The Site itself

[LamentingQuill]

So are we sticking with simple machines? I have to say, I'm not liking it at all. 

Is this a permanent thing or temporary?

[Lyrical]

So are we sticking with simple machines? I have to say, I'm not liking it at all.

Is this a permanent thing or temporary?

It's always been a Simply Machines forum, this is just a newer version than the old one we were using. Veks had the old one heavily modded, this doesn't have all of his mods added to it.

I don't like the look or function of it much myself but I'm pretty sure that he had to update it for lots of background reasons. (Security, database connections, server side stuffs, I think)

Last I heard he was planning on adding back in some of the old mods like multiple columns, bookmarks, and I'm not sure what else.

I thought I saw an update about it somewhere around here recently from one of the Gods/Goddesses

[Vekseid]

I did buy a Xenforo license for E, but it doesn't properly convert pms and the permissions are far less efficient.  I can fix the former but not the latter. There is also the issue of them leaving the editor in a broken state for months. 

On the other hand,  some smf code is going to be 30 soon. It isn't exactly state of the art. Xenforo is much easier to program for. 

I am interested in people's opinions on the matter. 

[midnightblack]

I am interested in people's opinions on the matter.

Speaking only for myself, but really I'm open to put up with just about any inconvenience in a trade-off for a dark theme (my eyes would appreciate it so very much) and a return of the bookmark function.

[RedPhoenix]

Speaking only for myself, but really I'm open to put up with just about any inconvenience in a trade-off for a dark theme (my eyes would appreciate it so very much) and a return of the bookmark function.

Took the words out of my mouth. Whatever brings bookmarks and themes back would be my vote.

[Lain]

I would be thrilled to have bookmarks back. I can deal with the rest of the newness. A dark theme woulld be appreciated, the old themes never worked for me (always reverted back to the default) so I never used them. 

That's just my two bits...

Thanks Vekseid!

[Lilias]

Firefox has the Dark Reader add-on, which applies a dark theme on everything. Pretty sure Chrome has some equivalent too. I can take or leave the column layout, but bookmarks are the single most useful thing around, and I'd be ecstatic to have them back.

[Geraint]

Having bookmarks back would be a blessing. 

But what I find desperately needed is something that will stop the miles and miles of gibberish generated when a post with any significant amount of BBtext is edited (for any reason).  It has pretty much destroyed half of my OOs thread.

Sometimes the gibberish shows on the on the screen after the edit, sometimes not.  But it slows down page loading significantly, often generating a blue screen and a warning from Firefox.  And it gets worse with any subsequent edits.  If I edit out the gibberish, it comes right back.   

[Lexandria]

Having bookmarks back would be a blessing. 

But what I find desperately needed is something that will stop the miles and miles of gibberish generated when a post with any significant amount of BBtext is edited (for any reason).  It has pretty much destroyed half of my OOs thread.

Sometimes the gibberish shows on the on the screen after the edit, sometimes not.  But it slows down page loading significantly, often generating a blue screen and a warning from Firefox.  And it gets worse with any subsequent edits.  If I edit out the gibberish, it comes right back.   

So a lot of times (not always, because I had some very complicated tables completely destroyed in another thread) this is because of the WYSIWYG editor that was automatically re-activated during the switch over.

In [Look and Layout] --> [Posting] there's a check box to remove the WYSIWYG editor which should hopefully help.

There's still some random stuff that will break the formatting, like the HR code, and it will sometimes try to auto-fill ending tags if there's a typo, but turning off the WYSIWYG editor should help a lot.

[Geraint]

Actually, that was the first thing I looked for since it seemed like a WYSIWYG problem. I have the WYSIYWYG editor turned off by default.

[Lexandria]

Actually, that was the first thing I looked for since it seemed like a WYSIWYG problem. I have the WYSIYWYG editor turned off by default.

Maybe it's doing the thing that happened with my tables then. I have noticed a difference between the quick edit option and the modify function. Sometimes one or the other will just...add stuff out of nowhere.

edit: I double checked: the [modify] function is what really tends to bork it up more than the [quick edit] does for me.

[Geraint]

Maybe it's doing the thing that happened with my tables then. I have noticed a difference between the quick edit option and the modify function. Sometimes one or the other will just...add stuff out of nowhere.

edit: I double checked: the [modify] function is what really tends to bork it up more than the [quick edit] does for me.

Thank you! I'll definitely try that then.  I had some early trouble with quick edit, so stopped using it.  I hopefully that will work, because it took me a week to fix the first page of MY OOs and have eighteen more to go, plus my requests.   

[midnightblack]

Firefox has the Dark Reader add-on, which applies a dark theme on everything. Pretty sure Chrome has some equivalent too.

Blessings to you.

[Amaris]

@Vekseid If you do end up going with the Xenforo option, is there a possibility to still get these functions that we're struggling without (like the bookmarks) in the interim while we wait for that possible switch?

[Wistful Dream]

Maybe it's doing the thing that happened with my tables then. I have noticed a difference between the quick edit option and the modify function. Sometimes one or the other will just...add stuff out of nowhere.

edit: I double checked: the [modify] function is what really tends to bork it up more than the [quick edit] does for me.

That's super useful to know, it's been driving me batty to have the formatting messed up with no clear apparent reason. It keeps adding duplicate fonts and sizes and just frustrating as heck.

[Lyrical]

I did buy a Xenforo license for E, but it doesn't properly convert pms and the permissions are far less efficient.  I can fix the former but not the latter. There is also the issue of them leaving the editor in a broken state for months.

On the other hand,  some smf code is going to be 30 soon. It isn't exactly state of the art. Xenforo is much easier to program for.

I am interested in people's opinions on the matter.

I'm not familiar with Xenforo but thank you for the update. And thank you for all the work you do in the background, I'm sure that maintaining such an enormous forum is sometimes a lot of work.

[Lexandria]

That's super useful to know, it's been driving me batty to have the formatting messed up with no clear apparent reason. It keeps adding duplicate fonts and sizes and just frustrating as heck.

It sucks because there's no preview option for the quick-edits, but it seems to not do the extra tags bit quite as badly.

As an example, on the messed up tables (I still haven't managed to fix; the first one took something like 6 hours) if I use the [modify] option, it adds a ton of space to the top of the tables, so many extra tags all over the place, and makes it really difficult to parse the information to edit or fix anything (which is why I ended up building a new one from scratch). But the [quick edit] doesn't add the space, and usually doesn't add too many extra tags.

I have noticed that when doing new posts, sometimes the preview will not show the extra tags that are going to get added until after it's posted (or sent, if it's a PM), and [quick edit] is the only way to edit the tags back off the post, since [modify] will either add them again or break the post worse.

[Wistful Dream]

It sucks because there's no preview option for the quick-edits, but it seems to not do the extra tags bit quite as badly.

As an example, on the messed up tables (I still haven't managed to fix; the first one took something like 6 hours) if I use the [modify] option, it adds a ton of space to the top of the tables, so many extra tags all over the place, and makes it really difficult to parse the information to edit or fix anything (which is why I ended up building a new one from scratch). But the [quick edit] doesn't add the space, and usually doesn't add too many extra tags.

I have noticed that when doing new posts, sometimes the preview will not show the extra tags that are going to get added until after it's posted (or sent, if it's a PM), and [quick edit] is the only way to edit the tags back off the post, since [modify] will either add them again or break the post worse.

That tracks with my experience too, so at least I'm no longer wondering if I'm going crazy. I've just tried to edit as little as possible and strip away the extra coding where I can. Hopefully it's something easy to fix.

[Geraint]

It sucks because there's no preview option for the quick-edits, but it seems to not do the extra tags bit quite as badly.

As an example, on the messed up tables (I still haven't managed to fix; the first one took something like 6 hours) if I use the [modify] option, it adds a ton of space to the top of the tables, so many extra tags all over the place, and makes it really difficult to parse the information to edit or fix anything (which is why I ended up building a new one from scratch). But the [quick edit] doesn't add the space, and usually doesn't add too many extra tags.

I have noticed that when doing new posts, sometimes the preview will not show the extra tags that are going to get added until after it's posted (or sent, if it's a PM), and [quick edit] is the only way to edit the tags back off the post, since [modify] will either add them again or break the post worse.

I can add something to this.  My experience with the modify function and preview suggests that it isn't modify that is adding the garbage, but rather the Preview button ... meaning that if one doesn't preview but rather just post, the trash often doesn't appear.

This let me to a work around to actually get a clean copy of the first post of my OOs.  I copied that post in a PM to myself then cleared out as much trash as I could, and then send it to myself without previewing at all. (saving a draft before posting is extra insurance)  Then I do it again to get garbage I missed the first time and so forth.  It's not a quick fix but it does eventually give me a clean page with a clean draft behind it.  Then I copy it or the draft out of the PM and post it where it belongs (without previewing). 

That has worked for me ... cumbersome but effective. 

 

[Esoterica]

Well my own two cents on the matter for whatever it is worth, is that for first, bookmarks and secondly, a dark theme, I really am willing to put up with whatever for that. Either forum host.

[Unholy]

I did buy a Xenforo license for E, but it doesn't properly convert pms and the permissions are far less efficient.  I can fix the former but not the latter. There is also the issue of them leaving the editor in a broken state for months.

On the other hand,  some smf code is going to be 30 soon. It isn't exactly state of the art. Xenforo is much easier to program for.

I am interested in people's opinions on the matter.

How 'less efficient' are the permissions?

And for their editor being in a broken state for months...how 'broken' is broken?

Xenforo being easier to program for sounds like a major plus though, and I will admit the Xenforo layouts I've been have generally looked pretty slick & have accessible dark modes.

[Miss Nyx]

So, I've just enabled the Super Dark Extension on Google Chrome. Here's what it looks like. And already my eyes feel so much better. 😭🖤 You might need to play with it a bit, I have mine set on Invert... every other site looks wonky but Elliquiy is looking alright so I guess I'll just on/off it as necessary until a dark skin is available on E.

[ObscureObscenities]

Dark Reader on Chrome Extensions might be a slightly better dark alternative, it handles the posting box, and it doesn't do the flat black, but more the dark mode grey black thats a bit easier looking.

[Miss Nyx]

Dark Reader on Chrome Extensions might be a slightly better dark alternative, it handles the posting box, and it doesn't do the flat black, but more the dark mode grey black thats a bit easier looking.

Excellent suggestion, I’ll give it a whirl. 👏

[RedPhoenix]

Dark Reader is on firefox too! ^^