Forum Technical Suggestions Thread.

MSE_Martin

Hi,

I know many regular users have their own expertise with Forum software and want to share or impart ideas which could help all users on here.

If you have a technical suggestion that you think could improve the performance/operations of this forum. We'd love to hear it, this is the thread. We currently use the latest version of the Vbulletin operating system.

Important Note

This is a thread, for technical suggestions from techinical people, looking at changing settings or codings, rather than a wish list of things you'd like changed (they're welcome but more difficult and I want to keep this thread specific).

The more specific the suggestion and how it would be implemented (and anythign we should watch for) the better.

Martin

PS. I Suspect I wont understand much, so won't be popping in often, but I will ask our Techies, and especially Ian who is our specific forum developer to keep an eye on this.

MSE_Martin

After all the chat about wanting changes, Im a little disappointed there are no suggestions

ThinkingOfLinking

I have ideas, none of which are original, and I wouldn't know how to implement them, therefore advise the MSE team on how to. It would be lovely if after a certain length of membership, much as newbie posters not being allowed to post links, if you could remove the 240 seconds between PMs rule and also maybe allow us to send a PM to more than one person at once? After all, if we spam/offend others, we can be reported and/or put on ignore...

fermi

MSE_Martin wrote: »

After all the chat about wanting changes, Im a little disappointed there are no suggestions

Got to say I agree.

The people who were criticising are conspicuous with their absence on this thread. Says a lot.

ThinkingOfLinking

I don't know how popular/feasible this would be but I keep thinking:

Could old threads be deleted?

I don't mean ones which have just expired but here's an example.

I came here looking for a discount code, ran the relevant search and came up with threads fro 2005. Who still needs to see those?!

So if certain old threads which clearly serve no further purpose could be removed, we'd all have less to wade through, there'd be more space on the boards and it may help it run faster?

Another example is old/expired grabbits/freebies from years ago.

One other thing which I think we've asked for before is some way of "hiding" threads you don't want to see or being able to mark them as read. This would be great for competitions so we can tell if we've entered or not, or stop having to wade through pages and pages again. An example of the "hiding" is anyone who uses Onepoll.com for surveys, you can "hide" surveys which aren't relevant to you; YOU click on them yourself to make them hidden so it's entirely personalised. Hope this makes sense.

CountryLad

Usernames are case sensitive, which is fine, but new registrations are allowed on this basis, too, which is a recipe for confusion, so that e.g. Lorweld, or godders would be permitted as a new registrant (sorry, board guides! ).

It would be simple to check for identical usernames on a case insensitive basis during the registration process.

Errata

The word censor will not allow me to read or post about the name of Eric Morley MP's constituency, which is S!!!!horpe
(S c u n t h o r p e). This seems absurd, unsophisticated and infantile - thorpe is an ancient english word describing a settlement, indeed it is suggested the word has Norse roots.

The censor also prevents me from using the rather mild descriptive word
!!!!less (f e c k l e s s).

Isn't it time the use of this particular censor was reviewed and judgment was brought to bear on what censorship is sensible and what is rather ridiculous ?

ajkey76

In my forum of just under 8,000 (active users) I found that tweaking vbulletin and mysql tables reduced server load by 3/4 which then had the positive effect of reducing server costs (they halved).
My main problem was the search option - using phenominal resources. It took me a month of tweaking to get it right - throughout that time the site and search function went offline.

It was very complicated but i also switched to lighty which helped a lot too. They also help with frequent DDoS attacks i experience.

Also cacti has helped loads too and i highly recommend it to help monitor the site

google for stuff- i can't post links yet

ThinkingOfLinking

Errata wrote: »

The word censor will not allow me to read or post about the name of Eric Morley MP's constituency, which is S!!!!horpe
(S c u n t h o r p e). This seems absurd, unsophisticated and infantile - thorpe is an ancient english word describing a settlement, indeed it is suggested the word has Norse roots.

The censor also prevents me from using the rather mild descriptive word
!!!!less (f e c k l e s s).

Isn't it time the use of this particular censor was reviewed and judgment was brought to bear on what censorship is sensible and what is rather ridiculous ?

I agree. I saw the S word on one of the forums here, in all its uncensored glory too so I don't know how it works. I remember one website ***'ed out the middle of the word cucumber though so this isn't quite as bad.:rotfl:

Errata

If that happened on this forum and there was a birdwatching/veg growing thread it would make for interesting deciphering
The word censor used on MSE does seem perverse when children who can read see the censored words in their full glory in any newspaper they care to pick up.

kalps

Hi everyone,

I am with moneysaving expert from quite a while but never post a thread. I tried one today in referral board but it didnt allowed me. Could anyone please help me what might be the reason and how should i go about it. Thanks in advance.