Since the site was switched to the new format I’m visiting everyday!
I know it’s a big change for some but it’s a very welcome change for me.
Full disclosure: It does help that I have several years experience with this format, from the App Inventor Communities.
Great to hear! Thanks a lot for saying so.
I like it, too.
At first, I didn’t like it, and complained about every little thing (usually via PM to a friend).
Now I’m used to Discourse, and think it was a good choice. 
Yeah, it’s growing on me.
I remember suggesting XenForo for forum software because I like it, and XF is a more traditional forum software.
The problem is that XF is not open source.
Honestly, Discourse works fine for me.
I didn’t like the “forever scrolling” of Discourse at first, but it’s not a problem for me anymore. 
I like the new site much better than the old site, because the muting feature means I dont have to read about bidets anymore… lol
one small feature, that I wish was not here on the new site,
that was also on the old site:
Editing a post, makes it go to the top of recent posts, as if it was a new post.
I would prefer that edits did not get promoted like a new post
It was like a train wreck. 
My interest in BLF was fading. I think my interest in flashlights was not as strong as before.
So with this new format, I will probably be visiting BLF very seldom in the future.
I actually already forgot about the old format. New one works and has more modern look and feel.
It’s great and improving with the tweaks, thank you @sb56637 for all your work.
I went from extreme
dislike to like in about 10 logins.
This is my first time using the new site. Bit of a shock but so far I have a favorable opinion.
Hey @Jack_Kellar , great to see you here. Thanks for giving the new site a shot, I really hope it works well for you.
Not trying to be a curmudgeon but this new software has glaring omissions that need rectifying. And bugs, so many bugs that are amateur oversights.
And its too busy.
That said it has some improvements, from being able to upload images to more smilies to multi quoting (when it works). Bookmarks are also a great new feature.
There are some well thought out small things that someone used their head when designing.
I get that SB had to upgrade at some point because once updates cease some hacker can hijack or destroy a site, but this new software while well thought out in some ways has glaring omissions in obvious places.
Yep, like the new site. Much more fluid (less clunky) and a breeze to use. Realize no solution is ever going to be the perfect fit and this format is quick easy to use (once you put a small amount of time in to become familiar with it) compared to some other forums I’m on.
What are the glaring omissions?
One big one i am hitting a lot recently is the lack of subscribed threads without new posts.
If i want to edit my post with more info or to look something up or to reread something.
I have had to use latest which works for now but over time will become unwieldy as more new threads are posted.
I also have yet to understand the search function, it has too many features that interfere with basic functionality.
I am a fan of more features but this software seems to throw them in your face. What it needs is to have basic function work in a basic way and have advanced options available upon request.
The thread post layout is also tricky, the old one was a bit dated but worked really well.
I go to other forums which use phpBB and Xenforo and the layout is lot better.
I know you and SB are working on this though.
And little things like total number of posts made, signatures, the fact numbers don’t disappear from the top right when viewed by “https://budgetlightforum.com/unread?order=activity” and so forth.
Oh and i’m still having the certain people not appearing in the PMs list that i mentioned back when this forum was under testing.
And two more, when hitting reply to a person it does not auto quote, and when quote hit later after typing it does not automatically put it on top.
Yeah, I miss that too. However, the new site has something almost identical. The My Watched Threads and My Tracked Threads links in the sidebar are basically the same thing, except that it shows threads in two separate categories instead of merged into one list. It’d be cool if there was a combined version.
(watched = notify me on all posts, tracked = only notify me on replies and @tags and stuff, but both are “subscribed”)
OMG, yes. It’s nice that those features are there, but the advanced-search interface can be pretty overwhelming. Search interface design is hard… and this particular widget is a good example of how not to make it approachable. It’s more of a query builder than a search widget.
As a general guideline, the widget used for typing a query should not take an entire page. That can be really intimidating and overstimulating.
Fortunately, there’s a simpler version which has the same features, but doesn’t throw them into a giant wall of buttons.
The advanced widget, if I understand correctly, is there to help people learn how to write complex queries… and then they can type those same queries into the smaller widget once they know the syntax.
Working on it.
I’m not sure, but I think “auto full-quote on reply” might be a server setting. But if it is, I doubt sb would want to enable it, because people in general have a tendency to over-quote. Like, long email chains where everyone top-quotes 5000 lines of text in order to write a 1-line reply. It only takes 1 person in the group to remove the extra quoting once in a while, but often there isn’t even 1 who bothers to do it. So on the old site, it was really common to see quotes nested so deep it didn’t fit onscreen. I’m pretty sure the reason it doesn’t do that by default is to prevent this from happening: (screenshot taken in 2014)
So I think it has been intentionally made more difficult.
The quote button still works, but it takes an extra step or two. And that can often be enough to make a difference.
I think the intended workflow is to highlight the part you want to reply to and then hit the “quote” pop-up button, which inserts just that part of the text. Then start writing. It strongly encourages people to be more selective and intentional about what they’re quoting.
However, that said, I specifically styled the blockquote widget to handle deeper nesting on the new site. It still gets unwieldy, but not as bad as before. Here’s how that same post looks now (after applying new themes):
That works, thanks 
Could SB perhaps put a link to this on the former, like how it was on the old forum?
Always nice when the resident genius agrees with me 
Its also glicthy, when i searched for an obscure term it brought to to the right thread but not to the post.
And when i tried to search my PMs for a certain person i had to fight it to work, it would try to copy over what i searched from the forum and i had to clear and hit reload then search clean to get it.
Thanks 
So there is evidence of my old avatar 
SB did come up with a good solution on the old forum with the snip after 5 levels of quotes.
I do think if you click reply on a post instead of the bottom it should automatically quote the person.
Also i do like an open reply text box that one can just start typing in at the bottom of every thread, not a deal breaker but a nice feature imo.
