[Poll] Do you prefer the old BLF or the new BLF?

That’s exactly the thing many people don’t want to. It’s just freakin’ forum. We use forums for 30+ years without need to learn how to navigate through them. If forum isn’t intuitive enough to use it without learning course then it’s definitely something wrong with it.

On the other hand Discourse look like suitable piece of forum software for modern instant-like way of life, where flat view threads get burried and forgotten with the new ones within the same day. Sadly old dinosaurs like BLF with so many useful old posts, old threads and all the informations, etc imho aren’t most suitable for this.
Flat view endless scrolling frontpage without static subforums is good for instant chit-chat like community but just isn’t old-knowledge-threads friendly. Once thread gets burried under the new threads it’s burried and forgotten forever. But that’s just my opinion.

P.S.
I expect more votes for Discourse, because there’s less and less old members left. And that’s just sad.

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Yet another bitch and moan thread. Yay.

Discourse doesn’t simply copy old website designs so there are new things to learn, yes. But just because something requires more effort to learn doesn’t mean it is not worth learning. It’s like using keystrokes on a desktop computer (CTRL+V ect). You learn them because they are efficient and it makes things easier in the long run, although technically mouse actions are more intuitive.

I think you’re possibly mistaking modern aesthetics with modern function here? As far as I can tell, threads behave the same way as they did before. Older threads appear below newer threads and commenting on an existing thread causes it to rise to the top. The old categories are still present on the sidebar so you can see the threads related to a particular topic.

What particular view are you looking for? Maybe you need a different view set as your home page. Maybe you would like it to default to this? : Categories - BudgetLightForum.com

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Categories are still there, stickies are still there, new posts move back older posts from the list but that how it works on any forum including the Drupal older version, really it’s not that much different, the only major difference is the page system replaced with the timeline . You’re describing reddit and it’s not that at all.

In my opinion the new forum is far better :

  • not just usable on mobile (or any sized screen) but actually a pleasure to use, the older one was barely usable.
  • quoting mechanism allowing easy multi quoting, quote collapsing eliminating the sometimes ridiculously long nested quotes on the older forum. Quotes link to the original comment
  • better search engine, which helps discovring older posts
  • 1st party image hosting, it was pretty common to see newcomers having difficulties adding images. Adding images now is a breeze.
  • I think the post editor is simpler to use, but some options are missing like resising 3rd party images , the instant preview is very practical.
  • dark/light modes and other themes (ToyKeeper’s)
  • better notification system.
  • bookmarks

Edit : I wrote this on mobile with my PC already turned ON 3 meters away, I didn’t even bother moving to it which would have been inconceivable for me with the older software.

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It sounds like you’re not familiar with the new platform yet, and may have even been implicitly saying so. The forum even added a note about how it was your first post this year, i.e. first post on the new platform. So things might not make sense at first. … which is relatable; that’s where everyone starts out.

But based on what you said, it sounds like you may not have understood the old platform very well either. Some of the things you noted as new-forum problems are identical to how the old forum worked.

Learning isn’t a bad thing. It may be frustrating when a need for learning is inflicted instead of chosen… but after getting past that moment of frustration, the path forward can be quite enjoyable if you approach it as an opportunity to grow instead of a chore.

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Hi there @YBF650 , thanks for your reasonable and balanced opinion.

I would actually argue that the new method is more precise, and becomes more useful the longer the thread gets. I describe this in detail and compare it with the old method here:


Hi there @Speadge , could you go into a bit more detail about these two points? I think we might not be understanding each other here. As ToyKeeper mentioned, there has been no functional change in those two aspects compared to the old forum software.

Possibly the biggest contributing factor to the rapid initial growth of BLF from the very beginning was the “Recent Posts” list of new threads and/or threads with current activity front and center on the homepage, which was strangely overlooked in most other forum engines. Now this current Discourse software was created by developers that also recognize the critical importance of showing what’s new/current on the homepage.

However, the Latest list is only one of the angles of viewing the forum, and shouldn’t be confused with its organizational structure. I totally agree with you that a Reddit-style flat-chronological forum structure is terrible for threads getting buried, and in that sense the current Discourse engine is even better than before. The only way to access the forum categories in the old forum was with a single obscure “Forum” link in the left sidebar. Every month I received multiple PMs asking “How do I post a new thread?” because they couldn’t find the forum categories and therefore couldn’t find the “New topic” button. Now the categories are much more prominent, including in the Latest topics list, which is something that I always wanted to display in the old Recent Posts list but couldn’t due to technical limitations.

It’s also worth noting that the search function we have now is head and shoulders above what we had before, which also contributes to finding and continuing valuable historical conversations. There’s also a very good mechanism on the homepage to help keep track of posts that are new for you and help you pick up where you left off on your last visit, as described here:

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It wasn’t referring to precision in terms of post number, mostly as in trying to find a specific post where you don’t know the number. A small movement of the scrollbar on some threads might move the thread by weeks of posts. The timeline slider is better in some ways, but can be inconvenient.
A way to jump to a certain date would be pretty useful, if it can be added somehow.

The new search function is great, I’ve used it plenty of times. SO much better than using “site:budgetlightforum.com” on google.

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Actually there is, although I admit it’s not at all discoverable with a desktop browser. Just hit Shift + # and you’ll get:

image

It’s actually much more discoverable in a small and/or mobile browser window:

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Two main things about Discourse I don’t like:

  • The lack of a decent hierarchical browsing mode. Makes it feel more like a blog than a forum (ironic given the old software was Drupal :rofl:).
  • Pages loading asynchronously. A blight on the internet, and makes it almost impossible to search within a thread, both since I use type-to-search a lot, and because Discourse’s search is just not that great.

Past that, I like it.

Hi there, do you mean like threading?

I definitely disagree here, in my experience Discourse’s search engine is the best local search engine I’ve used on any website. Also notice that the search icon has an “in this topic” option when you’re in the context of a thread/topic for searching within it, even if it’s thousands of posts long. But using the browser’s “Find in page” option or Ctrl+F twice will open the browser’s find-on-page controls, which do work within the loaded context of the thread. It seems like the currently loaded context is about the same as the former 30 posts per page in Drupal, so roughly a draw in that sense in my opinion.

More in terms of the navigation of the actual forum - I know there’s a sidebar with all the sections, but I always like interfaces where you can scroll down through the sections, seeing recent new/updated threads from each one together instead of just a long list of recently updated threads. Overall not a dealbreaker for using it and as an ex-forum-admin myself, I know there are good reasons discourse is so popular.

I see, thanks. You did find the Categories list right?
There are actually quite a few admin-selectable layouts for the Categories page in Discourse, including one that I think you’re describing:

I didn’t pick it because I wanted to avoid overwhelming users after the Discourse migration, but it’s an interesting option nonetheless.

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Generally i like the old style. I don’t feel super strongly about it, things change…i get old… life goes on…

I do kinda agree with Speadge in that i think there will be less necro-thread-revivals going forward.

They were both too complicated— :yawning_face: but— I was able to make them both do what I wanted them to. ( You’re not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition) Maybe we need to switch to A I… :robot:

You’re not supposed to end a sentence with a contraction either, but that’s the kind of person I’m.

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Just don’t! :grin:

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:joy:

I wondered if that post might be bothersome. Apparently it’s.

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Y’know what’s sad?
I was taught in school what a preposition is, but I have to Google “preposition” to know what one is. :man_facepalming:

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