome & personal/forum info! Also , nice to see your personal avatar right next to it. :)

Morgan,
love the last time visited stats(nice touch)! :)

You guys keep up the good work & keep them updates coming! :)

Glad to see the time showing correctly, but just one thing, as New Zeland(Oz too) now is on day light saving time, so the time show on forum is actually an hour shorter than my clock under system tray :)

I appreciate ur work man, with respect!:TU:

Hrmmm, actually I think I did see something about Daylight Savings time somewhere. I'll look again and find out what that one entails. Good point James.

LOVE the forum changes.

HATE daylight savings time. Why do we still do this?

Because it still saves an estimated 1% of all electricity use.

Daylight savings time in Tejas, Bah! ;)

You're welcome up here in Stockholm which's situated ~60° N (roughly the same as Fairbanks Alaska, Hudson Bay Canada or the southern tip of Greenland). Go figure if we like another hour of semi-day instead of pitch black night :D

/Tiny Tan

Very strange. Although NZ savings time ends a few days earlier than US savings time, it should still be working. I am GMT -6 and the time is accurate for me. I looked at your time zone and it's correctly set to +12.

Anyone else seeing problems with the time?

Maybe when I was in there fiddling I broke something that would affect other time zones.

Big thanks to you, Morgan for fiddling with these matters – It's just so much neater with a forum where stuff works – Figuring out when something was posted on other forums can be quite tricky when the time listed always is a bunch of hours off...

/Tiny Time Difference

Yes! First thing I noticed after the initial surprise of the changed opening, was the clock was correct! - Great! :TU:
Thanks for all the work you do, Michael and Morgan, it's much appreciated!

Daylight saving? - I'm with SunKing, - why DO we still do it? - I hate changing clocks twice a year, for no good reason!
I thought it was only us in the UK who were stupid enough to fall for this, - never knew other countries did it!
They did stop it here once, can't remember when, must have been about 1970ish. But within a couple of years or so, it was back, - MADNESS!!! :rolleyes: - (We used to do it 4 times/year!! - 'Double British Summertime'- can you believe it!!)

If anyone out there has a sensible logical reason why it's still necessary, lets have it, - I could be wrong! ;)

LOL, I don't like Daylight saving time too, it makes most of net friends confusses about my time, they've complain about sometimes they have to plus one more hour and sometimes not, when counting my local time here.

Yes morgan, the original time is GMT plus 12, but when daylight saving's on, it should be GMT plus 13!! but the forum just still plus 12 for me only!!
However, NZ's Daylight saving will go off on 16th Feb, just few days later, Oz will follow. And now I just stick with the time wrap exist between forum and my local time ;)

200 lines of code later, you can see all the fun you're missing in the chatroom from the forum front page. :D

I'm going to release the code I wrote on vBulletin.org. It's nice and modular and should work on any mIRC 6 and any copy of vBulletin.


James, we looked at code to make Daylight Savings Time work. It's pretty complicated but we'll consider it.

LOL. i'm confused.

James wrote;

"However, NZ's Daylight saving will go off on 16th Feb"

Well, in Norway (GMT +1) Daylight saving will go ON, sunday 30 March. Then Norway is GMT +2

Now i'm totally confused. :) Is it even possible to handle all this?

Well the on/off issue is probably connected to the fact that you and James are on the opposite sides of the globe. He's got summer over there you know (mmm, wish I had summer too :) ).

/Tiny Winter

teac,

There are ways to handle it, and I am still researching the process. But like Morgan says it is fairly complicated. Doing some more research and figuring out just how stable this option is, or isn't, before trying it.

i don't like ds time either. probably has something to do with money [lol]. in fact i don't change my wristwatch, i just remember it's an hour off part of the year. messes up some friends when they look at it but i get lol.....my personal way of fighting it ...

Ok, a quick update. Morgan and I spent 8 hours Saturday testing and fussing around trying to get the new "Chat Activity" placed, working, and bug free at the bottom of the main page. At this point we can report that it is working and everything should be fine !! :) :) Thanks to Fishybusiness for some "critiquing" about colors during the process.

We are also considering some visit stats somewhere on the main page. We have several different combinations in mind, but all comments and opinions are welcome.

no real computer education here, but i hate cookies. go to washington post, no cookies. go to ny times cookies,cookies cookies, go to my alternate isp in case of trouble with msn an i get 17 cookies if i don't block.
i think there ought to be a law against putting anything on another persons computer wiyhout them seeing exactly what is being said or happening.
of course i don't know why we need them period. there should be another way. they sure are a way to sneak things in.
i wish we would go back to the "remember my password" check box........oh well, that's just me airing things out.....bye for now

Cookies are inherently benign. It is how websites use them. Cookies allow you to go to an international company's website and select your language and it will never have to ask you again. Cookies allow you to visit this forum a month from now and pick up right where you left off.

I'll concur that If one cookie could not read the contents of another cookie and if ActiveX did not exist, then it would be a more perfect world.

Isnt there a calendar option with vBulliten, where we could put members birthdays, important events, new SereneScreen release dates ( :) ), etc...?

Also, on a members profile page, couldnt we have a male/female indicator?

:rolleyes: ???

SereneScreen does not do release dates. :)

We could also do flags for each country-of-origin, we could do karma ratings based on who gives the best advice, etc. etc. vBulletin comes a certain way out-of-the-box with many settings. Then you can literally rewrite any part of the forum yourself since it is all open (but not open source) PHP code. People have written any and every kind of modification for vBulletin. I really saw no need for a calendar since months go by without any major activity. If there is a need for a calendar, I'll turn that feature back on. :)

As for indicating male/female, I think some women appreciate a certain anonymity online. If they don't want to be treated differently online, then they simply won't volunteer that information. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Morgan
Just a thought........ getting back to cookies. With the changes you are making can you fix it(the cookies) to "NOT" show the FAQ when first logging on? Your FAQ is very valuable to new members and I would not want to see it disappear but after a while...........
Just a thought :)
Ralph

Ralph,

For new users coming in from the web site the FAQ is important. But for registered people here all the time the easiest way is to just Bookmark the main forum page. :)

I love the chatroom activity thing! Its great to see which members and how many are in there.

Not all the woman on our forum show their smiles. Just you and LightFeather. I can understand Morgans point of view though. Perhaps the ladys would get hounded too much. But I dont recall LF ever complaining about that.

:) Yes, I know that SereneScreen does not give release dates. The calander would mostly be used for members birthdays, weddings, special events, Chat with Jim Sachs, holidays from around the world, etc... What does everyone else think about this?

The flags for each country-of-origin is a great idea.

Ok everyone, it's opinion time again. The fish icons for read, unread, participant and so on. Yea, Nea, or somewhere inbetween?

Hmmm, all day long and not even one comment. Not even thbbbbbpttttt. * <---- Read Calvin & Hobbs here* :)

feldon:

Is this forum designed completely by you? Or you have got a open source and customized it yourself?

Cheers