I appreciate all the thought and hard work that is going into the site. That said, it would be nice to have a bit of peace and quiet for a while. I am finding the constant change a struggle. I am sure I will get used to all the new functionality and I dare say I might find that it improves my experience here. In the past though, I have stopped using sites that have gone into a ‘permanent revolution,’ as it just started to feel like work every time I logged on and had ceased to serve the function I most require, which is five minutes relaxed and peaceful meandering.

I don’t understand why this is becoming an issue. I actually like the change because it gives the place a more “traditional” feel, as far as forums go. Though this does lead me to believe that most SH users don’t also frequent 2-3 other forums.

There won’t be much changing for a while.  I agree @Harlequin, I don’t think most folks here are used to what forums truly are.  

If this forum is headed toward being a full featured forum instead of the lightweight version we’ve had previously, I think just moving things to phBB would work better than trying to massage Vanilla into phBB functionality.

@cakeanddottle:

I’m doing what I can with what I have.  If it were up to me, the whole site would be on ProBoards but then we would lose everything that is on here.  It still might happen one day. 

If you are looking to move from Vanilla to a more traditional type of forum (ProBoards or not) there are many with conversion scripts out there.  I would work from the angle of which ones have conversion scripts.

I actually kind of like Vanilla, I think it does what Drupal does and abandons the traditional forum which in many ways is an outdated construct in the modern web world.  Granted Drupal is not just a forum, merely their forum interface behaves like that, unless you tie in a third party solution.

A tip, if you don’t feel like diving through each category on the home page just clicking discussions brings you all new and latest from what I see.  If it didn’t I would say you need to add a view for that.

Ken

‘I’m doing what I can with what I have’ - Chris is working with a very limited dashboard (control) - most of it being non functional; ie you see what is apparently a function, apply it, and then find it doesn’t work. What most people don’t know is that Snuffhouse was just an exercise in site building by the original creator - snuff was just one of his interests that he decided to use as the theme and it was intended to be shut down after three months. It took off though, and by that quirk of fate the Snuffhouse community was born. Version two, as I understand it, was a further exercise. A new owner walks into a kind of virtual building site, where the plumbing has not been installed. But, by default, that gives us a very simple format which I’m sure lots of us like. I loved the changes that were made a few days ago, but anything more than those would possibly be extraneous to what the majority of users want, given there is probably a lot of first generation web users - too much choice can obscure the content sometimes.
Bad thing.

I’d just like to say that one of the great appeals of Snuffhouse is its extreme simplicity. It’s easy to stay “in the loop” with what’s going on without having to check lots of things. Having said, other ways to search for stuff, like tags, are always helpful. Thanks for everything. I really like this place.

I will gladly change it back to the way it was.  If that happens though the reviews section will be gone, probably merged in to the snuff types category.  Doesn’t seem like anyone uses it anyways.  I will have to delete the reviews to keep the banners up top – gotta keep the lights on.   

I say give the review section time.  I think it will be used, or at least used in a way to figure out how it needs to evolve down the road.

Ken

Ok, I have a dialogue going with the folks at Vanilla to see why the Recent Discussions and such doesn’t work.  We shall see what they say.  

When I go to just discussions from the top menu it works, also recent discussions seems to work for me.  I find the first anniversary badge I just got interesting since I have been here longer than a year.  Also I am still trying to figure out how the “Best of” area is supposed to work.

If it matters I am currently looking at this through Firefox on Winblows XP SP3.

I can test through pretty much anything else you can think of except Mac and IOS at this moment.

Ken

I like the badges - the last thing I was awarded was for swimming 100 yards when I was 7, so I feel like I have amounted to something at last:)

I think the changes you made were cool if you can get them working.

@devilock76 the discussions tab only shows the new posts in the General category, not all categories

Yeah I just got a 500 comments badge.  My profile says I have 5 badges but those are the only two I know about, not sure where to see the rest as they are not showing in my notifications view.  It also says I have 37 points.  So what is the end result of these points or are they just for novelty purposes.

Ken

@devilock76 the discussions tab only shows the new posts in the General category, not all categories

I did not realize that, well oops and oops x2…

Ken

They are probably just part of the badge add on, novelty value I suppose. I like baubles anyway.

I just found how to see the other badges.  Which in my case were for earlier comment counts reached.  In the my profile view it shows as an iconified list sidebar.  Also discovered the badge notifications were emailing me.  Had to turn that off.

Ken

If a general consensus think that the badges are silly or overbearing, say so and they will disappear.

I maybe, just maybe might have made the “Recent Discussions” tab operational, it now gives you recent discussions for all of the categories.  Thoughts?

What would everyone prefer:  Open up snuffhouse.org and it gives you categories or it gives you a run down of categories with the discussions under them like it does if you hit “recent discussions”?

That seems to work ok for recent discussions.

Fantastic, glad to see the return of recent discussions. This thread has been an education, I had not fully understood the problems faced.

I see the change to recent discussions, however it seems like the top anchored threads are now gone, well not on top.  Intended?

Ken

@devilock76 - The announcement threads are still on the top if you click on ‘more discussions’, to see the whole list of threads in the section. It’s only in the ‘recent discussions’ bit that the announcement threads aren’t on top, which is right, unless they have been posted on recently!

Oooh second anniversary badge!

Recent changes is great–I didn’t know how much I was missing! Thanks for all the work tweaking this site.

I dig all the new stuff personally.

Everything works great now that the Recent Discussions button is working and I like the badges

Ok, I think i’m done tinkering with the look of the place for a while.  The “Discussions” and “Recent Discussions” tabs both bring up the recent discussions.  Threads can be segmented by category with the “Categories” tab.  I think everyone will get the hang of it eventually.  

The only other things that might change are a few links on the forum to different sites that are meant to enrich the forum and the user’s experience.  

Bookmarks are working again! Thanks!

love the badges keep them I say

I got bombarded with badges when Iogged in.

bob, [Deleted User], [Deleted User], [Deleted User], [Deleted User], [Deleted User], dm_lasse, You, Mike B., sloth357 and 16 others earned the 10 Comments badge.

I like changes.

@cstokes4 if you are taking votes…I personally would like the home page to be the discussions page. 

Sorry I haven’t been around much lately guys
but I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the new set up!
I’ve been thinking this WHOLE TIME “man I wish we had a “LIKE” option or something!” and then POOF!

Thanks Nigel @snuffster and Chris @cstokes4 and Dave @mr.snuff you guys ROCK and if you ever need ANYTHING let me know.  I’d be more than happy to help with the site or whatever is needed.

Keep snuffin!

I like the changes.

That seems to be the general feeling.  

I’m done monkey’n around with it for a while, I promise.

Yup and if someone NEW comes on here and is looking to ask a snuff vet about something specific, one might look at their badges and get a rough idea as to whom might know out of experience, etc.

You can still have the long list of discussions if that’s what you want to see, I think it’s a great compromise for people that prefer that look and those who prefer the conventional forum layout.

I’m finding that I leave the site with many unread posts now. To read them all I have to click at the top scroll down click, scroll down, read, click at the bottom, scroll up, click at the top, scroll down, read, click at the bottom, scroll up, click at the top, scroll down, click, scroll down and so on. This will now only be my on my third thread to read. I do miss the click, click read scroll, click, click read scroll, click, click, BOOM!

@Cstokes4 - what makes a post ‘answered’ and what are the things on our members details page, ‘spam’ ‘abuse’ etc ?

Love the badges, the answered thing is a bit odd, it sort of stops conversations that develop.

Stefan

I made a discussion that gave suggestions to consolidating some of the categories in order to retain the simplicity of original snuffhouse while still having some degree of organization to make finding the resources you are looking for easier and making less clutter. What we have right now is too spread out, and if we were to move onto a serious forum format like proboards then I would be pretty fed up. The format for snuffhouse is so appealing because of its relaxed simplicity, but now you have 9 different categories that should really only be 5 or 6, and you have these silly ratings and buttons to press that serve no purpose at all including these silly badges you get for making a certain number of comments or for being a member for a certain amount of time. If somone wants to know how long I have been a member here it says it right on my profile.

@Walrus1985 Shouldn’t you get a badge for having your reply marked as the ‘answered’.  

whats the point?

It would be nice if clicking on the big Snuffhouse logo on the top left brought you to recent discussions rather than the silly categories

@jux lol probably