Your favourite forum features

As you get to know this wonderful forum that Sim has created it would be nice to hear your views of what features you really like. Perhaps we can assemble them in a Poll to vote the best feature.

One new feature that I found which could be very useful is Subscribed Threads. When you open a thread, at the bottom you can click Subscribe to this Thread. Now if you go to the top of the page and click User CP you will see the thread listed under Subscribed Threads. But the real beauty of this feature is the search function just below the list. So now it is possible to create your own database of favourite threads which you can easily find.

I also like it because you can easily find an interesting thread you want to follow but which can be hard to remember and find from the main forum. Then if you decide you don't want to keep it you can unsubscribe it.

Any other useful or favourite features you want to mention?

Mike

PS: Since I added this thread to my Subscribed list I get e-mail notification everytime someone adds a post to the thread. Nice one! I can browse for MP3 files and get notified when a new post is added. Excellent!
 
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Mike, great thread.

I've moved it to the Help and Feedback forum, because this is what I will be monitoring for ideas and suggestions on how we can improve things.

I love the speed of this new software, and the flexibility - it is quite easy to customise it with new features or to move things around the page.

Please let me know what you like, what you don't like, and what you think we could do to improve things, and I will see what can be done !
 
Hi Sim,

Had a thought regarding moving this post to Help and Feedback. I considered posting it there originally but wondered whether it would be seen by more people in the Coffee Lounge? Is there a way to monitor which forums are viewed the most? On the Web Board it was thought that Caveat Emptor didn't have the same patronage as the Property Forum board.

If Coffee Lounge proves to be as popular as I think it will be perhaps this thread could stay there until the discussion is exhausted then move it across. Just a thought. But happy to go with what you think is best.

Regards, Mike
 
Just something very minor. It would be nice to post a reply to a post in the thread, not reply to the whole thread.
 
Sorry geoffw, not quite sure what you mean.

This forum is not threaded like WebBoard - all new posts in a thread appear at the bottom of the thread list. That's the way it works. (vBulletin v3 will have some new features like a "pseudo" threaded view option).

If you need to respond to a particular post in a thread, you should use the quote vB Code feature:

It would be nice to post a reply to a post in the thread, not reply to the whole thread.

Like that !
 
Of course, Geoff, responding directly to posts also has disadvantages: whilst your post will appear directly underneath the post which you are replying to for a short time, in doing so, you may cause someone elses direct reply to be pushed further down the list. If they hadn't anticipated this and not used quotes then the clarity of their response may become clouded.

Now if other people have the same idea and post a direct reply to the same post after you, suddenly their post is between your post and the post you originally replied to. So your post is pushed further down the list. This has a knock-on effect.

So best to use quotes always to clarify who you are responding to because you never know how far away from the post you are replying to you will end up.

Regards, Mike
 
Mike,

If my direct reply appeared AFTER someone else's direct reply to the same post, that would not be a problem, if I've understood you correctly.
 
Hi Geoff,

In that scenario, which you understood correctly, your reply may or may not be understood depending on the circumstances. I'm not sure if you remember the original Somersoft forum before Web Board but that had the threaded ability which you are talking about. I have been in the process of archiving those threads ( I estimate about 5000 posts ) and one of the biggest problems I came across was many threads contained multiple discussions because people would reply in the middle of the thread and ask a question which took the discussion off on a tangent. So part of the original discussion was separated and pushed to the end of the new discussion and so had lost its context.

One of the jobs which has slowed me down considerably with archiving those threads is having to re-order the posts so that the discussions remained intact and not fragmented and easily followed when reading top to bottom. In one case I had to take a bunch of posts away from the original thread and created a new thread because these posts were discussing something completely different to the original topic.

Another problem created by people who post late in the middle of a thread is that they often refer to things said BELOW their own post because they have already read the entire thread. However, this causes all sorts of confusion for people reading the thread for the first time and are reading top to bottom.

I did follow your link given in post #8 and noticed there were 5 posts between Jerry's post and your reply to him. In that situation I would recommend you begin the post with "Hi Jerry" so we know who the reply is to followed by a quote from his post which you are replying to. You did this which is fine. I would add the post number (ie from Post #4) to the end of the quote so that we can find the post you are referring to quickly.

Regards, Mike

PS: If we polled this issue I would vote against threaded discussions without hesitation. It creates a fragmented discussion which is hard to follow when reading top to bottom. Now many of the longer Web Board threads suffer from the same problem.
 
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i've just noticed that when you reply to a thread that's located down the list, your post bumps the thread to the top!

that's my fave feature. :)
 
MB !!!!!!!!

Where have you been?? :( We've been waiting for you!

On the main forum page there is a link at the top........Go to Chatroom.

We are waiting for you :D Don't be long!!

Ruby :)
 
pjb89, do you know if you have a "socks" server you can use to get to the outside world from your work network ?

The chat software has an experimental feature of socks support which I am considering implementing.
 
Well... other than asking your local non-IT department techo guru (there's usually someone around who annoys the IT dept because he knows enough to be dangerous !)...

one quick way of checking is looking at your proxy settings in Internet Explorer... Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> Lan Settings -> Advanced ... if there is something in the Socks field then you DO have a socks server.

If there isn't, that doesn't mean you don't have a socks server. But it means that you're going to have to ask someone who knows.
 
Sim

I have had a look and all of the other boxes (Secure, FTP, Gopher ) have information in them and are greyed out? while the Socks box is empty and also grey.

The only 'open' ? box is the HTTP which is 'highlighted'?? white
 
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