New Version of Solar Panel Talk

[solar pete]

Hi All,

Hope everyone is having a great thanksgiving weekend. As you may have noticed this is the new version of solar panel talk, it finally arrived. Seems there is a few issues we have to sort out, like where are my subscribed threads? Well you can find those if you click to look at your inbox, you will see a bit further down that says subscriptions. Dont worry we will put it back like it was probably early next week now.

If anyone finds anything else not working or something they think need to be addressed please post it in this thread or you can PM me, well some of you can. I think we compromised on PM's, Some wanted them gone altogether but I think we just raised the number of posts needed before you can PM

The other thing was the style sheet that sits over the top, well something went wrong with it so Gregory has launched it with the vanilla template and we will get to fixing that next week, cheers all

[sensij]

Looks great! I haven't tested much, but will let you know if I run into any trouble. Thank you for continuing to support this forum.

[Sunking]

I like the older version better. Will take time to get use to it. At least are Icons are back.

I do notice a problem being dyslexic, Auto Spell Checker does not work first time around. I have to Save, then Edit before it works.

[J.P.M.]

On any thread, the oldest (first) post comes up first for me. Call me a Luddite/ignorant/stupid, but I can't find how to change things to show most recent post on top,

[SunEagle]

I noticed that the clock is off by an hour. It is only 8:18 PM Eastern Time and I have been seeing posts almost an hour later.

[Living Large]

I noticed that the clock is off by an hour. It is only 8:18 PM Eastern Time and I have been seeing posts almost an hour later.

You're seeing the future, man. Awesome.

[SunEagle]

Gee. Now I only have to pick 6 numbers for the lottery and I will be gold.

[Alchete]

The forums look more modern. Good!

Some feedback --

1. You now have a lot of whitespace, and your STICKY THREADS are OVERWHELMING the new posts.

By my count there are 8 sticky threads and 10 new threads visible in the (most popular) forum "Solar Panels for Home". That's almost a 50/50 ratio. Not good at all. Terrible actually.

Additionally, many of the sticky threads are VERY dated and/or somewhat non-important.

How many solar homeowners care about zener diodes??? I'd guess 1% at most. Probably 0.1%. People in general are buying solar panels from installers, not studying EE for 4 years to build their own zener diode setups... And, if they are that crazy, there's already a separate DIY Solar section where this sticky would be more appropriate.

An Earth4Energy scam sticky that happened in 2009??? Six years ago? And, all the links in the original post are broken. This should be deleted yesterday.

It would help readability if you cleaned up your sticky threads and limited them to be no more than 3 or 4. This will result in a better browsing experience for all visitors. No one wants to scroll down, and then click through page after page just to find new posts. I find this really frustrating in general, and even more so with the new layout.


2. Also -- was going to upload a picture to illustrate this, but you have a 200KB limit -- which is an incredibly archaic amount of storage that exceeded the simple screenshot I took. C'mon!

I'd recommend either increasing your image size limit to something more appropriate for 2015, or if you're space limited, allowing easy linking to external images as every other message board does.


3. Finally, "Solar Panels for Your Home" should be the FIRST LINK in the Solar Panels for Your Home section, not the second.
- It's the most popular message board. BY FAR.
- It's the same name as the heading.
- And, people read from the top down.

This isn't necessarily a "new" issue, but more of a general user experience issue. The most important items in Western culture are should be placed top-left and top down. Why is "Solar for Panels for Home with Solar Batteries" (redundant "solar" btw) the first link, when it only has 1% of the posts of the most popular forum? Violating the rules of visual hierarchy makes it harder to scan for the most important forums... Most popular = on top.

That's my .02 UX feedback.

Cheers.

[f1b]

The "forgot password or user name?" isn't working.

And of course I forgot my password...

It's possible that Yahoo mail is silently deleting the emails, but I haven't had problems with yahoo doing that, so I doubt it.

[Gstachura]

I like it now that I finally got logged in after many attempts at password guessing and still waiting for the password reminder email from 3 hours ago. I agree with the above post on all of the stickies. Way too many that are many years old and no longer relevant. Did I mention I like it though? Nice work!

[ILFE]

The other thing was the style sheet that sits over the top, well something went wrong with it so Gregory has launched it with the vanilla template and we will get to fixing that next week, cheers all

Great idea, increasing the number of posts before being able to send PMs. I do the same on my (totally unrelated to solar) forums.

Great look, Pete. Ya done good, sir. Great look, and great forum software.

[gradysfalcon]

I like the new look

[bernard]

I prefer the way older theme looked like. The nuance of blue with white was the right choice, at least for my eyes.

Is there any possibility it can be changed from the User Settings panel?

I tried changing this default one (in User Settings -> Account -> Forum Skin) to other 3 (Blue Yellow, Blue Yellow White, Defaule vB5 Style), and none of them worked.

[SunEagle]

I like the older version better. Will take time to get use to it. At least are Icons are back.

I do notice a problem being dyslexic, Auto Spell Checker does not work first time around. I have to Save, then Edit before it works.

I also see the lack of having spell check before you make a post.

[Sunking]

I also see the lack of having spell check before you make a post.

Copy that. Fix it.

At least Avatars are back.