Forum Upgrades

[FaithInIrish Forever 4,695]

Really like this.

The twitter feeds there for us to see.

I love how easy it is to create a poll. The reaction/like button is there! (Bottom Right, looks like a heart)

Reminders the helped me were:

I click the topic instead of the persons screen name. The screename leads you to the persons profile, which is great  but I usually want to reply or read the topic

Threads are known as topics(Start a new topic, is the same as start a new thread used to be)

Same video in thread functionality.

Private messages work awesome(looks like an envelope Icon)

have both file drag attachments and file upload attachment choices.

Can surf between all the boards!

 

I'm really thankful for this. Exciting stuff!!! Thanks!

[Mike 685]

7 minutes ago, FaithInIrishForever said:

Really like this.

The twitter feeds there for us to see.

I love how easy it is to create a poll. The reaction/like button is there! (Bottom Right, looks like a heart)

Reminders the helped me were:

I click the topic instead of the persons screen name. The screename leads you to the persons profile, which is great  but I usually want to reply or read the topic

Threads are known as topics(Start a new topic, is the same as start a new thread used to be)

Same video in thread functionality.

Private messages work awesome(looks like an envelope Icon)

have both file drag attachments and file upload attachment choices.

Can surf between all the boards!

 

I'm really thankful for this. Exciting stuff!!! Thanks!

Thanks Faith! Also just learned I have the ability to embed a poll from a topic into the sidebar. As you may have noticed (or would, soon!)

[FaithInIrish Forever 4,695]

6 minutes ago, Mike said:

Thanks Faith! Also just learned I have the ability to embed a poll from a topic into the sidebar. As you may have noticed (or would, soon!)

That's cool too. Really liking this. Thanks for all your efforts on the upgrade!

[Big23Head 2,246]

3 hours ago, D Fence said:

Not a fan of the new site either.  This is supposed to be a discussion board, not a running commercial for 247 articles that don't have anything to do with ND football.

That's okay, lot of sites out there to get news and updates.

This might be because tweets got blown up. So any post with tweets in it then got linked to a ton of other non ND tweets due to embedding from the original tweet. I’ve cleaned some of the main recruiting thread. It looks like a massive 247 advertisement in others though but it isn’t meant to be and will clean up over time. 

[D Fence 162]

6 hours ago, Big23Head said:

This might be because tweets got blown up. So any post with tweets in it then got linked to a ton of other non ND tweets due to embedding from the original tweet. I’ve cleaned some of the main recruiting thread. It looks like a massive 247 advertisement in others though but it isn’t meant to be and will clean up over time. 

Thanks Big - yes, that is what I was referring to.  There were links to tweets and articles on a bunch of different topics like the NCAA tourney, etc.  Looks like the main 2022 recruiting thread got fixed to your point. Thanks again

[Mike 685]

1 hour ago, D Fence said:

Thanks Big - yes, that is what I was referring to.  There were links to tweets and articles on a bunch of different topics like the NCAA tourney, etc.  Looks like the main 2022 recruiting thread got fixed to your point. Thanks again

Sorry @D Fence. Didn't know that was what you were referring to. Yeah, that was a bug with the transition to the new software. Going forward, it shouldn't be a problem, but I'm working on seeing if there's a way to fix broken ones from previous posts.

8 hours ago, Big23Head said:

This might be because tweets got blown up. So any post with tweets in it then got linked to a ton of other non ND tweets due to embedding from the original tweet. I’ve cleaned some of the main recruiting thread. It looks like a massive 247 advertisement in others though but it isn’t meant to be and will clean up over time. 

Thanks for covering, @Big23Head. Didn't realize that's what was being referenced. Thanks ?

[Mike 685]

Got a nifty 'All Posts' button added to the homepage. Click that little dynamic view button (arrow below) and you can see all new posts across the board, or even check the boards (right column) you're interested in (red box below)

[Mike 685]

I don't plan on making any more major changes for a bit, as I need to catch up on some other projects of mine I put on hold, as well as battle planning on the Domer Domain website (non-forums).

Thanks for the patience everyone. I know transitions / change like this isn't always the most fun at first, but I'm hoping with time, the experience is a lot more enjoyable. The only outstanding thing I'm working on is discussions with the forum developers to see if there's a way to fix legacy embeds, like the Tweets that broke.

If anybody needs anything in the meantime, send me a PM or respond to this thread and I will get to it.

Thanks again!

[Mike 685]

I lied. I made one last (quick) edition. But I added a 'Dark' theme as well if you prefer. If you look in the Footer on the bottom of the page, you can click Theme and switch to 'Dark' 

Note: Advanced isn't available as it's an admin-only option / scrapped theme.

[irishwavend 565]

I’m gonna be honest.  Incredibly frustrated with the overhaul.  I have a much longer post, but the simplicity of DD is what made it attractive.  This is not more user friendly on an ipad or iphone.  That’s the only way I access the site.  This is more like IrishEnvy which I shunned 15 years ago due to layout.  The monetization is a joke too.  If you want to monetize, create a tab for a shop with some Amazon affiliate links.  Get the other crap outta here.  If you insist, though, please give us the old files for the old layout so we can go rebuild what we had before someone fvcked with it and pretended it was an “upgrade.”  It isn’t...you’re talking to someone who knows sites and SEO pretty well...you’re killing your market and devaluing your investment.  There are a lot of books out there on cultural changes to groups and you’re hitting every landmine you can...

minor changes are “upgrades”...not this.

 

[Mike 685]

36 minutes ago, irishwavend said:

I’m gonna be honest.  Incredibly frustrated with the overhaul.  I have a much longer post, but the simplicity of DD is what made it attractive.  This is not more user friendly on an ipad or iphone.  That’s the only way I access the site.  This is more like IrishEnvy which I shunned 15 years ago due to layout.  The monetization is a joke too.  If you want to monetize, create a tab for a shop with some Amazon affiliate links.  Get the other crap outta here.  If you insist, though, please give us the old files for the old layout so we can go rebuild what we had before someone fvcked with it and pretended it was an “upgrade.”  It isn’t...you’re talking to someone who knows sites and SEO pretty well...you’re killing your market and devaluing your investment.  There are a lot of books out there on cultural changes to groups and you’re hitting every landmine you can...

minor changes are “upgrades”...not this.

 

This was an overhaul of a 13 year old version of vbulletin and a website running Joomla 1.0. It wasn't a minor upgrade and it was a major overhaul that took dozens and dozens of hours and brought everything up to current standards. Using forum software that doesn't even have meta descriptions or page titles, and hasn't been supported in over a decade is not how you grow a brand. have already been doing SEO full time for over a decade, and I will be transparent in my intentions / goals. Number 1 rule for SEO is too have a mobile friendly experience as rank is determined via the mobile rendering of a webpage.

• Outside of the forums, I have put about another grand into upgrading the forums. I had to buy the vbulletin software upgrade, and choose to buy invision power to transfer instead of just upgrading to the newest version like IE did. I did not need to incur double the cost, but I wanted to give the users what I thought was the best experience possible of the major message boards (vbulletin, xenforo, IPS)
• I am working with invision power to try and fix embeds that didn't transfer properly
• I plan on using the blog for monetization purposes. Right now I'm in the hole about $5k and if I can get a little bit of that back, I'm going to try. Figured it was better than asking for donations (which Irish Envy has done and raised over $2k by their userbase which has been supportive). I am not trying to put that on the members of the forum.
• I am doing everything in my power to make this place look and feel like the place for Notre Dame fans.

So no, it wasn't a minor upgrade, but a major overhaul that was absolutely necessary to avoid getting hit by the upcoming Core Web Vitals Google algorithm update coming this spring. Without the update, there's a big chance much of the organic traffic would be lost. Hence the rush job since you want Google to see it's been updated before that update drops, and they have a chance to crawl all your major pages.

I'm sorry you feel the way you do about the changes. I am aiming to make this place more lively and doing everything in my power to get there, while being true to the members here.

[BAgate 23]

I like the dark theme, but embedded tweets are unreadable in it.  Black text on black background.  Any way to change that?

[Mike 685]

26 minutes ago, BAgate said:

I like the dark theme, but embedded tweets are unreadable in it.  Black text on black background.  Any way to change that?

Odd. They should be loading like this. I'll take a look next time I'm at the computer and see if there's a change I can make. Any chance you can drop a screenshot?

 

[BAgate 23]

On desktop.

Edited March 30, 2021 by BAgate

[Mike 685]

9 minutes ago, BAgate said:

On desktop.

Thank you. I'll take a look at it as soon as I can.

[Baldy 1,221]

I really like the upgrades!  I think it’s so much easier to navigate, read, and post on my iPhone.

[Mike 685]

2 hours ago, BAgate said:

On desktop.

Following up on this, but can you check and see if there's an improvement? I switched to Cloudflare and enabled some caching options to try and speed up the loading of Tweets. But I might need to buy a more expensive hosting plan.

Thanks again for helping me debug this.

[BAgate 23]

2 hours ago, Mike said:

Following up on this, but can you check and see if there's an improvement? I switched to Cloudflare and enabled some caching options to try and speed up the loading of Tweets. But I might need to buy a more expensive hosting plan.

Thanks again for helping me debug this.

No improvement.  And thank you for taking our concerns seriously.

[DamshaBua 48]

I like the look. It's definitely cleaner. The prior iteration looked like something from the days of GeoCities or AOL. This is easier on the eyes aesthetically. 

[BAgate 23]

Is there any way that when you go to a page with new posts you are sent to the new posts automatically rather than having to scroll down to them? Or am I missing something?