It would be useful for comparison for how to adjust the new site to solve some of the visual issues.
A local DNS override can do the trick. Like, putting something into /etc/hosts or whatever the equivalent of that is in Windows or MacOS… and then restart the browser or force it to clear its host cache.
The old site is read-only though, and not guaranteed to stay online much longer.
2 Thanks
What is the DNS for the old site?
I tried to save it but they both seem to redirect to the new site:
170.75.164.123
5.161.81.229
This is going to be hard. I am not sure where to start 
quite confusing.
Where or how do I find my subscriptions (threads I was subscribed to) ?
subscriptions didn’t migrate, but can be recreated with these steps:
1 Thank
Yes, those threads were/are gold of this forum (if it is still a forum ? 
) that I collected over the years. And I am not talking about 1-2 years, I am member here for (I would tell you exact number but can’t find that either, but), I think over 10 years.
So how do I find all those threads so I could recreate my knowledge collection?
I only see description of new “tools” but not steps to find mentioned threads I was subscribed to!
you’re right: you need to first find your old subscriptions before you can mark them with watching/tracking/bookmarks. a good way to get started is to review “topics” (threads) and “replies” (posts) in your activity here:
https://budgetlightforum.com/my/activity
@sb56637 may have more advice.
If you delete a post, it isn’t really deleted, and everyone can still read it if they click the edit icon. And you cannot then re-edit it to undo the delete, having discovered that delete is useless. So it’s even worse than useless.
Not only are deletes always visible, but SO ARE EDITS. Any previous versions of a post remains available.
This means that you can never remove any statement by editing it, or remove a web link that you no longer wish to be publicly available. No longer can you correct yourself if you posted something in a poor state of mind, etc.
Hi @Sirius9 , great to see you here.
All of the old threads and posts and private messages are still here. As mentioned in the tips that others have mentioned, I would recommend that you start here:
- https://budgetlightforum.com/search?expanded=true&q=in%3Aposted (List of threads that you posted in, which are often the same ones you were subscribed to. Note that you can sort them by date or by the size of the thread.)
- https://budgetlightforum.com/my/activity/topics (List of threads that you created.)
This forum software has been proven to work well for large forums with very active members that want to keep track of everything that’s going on, both previous activity and new activity. It’s definitely not lacking in features compared to the old forum engine. But I do need to do a better of job of explaining some of the new aspects and features, so my apologies for not doing that yet.
Hi @Hoop , regarding the functionality/behavior that you describe, it’s an optional feature that I can disable. I’m still on the fence, but I’ll definitely take into account your comments.
With the “reply” button integrating a “quote” every time it is used, there’s inherently less of an ability to edit and redact statements than there was on the old site, where I felt the quote feature was already overused. Now practically every reply in a thread features a quote of a previous post.
The aforementioned features in aggregate mean that I need to alter the way I use the site as compared to before. I used to edit my posts a lot in order to refine statements, correct information that I further investigated, and so on. It was like a living document, a work in progress which I refined over time. I used to delete a lot of posts too, when I considered it redundant, or if I decided I was not sure enough about some of the statements I made, or if in hindsight I decided it was rude, and so on. I’ve probably deleted close to half of my posts historically, none of which were quoted prior to doing so.
Being able to view past edits and deleted posts has advantages and disadvantages, so the choice will be difficult.
Theoretically I appreciate having the ability to view past edits and deletions, but practically that may not be the best overall choice for the forum and there have been times that I was thankful my edits and deletions were no longer visible.
To use a marine metaphor, I am glad sb56637 is an experienced “Sea Captain” capable of “steering large ships” and making these important decisions.
1 Thank
Seconding Hoop regarding edit and deletion, beeing able to see every edits and deleted post is just silly.
Thanks to everyone for their thoughtful replies. It looks like there are more disadvantages than advantages to the post revisions button, so it’s been removed.
Regarding quoting, it’s another case of weighing the advantages and the disadvantages, and the software offers an additional option:
I chose to disable that default behavior to avoid giving the impression that the new forum is buggy or is disallowing users from quoting. Posts containing entire or partial quotes of previous posts that have since been edited or removed have always been a frequent occurrence on internet forums, including with our old forum software.
With that being said, the new software is much better at showing the threading (who is replying to whom) in long discussions, plus it has the user @ping feature to indicate who you’re replying to, although that shouldn’t be abused since the pinged user will receive a notification. It also shows a preview of a post if the link is pasted on its own line:
If Hoop were to edit or delete that post then the preview would reflect that.
So I won’t enforce any new rules on quoting, but there are now more ways than before to avoid unnecessarily quoting entire long posts while still indicating who/what we’re replying to.
Can there be more tools in the tool bar ? I’m not fluent in markdown, BBcode or HTML, nor are many people I think.
Like for inserting image from third party host, and is it possible to resize them ? I want to edit some of my old posts because now the pictures take the full width.
How do I resize internally hosted picture ? there are numbers but changing them crop the image instead of resizing it.
There are some additions that I could install, but I need to make sure they’ll be viable in the long term.
Simply put the image URL on its own line. For example:
https://getwallpapers.com/wallpaper/full/b/5/f/563687.jpg
becomes
Regarding image resizing, it’s generally preferable to let the forum software deal with the image size for different screen sizes. But there might be some easy options, I’ll get back with you on that.
1 Thank
I noticed something that I don’t really care for.
In the blue scroll bar on the right of the thread, you can use the slider to choose what post you want to look at.
The thing is, there’s a huge difference between Feb 22 and Feb '22.
One refers to February 22nd, 2023 (the current year) and the other refers to 2022.
I think that '22 should be not be shortened and it should be extended to “2022.”
Maybe 22 should also be lengthened to “22nd” to further avoid confusion.
2 Thanks