topic Re: Why do we have this site? in Community Site Feedback

Why do we have this site?

daveyb — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:09:30 GMT

OK, I've obviously reached that age where I'm turning into a grumpy old man, but for the life of me I can't see why we now have this site. What was wrong with the old portal forums?

Re: Why do we have this site?

jelv — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:39:04 GMT

Because there were separate forums for each of the vISPs (Force9, free-online, Metronet and Plusnet). The community site brings them all together in one place.

Re: Why do we have this site?

lingbob — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:44:44 GMT

There was nothing wrong with the old portal forums and I'll even stick my neck out and say I much preferred them to these (dons tin hat!)
Regards .....

Re: Why do we have this site?

jelv — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:48:22 GMT

I'd guess Force 9 users would say that there was a hell of a lot wrong with the Plusnet forums - they couldn't post in them and the Force 9 forums were not nearly as active (mainly because there are a lot fewer F9 users).

Re: Why do we have this site?

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:29:14 GMT

I second Jelv's comments about the Force 9 forum which I regularly read This forum is much livelier and I have picked up lots of useful information from reading the responses. I was particularly interested in the earlier post about the wireless connection/e-mail problem as I had no idea this could happen - also, I now know my own gateway, which I didn't know before.

Re: Why do we have this site?

Ianwild — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 08:25:59 GMT

That was one reason but not the only one. In fact, a lot of paths lead to the same outcome, and the community site was born. These included:
- Customers asked us for a way to post without displaying their account username. It wouldn't have been possible to do this in the authenticated portal environment (Or at least would have been much harder).
- Integrating the old forum code directly with the portals meant that a lot of work was needed every time we wanted to upgrade the forum software. Now we can keep it up to date much more easily.
- Every time the portal was down for maintenance or suffering a performance issue, the forums were affected. With the community site they are not.
- We prefer the SMF software generally as it has more functionality then the old software. I for one find the RSS feeds alone have made a massive improvement to the way I use the forums (I spotted threads like this one for a start!).
- When I publish the community site roadmap (Hopefully tomorrow or at latest next week) I hope some more advantages of the separate set-up will become apparent.
Kind Regards,
Ian

Re: Why do we have this site?

Simon — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 13:17:06 GMT

..my 2penn'rth:
Agree with daveyb + roadrunner (might be of that age too!)
- Not bothered about displaying username (when logged on to PlusNet), why not have aliases?
- Fed up of having loads of logins (another needed for this!).
- I 'look after' a few PlusNet accounts, so sometimes I will have issues with one and not with another, so I like to keep things separate. (Would need one community account per PlusNet account... see above)
- If SMF has more functionality than previous s/w, wouldn't a good start to have been to mimic the previous, then add features when move settled?.. E.g. Seeing topics in reverse date, but reading thread in ascending date. Plus am not keen on lilac scheme, etc. etc..

Re: Why do we have this site?

jelv — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 13:29:10 GMT

One of the features I really like on here which wasn't on the old forums is the ability to attach screen shots directly to the post without having to upload them elsewhere first - and then the way they appear as thumbnails without taking up acres of screen real-estate.

It also has so nice additional text formatting options.

Re: Why do we have this site?

lingbob — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 13:35:56 GMT

I must admit that, if I could figure out how to do it, I would probably like that feature too.
Regards .....

Re: Why do we have this site?

jelv — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:06:36 GMT

Just save the screen shot in jpg format on your PC.
When you make your post click additional options and the attach option is there.

Re: Why do we have this site?

rowancott — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 07:56:33 GMT

maybe it's so we can post our comments about plusnet - my first login to plus.net has not impressed me - the central feature is a competition that closed a fortnight ago - I don't remember Force9 ever being quite that out of date.
Added to the loss of emails a fortnight ago so far I am extremely underwhelmed about plus.net and actively researching alternative suppliers!

Re: Why do we have this site?

James — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:17:15 GMT

Hi there,
Which competition are you referring to?
When I login via the PlusNet HomePage the only competition I see is the PC Pro one.

Re: Why do we have this site?

lingbob — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:32:25 GMT

Perhaps the OP is referring to this one .....

Re: Why do we have this site?

lingbob — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:33:14 GMT

Quote from: jelv
Just save the screen shot in jpg format on your PC.
When you make your post click additional options and the attach option is there.

Thanks very much for that
Regards .....

Re: Why do we have this site?

jelv — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 21:45:31 GMT

Quote from: rowancott
the central feature is a competition that closed a fortnight ago - I don't remember Force9 ever being quite that out of date.

It was supposed to have been removed: http://usergroup.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,5264.0.html

Re: Why do we have this site?

pberry — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:57:15 GMT

It's in the process of being removed.

Re: Why do we have this site?

James — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 08:22:37 GMT

Thanks Guys,
We got it raised with Content yesterday and it should be sorted soon, if it hasn't been already. Cheers for pointing it out.

Re: Why do we have this site?

Spider — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 16:38:12 GMT

Slightly off topic but found this page of the thread interesting.
Title
Why do we have this site?
Plusnet Staff 1
It's in the process of being removed.
Plusnet Staff 2
Thanks Guys,

Re: Why do we have this site?

Assos — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 17:30:25 GMT

Re: Why do we have this site?

glyndev — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 04:09:33 GMT

The only thing that Ihas upset me about the new forums is that on the old +net ones I had a random image avatar, but that is not possible here.:-((