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Network Talk
For discussions about network-wide site topics, announcments, etc.
Hosted by Jim Starkweather
Forum pages no longer showing Site Content...
staff_Jim
Staff MemberPublisher
KITMAKER NETWORK
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New Hampshire, United States
Member Since: December 15, 2001
entire network: 12,571 Posts
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Posted: Tuesday, November 07, 2017 - 04:59 AM UTC
I just added some new functionality to clean up Forums that are a bit over-cluttered with site related content posts. Back in the old days many members use to simply use the forums to find all the new content on the site (rather than peruse the homepage, news page or other article areas. Things have changed a lot since back then so it doesn't make sense (by default) to be showing a bunch of topics that duplicate the news, reviews, and features we already have listed on our homepage, Facebook, and elsewhere. Of course if you WANT to still see these things you will have that option by checking the "Show Site Content Related Topics" and hitting the "Save Selected" submit button to the right of that area. I also fixed the issue of non-associated topics not showing up if you use the filtered view, so now you also have an option to include those topics in your preferred forum view.

This current does not affect the Latest Posts page in any way and there is the Content forum on Model Shipwrights that is also going to get emptied by default for this feature. I need to add an exclusion for that forum I guess.

If you have questions, suggestions, or see some bugs related to this change please post them here.

Thanks,
Jim
RobinNilsson
Staff MemberDirector of Member Services
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Member Since: November 29, 2006
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Posted: Wednesday, November 08, 2017 - 03:24 PM UTC
One confusing aspect of this change is that a News item shows up as the latest post for a forum when viewing the Main page of the forums but once I go into that forum, e.g. armour/afv, the "latest post" is nowhere to be seen.
I have now used the option to show site content.
The editing functions when adding a comment to a news item leave something to be desired to put it politely.
Adding replies to the corresponding thread in a forum makes it a lot easier to edit, add images, smileys/emoticons et.c, being able to hit carriage return to make a line break without immediately committing the comment, the ability to go back and edit the whole post/comment.
/ Robin
drabslab
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Posted: Wednesday, November 08, 2017 - 09:47 PM UTC

Quoted Text

One confusing aspect of this change is that a News item shows up as the latest post for a forum when viewing the Main page of the forums but once I go into that forum, e.g. armour/afv, the "latest post" is nowhere to be seen.
I have now used the option to show site content.
The editing functions when adding a comment to a news item leave something to be desired to put it politely.
Adding replies to the corresponding thread in a forum makes it a lot easier to edit, add images, smileys/emoticons et.c, being able to hit carriage return to make a line break without immediately committing the comment, the ability to go back and edit the whole post/comment.
/ Robin


Or basically, instead of the simplified reply window for a news item, use the standard reply window that is otherwise available under the "reply" button in the thread.

RobinNilsson
Staff MemberDirector of Member Services
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Member Since: November 29, 2006
entire network: 6,693 Posts
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Posted: Thursday, November 09, 2017 - 12:09 AM UTC

Quoted Text


Quoted Text

One confusing aspect of this change is that a News item shows up as the latest post for a forum when viewing the Main page of the forums but once I go into that forum, e.g. armour/afv, the "latest post" is nowhere to be seen.
I have now used the option to show site content.
The editing functions when adding a comment to a news item leave something to be desired to put it politely.
Adding replies to the corresponding thread in a forum makes it a lot easier to edit, add images, smileys/emoticons et.c, being able to hit carriage return to make a line break without immediately committing the comment, the ability to go back and edit the whole post/comment.
/ Robin


Or basically, instead of the simplified reply window for a news item, use the standard reply window that is otherwise available under the "reply" button in the thread.



Good thinking

I solved my problems by ticking the box to show site content and then 'save selected' to make the tick permanent.

/ Robin
drabslab
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Posted: Thursday, November 09, 2017 - 01:46 AM UTC

Quoted Text


Good thinking

/ Robin


I have my moments of enlightenment

Unfortunately, they are very rare
barkingdigger
Staff MemberAssociate Editor
ARMORAMA
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Member Since: June 20, 2008
entire network: 3,981 Posts
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Posted: Tuesday, November 28, 2017 - 09:07 PM UTC
At the risk of resurrecting a slumbering thread, I ticked all the boxes days ago (because I usually go to News etc via forums rather than the Home Page), but today I noticed they had all un-ticked themselves again! What gives?
staff_Jim
Staff MemberPublisher
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Member Since: December 15, 2001
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Posted: Tuesday, November 28, 2017 - 09:19 PM UTC
Hi Tom,
Well since the email I got is using "www.armorama.com" as the URL I am going to assume you are using a login for that domain. IF you are also logged in on "armorama.kitmaker.net" then those two sites will have DIFFERENT cookies. So it may be that you moved from one to the other at some point and are seeing a site you didn't setup those preferences on. Just a guess.

Cheers,
Jim
Trisaw
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Member Since: December 24, 2002
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Posted: Tuesday, November 28, 2017 - 10:08 PM UTC
I've noticed that when I log in with username and password, the username|settings|inbox doesn't appear. I have to click login|join again for these three words to appear, meaning it's like Armorama doesn't log in the first time around with username and password. This has been happening for about a month and I've never experienced this problem before after the red log in bar marches across the screen until recently.

I'm using Firefox Quantum, the latest version, v57.0
staff_Jim
Staff MemberPublisher
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Member Since: December 15, 2001
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Posted: Tuesday, November 28, 2017 - 10:15 PM UTC
Hi Peter,
That is all due to this change. You can fix that by changing your bookmarks though. For example if I come to www.armorama.com I am not logged in currently. When I get the login window it redirects me to armorama.kitamker.net (where I am logged in) and then hopefully back to the page I was trying to access. So yeah it's a bit clunky if your bookmark isn't set to the *.kitmakaer.net version of the site.

Cheers,
Jim
barkingdigger
Staff MemberAssociate Editor
ARMORAMA
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Posted: Wednesday, November 29, 2017 - 04:52 AM UTC
Thanks Jim - I'll have to look at the URLs and cookies. (When did computers start to have more cookies than a supermarket snack aisle? I'm sure it'll lead to health issues down the road... )
Trisaw
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Member Since: December 24, 2002
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Posted: Wednesday, November 29, 2017 - 09:02 AM UTC

Quoted Text

Hi Peter,
That is all due to this change. You can fix that by changing your bookmarks though. For example if I come to www.armorama.com I am not logged in currently. When I get the login window it redirects me to armorama.kitamker.net (where I am logged in) and then hopefully back to the page I was trying to access. So yeah it's a bit clunky if your bookmark isn't set to the *.kitmakaer.net version of the site.

Cheers,
Jim


Thanks, Jim. The armorama.kitmaker.com login works as you described compared to the armorama.com's login.
firstcircle
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Member Since: November 19, 2008
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Posted: Monday, December 11, 2017 - 09:46 PM UTC
Show Site Content Related Topics (off by default)
Yup, I had sort of noticed this, but only understood it once I saw Darren's reply in a review thread showing as the latest post but not appearing in the AFV forum, then I realised it was being filtered out.

So, have you done any analysis on whether it's affected traffic to site content? We know there are those characters who only read news threads via the forum... Have they stopped reading them altogether, or have they changed their habits?

We need to know, Jim!
staff_Jim
Staff MemberPublisher
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New Hampshire, United States
Member Since: December 15, 2001
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Posted: Tuesday, December 12, 2017 - 12:40 AM UTC
I just looked at the site analytics for areas like the news section. No appreciable difference comparing the last 30 days to the prior 30 days. I am sure it's having some effect, but the forums are really there for MEMBER discussions, not site content. And of course the latest posts page still shows all these topics if you opt to so that means those people using LP are unaffected.

Cheers,
Jim
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