• Honestly I think the new theme looks pretty bad. I wish the posts appeared on a solid background compared to having a blur over an image (similar how to MyBB, Flarum, and ProBoards have all had their themes).

    The default WoltLab theme looks miles better. That would actually be tolerable if it had a dark version. Also, why is the padding so big?


    I mean, I think this padding or font can be a little smaller

    In terms of improvement for Video's theme, why is it so bad?

    You can barely see any distinction between the quotes except for the text being spaced. Also it's really hard to tell if a thread is selected. You have to click on the title of the thread as well. On Flarum, you can click anywhere on the line of the thread and it'll bring you there. I think that's a genuine functionality improvement that should be implemented on WoltLab.

    Other improvements are to put the sidebar at the top of the page with the user info and fix the padding

    What's the point of a dashboard if you can't customize it? Shouldn't you be able to add or remove what you want to your dashboard? Seems kind of useless if not and in my opinion the boards should be at the homepage of the forum.

    I also don't understand why the categories tab on the articles page has to take it up and then there be dead space under it. The comment section feels crammed.

    Also, I think the padding for discussions is pretty big. If there was a normal theme instead of a blur on an image, we could have lines to separate threads.


    I think the background not only looks bad especially with that image, but if it was a normal solid color, you could have lines separate it and not have such big padding. I mean, if you look at iMessage or WhatsApp which has "bubbles" like the forum, they aren't even padded as big as they are on this forum.

    Also, what's up with uploading images? Why do we need to put a source and a link? Isn't that the same thing?

    The final two things are I think there should be an option to let us have a smaller profile picture sidebar view. Feels like the avatar is too big which makes the rest of the sidebar too big. And finally, I think that the logo is too big. On a laptop, the logo seems to take up most of the screen. On Flarum, the title is small enough that you can still get a glimpse if a lot has happened since you last saw the forum. I mean, just look at how much space is being used on WoltLab compared to Flarum

    I personally don't like the new forums. I feel like Flarum had a really good design, but doesn't have a great suite of features or permission system. ProBoards had both a great design and a lot of features, but we've already had this argument a million times. So, I hope that these suggestions are considered and we don't have another MyBB forum.

  • Appreciate the criticism of my theme. If you could give a list of other specific things in my theme that need improvement (color adjustments, padding fixes, etc), that would be lovely. I can also make a variation of the theme that doesn't have blur if needed.

    Edit: As a test, I've also adjusted the colors to be a bit brighter, is it any better now?
    https://videogamesm12.me/VyP5AlaTkgJd.png

    image.png

  • @Shdwo#16428 I disagree that "Flarum is shit at everything else", but I definitely agree that we should have a clean theme similar to Flarum. I think with some polishing, Video's theme could be fine for those who prefer it. But I don't like it, and I think there will be a lot of people in the same boat, just a plain theme would be really nice.

  • @videogamesm12#16430 I think it would benefit mobile more than desktop. I think that in theory a blurred theme would work decently on a good monitor. It's really bad to look at on mobile (especially when it's bright outside). Flarum's mobile theme is frankly unbeatable (except to ProBoards, and that's because it hardly requires any data to load the full forum).

    Also, I have no idea if this is temporary, but the forums are frankly ridiculously slow. The Flarum being slow was finally fixed recently for me. It feels like the WoltLab forums have the same long delays and loading times. The only different is that instead of Flarum displaying a loading wheel, it's the browsers loading page. It could just be temporary, but that problem is back again.

    Another suggestion is to have automatic timezone detection. It should automatically have the right timezone, that seems like pretty basic functionality.

  • Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16431 I think it would benefit mobile more than desktop. I think that in theory a blurred theme would work decently on a good monitor. It's really bad to look at on mobile (especially when it's bright outside). Flarum's mobile theme is frankly unbeatable (except to ProBoards, and that's because it hardly requires any data to load the full forum).

    Yeah I agree - would it be a good idea to have the transparent blur effect only apply for desktop users?

    image.png

  • @videogamesm12#16432 no, because I still don't like it on desktop. That's just me, so I would split them in two. Plus if you keep them in the same theme, you'll pull off a windows 10 and gradually down the line things will be inconsistent

  • Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16425 Honestly I think the new theme looks pretty bad. I wish the posts appeared on a solid background compared to having a blur over an image (similar how to MyBB, Flarum, and ProBoards have all had their themes).

    The default WoltLab theme looks miles better. That would actually be tolerable if it had a dark version. Also, why is the padding so big?


    I mean, I think this padding or font can be a little smaller

    In terms of improvement for Video's theme, why is it so bad?

    All of the styling is still a wip. It wasn't something we originally planned to do yet but everyone moaned about there only being a light theme. I know it's not perfect especially on mobile. For some reason it seems to be slightly worse on mobile but we're working through it as we go.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16425 Also it's really hard to tell if a thread is selected. You have to click on the title of the thread as well. On Flarum, you can click anywhere on the line of the thread and it'll bring you there. I think that's a genuine functionality improvement that should be implemented on WoltLab.

    Not sure how much control we have over this especially on desktop, but I also suspect this is the results of the custom themes not making it as obvious that the titles are linked. I never knew flarum let you select a thread from anywhere on the row because it looks like the title is the link, so as I say the themes should make this better, but otherwise I suspect we can not change this behaviour realistically.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16425 Other improvements are to put the sidebar at the top of the page with the user info and fix the padding

    This is theme dependant. We've had it at the top on some themes and on the left for others. Again the styling is being worked through in slow time.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16425 What's the point of a dashboard if you can't customize it? Shouldn't you be able to add or remove what you want to your dashboard? Seems kind of useless if not and in my opinion the boards should be at the homepage of the forum.

    The dashboard is designed to show the latest announcements or other things that I want the community to know about. It's not intended to be customized and that is by design. The dashboard is only shown if you go to the forums for the first time, or if you then click back to the dashboard. It shouldn't be something that ends up really getting in the way once you start using the forum.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16425 I also don't understand why the categories tab on the articles page has to take it up and then there be dead space under it. The comment section feels crammed

    This section hasn't had a lot of time looking at it yet as the boards themselves have been the priority. Will look into this.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16425 Also, I think the padding for discussions is pretty big. If there was a normal theme instead of a blur on an image, we could have lines to separate threads.


    I think the backgrou

    The padding I think is more or less the default and it's just the way woltlab tends to make itself look. Again nothing stopping us trying to change it if we want to. This is something we can look at as we mature the styles.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16425 Also, what's up with uploading images? Why do we need to put a source and a link? Isn't that the same thing?

    I suspect source is the image itself and link is a link to go to when you click it, but will check.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16425 The final two things are I think there should be an option to let us have a smaller profile picture sidebar view. Feels like the avatar is too big which makes the rest of the sidebar too big.

    This is linked to the theme so its a theme specific change we'd need to make fwiw. See previous comments here on the style.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16425 And finally, I think that the logo is too big. On a laptop, the logo seems to take up most of the screen. On Flarum, the title is small enough that you can still get a glimpse if a lot has happened since you last saw the forum. I mean, just look at how much space is being used on WoltLab compared to Flarum

    Yep that's fair. I think that's the default sizing for that theme, but we need to do some tweaks, it looks okay on larger monitors but clearly not on smaller ones.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16425 I personally don't like the new forums. I feel like Flarum had a really good design, but doesn't have a great suite of features or permission system

    Flarum has a lot more wrong with it than permissions, and tbh the design isn't great imo either. Speaking to one of the folks that work on flarum about why we're moving off, they agreed with me that flarum isn't fit for our community.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16425 ProBoards had both a great design and a lot of features,

    That's the only bit there I disagree with. The design was only bareable due to masses of work to create custom themes, but it especially in its current state is exceptionally buggy and feature lacking. All the users on our old forum on proboards are broken due to weird orphan groups and all sorts like that... Not to mention the design has been crap out the box for years!

    Wild1145

    Network Owner at TotalFreedom

    Managing Director at ATLAS Media Group Ltd.

    Founder & Owner at MastodonApp.UK

  • Quote

    @wild1145#16459 The dashboard is designed to show the latest announcements or other things that I want the community to know about. It's not intended to be customized and that is by design. The dashboard is only shown if you go to the forums for the first time, or if you then click back to the dashboard. It shouldn't be something that ends up really getting in the way once you start using the forum.

    Is the dashboard not just the main page of the forum? We've historically always had that set to either the list of boards or the list of recently updated threads. If you want to see a website, you should go to the website and not to the forum.

  • @StevenNL2000#16488 The dashboard will (When I've got it working exactly how I want it to) serve as a "Latest News" type thing, a little bit like https://www.spigotmc.org where it's a home page of the latest updates and announcements.

    It may make more sense in the longer term to converge and have totalfreedom.me show as that dashboard / landing page, and then /boards be the forum, but for now at least I have split it like this because it just makes more sense, especially for the technical testing side of things we're currently doing.

    Wild1145

    Network Owner at TotalFreedom

    Managing Director at ATLAS Media Group Ltd.

    Founder & Owner at MastodonApp.UK

  • @wild1145#16459 Blame the theme all you want, but it's evident that Video is much more interested in improving his.
    The dashboard is the default view every time you go to the page. You have to explicitly click on the forum tab or unread posts to actually get to the forum.
    As for the articles, seems like unnecessary bloat? Wouldn't announcement threads serve the same purpose? I could see it functioning as a crappy Wiki substitute, but in that case why not just spin up MediaWiki and use that? Not saying we want to have a Wiki all of a sudden but thats a theoretical use.

    And finally, wasn't trying to bring up the ProBoards vs Flarum vs WoltLabs argument, just a nice way to close the thread. Yeah its probably not fit for the community honestly, but I think the design is sleek and probably one of the best ones I've seen. I mean, just look at phpBB. I think Flarum had one of the best mobile experiences for a forum and you shouldn't be quick to dismiss the end user design because you didn't like it's lack of features.
    As for ProBoards, v6 is extremely sleek. The only reason those glitches have happened is after Seth nuked the forum. Had he not, it would still be functional. Besides, they went against their rules to restore their forum and it's not a normal thing they do. ProBoards v5 (and still even v6 to some extent) literally load on anything no matter how crap of a signal you get, which is really nice. Obviously we can't go back in time and creating a new ProBoards forum would be kind of backwards, ProBoards did have its advantages.
    Ultimately, I'm trying to look at thing on an objective scale compared to my feelings based on how much I like the software. I hope you won't pull off a Seth and actually take those things into consideration.

  • @Telesphoreo#16517 The thing is, 90% of what you describe is the result of the theming, Woltlab is very customizable, but that comes at a cost and it's about striking the right balance, so there's no reason we can't change these things, we just need to actually do it. As I say though, we had never originally planned to do anything about themes in the tech preview, this was more to play with the forums themselves.

    Articles may well get disabled, it's a native Woltlab feature, but as you say, the amount of use in our community they will get is possibly limited, because if I wanted to write blog's / similar relating to TF, they'd be posted on https://blog.atlas-media.co.uk and linked off of the forums, or it'd be an announcement. It's just a new feature since I last used Woltlab in anger, so didn't see the point in disabling it yet in case we felt there was a good use for it, but even then it's still not going to be as good as a proper Wiki tool as you illuded to in your post.

    The dashboard should only show if you go to the root URL, once you're in Woltlab clicking the logo should for example take you to the forum home and not the dashboard. The dashboard config will need tweaking to make it look how I want it to look, and as I said in reply to Steven's message here, it may end up making more sense to be the root page for totalfreedom.me like what Spigot do, as that was the sort of look I was really going for.

    And I know a lot of the broken Proboards stuff is the result of Seth's tantrum and deleting the forums, and Proboards certainly I think is a better fit for the community than Flarum (For the same reason I wouldn't move to Discourse, it moves away from the "Board" structure which I think we actually do need), but I've found Woltlab to be an excellent bit of software, and there will be some getting used to it, but I'm keen that we make it as painless a migration as possible, I've no intention of just up and shifting everyone over like Seth had done, which is why I'm taking my time and we're in no rush. We'll move when I feel it's ready and the community are generally happy with things on the proposed new setup.

    Wild1145

    Network Owner at TotalFreedom

    Managing Director at ATLAS Media Group Ltd.

    Founder & Owner at MastodonApp.UK

  • @wild1145#16519 The dashboard functionality seems broken then. If you click on any of the tabs it will bring you back to the dashboard. However, if you're on the forums tab already and you click the logo, you will be taken to the list of boards. Regardless, it seems as if you have a much more sane approach to the transition than Seth did. I was the one who initially setup Flarum in pure hatred to MyBB. I really like Flarum, but I was only trying to show how the forums could have theoretically looked. I never fully intended for Seth to use it, or for you to set it up again. I really just made a temporary beta, and of course that temporary beta became our permanent solution. Would have tried Discourse except for the ridiculous requirements and prerequisites.

    Anyway, paging videogamesm12 now: The quotes on the page look a lot better. However, it's still hard to tell when a post ends. This seems to be a consequence of the background image having darker spots than others.

    The normal theme has blur for each post and no blur for the padding. Yours has blur for the entire thing and a line to separate posts. Not sure how you wanna fix that, but seeing a clear distinction between posts is harder on your theme than the default. Some visual tweaks need to be made to quoting also. Yours is definitely better than Wild's for small screens. The sidebar on the side is just badly designed and your posts go to the end of the page. The default theme seems to be boxed in to a fixed width. It's a double edged sword because do you box it and have something that's good for big screens, or unbox it and it be better for small screens. It's similar to the crappy GitHub redesign. You know how if you have an ultrawide monitor and the sidebar is so far away from the rest of everything else?

    Speaking of, we should probably take a page out of ProBoards and automatically only quote the previous two quotes on the third one and so on. When you let the quote go on and on you get this eyesore

  • Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16521 The dashboard functionality seems broken then. If you click on any of the tabs it will bring you back to the dashboard. However, if you're on the forums tab already and you click the logo, you will be taken to the list of boards.

    Okay, I'll take a look into that, the expectation is once you're on the /boards endpoint the logo will always take you back there. The logo will likely take you back to the dashboard from other sections because of how Woltlab works (And the boards are an "add-on") now to the core suite, but that's weird anyway.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16521 Regardless, it seems as if you have a much more sane approach to the transition than Seth did. I was the one who initially setup Flarum in pure hatred to MyBB. I really like Flarum, but I was only trying to show how the forums could have theoretically looked. I never fully intended for Seth to use it, or for you to set it up again. I really just made a temporary beta, and of course that temporary beta became our permanent solution.

    Yeah, MyBB can be setup well, but again it's like all of this, you've got to do it right and take your time, I think the original move from Proboards was rushed and as highlighted by the fact we're on Flarum it clearly didn't go well! And as with all "prototypes" they somehow always become official / permanent so guess that's no real surprise either!

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16521 Would have tried Discourse except for the ridiculous requirements and prerequisites.

    (Yes this is off topic but eh) - It's okay software, I used it for another ATLAS project and have used it before, I found it to be a lot more polished and easier to work with than I have Flarum, but the big issue for me and this community is the lack of depth on boards, you could only have 2 layers, which is no better than the 2 layers of tagging here. It is a bastard to setup but once it's up and running it is quite nice to use, and I do prefer using it over Flarum but it's still not quite the right fit for TF that does need that more complex and lengthy hierarchy of boards.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16521 Speaking of, we should probably take a page out of ProBoards and automatically only quote the previous two quotes on the third one and so on. When you let the quote go on and on you get this eyesore

    Yeah, I was playing with the quote depth settings, by default it only quotes a single post, I turned that off entirely because it does in theory collapse that down, but it still looks like a hot mess and as Steven has said on here or another thread, it will spiral in the deep discussion sections. I think that's now capped at 3, so you should still be able to get plenty of context but it won't end up as a really long hot mess like your screen shot there.

    Wild1145

    Network Owner at TotalFreedom

    Managing Director at ATLAS Media Group Ltd.

    Founder & Owner at MastodonApp.UK

  • Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16521 Some visual tweaks need to be made to quoting also.

    I'm guessing you're referring to the "Display More" button among other things - yeah, my bad.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16521 The normal theme has blur for each post and no blur for the padding. Yours has blur for the entire thing and a line to separate posts. Not sure how you wanna fix that, but seeing a clear distinction between posts is harder on your theme than the default.

    Fair - an idea I had to fix that would be to see if it's possible to brighten/darken every other post's background just enough to differentiate between two posts, sort of like how ProBoards does it. I'm not entirely sure if this would work but it never hurts to try.

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16521 The sidebar on the side is just badly designed and your posts go to the end of the page.

    I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this? I'm a bit sleep deprived so I might just be not seeing the obvious here but are you referring to the sidebars on the home page or the sidebar in each post?

    Quote

    @Telesphoreo#16521 The default theme seems to be boxed in to a fixed width. It's a double edged sword because do you box it and have something that's good for big screens, or unbox it and it be better for small screens. It's similar to the crappy GitHub redesign. You know how if you have an ultrawide monitor and the sidebar is so far away from the rest of everything else?

    Good catch - this problem also appears in my theme as well. From what I recall, it is possible to have things appear differently depending on various factors (including minimum resolution), so I might look into implementing something similar if that's what you're aiming for.

    Thank you. Keep this stuff coming, I appreciate it. I'll use them to build a list of things I need to do and try to prioritize the more annoying or broken aspects once I'm not sleep deprived. Let me know if I missed anything.

    image.png