New format is excellent

[Steve H]

To all who labored,
Thanks so much for updating this site and making a drastic improvement over the previous one. Im sure many hours went into this, and I just wish to express my gratitude for it.

Thanks again,

[Ralph Barker]

Thanks, Steve. Tom did all the hard stuff.

[Andrey Donchev]

Yes indeed! Wonderful!

[David Crossley]

Nice work guys! I really appreciate your hard work and commitment!


David Crossley/Crossley Photography....

[Richard Ide]

Many thanks! As the LFPF is virtually where I live, this new furniture brightens up the place completely. I am in the middle of packing for a trip so will continue this discourse at a later date.
Again THANK YOU
Richard

[bglick]

Thanks to the moderators, the new forum is great...

A simple question...

Is there a means to display the threads only from the categories you are interested in? I could not a method to accomplish this?

[Ralph Barker]

. . . Is there a means to display the threads only from the categories you are interested in? I could not a method to accomplish this?

Yes. There are nav links in the top rectangle that shows the "real" hierarchy of where you are. Clicking on the "Large Format Photography Forum" link will take you to the sub-forum view.

[bglick]

Ralph, I see the sub forum menu....but what i was wondering was, can I select say two categories, Camera accesories and Darkroom, and then only threads from those categories will be listed on my view, or must I keep going back to the sub menu and go select each of the categories to view new threads? Make sense? Seems this new bulletin board is so sophisticated it must be able to do it :-)

OH, and how do you change your screen name? In my case, bglick, I see how to change password and email, but not the displayed name?

[Tom Westbrook]

Try this:
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/search.php?&do=getdaily&days=90&forumid=10,19,6

the significant part is "search.php?&do=getdaily&days=90&forumid=10,19,6"

[Tom Westbrook]

The deal with these search-based URLs is that you need to save them as links to use them--the software changes them to something else on use.

To get the 'forumid's just hover your mouse over the name of the forum in the main page and it's url has an "f=<digits>" thing at the end. That's the forumid. You can change the "days" parameter, too.

I'll try to write up a little How-To on this soon and put it in the News section.

[bglick]

Tom, not sure what you mean.... i hit the link, and it showed all darkroom equipment? So can I ony display the categories I am interested in, or must I go to each sub menu and look, then exit, go to next sub menu, again, again... ?

Thanks

[Ralph Barker]

. . . OH, and how do you change your screen name? In my case, bglick, I see how to change password and email, but not the displayed name?

We should be able to change that for you through a separate admin interface. Please send us an e-mail through the link below, detailing how you want your user ID to show, and we'll deal with it offline.

http://test.largeformatphotography.info/forum/sendmessage.php

Or, you can left click on an admin's name and send an e-mail or private message.

[Jon Wilson]

A sincere thank you to everyone who makes this web site possible. It truly is appreciated. I am not if certain this is the "proper" place to raise these suggestions, but I would support a donation to help defray your costs of operating this site and support a % donation for sales through this site, e.g., like APUG. If you are hesitant to "accept" the monetary approach, perhaps such funds could be collected for sponsoring regional seminars to promote large format photography. In any event, thanks again. Jon

[Tom Westbrook]

Tom, not sure what you mean.... i hit the link, and it showed all darkroom equipment?
Thanks

Oops, I guess it only uses the first forumid. I'll have figure out how to include several sub-forums in one search and get back to you. Seems like it should be possible, though.

[Ralph Barker]

. . . If you are hesitant to "accept" the monetary approach, perhaps such funds could be collected for sponsoring regional seminars to promote large format photography. In any event, thanks again. Jon

Thanks for your thoughts, Jon. While we've been keen on keeping this site "free", your idea about a seminar fund is a good one for future discussion.

[bglick]

There was a neat web site that offers you the ability to put a donation button on your site, you hit it, and it asks you how much to donate, connects via paypal and you collect donations. Then, you can even add this to posters title, such as "Senoir Member - Contributor"

I am sure this forum has expenses to maintain, and if it is to remain free, we should all pony up a few bucks... its nice enough the moderators dedicate so much time to the venture...

[Brian Ellis]

I agree, it's a little daunting at first to one who is at best only semi-computer literate but I like the layout and the options. Thanks to Tom, Ralph, QT, and any others who obviously devoted a lot of time and energy to it. My only suggestion is that the policitcal subgroup be buried even deeper than it already is. If the occasional political messages that have appeared here in the past is any guide to the future content of that forum, I don't want there to be even the slightest chance that I'll inadvertantly stumble across it.

[Ralph Barker]

. . . If the occasional political messages that have appeared here in the past is any guide to the future content of that forum, I don't want there to be even the slightest chance that I'll inadvertantly stumble across it.

That's easy to do with the "sub-forum view" (what you see when clicking on the "Large Format Photography Forum" link at the top of the page) - one can simply not go into the Lounge sub-forum. Presently, however, all posts get shown in the "unified view". As time permits, we may be able to find a way around that, however.

Another option is to add whomever you select to your "ignore list" via your profile (the "User CP" [control panel]) link.

[Juergen Sattler]

Very impressive - not just the new format, but the fact that you stuck with your timeline - most of these IT upgrades end up in chaos - this was very smooth. Thanks for all your hard work!

[Jerry Fusselman]

As much as I liked the old forum, I may like this one more!

However, one big problem for me is as follows: The preamble for the email title is way way too long and uninformative.

This is what I can read:

New Post/Thread Notification: The Lou

That's all that is visible. The old way, which started

[LF Forum]

Actually has some information content. In fact, it tells me everything, and it is shorter, and I can often see what the thread is about, because there is some room for the actual title of the thread!

Even better would be

[LFF] The Lou...

I think I can figure out which forum is abbreviated [LFF]. But who on earth can figure out which forum is "New Post/Thread Notification:"? Furthermore, the slash is bad style---not approved by Strunk and White or the Chicago Manual of Style. It clashes to the ear and damages the flow.

In summary, please please please dramatically shorten and change "New Post/Thread Notification:" It is so many letters that it makes the email notification feature almost worthless to me. So many letters, yet so little information!

[Jerry Fusselman]

Also, I wish I could see the particular subject that the original poster chose for the question. Now it seems I can only see a broad generalist category. I hope it changes back much closer to the old way, which was just about perfect. Again, I am only talking about problems I see with the immediate email notification feature.

[Ralph Barker]

Thanks for your input, Jerry. Tom has been working on the e-mail notification feature, so I'm sure he'll add your suggestion to his to-do list.

[Tom Westbrook]

Also, I wish I could see the particular subject that the original poster chose for the question.

Check it now. I changed it to the thread title with a prefix to identify the source.

[Jerry Fusselman]

It works now, thanks so much!

[Allen Quinn]

Just a note of thanks to everyone who worked on this deal. It looks real kewl...

[Bob Gentile]

I liked the old format, but this is even nicer! Quite an undertaking.

[Phong]

I for one prefer the old format; the new format has way too much of dead screen space. There's hardly half the information on the screen compared to the old format: much fewer lines per screenful, and the lines are shorter; I also remain unconvinced that the new graphics makes things easier to read. Sort of like the old mpex web site: very simple, but the user gets a lot more information per page. The extra graphical elements (buttons, etc.) in the new format will become noise soon enough. The ability and tendency to add signatures don't help either.

Perfection is reached not when there is nothing to add, but rather when there is nothing to take away from.

Be that as it may, I would like to thank the team for a tremendous job, done with little service interruption.

Respectfully,

- Phong

[Diane Maher]

I like the new format too. :)

[Tom Westbrook]

Phong, check out the "Mobile Alabama" style from the drop-down at the bottom of the page.

[Tom Westbrook]

Phong, check out the "Mobile Alabama" style from the drop-down at the bottom of the page.

Never mind--it had a bug in it that prevented changing to other styles--I deleted it. But the point was that, the look of the place is quite customizable, so we can work on making two or three styles the satisfy most tastes. The other style, Almost No Images, is in progress, but is a step towards a more minimal look.

[Phong]

Tom,

Thanks much for all the efforts to accommodate so many different tastes and styles. And yes, I much prefer a more minimal look.

- Phong

P.S. Mobile Alabama sounds like a cute name for a streamlined option. Reference to the mobile hand devices, I suppose ?

[jnantz]

this site is great!

thanks so much for the "facelift".
i can only imagine the hard work it took
to do all this.

- john

[Tom Westbrook]

Phong: Yes it was for PDA use and was pretty bare bones, tho was pretty awful once you got down to message level--still have all the relpy/quote buttons and things.

John: Thanks! it wasn't too horrible, but i wouldn't want to do it every day.

[Huw Evans]

I'd better add my thanks. I'm generally a bit of a curmudgeon about forum software, preferring things as simple and as much text-based as possible - a hangover from days when bandwidth was in pretty short supply and Usenet was all there was - but this new format seems to have kept things still reasonably minimalistic, and there are even a few options for switching off unnecessary stuff. So all in all I'm much happier than I expected to be. Having checked a few other similar forums it appears the pages of this one are still loading with a lot less kB than most.

So, well done and thanks to everyone concerned. :-)

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

Congratulations for all the work done updating the LF forum software.

There are far too many features in the new software, most of them I'll never use, however there is one which is absolutely superb, it is the ability to correct your own posts !!
If I understand well, an author can also delete one of his posts if he find it inappropriate after thinking twice about it !!

I also like the ability to display a simple listing of all groups like in the previous software. So you can continue like before and take benefit gradually of new features !! superb !
I also appreciate the job done to store and sort previous posts in the archive ! that was certainly a major task !!

[Tom Westbrook]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Emmanuel: I'm glad you brought this editing feature up.

Yes you can edit your own posts & Thread titles. There is a 60 minute time limit imposed. I believe that also applies to deletes, too. A deleted post still leaves a place-holder and the moderators can look at the previous contents and permanently delete it if they see fit.

We may change the timeout if it seems needed. Edit's are experimental, and if we see much abuse of it going on we'll have to reevaluate.

The archive import was a requirement before we even thought about moving. Luckily the software has am import facility I managed to customize to our needs. It worked pretty well.

[Sanders McNew]

Tom, I second Phong's observations. The new site is impressive but I found the old one much easier and faster to browse. Sanders.