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I don’t understand the order posts are presented in. It doesn’t appear to be most recently updated, it’s not creation.
The Search function doesn't appear to do anything (at least for me - Edge & Windows 10).
The topic icons appear to be missing.
Could we have Page options for the forum rather than Load More Topics? If you loads more topics, rear a thread and then hit Back, you're back to the first page & have to start again.
Surely the "Working" animated wheel should have a hamster running in the middle of it.
I think that is because if you quote a previous post, your reply appears as a reply to the post rather than at the end of the thread, but shows on the main page as the latest post.
Not sure what I think about that, I can see advantages and disadvantages, maybe it will just take some time to adjust. But could be confusing especially if replies are on a previous page.
I'm colourblind and struggling with the small red text on black.
What red text (can't see any red on mobile).
Definitely something odd with last post. After posting advice the reloaded page said last post by me at the top but the post was not there at the bottom. That rules out a whole page cache as the page has been partially updated. Does the forum just partial page caching?
Search just worked for me, but still can't find the Trump thread.....?
the hot van thread seems to have had some sort of apoplectic fit. There’s multiple posts, posts that it said it had timed out on but then appeared hours later, draft posts that hit refused to put up as the images were too big (they weren’t). It generally seems to struggle where an image is involve d
Im struggling to post on my ride thread. It says i have made a post but i cannot see it and the thread has not gone to the top.
Replied to.a new post which now has multiple replies but I can only see the original post. Very confusing.
Ah, the mobile site seems to be working but not the desktop one which I tend to use.
Van thread: Forum index says I've posted but I can't see it in the thread itself.
Excellent job setting it up!
Couple observations
The new icon very annoying. Better to just have the '2 minutes ago' last post thingy etc
On my phone in portrait you can't see the number of posts on a thread which is a shame as it was good to see if a thread was gaining traction/someone had replied at a glance
Threads don't appear in chronological order
There are an awful lot of double posts. I put it down to my fat fingers or ineptitude the first couple of times it happened to me. It seems to be happening to lots of others though. There seems to be a glitch which makes this much more likely.
Apologies if it's been mentioned already - I guess it probably has, but I'm not about to read through this entire thread - or I've missed something obvious, but there doesn't seem to be an option to jump from the forum index page to the latest post of a thread? You have to open the thread then click on the 'Last Post' link top left?
The ‘new’ label is set to link to last unread post but it’s not working currently. It’s high on our list for today.
I am finding the posts do not seem to be in order of most recent comment. For example below the pinned posts it shows me Budget MTB clothing 12 mins ago, Australia 9hrs ago, old shipping container 7mins ago. . .
Not sure if that’s user error on my part, or Ray Davies yet to be ironed out?
I'm going to leave the forum a week or two to settle down. Lots of functionality I can't find or see, I'm really struggling with blue on black icons, so I'm kinda screwed at the moment. Or I've lost patience.
Loads of posts don't seem to be showing. Can see people have posted but you go to the thread and nothing is there.
Finding it hard work on my phone tbh - couldn't post a pic, but sure it'll get better
Have we lost the ability to jump straight to the most recent post on a topic from the overview page? I can't see it
As you post and receive likes you accumulate a score.
Competition to join the echo chamber? Is that a good thing?
I like the update and well deployed. Definitely a succesful piece of work that undoubtedly required a huge amount of effort behind the scene.
I'm not getting taken to the last message in a thread. Taking huge the "PSAs that may or may not...." thread. I open it, it repeatedly takes me to page 1 then I've got to use the scroll (or type) to get to page 79. Why no "Jump to last page" button?
I like these features
but they'd be far more useable if they were at the top of the screen rather than having to scroll all of the way down the page to get to the useful personal features.
Finally ... when choosing these options, the screen feels a bit 'budget' compared to the main forum page. Why can't it have the same consistent look/feel throughout?
Refinements rather than issues. Thanks STW team, great job.
@snownrock - thanks I was going to ask the same. I really liked this feature, was good for longer threads I’m active on.
Double-posting is definitely a "thing". Nothing happens and then it doubles down.
See also the four threads about using either a coach or a container as a building
Hi @mark and team.
Great work, thanks. I view the forum exclusively from my phone (a pixel? 7a maybe) in chrome. The disabled dark toggle is off in Prefs, and I assume my phone/browser setting is in permanent dark mode. And... It's all pretty good, colour and formatting. Maybe you made some tweaks over the course of yesterday afternoon or maybe I just got over the shock 😄 anyway, just a data point of it works here in case that helps for the it doesnt work "tickets"
I feel the page navigation buttons could use some work. I completely missed them for a few scrolls up and down the first view of the newness. Maybe because they are white and so I file them with the comment box. I mostly lurk so ignore the comment bit.
The burger menu to go back the the posts list is a bit finiky (and an annoying extra click). I only just spotted the forum jump thing grabbing screenshots as I rarely go below the dotted line. But that doesn't navigate me back to the post list so, irrelevant 😄
Some images
Have we lost the ability to jump straight to the most recent post on a topic from the overview page? I can't see it
as mentioned already this will return.
It seems there is a very long list of minor (ish) issues to work through. I really hope you guys don't get overwhelmed or disheartened by that, and that morale remains high in hamster towers. I like the new look and extra functionality. I can see the real potential for a much slicker and easier to use interface. I'm sure once the teething troubles are worked through, the old posts imported and the legacy site switched off, we will be in a much better place. I and hopefully most of us are really grateful for your efforts to improve the forum and our user experience.
Thanks for the input there @uniqueusername
An update, taking in some of your points..
After yesterday we are on the whole pretty happy at how it went. Copying over an entire forum from oneplace to another while being live on the new forum was always a risk. Performance is the price we are paying for that. Progress is good.
We are at 1.9 million posts migrated as of this morning, which I think takes us back to 2021 or there abouts. We need to get back to 2008 (10million+).
So, while that is going on , we are focussing on two things today.
1 - The 'New' labels which are set to lionk to your last unread post on a topic. Currently take you nowhere or to the first post, which is not useful
2 - The inefficient use of white space and organisation of the various buttons and controls (including navigation) - with a particular focus on mobile.
We'll obvioulsy keep monitoring the other stuff and performance and fixing any priority stuff that crops up.
Thanks everyone.
All the "posted something but it's not appearing, but is showing in my profile". This might not be all the cases, but what caught me out is that if you use the quote button at the bottom right of of a post to quote and post a a reply, your reply is nested/inserted in the thread at that point, rather than added at the end. If you are replying to a post back in the thread it's really easy to miss your post (and it might as well not exist anyway).
Mark - is it possible to turn nested replies off? I think it's going to cause a lot of confusion and personally I hate it.
Both time I have posted, after hitting the "Add Reply" button the page just sits there for about 5 mins churning away. If I open a new window/tab and look at the thread then my post has appeared, so it is working, but the page just sits there showing something is loading, but nothing happens. This time I got the following error after about 5 min;
What is displaying is what users have entered into their profiles in the 'Nickname' box. It will display usernames shortly
All sorted
Thanks for the input there @uniqueusername
An update, taking in some of your points..
After yesterday we are on the whole pretty happy at how it went. Copying over an entire forum from oneplace to another while being live on the new forum was always a risk. Performance is the price we are paying for that. Progress is good.
We are at 1.9 million posts migrated as of this morning, which I think takes us back to 2021 or there abouts. We need to get back to 2008 (10million+).
So, while that is going on , we are focussing on two things today.
1 - The 'New' labels which are set to lionk to your last unread post on a topic. Currently take you nowhere or to the first post, which is not useful
2 - The inefficient use of white space and organisation of the various buttons and controls (including navigation) - with a particular focus on mobile.
We'll obvioulsy keep monitoring the other stuff and performance and fixing any priority stuff that crops up.
Thanks everyone.
Thank you for all your views
Thanks for the input there @uniqueusername
An update, taking in some of your points..
After yesterday we are on the whole pretty happy at how it went. Copying over an entire forum from oneplace to another while being live on the new forum was always a risk. Performance is the price we are paying for that. Progress is good.
We are at 1.9 million posts migrated as of this morning, which I think takes us back to 2021 or there abouts. We need to get back to 2008 (10million+).
So, while that is going on , we are focussing on two things today.
1 - The 'New' labels which are set to lionk to your last unread post on a topic. Currently take you nowhere or to the first post, which is not useful
2 - The inefficient use of white space and organisation of the various buttons and controls (including navigation) - with a particular focus on mobile.
We'll obvioulsy keep monitoring the other stuff and performance and fixing any priority stuff that crops up.
Thanks everyone.
Thank you for all your views
1 - The 'New' labels which are set to lionk to your last unread post on a topic. Currently take you nowhere or to the first post, which is not useful
Just to clarify what I'm seeing - the red "New" labels aren't currently links, they are just text labels, there's no hyperlink there.
This is on Firefox on Windows 10.
Not sure if it's an iPad specific thing, or just a result of the portrait screen format, but the new forum leaves a really nasty area of dead white space to the right of the screen. It really scrunches everything over to the left in a horrible fashion. Looks even worse as you move down a page so the ads/images at the top of the column are not visible.
I would also say the font size for post titles is way too big so, in combination with the dead space, they span multiple lines so you can see very few per page.
Looks like threads now appear in chronological order of last post.
Great. 👍
Avatars ?
And so slow, barely usable 🙁 why so slow.
Think I might go out for ride 🙂
Ots performing worse than the old one for me tbh, just tried replying in the hot hatch thread and it just seemed to stall, very slow too (this is on my phone though, andriod with chrome browser) Not tried on the laptop yet.
Its performing worse than the old one for me tbh, just tried replying in the hot hatch thread and it just seemed to stall, very slow too (this is on my phone though, andriod with chrome browser) Not tried on the laptop yet.
Wuite a few user interface inconsistencies/issues I'm feeling, having just seen teh updgrade this morning:
Loading more threads on the main page makes thh list longer, but once in a thread loading more replies is a "next page" button. I'd suggest one or the other across teh whole site for consistency.
Loading more threads seems to take ages. (Could be temproary)
No spell checker in reply box. Note teh typos...
Lots of "white space" without borders. IE: the replies on a light grey background matche the page colour, leaving the text floating in space.
No "return to top" button, This woud be particularly useful if you've extended the page of threads several times looking for something, and then want to go back to the search box...
No clear "jump to last post/gage" buttons in theads. I found the "go to last post" button by cliking on a random blue box icon that I didnt knwo what it represented.....
each post seems to waste a lot of screen "real estate" with widely spaced post/user info. Could this be compressed? Get more actual info on the screen that way.
No Coffee and Cream colour scheme? 😉
I can see some of these have been picked up above, and you are workign on them sio Thanks!
MSP earlier, which I'm not going to quote directly for obvious reasons:
I think that is because if you quote a previous post, your reply appears as a reply to the post rather than at the end of the thread, but shows on the main page as the latest post.
Not sure what I think about that, I can see advantages and disadvantages, maybe it will just take some time to adjust. But could be confusing especially if replies are on a previous page.
It's very confusing IMO. A better solution might be to keep the usual post order but include in the quote a link to jump to the quoted post. Don't know if that's possible!
Another minor thing: the dropdown to select the page number is unclear that it is in fact a dropdown. Looks like a textbox or just a label.
Its performing worse than the old one for me tbh, just tried replying in the hot hatch thread and it just seemed to stall, very slow too (this is on my phone though, andriod with chrome browser) Not tried on the laptop yet.
I am by no means a forum expert but I would hazard a guess that the current performance issues, and possibly some of the other posting problems like the duplicates I'm seeing scattered around the place, are probably down to the massive amount of old threads & posts that are being migrated across from the old forum to this one.
Having been involved in massive data migrations in the past (and I'm talking far more data than STW are shifting at the moment, and it took much bigger teams to do it) I wouldn't expect things to be running as expected for a few days yet.
Its performing worse than the old one for me tbh, just tried replying in the hot hatch thread and it just seemed to stall, very slow too (this is on my phone though, andriod with chrome browser) Not tried on the laptop yet.
I am by no means a forum expert but I would hazard a guess that the current performance issues, and possibly some of the other posting problems like the duplicates I'm seeing scattered around the place, are probably down to the massive amount of old threads & posts that are being migrated across from the old forum to this one.
Having been involved in massive data migrations in the past (and I'm talking far more data than STW are shifting at the moment, and it took much bigger teams to do it) I wouldn't expect things to be running as expected for a few days yet.
Is there an option to turn the date/time stamp on posts to e.g. "posted 5 minutes ago". It is much more user friendly.
Would it have been easier to migrate all the older posts first well in advance and then newer posts during the downtime yesterday?
Android mobile
Apologies if anything has been mentioned before but, navigation has now taken a step backwards imho by getting rid of the navigation bar top and bottom that was there previously. Having a button to click at the bottom when you've read all replies that takes you back to an Overview page was very handy. It's a pita getting back to a newly refreshed Overview page now. Even the drop down menu you have to open now seems to have Overview greyed out, unclickable.
It seems that much of that navigation bar area has been replaced with wide open areas of blankness. Looks kind of random imho.
The bright red 'New' sticker on every single line is a bit much imho.
The ability to see if there had been any replies without opening the thread was handy, as was the little >> button that took you to the last answer.
I used to be a regular on UK Rivers Guidebook and that remembered what you'd read up to and took you straight to the next new reply. That was brilliant. It was about 15-20 years ago.
Again, apologies if any of this has been discussed and is on the cards.
Thanks to all the team for working on things and being willing to listen to feedback. 🙂
12345
It amazes me, everytime Singletrack does an update, it just does not work properly. Seriously, you need to improve things before you make them live.
Server is slow, no doubt as every time you want to go to the last post/page of a thread, you need to navigate from thge frst page, thus doubling server work. Multiple posts with the same title, some say it doesnt work on their browser etc.
Please, before you make it live, do some proper testing, because this update clearly has not been tested properly.
To add to my list above, there doesnt appear to be a way to jump to the last post of a thread from the overview page. I echo points raised about the lack of navigation bat at teh bottom of a thread. It seems like all the issues from the previviosu "upgrade" have been repeated, and now need fixing again?
Can't say I'm having a great experience so far - can't seem to post or reply on my phone, so now tring on my laptop (both chrome). I'm sure it will improve though....
Edit - I see my phone post appeared above. When posting, it just sits there spinning, so I leave the page assuming it hasn't posted
To add to my list above, there doesnt appear to be a way to jump to the last post of a thread from the overview page. I echo points raised about the lack of navigation bat at teh bottom of a thread. It seems like all the issues from the previviosu "upgrade" have been repeated, and now need fixing again?
It amazes me, everytime Singletrack does an update, it just does not work properly. Seriously, you need to improve things before you make them live.
Server is slow, no doubt as every time you want to go to the last post/page of a thread, you need to navigate from thge frst page, thus doubling server work. Multiple posts with the same title, some say it doesnt work on their browser etc.
Please, before you make it live, do some proper testing, because this update clearly has not been tested properly.
I guess you haven't read any of the updates that Mark has put in this thread. Server performance is expected to be slow until they've finished copying over the data, which will take a few days. We're getting this for free, there's no justification to moan.
It amazes me, everytime Singletrack does an update, it just does not work properly. Seriously, you need to improve things before you make them live.
It's more than an update. It's completely new forum software, the migration of 10 million posts, thousands of users and all their account details and then the structured closure of the old forum. With 3 people, one of whom is part time. I've been critical of the forum interface in the past but this is a major investment by STW to try and improve things for everyone. It's hardly been 24 hours, give them a chance to address the inevitable teething issues.
When posting, it just sits there spinning, so I leave the page assuming it hasn't posted
Judging by the number of duplicate posts, I think everyone must be seeing this.
By the way, in case people haven't discovered, the best way to quote someone is to click and drag across the text you want to quote. After you have highlighted the text a blue quote button pops up. Hitting that puts the quote into the reply box.
It amazes me, everytime Singletrack does an update, it just does not work properly. Seriously, you need to improve things before you make them live.
Ruddy 'ell - did you get out the wrong side of the bed then get back in so you could get out the wrong side again!!
Very minor thing. This thread is pinned in the bike and overview forums, but not the chat forum. Dunno about others, but the chat page is the one I have bookmarked.
I'm completely miffed by this new forum. It's really awful. To the point where I might just not bother, even browsing is a chore. I'm seeing loads of duplicate posts.
I can appreciate it will be slow, but the visuals are just terrible, and navigating is awkward.
I'm completely miffed by this new forum. It's really awful. To the point where I might just not bother
If you had the patience to read even just a handful of the posts above, you'd realise the scale of what is being done, why there are issues, why they are temporary and what is being done to fix them. But if you don't have that patience and understanding, cheerio.
Problems:
1. its slower than the old forum which is pretty impressive going!
2. just posted a reply to the hot hatch thread - took ages to do anything, then timed out with an error but seems to have posted my response anyway
3. loads of duplicate threads
4. death by adverts
5. the little box for the next page in mutli-page threads took about 5 minutes to find
6. when typing replies like this one, randomly the forum seems to think I'm using a shortcut or something and tabs me down to the bottom of the page
7. well impressive the new forum is worse than the old one which was worse than the one before that
It's awful.
I understand why it's so bad at the moment and will give it a chance.
However, the colours are terrible.
I still don't understand why they don't use the more common formats?
I am active on a number of free forums with proper search functions, notifications, new posts, thread subscriptions etc. They all work 100 times better than STW.
Lol, in response to my post above (which double posted), this is the error I eventually got when posting a reply as I had it above:
Origin Unreachable
Sorry, we are unable to reach the origin server at the moment. Please try again later.
Error ID: 9e4be99f-0481-4f3a-b291-e4590f609976
Timestamp: 2025-02-07 04:34:52
I still don't understand why they don't use the more common formats?
I am active on a number of free forums with proper search functions, notifications, new posts, thread subscriptions etc. They all work 100 times better than STW.
They appear to be using wpForo which is in the top 5 of any Wordpress forums list that I can see. Hang in there
Keep at it Mark et al! Its prompted me to finally subscribe, hopefully you can give the server hamsters a few extra treats.
Lol, in response to my post above (which double posted)
I think you managed three copies of your post on the Hot Hatch thread 😉
I was thinking that the multiple replies were just people assuming it hadn't worked due to taking a long time to load, but I just had a double post on the bald tyres thread and definitely only hit the add reply button once.
Thanks @teaandbiscuits
Big slowdown for the last few hours while we keep on with the migration. If you look at the forum stats at the bottom of the page you see where we are at. 2.2 million posts migrated. That takes us back to 2019.
We had a meeting this morning and decided to change our plan a bit. Instead of migrating the entire forum we are going to stop at this point (2.2 million) and migrate the rest into a seperate forum that we'll call something meaningful like 'Archive' or something. The vast majority of all those older topics are currently closed anyway. If we decide to reopen any historical topic we can easily move it to the, shall we say, 'Live' forum.
Why do this?
Each forum is stored in it's own table seperate from the other forums. The big problem with the old forum was it didn't do this and so the entire forums was sitting in it's own massive database table. Although we will see a huge improvement in performance as soon as we get rid of that old database we will see a better improvement if we keep the size of the live forum table down too.
So, on we go. Sorry for the slowdowns. Not for much longer.
Thanks for the update @Mark.
sorry to throw yet another spanner in the works but I've just tried to post a whimsical comment onto the latest FGF and nothing is showing up. Don't know if you've temporarily switched this off to ease the migration or there's something else at play, but thought I'd mention it before the real whinging starts.
I cant find it listed but if a open a multi page thread for the 2nd or 3rd time, should it take me to the last page/post? Currently it takes me to page 1. If this is expected, any way to list the page numbers next to the title so I can click the last page and go straight there?
Another issue, posting gives the following error but actually posts twice despite only clicking the button once.
This site can’t be reached
The webpage at https://singletrackmag.com/forum/bike-forum/the-new-forum/paged/7/#post-13529035 might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.
although I can see there have been 2 posts since my last one, I have no visibility of any of them. Last post I can actually see is -
Don't know if this is impacting anyone else.
OK, so replies not posting, (I hope this one does) I just replied to the digital DTI thread, shows me as last reply and 1 reply but the post doesn't appear. It even shows me as having posted in my profile - forum - replies page.
I am active on a number of free forums with proper search functions, notifications, new posts, thread subscriptions etc. They all work 100 times better than STW.
How many of them are currently migrating to a new forum with millions of posts?
Then don't release it to the public until it's all done ? Take it offline for 2-3 days and actually give people a decent experience when they return that actually does what it's supposed to ?
The red NEW stickers have gone. Looks much nicer 🙂
I thought the red NEW stickers had been removed but they've just gone orange :-/
There were a few minutes without them I think.
Looked much better imho.
I thought the red NEW stickers had been removed but they've just gone orange :-/
There were a few minutes without them I think.
Looked much better imho.
Thumbs up to the change in colour for the NEW badge against threads with new posts. They are still inconsistent for me though. All threads get the NEW badge, regardless of if I've vistited the thread (and there are no new posts since then) or not.
Thanks for getting rid of the "stuck" 1st posts for threads.
The much nicer coloured 'NEW' button on forum page still takes you to the first post not the last post.
Colours of stuff WILL be adjusted. But they aren't the priority today.
Priority jobs today are adjustment of empty space and tightening up of navigation options.
Get the forum cache sorted so that posts appear where they should.
Reminder! Performance won't improve for logged in users until we have finished the import of the old forum and deleted the old one.