483 replies to this topic

[Ginga]

The forum area of autosport.com will be undergoing a server move and software upgrade overnight tonight (UK time). This will involve the forums being unavailable for approximately two hours from roughly 1am-3am on April 30.

We are upgrading the forum software as the current version is now a little long in the tooth and also represents a security risk to the entire site. The new software is broadly similar to the existing forum, but the key benefit for you is that the forum will be faster, especially at peak times. We make no guarantees that everyone will suddenly agree with your opinions though!

If you experience any problems, please let us know via the contact form (http://www.autosport.com/contact.html)

Cheers
David

[vashlin]

I'm finding it startlingly fast!!

Here at work on my aging MAC I used to open a page of a photo thread and then turn to something like actual work to wait for it to download.

This morning I barely drew a breath and the page was finished.

Very nice.





Lin

[Chubby_Deuce]

I don't think it's actually been updated yet..

[Hack]

No, it hasn't happened yet. There will be a few visual clues once it does.;)

The reason the current forum is now much quicker is it no longer shares (limited) server resources with the rest of the site. It is home alone on our old servers since the rest of the site moved last week.

Equally, the forum will have dedicated and beefier resources once we move it to the new servers tonight, meaning things should be much quicker and more available when it gets busy.

[Chubby_Deuce]

Awesome. There's several reasons to avoid the forums after a race but even if you try it's often impossible.

Looking forward to the new vB version.

[Hack]

The work has now been completed. Welcome to the upgraded Bulletin Board.

If the new look is not to your taste, and you'd prefer a bit more orange, you can choose a retro Atlas F1 theme for the Bulletin Board. Once logged in, the theme choice is available in the drop-down box (showing by default autosport.com) just above the Google Ads at the bottom of each page. Your choice will be stored with your profile and applies whenever you are logged in.

As David said, if anyone is struggling - with login problems for example - please click here to contact us, otherwise we welcome feedback in this thread.

[Alfisti]

Yipes. Well you knew I was going to whinge, Atlas was like an old friend after 10 years. I knew where everythign was and how it all worked, now I am lost.

First impression? It feels old, like it's 1998 in here.There are gobs more features but the colurs don't work, the button text is awful and the rest of the aesthetics poor.

Where's Bira?

[rolf123]

Wow!

Seems strange to move back from vbulletin, most consider it the best software around. That said, I do like IP board a lot.

Congrats on such a seamless upgrade. There wasn't even any downtime!

[imaginesix]

Boy, you're already an old man 'fisti!

[Ricardo F1]

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Atlas.

[Hack]

Atlas.

If the new look is not to your taste, and you'd prefer a bit more orange, you can choose a retro Atlas F1 theme for the Bulletin Board. Once logged in, the theme choice is available in the drop-down box (showing by default autosport.com) just above the Google Ads at the bottom of each page. Your choice will be stored with your profile and applies whenever you are logged in.

[Alfisti]

Boy, you're already an old man 'fisti!

I must be, it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to quote

Best way i can describe it is that I feel like this BB is now yelling at me .. it's so ... IM YOUR FACE compared to the classy one we had before.

Why do i now need to scroll down to hit the 'POST' button, it should be where the 'BB Code Help' buttom is.

[Alfisti]

If the new look is not to your taste, and you'd prefer a bit more orange, you can choose a retro Atlas F1 theme for the Bulletin Board. Once logged in, the theme choice is available in the drop-down box (showing by default autosport.com) just above the Google Ads at the bottom of each page. Your choice will be stored with your profile and applies whenever you are logged in.

Thanks for ther effort, that is appreciated.




(though it's a bit like having sex with your pants on)

Edited by Alfisti, 30 April 2009 - 02:55.

[TickTickBooom]

Man, I was hoping for some new smilies! It's a bit weird, but I kind of like it.

Edited by TickTickBooom, 30 April 2009 - 03:11.

[SB]

Thanks Autosport team for the effort !

But I really think the orange Altas color scheme looks much better than the new purple scheme .....

[grackle]

Well done.

[Zmeej]

Hack - If the new look is not to your taste, and you'd prefer a bit more orange, you can choose a retro Atlas F1 theme for the Bulletin Board. Once logged in, the theme choice is available in the drop-down box (showing by default autosport.com) just above the Google Ads at the bottom of each page. Your choice will be stored with your profile and applies whenever you are logged in.

Hmmm, seems like either Alfisti has lived in Canada too long and has lost his edge, or I need to take more medication...

"Prefer a bit more orange?"

How about some red?

PLEASE GIVE ME MY OLD ATLAS FORUM BACK!!!

It's one thing to split stuff off from the main servers
( BTW, thank you for keeping us around at all and saving all of the archives )
to make things safer and run faster, certainly laudable and understandable goals - but why the drastic redesign???????

But what if, in general, someone (can only hope I'm not alone in this )
- finds the new look blockily hideous??? [retch] [Bleeeech!]
- wonders what happened to the previous forum's various features?

Edited by Zmeej, 01 May 2009 - 14:10.

[Chubby_Deuce]

Hack, next time there's potential security issues with the site just ignore them.

[primer]

Looks okay. Congratulations to Autosport team.

Now then...

• Congratulations on dumping php 4.whatever you were running, but why are you using 5.2.6? If the idea is to enhance security (and performance), you'll agree that 5.2.9 is better in all respects. 5.2.6 was released a year ago!
  
• Personally I would do away with the 'Post Icons' feature immediately. People can express their 'creativity' in posts, no need to be overly emotive in titles. I see potential for juvenility, yes even more so than now!
  
• The icons for "Insert Link" "Insert Image" etc are not particularly appealing. Other BB using Invision have better stuff. When you are not presssed for time you can browse the invision support forums and replace these with something better.
  
• Why not do away with the "Side Panel" alltogether. It is merely a duplication of smilies and such. (Yes I know it can be toggled away.)
  
• Would be interesting to know why you guys chose Invision over phpBB 3.0.4

[peroa]

Finally!

[primer]

to make things safer and run faster, certainly laudable and understandable goals - but why the drastic redesign???????

Drama Queen, have you never used any other bulletin board? This is not a drastic redesign. You just need to browse the internets get out more.

- wonders what happened to the previous forum's various features?

They are all here, and then some. Zmeej baby, stay cool.

Edited by primer, 30 April 2009 - 04:14.

[philhitchings]

do we have to enable email notification of replies each time we post?

[Ivan]

It's like coming home from vacation and finding your house has been completely rearranged! Now to learn my way around!

[primer]

Guys, just FYI: You may go to 'My Controls'>>'Edit Profile Information' and change these two setings.




On the subject of changing things, I can't edit my signature. Or the registered email address.
Admins, please change the default font color for signatures to black, too.

[Ivan]

Where is spell check? Can we have the Black Dot back to show the threads you've posted in?

[primer]

Can we have the Black Dot back to show the threads you've posted in?

Agreed. Instead of 'Hot Topic (New) ' and 'Hot Topic (No New) ', it would be better if these two icons were utilized to denote the topics in which a person has posted.

Since almost all discussions in the Racing Comments section get many comments in a short time, the hotness indicator is a waste. People can just as well use the number of replies as an indication of hotness.


Disregard.

Edited by primer, 30 April 2009 - 11:16.

[primer]

Feature Request:

Presently the forum software shows the time of posts only in one AM/PM format. I would like to have the option (in 'My Controls') of changing it to a 24 hour format. This AM and PM business is too complicated.

[Ivan]

I just figured out that there is an arrow in the bottom right corner of the folder to let you know you have been there. Hmmm, maybe make that black to see it better.

[Ivan]

Primer,
You can edit your sig. Go to My Controls, it's on the left, scroll down and you'll see it.

[D82]

Seeing the Atlas F1 logo changed to AUTOSPORT WITH CAPITAL LETTERS is pretty sad.

[FrankB]

I might be missing something but...

I know there is a button to view new posts, this takes you to the threads that have
altered since your last visit (as before).

What I can't find is a "Go to first unread post" button.

[Option1]

Frank, it's the little square next to the topic itself.

I like the new board.

Neil

[brunopascal]

Hi admins! I like the new layout, looks very clean, and loads faster than before. I still need some time to get used to it, because I still have the old one in my head.

I have a question also:

I posted in the RC bets&games on the 27th of april using the code-function. I now see that with the new layout of the forum, extra blank rows were added to what i posted under the code function.
I would like to edit my post and remove the extra rows to improve readability and reduce size, but i can't find an edit-function for that post. Usually it was possible to edit posts at least a week or so after original post was made.

Is it possible to edit a post made the 27th (before new layout)?

EDIT: ok, i see now I can easily edit this post, so I know where the function is. Just thought I could edit a post made 3 days ago, used to be possible. cheers!

Edited by brunopascal, 30 April 2009 - 06:28.

[Breadmaster]

Seeing the Atlas F1 logo changed to AUTOSPORT WITH CAPITAL LETTERS is pretty sad.

change the skin - it's still there!

[Ross Stonefeld]

Even with the AtlasF1 palette it's a bit confusing because the interface is so different. The one I'm struggling with at the moment is I think the quote button is attached to the next post, and the icons it uses to tell you what threads you've read and which you've posted in.

We did this when we had the last switch (2000?) and I can barely remember what the very first version looked like now.


Oooh, big avatars.

[A3]

Yipes. Well you knew I was going to whinge, Atlas was like an old friend after 10 years. I knew where everythign was and how it all worked, now I am lost.

First impression? It feels old, like it's 1998 in here.There are gobs more features but the colurs don't work, the button text is awful and the rest of the aesthetics poor.

Where's Bira?

I'm with Fisti....

[D82]

change the skin - it's still there!

Yes, but it's AUTOSPORT BB now. It's sad that the Atlas F1 name is gone.

[se7en_24]

Well done guys, I'm sure it took a lot of work and people will always moan about change.

I'm sure any small niggles can be sorted now, the hard bit of the work has been done.

[se7en_24]

Well done guys, I'm sure it took a lot of work and people will always moan about change.

I'm sure any small niggles can be sorted now, the hard bit of the work has been done.

Ooops I think you need some flood protection turned on! I'm sure I only pressed post once but maybe I slipped and pressed it twice.

[Bernd]

I think it looks crap. Really crap.

[se7en_24]

I think it looks crap. Really crap.

Change the skin then.

[mach4]

Good work, it can't have been easy moving everything over. I can see a lot of effort has been put on making things similar to how they were.

My main criticism is that there's way too much space dedicated to repeated controls. Top, Report, Quote, Reply buttons should be on the same bar as the username if possible. At the very least they should be made much much smaller and the margins reduced. Also the left hand side where the user info goes is way too wide, again a lot of wasted area for nothing. Another waste is the quote heading, huge graphic of quotes and large vertical margin space. Focus should be on content, and wasted space should be minimized.

For an example look at how the thread content is displayed when you are writing a reply. It is much easier to read because these things I mentioned are gone.

Edited by mach4, 30 April 2009 - 07:33.

[rjk]

Good Job with the upgrade. Should be quicker now

But the new forum will make this look like the Other F1 forums. Maybe a different colour schema can be introduced to make this unique

[se7en_24]

Good Job with the upgrade. Should be quicker now

But the new forum will make this look like the Other F1 forums. Maybe a different colour schema can be introduced to make this unique

You can change the skin to look like the old Atlas one.

[ForeverF1]

Congratulations guys.

I guess you can please some people all the time, but not all the people all the time.

Everyone will be used to the new look in a few days time, change is hard to understand for some.

I would be interested to know why you did not go for feature rich phpBB3?

[Dragonfly]

What a surprise!
Well done guys

BTW, did you install all anti-spam-bot patches? We are on the same platform with our local forum and they were a real nuisance for some time. The last are the PM spam bots.

[Ivan]

OK I'm lost. I've been trying to figure this out on my own but to no avail. I wanted to post a link in the youtube thread but I can't figure out how to add the link as the name of the band, like we used to. I've tried Quick Access and can't seem to get any of it to work right. What am I doing wrong?

[Timstr11]

Nice surprise.
Need to get used to the new buttons: Reply, Fastreply, Addreply
Well done.

[rjk]

Cant I edit my post?

Edit:
I can here but not in Racing Comments Section

Edited by Raj, 30 April 2009 - 07:51.

[rjk]

You can change the skin to look like the old Atlas one.

yeah. I understood it and even tried it out

What I meant a completely new colour scheme which would make this forum different from others