Before someone asks, I'll just get this out now. Here are a list of things I will implement soon here on The Guide:
Signature file. Some of you had the best signatures on your messages. This feature will be the first thing I'll implement here... hopefully in the next few days.
Mark-up. Right now, the forums filter out HTML. I'll include some kind of clever mark-up that will parse bold, italics, and URL's.
There are other things, but they're mostly administrative functions. The idea here is that I want to be able to add news or links or whatever from any browser anywhere on the planet, so I can spend less time coding and more time coasting!
I dont see how you can improve this site more than it already is!! I am just so impressed with the whole thing! ALL HAIL TO THE CP PLACE GOD!! (JEFF!) LMAO!! :)
What does that stand for? I can't keep up with Net acronyms!
A good site is never "done," just functional. So far so good... none of the bugs in the beta stage have resurfaced (knocks on wood).
Still lots of things to improve and fix though. In fact, I have to figure out how to divide the forum topics up into blocks of 20 or so... something I didn't do when testing because, well, we didn't have that many topics!
Hmmm, couple of questions and some what I like and don't like.
1) Is this still UBB?
2) The color scheme is interesting. I'm not sure yet if I like it or not.
Commentary and caveats:
1) An option, like on the old board, to post or not, was kind of nice.
2) This loads a lot faster on my slow, old, POS computer than the old board did. It renders much more quickly.
3) Sigs, info pics, stuff'n'such like that which I'm sure you're working on.
4) Cedar Point's price jump sucks.
5) What is up with those banners at the top of every page? Have they always been there or are they just more annoying than before? =) Seriously, during lag time, I've had them load and nothing else on the page.
*** This post was edit by Bill on 11/25/99. ***
1) Nope. This is NOT UBB. This board is backed by an actual SQL database, not slow CGI. (And I wrote it, dammit!)
2) I don't know either... Living with it for now.
1) I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "post or not."
2) The quick render has more to do with the way the page is served than its design. Like I said... database driven = good thing.
3) Yep.
4) Good thing I bought a season pass! ;)
5) The banners have always been there, it's just the board is much faster than the ads now. There's also one with Java that is most annoying, and I might drop it.
*** This post was edit by Jeff on 11/25/99. ***
Hey Jeff, I love the new site. Anyway I have one question: are you going to be able to tell whos a "member" and whos a "newbie" any more. That was always helpful finding out if it was someone new posting. Well anyway I love the new site and keep up the good work!:)
*** This post was edit by CoasterChuckey on 11/25/99. ***
We'll see.
Oh, I thought of a couple of more things today.
(hehe)
When you enter a iscussion area (General, MF, etc) and it shows the list of discussions that have new messages with a yes! and those that don't with a no...
Well, new threads don't get a Yes! marker. In general, especially, that gets somewhat confusing. I find new discussions by looking at the date stamps, currently.
(P.S., by Yes - No post markers, I meant the images at the bottom of the UBB set-up, one of which was reply to this thread.)
the color scheme is killing my eyes......really orange on yellow...just stick a knife in my eye it'll be faster...lol
In reply to what Bill said I also noticed the same thing last night. Some of the threads did have the "New" marker, but some new threads did not. I don't know it might just a problem with my browser, because this used to happen sometimes at the old CP Place.
Is anybody else having trouble with the "punch the monkey" add at the top? Whenever I scroll the page the monkey add moves up and wipes out the top tool bar, URL address window, etc. at the top of the browser.
Sometimes I dont even click on the monkey add at all, but I get taken to the adds page anyway.
*** This post was edit by CoasterChuckey on 11/26/99. ***
Regarding the new post indicators...
As long as you move around through CP Place using the navigation at the top or bottom of the table, the indicators should be correct. However, like UBB, this is dependent on you entering CP Place by the link in the main menu down the left side. Here's what actually happens...
When you enter CP Place through the main menu (or from the home page), the site sets a temporary cookie with time and date to compare to. This happens every time you go to http://www.guidetothepoint.com/thepoint/cpplace/, so if you're using that link to go back to the forum list, it will reset your indicators. I suspect this is what's happening. I noticed some of you have added the forum list to your My Guide favorites. If you've done this, be sure it's the page with the above address.
On the other hand, if you use the "CP Place Home" link at the top and bottom, you'll notice it goes to the forum list with an address that has "action=keep" on the end. That prevents the cookie from being reset.
Regarding the monkey ad, I hate to remove it (it pays well per impression), but if it's causing problems in your browser, I'll pull it from rotation.
Hey Jeff, I dont mind the monkey add, its not that big of a problem. Plus if it helps the site get money for improvements Im all for it!
Don't yank the monkey on my account. It's a pain, but worse things could happen. Besides, maybe it's fine with most everybody else. I just switched to OS 9 and for all I know maybe IE 4.5 and the new OS and the monkey just don't get along.
It might be IE 4.5. I've been displeased with both of the latest Mac browsers, and I've found Netscape to be the less buggy, more compatible of the two (exactly the opposite from Windows).
One other thing I though of regarding the new post indicators... I know some people on networks at work can't get cookies, which would surely cause the indicators to be incorrect.
The only problem i have had with this new layout, is that my links on my guide are not working for some reason, any reason why?
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Likes her coasters like her men, fast and furious!
I identified that problem... you can't add CP Place pages to My Guide for various reasons. I think that's a good thing anyway because there's always a chance that the posting member or moderator removed something anyway. I removed the buttons from these pages.
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Jeff
Webmaster/Guide to The Point
The only other problem I see, might just mine, but on the colum that says yes or no for new post, mine usually says no, even though there have been new posts, actually several, it still says no new posts, it worked the first few times i was on here, but hasnt worked since.
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Likes her coasters like her men, fast and furious!
That's because you're going directly to individual forums, and not starting from the CP Place home page. If you enter CP Place from any address other than http://www.guidetothepoint.com/thepoint/cpplace/ or http://www.guidetothepoint.com/thepoint/cpplace/default.asp the indicators will not work correctly. This was also the case with the old system.
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Jeff
Webmaster/Guide to The Point