New Forum Version

[ivconic]

I apologize for going a little off topic. But this is like a bolt from the blue for me! This new forum look. I still can't adjust my eyes to all this!
A lot of things are not the same, and for 16 years I have been looking at one forum layout. Ugh...
",,,I have browsed around a little and it looks like everything converted over properly. Please let me know if you see anything missing or rendered incorrectly.,,,"
Too many things are new and tough to accept so fast and easy. But here is something, the degree symbol is shown as "?":

(this is screenshot and not a typed text, yet is hard to distinguish)
...
Carl that is educational info and will help a lot.
...
P.S.
Ok, switching to "Geotech style" makes bit a difference.
Oh Carl... this is tough!
My eyes hurts for real!
A wise man once said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"!

[Carl-NC]

The default VB5 layout is very blah IMO, that's why I re-created the Geotech red-gold layout. I really focused on good contrast, especially where it matters the most. As I type this a little auto-save message is popping up on the right and both the text color and background are the same so it's unreadable. Those are the little things that will need fixing and it can be maddening to find them in the 450 available settings.

The old version wasn't broke, except for its CMS system which was unusable. That's why I upgraded. As I build up the Articles side of the web site I think it will be worth it.

[Skippy]

Well it's a huge Thumbs Down from me. I can't even log in, for start ( I'm now on a public computer in a library ). I tried it with scripting off, nothing happens at all when I click 'login' . With scripting on, the 'login' button does something , it puts up a message 'logging in ...' but does nothing. Sigh.
Loads of the 'buttons' are non-functional. For example if I'm viewing a thread with multiple pages, there's the buttons to do 'Next' , '2' and enter a page number. The buttons at the top of the list of posts work OK. But bizzarely, the ones at the bottom are non-functional, in fact with scripting off, they aren't even there, though the ones at the top are there. hmm. I can actually work around that, one, by just using the top buttons.
The 'style choice' option is non-functional, if I choose Geotech1 style, all it does is add a hash, so it's ....forum/# , which obviously does naff all.
I couldn't even read the UPDATE NOTICE , just the title, until I turned off page style, and then the (seemingly hidden) text became visible. I presume when Carl says he "checked out the new forum" , he did so on a totally up-to-date browser. Spare a thought for us folk using older PC's / cellphones etc, or better still, actually check it's compatible ... aren't there websites that do 'compatibility tests' ?
For reference, my browser is Firefox V50, OS is Windows Vista on desktop PC.

Even typing this on a modern PC, I'm getting continuous browser warnings ( 'Invalid Sever Response . Please try again' )over a grey screen, I'm having to click OK to continue. No idea why, maybe the 'auto-save' feature is causing it?

[Carl-NC]

I tested the new software on Firefox, Chrome, and Edge. I even tried it on my phone and was impressed it looked as good as it did. Phone usage is not something I specifically tried to support but supposedly vB5 is way better than vB4. But on all the browsers I tried I get no errors and all the features appear to work.

Your issues are likely caused by a too-old browser. There is no way I can go back to all the old browsers and test them, and even if I could I cannot do anything about rendering errors. vB5 likely uses newer features of HTML and CSS that old browsers don't support and I can't fix that.

[Qiaozhi]

Seems to working OK in Geotech mode. I'm using Mozilla Firefox for Linux Mint (mint-001 1.0) Version 108.0.2 (64-bit).
No error messages so far.
Clearly this is a work in progress, so I'm sure things will get sorted as time progresses.
Also, as you can see, smileys are working.
Not sure what's happened to my avatar though.

[Qiaozhi]

Avatar now working. Had to change it to a square, as Carl mentioned earlier.

[Toros]

I think the old forum layout was much better maintained. Please bring back the old colors. They were nice and warm. The blue color is suitable for a pharmacy or an operating room.

[lolbou]

HI, after some lurking, I'm afraid my first post is actually a complain... It seems that the search function is not operating, or at minimum. I used to use it a lot to browse through the VERY long TGSL thread(s) and it was working nicely, but now it doesn't... Does it need to have its parameters adjusted to be effective?

Anyway, I'm currently working on building a two tones TGSl and I'm already very thankful to this community...

Laurent, from France.

[Qiaozhi]

I think the old forum layout was much better maintained. Please bring back the old colors. They were nice and warm. The blue color is suitable for a pharmacy or an operating room.

Go to: User Profile > Edit Settings > Account > Change Forum Style
Then set Change Forum Style to Geotech.

[Carl-NC]

You can also go all the way to the bottom of any forum page and on the left side of the footer there is a drop-down (drop-up?) menu to select the color style. It was my intention to have "Geotech" as the default but apparently it's not.

[Carl-NC]

HI, after some lurking, I'm afraid my first post is actually a complain... It seems that the search function is not operating, or at minimum. I used to use it a lot to browse through the VERY long TGSL thread(s) and it was working nicely, but now it doesn't... Does it need to have its parameters adjusted to be effective?

I needed to rebuild the search engine index. It's now under way (takes a while) but you should already see better results.

[Carl-NC]

And now "Geotech" should be default color scheme.

[ArchibaldSTM]

I like this. Over time, we will get used to the new. Of course, it's a pity for the old forum, but we need to move forward and make improvements gradually.

[Carl-NC]

There are some aspects of vB4 I like better, mostly post & thread layouts. I think that's a matter of what I'm used to. The admin control area is hugely improved in vB5.

vB5 was released 10 years ago and it took me this long to switch because early versions came with horror stories of massive bugs and poorly implemented features. Seems they got it ironed out. I was going to have to switch sooner or later because vB4 is no longer supported and I've already had problems with PHP compatibility on the host server. Geotech went down twice in the last year or so and I had to get an old version of PHP reinstated. The host tech support told me that will eventually be impossible, so at some point vB4 was gonna stop working.

BTW, I've kept these forums going for over 20 years and have never lost data or gotten hacked. I'm shooting for 20 more years.

[ivconic]

There are some aspects of vB4 I like better, mostly post & thread layouts. I think that's a matter of what I'm used to. The admin control area is hugely improved in vB5.

vB5 was released 10 years ago and it took me this long to switch because early versions came with horror stories of massive bugs and poorly implemented features. Seems they got it ironed out. I was going to have to switch sooner or later because vB4 is no longer supported and I've already had problems with PHP compatibility on the host server. Geotech went down twice in the last year or so and I had to get an old version of PHP reinstated. The host tech support told me that will eventually be impossible, so at some point vB4 was gonna stop working.

BTW, I've kept these forums going for over 20 years and have never lost data or gotten hacked. I'm shooting for 20 more years.

I am totally in shock and it will take me a long time to get used to it. Here, you have down on another topic; I still found a lot that needs to be fixed.