Boards News - August 2017

Hi everyone,

Hope you all enjoyed the Bank Holiday and the slightly shorter week. Here with another update about some interesting things that happened over the past month.

One of the more interesting stories from the site came after someone posted about their car being stolen. The user initially posted to ask people to keep an eye out for it, but ended up getting assistance of a completely different kind. Users pooled money together and hit a fundraising target, so the OP is going to be able to replace an essential part of their life.

In recent months, we've highlighted projects from the Sailing & Boating forum, but this time it's the Projects and Builds forum (under the Motoring & Transport umbrella) that we turn our attention to. colm_mcm has started on his SWB low roof Ford Transit to campervan conversion project. There have been plenty of updates so far with pictures along the way, so hopefully that continues.



Hopefully by now you've seen the Open Discussion on Hosted Forums. We're doing a clearout of the dead forums, hopefully rejuvenating life into semi-active ones, and moving suitable active ones into a Boards.ie category. There are some things to work out, and some cases where forums will be consulted with on an individual basis, but we'd like your feedback.

In less drastic changes, the Arcade & Retro forum is now the Arcade, Retro and Emulation forum, which will hopefully broaden the conversation and possibly draw in some new blood.

There are a few forums that should be busier over the next little while. While the Soccer forum is kept ticking over with transfer news...and some silly season stuff...the return of the Premier League should see it buzzing with activity. If you don't have access to post in the Soccer forum, read the procedure for gaining access here.

On a related note, the Fantasy Sports Arena should be even busier in the coming weeks. While there have been speculation and Rate My Team threads, it's once the Gameweeks start and player form starts to materialise that this forum really picks up. And there are plenty of leagues running, some of which still might have space.



If keeping an eye on the week to week business isn't for you, you can instead make some bold predictions now about how the season will play out and check back on them at the end of the season. Who will reign victorious, who's going to be earmarked as the key signing of the year, and who's going to flop? And now that the future of the Pro (now) 14 has been decided, expect a similar prediction competition to start up over in the Rugby forum over the next few weeks.

Of course, it's also Back to School season. Over the next few weeks, we'll not only have people finding out about the results of their Leaving Cert, but we'll have students back to the grindstone in both Secondary and Third Level. And the teachers out there need their support structures too!

In one update, we mentioned that image-sharing site Photobucket had changed how it treats images shared on third-party websites. It now displays a message to upgrade your account rather than the image. This is something to bear in mind if relying on Photobucket for your signature or simply for image sharing.



And while you're thinking about the idea of image sharing, why not consider entering one of the photo challenges and contests? Over in the Photography forum, users are being tasked with entering a photo under the heading of Symmetry until August 15th (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=104097146&postcount=13). Then the challenge switches to Street Photography. Meanwhile, the Farming & Forestry forum's challenge this month is Summer Holidays (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057771445).

Another Photography forum that's fascinating, but unfortunately quiet, is the Astrophotography forum (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1578). It's quite specialised if you want to take part, but it's fascinating as a passer-by.

m31 by Richard Sweeney, on Flickr

In technical news, we rolled out a fix to stop errors from occurring after posting in a pre-moderated thread on the Touch Site. We also implemented a fix for iOS users who reported being unable to post on Talk To forums. However, we'll need you to test if it works for you (it may require a clearing of the cache); you can let us know how you get on here. There is some tweaking to be done, as it redirects you back to the homepage at the moment.

One issue that seems to be rearing its head again however is the accents issue. Accented characters and the Euro sign seem to be published as a garbled mess at times depending on how they are handled by the database and posting process. So this is going to be looked at once again after a good, albeit brief, run.

That's it for this month, I believe. But if there's anything that you would like me to cover / talk about, please let me know. Thanks all!