Welcome to the new Boards.ie platform - Version 1.0 :)

Leftwaffe · 30-07-2021 12:18am

Touch site - when I click on my avatar, the star button for bookmarks only works some times and not always. Tried the bell icon for notifications and it didn’t work at all until I returned to the home page.

30-07-2021 12:21am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117680911#Comment_117680911

Lucky you. That's a cool new feature. Jealous AF. I only wish we all got the same great upgrades but it looks like everyone gets different ones throughout the day.

30-07-2021 12:46am

The only way I can get to my posts is to go to:

https://www.boards.ie/profile/discussions/MyUserName, which I now have bookmarked on my phone and my desktop browser.

If I try to go to that through my profile on the mobile site, sometimes I can’t get the contextual menu for that to work, without about 5 reloads of the page, and it doesn’t seem to exist on the the desktop site, unless I go to it by using a bookmark.

It’s a wonderful UX, up there with trying to programme a 1980s VCR or a cooker timer.

jammiedodgers · 30-07-2021 12:48am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117679883#Comment_117679883

Fair play for being able to find 2 threads within 30 seconds.

DeepBlue · 30-07-2021 1:05am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117680960#Comment_117680960

Using that method I get a list of threads I started and not a list of my posts/comments.

30-07-2021 1:17am

Just tried googling boards.ie man united tickets and cannot access any of the results to see how people are usually getting their packages.

Just revert back to the old site and lose all posts since ye started this upgrade, put this in UAT and when everything is fixed go again.

30-07-2021 1:28am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117680992#Comment_117680992

Try https://www.boards.ie/profile/comments/MyUserName

Peregrine · 30-07-2021 3:41am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117674975#Comment_117674975

My Bookmarks is now loading much quicker. That's all speed issues resolved for me, I think.

Navigation on mobile is still my biggest issue. If the forums were easier to find and if the buttons hidden in the profile picture menu were easily accessible, it would be loads better.

lawred2 · 30-07-2021 8:11am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117679877#Comment_117679877

timeout was between CF and Vanilla. Not an issue for the client or client network

Degsy123 · 30-07-2021 8:21am

This is an awful upgrade to a site that was easy to navigate and responsive. I’m all for change but not when it’s taking a product / site that was good and moving back in time to something that was designed like a first year college project.

Hodors Appletart · 30-07-2021 9:53am

Still not fixed?

😂

odhran gone silent again

even the officials are gone

lamentable and entirely foreseeable

odhran has his wish, boards.ie is finished

mossie · 30-07-2021 9:54am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117681592#Comment_117681592

Yeah nothing for a couple of days now.

HeidiHeidi · 30-07-2021 11:37am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117681595#Comment_117681595

That's one of the most disappointing things about this whole mess for me - the complete radio silence, broken very occasionally by fairly meaningless "updates" of what they may or may not be doing behind the scenes - can anyone else tell?? because I certainly can't!

I'm not expecting hourly feeds of what they're doing, but given the sheer volume of dissatisfaction (71 pages and counting in this thread alone, which they're meant to be monitoring, can't tell you how many posts because we still don't have a post count 🙄), you'd have thought some instinct for trying to keep the natives from getting too restless might have kicked in..... but no. Mushrooms is what we all are.

And then, the tin hat on it all - on the mobile site appears "trending threads" out of nowhere - all the things that are wrong, glitchy, and really really annoying, and they spent time developing that? Which just pushes the navigation menu even further down the page, so more scrolling and clicking, as if we didn't have enough frustration already.

😡

Leg End Reject · 30-07-2021 11:44am

I'm convinced at this stage that a lot of attention is currently diverted to checking whether the migration was compliant with data protection and GDPR. That thread is being completely ignored, understandable that they wouldn't want to put anything misleading in writing, but that means they have to ignore this thread too.

The whole thing is an unprecedented shït show of epic proportions and there's a small number of employees to scramble around trying to clean it up.

mossie · 30-07-2021 11:51am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682122#Comment_117682122

Yeah. We had an update on Tuesday evening from @Boards.ie: Odhran but absolute silence since. Not saying we should have updates every few minutes but surely a daily post isn't too much to ask.

Quazzie · 30-07-2021 12:16pm

Has anyone figured out how to tell if a post you're following the My Threads tab has new unseen posts in it. They all look the same on the desktop site of this new farcical layout.

HeidiHeidi · 30-07-2021 12:26pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682350#Comment_117682350

Click on your avatar top right, and use the bookmarks list, that shows unread posts

kadman · 30-07-2021 12:55pm

And how do you/I explain where all the posted attachments have dissappeared to.

It must be the same place that the forum members are gone to. Its supposed to get better as time goes on.

Its not folks, its really not.

iLikeWaffles · 30-07-2021 1:22pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682207#Comment_117682207

There's a definite pattern alright. Update, then a barrage of angry posters asking the same questions that have already been asked and or reporting the same issues, might even get a few logins from posters that said they are leaving about 20 times already or someone saying roll it back and a whole load of posters thinking they're the ones calling the shots on boards. Then it's why have we not gotten an update since the last update there has been nothing, nothing but silence and it's rinse repeat.

Damien360 · 30-07-2021 1:30pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117680911#Comment_117680911

Been reported many, many times. Still not right. Click on boards at top to refresh, works 70% of the time.

i will echo what has been posted by others. This thread repeatedly has the same bugs reported, and not just all together but right from the get-go. It’s frustrating that there is no evident plan to fix these or at least have a working list with priorities. Requests for dark mode should be very last as a nice to have option. There is loads to fix before that.

I exclusively use mobile to access boards and it was my go to site for information and something different. I’d access quite a few times in a day. I am honestly down to once a day check and stick to this thread and the Liverpool one. I’m sure I’m not the only one but I’m only drawn to boards by a single thread right now. New content is too hard to find and the site is not active enough to warrant any more time on it.

I fear boards will die a quick death unless someone takes the finger out to address the constant bugs. I’ve been patient because as a non-payer, I have no right to expect all the bells and whistles working. But I would think you need to fix even the basics before you loose some of your core long term posters (which I am not with my post count), and then it’s dead.

Boards.ie: Odhran · 30-07-2021 1:35pm

Hi all

I have not updated daily as before ... a few reasons for that - some of which are for another day.

As you know... We have a small team of people at Boards who are working day and night to move things along. This migration was never going to be walk in the park. We have been out of runway in Boards.ie for a long time now. The site could not support itself financially ... If we did not do this there would be no Boards. That can get a bit lost sometimes and needs more explanation - but again that's for another day. Right now our focus remains the same:

Continuous improvement, regular updates, get Boards 2021 to be its best .... as fast as we can.

Why the delay?

Look, we never expected a gold medal... Things have been a lot more difficult in areas we didn't anticipate. The backend stuff you guys don't see ties us up in knots a lot …

Some questions have rightly been asked here:

Did we test? Yes we tested. We wrongly assumed we could fix these issues a lot faster. The creation of plugins and pull requests for every small/big change is really slowing us down.
Why not wait 6 months until it was ready...' Well putting it simply - we don't have the money to wait. There was a cash injection into Boards of old to keep the lights on. The legacy site was too expensive to maintain and not generating enough income.
Why not get more Devs... We have more devs working with us to help us with some of the bigger issues. There are frontend things you all see which we are also unhappy with… but some of the bigger issues in the backend need to be resolved too and we have to pick our battles. We will be pushing some more today that will put us back on track again with continuous improvement.

Overall we have had to change our approach a little. One of the major factors in why our progress has been slower than we would like, is that we are trying to retro fit some very bespoke 'features' from what was on legacy Boards... an overly complex square peg.... As an example - My Forums ... That sounds pretty simple right? User followed forum XYZ so same post migration = XYZ again. Unfortunately not - legacy Boards had a very specific structure on VBulletin and for us to replicate (which we have endeavoured to do will all legacy features) ended up tying us up in knots.

So we are changing tack (for some features) and are now implementing some core Vanilla widgets / features instead of trying to recreate old (ie My Forums). We have made a few quick updates to test this and our pace of change will be a lot quicker - visually its not the most elegant solution at the moment those things are quick fixes. We are working on this right now....

Some minor updates:

Users now have (slightly) more control over their notifications - https://www.boards.ie/profile/preferences - and scroll down to Category Notifications. It's not the most elegant ... will be fixed over coming weeks - ie we make it more granular down to individual categories. (edit - moving homepage layout to next line)
Enabled the Trending Discussions on homepage mobile. Also made the font of thread title and intro text darker, along with the Trending Discussions heading. However the view here shows more information and while a little bigger in real-estate from an individual post perspective it shows much more relevant information and we are looking at adapting this for homepage view.
Site speed works ongoing. Our original site structure created some problems but ongoing improvements are being made. We will give a full list of fixes, improvements at a later stage however users reporting improvements overall
Like button width expanded to accommodate posts with large thank counts (Flag and Quote also widened for consistency). We will still update this to 'Thanks. Note we have to submit that to Vanilla and are batching as many of these changes together where possible.
Preview button available to Mods when editing the opening post of a discussion styled
Space added to left of comment box to ensure additional text options still available when screen gets smaller
Lower character limit on posts upped to reduce blank posts
AH Pagination fixed so all pages now show
Join dates now display consistently - month and year - regardless of user joining this year or before
PR for navigation on mobile has been submitted - some of you saw where that was tabs on homepage and we had to fix that and submit another PR - this is now updated to be in the left nav and we await approval to push that live.
We are working on fixing the issue with cookie and privacy not displaying. Again what should be a simple update to a page requires a plug in. We will do an interm fix for that today and update with a cleaner layout later.

It goes with out saying we have had lots of great feedback here and thanks to you all for that. Hopefully some of you have seen bugs you reported being actioned.

Thanks all

Odhran

30-07-2021 2:03pm

Thanks for the update @Boards.ie: Odhran

Any update on the improvements for mods? Moderation across the site has taken a massive hit and reported/flagged posts are not getting addressed.

On that note, mods with private profiles can't be contacted directly. Well, anyone with a private profile cant, but it's an annoyance that mods can't.

Lastly, it's now impossible to identify who the mods are for a given forum.

mossie · 30-07-2021 2:12pm

Thanks for the update @Boards.ie: Odhran just wondering why the issues which have arisen were not foreseen? Surely before the switch Vanilla would have been clear with what was or was not supported eg. "My Forums". Also on the financial reasons for the switch, given the big drop off in postings on a lot of threads / forums that were extremely active, is there a danger that the move could have the opposite effect?

J Mysterio · 30-07-2021 2:22pm

What I would like to see is Boards documenting all the changes required, and then having a sit down with Vanilla to map out exactly how long the changes will take, and when they will be made.

As it's now obvious that fixes and improvements will take maybe months to implement, there should be a schedule or roadmap put together for that.

HeidiHeidi · 30-07-2021 2:30pm

Site speed works ongoing. Our original site structure created some problems but ongoing improvements are being made. We will give a full list of fixes, improvements at a later stage however users reporting improvements overall

Just on this point..... I keep seeing "speed should not be a problem" and "speeds are improving " and the like - well, speed has not improved for me. Pages still taking up to 10 secs to load on the desktop site. Coupled with the fact that posts submitted while I'm composing a post are not shown, meaning the whole thread needs to be refreshed every time (also taking ~10 secs) makes quick moving chat threads almost impossible to use.

upandcumming · 30-07-2021 2:59pm

@Boards.ie: Odhran

Some questions have rightly been asked here:

Did we test? Yes we tested. We wrongly assumed we could fix these issues a lot faster. The creation of plugins and pull requests for every small/big change is really slowing us down.

What exactly was tested?

30-07-2021 3:01pm

A reddit-style golf system for posts would work imo. A few quid to gold a post and it helps run boards. Been suggesting it for years since it works on one of the biggest sites on the internet.

Leg End Reject · 30-07-2021 3:04pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682762#Comment_117682762

It's a pity Odhran couldn't do something completely radical like, I dunno, actually answer the questions so they didn't have to be asked repeatedly isn't it?

Or maybe a separate update thread that only he and employees could post in with details of fixes and timelines to prevent everyone getting frustrated?

Mad, I know. 😏

Leg End Reject · 30-07-2021 3:12pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117683319#Comment_117683319

I rarely look at reddit but I thought the money went to the poster.😆

That's a great idea.

ezra_ · 30-07-2021 3:16pm

Could someone adjust the title?

Version 1.0 is waaay to ambitious for where we are.

Welcome to the new Boards.ie platform - Version 1.0 :)

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