Data Sphere

While I absolutely love our new forum theme, it's also still a bit new to us.

Feel free to post your suggestions on what you feel isn't working, what you're missing, etc here. We'll look at each suggestion and if possible/viable we'll implement it.

Thanks guys!

I would recommend that new users default notifications when you post in a thread to "On". Otherwise it can look oddly quiet if you don't think of that...

macfergusson wrote:I would recommend that new users default notifications when you post in a thread to "On".

I curse every forum that does that as I never notice it until I start getting piles of emails. I find it annoying as heck

Zac wrote:

macfergusson wrote:I would recommend that new users default notifications when you post in a thread to "On".

I curse every forum that does that as I never notice it until I start getting piles of emails. I find it annoying as heck

I suppose that is fair... Maybe there could be a prompt on first post to set the setting? Dunno how flexible the back end is.

macfergusson wrote:

Zac wrote:

macfergusson wrote:I would recommend that new users default notifications when you post in a thread to "On".

I curse every forum that does that as I never notice it until I start getting piles of emails. I find it annoying as heck

I suppose that is fair... Maybe there could be a prompt on first post to set the setting? Dunno how flexible the back end is.

This is available. If you start a new topic or you reply, underneath the buttons (on the new theme) there are two tabs. The Options tab has a checkbox called "Notify me when a reply is posted". This will email you.

Alternatively, there is a subscribe topic button at the bottom of every topic, and a subscribe forum button at the bottom of every forum.

When being notified, you will be notified once, and then when you visit the topic or forum in question, it will then notify you of any further changes. That way you won't get overly spammed by constant emails for multiple replies to the same topic / forum.

Coder wrote:When being notified, you will be notified once, and then when you visit the topic or forum in question, it will then notify you of any further changes. That way you won't get overly spammed by constant emails for multiple replies to the same topic / forum.

Is there a way to turn that on? I like the "email spam", as gmail threads them all together into one clicky that I can read easily without visiting the website unless I wish to respond.

macfergusson wrote:

Coder wrote:When being notified, you will be notified once, and then when you visit the topic or forum in question, it will then notify you of any further changes. That way you won't get overly spammed by constant emails for multiple replies to the same topic / forum.

Is there a way to turn that on? I like the "email spam", as gmail threads them all together into one clicky that I can read easily without visiting the website unless I wish to respond.

Not by default, no, that would take some effort and it's likely not to be implemented. Not to mention the fact that PHPBB also by default doesn't send out the content of the new posts either.

However, do not fret, because there is a way to do what you want.

If you view any topic or forum and look at the URL bar at the top, you'll see viewforum.php or viewtopic.php. If you change that to say feed.php instead, keeping everything else the same, you'll get the RSS feed for that forum or topic.

Now, you can then use an RSS to email feeder (like Blogtrottr), which will take that RSS feed and email you when changes are made, allowing you to be "spammed" through the RSS.

macfergusson wrote:Is there a way to turn that on? I like the "email spam", as gmail threads them all together into one clicky that I can read easily without visiting the website unless I wish to respond.

Go into Board Preferences and Posting Details in your UCP and enable it

ucp.php?i=prefs&mode=post

Zac wrote:

macfergusson wrote:Is there a way to turn that on? I like the "email spam", as gmail threads them all together into one clicky that I can read easily without visiting the website unless I wish to respond.

Go into Board Preferences and Posting Details in your UCP and enable it

ucp.php?i=prefs&mode=post

Those emails don't contain any text of the actual post.

There's some issue where icons preceding a username below a thread title (within each subforum) don't display correctly. "By" is partly covered by the icon, running under Chrome on Windows 7.

Oh, and my own text appears as red. Is that normal? Is it because I'm a Nomad?

Red text appears to turn up depending on which link you clicked to get to the thread, but the criteria aren't totally clear.

Similar to the icons, the 'go to last post' buttons in the lists of threads is overlapping with the user name of the last poster in Safari on OS X.

Red text seems to indicate the latest reply? I think?

macfergusson wrote:Red text seems to indicate the latest reply? I think?

I think so. Might just be for your reply as well.

Not sure if this is the right place, but is there any convenient way to go to the oldest post you haven't read? Like how the official forums has?
Nevermind, found it.

IJW Wartrader wrote:Similar to the icons, the 'go to last post' buttons in the lists of threads is overlapping with the user name of the last poster in Safari on OS X.

You can see the icons not wrapping correctly in this image

macfergusson wrote:Red text seems to indicate the latest reply? I think?

Almost!

The red text indicates the targeted post. It's the one that you jump to when you view a particular thread; so that would be the last unread post when you use the unread feature, but it could also be a post you're sent to if you tap a directed link.

You can test this by clicking on any of the Re: New forum theme feedback above any of these posts and watch the red text jump to that post.

Zac wrote:

IJW Wartrader wrote:Similar to the icons, the 'go to last post' buttons in the lists of threads is overlapping with the user name of the last poster in Safari on OS X.

Screen Shot 2014-07-14 at 1.21.02 PM.png

You can see the icons not wrapping correctly in this image

Thanks, will check that out, that's good feedback

Overall, I think it looks good and no issues with the desktop version.

The mobile version looks to need a few minor size tweaks, with the grey 'post count/reply boxes' taking up a lot of room on the left . There is a lot of white space under them and the actual content is left little room. Of course if you view the forum in landscape on your phone then it works better, but even then the grey boxes are a little large and in charge.

Color wise I like it, and I haven't gone through the other theme options yet. You could consider a contrasting warm color (as an alternate theme maybe) to make navigating easier. I'm a big fan of the blue and grey, but they do come from the same cool family, so the eye doesn't navigate as quick as it would with warm colors waving at them.

Good stuff though man, i really do dig it a lot.

I can't do this theme on mobile. Too much of the page is taken up by the post count. The contrast is low on desktop. I use Tapatalk or Digital theme after giving it a chance for 24 hours.

Honestly, I'm not a fan of the default theme - it's bulky/bloated. I much prefer digital or prosilver (and have switched), and think they should be the default options.

EDIT:
And since this is (hopefully, I guess) going to be the new "go to" place for Infinity discussion, the site needs to look it. The front page is also cluttered to me - lots of big tiles everywhere with what appears to be little organization to it. I'd like to see it neatened, organized, cleaner, with links to various topics (e.g. terrain, tactics, painting, news and rumors) rather than a big-ass page of links. If categories like that were applied, then just the latest story in each could be listed.

Lastly, how are the official terrain makers taking the switch? How long are the links to the unofficial terrain builders going to last...

I agree with Cervantes. I'm staying with the Digital skin. Its simple and clean.
You might want to add the INFINITY logo to the top banner.

I did a really quick chop shop on the new theme. This is just a general idea that you could possibly pull from to tweak, and optimize the space a little better. Again it was really quick.

+1 to Levitas' design above. That's basically exactly what I was suggesting in the other thread-- less dead space, and put the nav up at the top.

The only bit I'd add after a few hours of using this forum is that it's a little weird to see the last person to post in each forum but not the title of the thread they posted in. When I scan through the list of forums, I want to know what's being talked about in each one-- I don't particularly care that "Hey, Steve was here!"

My mysterious Coder is reading it all, I'll talk these suggestions through with him.

Appreciate the design a lot, Levs. I also want to implement a banner area for when the partnerships start rolling: only relevant companies in that banner area, no worries.

As Arachas says, I'm reading all this

Keep this awesome feedback coming guys. This is really helpful stuff, and we're going to be actively working to improve the theme.

Any chance the page title could be changed to "Thread name/Section name/etc - Data Sphere", because the current "Data Sphere - Thread name/Section name/etc" format just results in a whole load of "Data Sph" tabs in a browser - which take a lot more searching if you lose the one you were posting in every time you click away to find a link or picture (or suffer from a poor attention span and keep checking Facebook mid-posting).

I miss having a "view new posts" link on every page...

ElectricPaladin wrote::( I miss having a "view new posts" link on every page...

Bottom right of every page (on the desktop view of the forums), there is a View New Posts area. I've turned the header of that area into a link to the View New Posts page.

I've also made substantial changes to the forum layout, and to the layout on the phone as well. Do let us know if you have any further feedback for the theme!

My "view new posts" option is in the top right, but yeah, it's there (I'm using one of the not-default themes).

MarcoSkoll wrote:Any chance the page title could be changed to "Thread name/Section name/etc - Data Sphere", because the current "Data Sphere - Thread name/Section name/etc" format just results in a whole load of "Data Sph" tabs in a browser - which take a lot more searching if you lose the one you were posting in every time you click away to find a link or picture (or suffer from a poor attention span and keep checking Facebook mid-posting).

Maybe if more people ask for that... dunno why phpBB doesn't default to that order anyway.