So, what do you think of the new forum?

[#1]

I was initially excited to hear about the new forum and was looking forward to it however now its arrived i think it's dreadful!

Ok i do sort of like the look of it but even that has a fault when reading a topic - every reply is cluttered up with a huge title (not needed), then large thanks / that fixed it / reply buttons (we only need one reply at the top or bottom but QUOTE buttons would be good - hint hint) and the actual space between the text of each reply is far too much which makes a big difference on a mobile phone and at 5 inches its quite a large phone screen. Oh and half of our avatars are missing thanks to the rounded corners!

Then we have missing features like multiquotes, table layouts and several other features that most forums have as standard.. that this new one clearly hasn't managed.

So what do you guys think of it so far? Better, worse, rollback? (hint Bob hint lol)

[#2]

It all went wrong when the various VISPs were merged in to a Plusnet community forum.

Bring back my Force9 vBulletin! 

[#3]

I agree.

I don't think I've encountered a forum or newsfeed with so much white space.

Even the inter-line spacing is double spaced.

And then there are those great big blobby buttons that you can click-on. Is that for people with mobiles that are afflicted by fat-finger syndrome? It's positively childish.

If you see a plot laying round somewhere please send it to me - I've lost it!

I wonder if the plot was to arrange a transfer of funds to BT via an intermediary, so that it could be written off as a tax loss?

---

[#4]

We have been moaning about the huge amounts of wasted white space and large buttons etc for what must be getting on for a couple of months now. The primary issue is that this is constrained by Corporate Styling policy which is clearly going to have to change. Plusnet have been told that, and they were told that this would be the sort of reaction to it, but it's fallen on deaf ears so far.

Enhanced functionality like multi-quotes etc is something that we'd obviously like to see added, but we didn't have it on the old SMF forum, so I'm not sure why you are making such a big issue of that particular one. Once the bugs that appeared Friday morning are resolved then we can hopefully move forward.

[#5]

Pre alpha release

Its Terrible for a Expert forum suplier to charge for this amount of bugs

[#6]

Plusnet may have got it on the cheap, as it's the first "responsive" design I believe to suit multiple devices. I keep meaning to go and check BT's Community Forum on a mobile - I don't think they have the "responsive" version.

[#7]

I like it on the whole, but I agree about the white space.

I'm not particularly fond of the avatars in the forum view/topic listing. It makes things far too busy for my liking (just look at the non-chat forums where most users still have the generic avatar - it's much easier to read), and the coloured icon for read/unread of before was more useful.

[#8]

Get rid of the 'kiddie-style' pink blobs and wasted white space and I'll give it 8/10. At the moment I don't like it, but will tolerate it.

[#9]

We're hoping to get a small balloon icon introduced for Unread posts/topics. It will help readers with visual impairments identify the Unread ones. It's been mentioned elsewhere.

Edit: see message #16

[#10]

The grey low contrast font makes it difficult to read, but the previous forum suffered from that too. Overall it is no improvement over the previous bulletin board. The wasted screen space to accommodate touch screen devices makes it far less efficient on normal PCs.

[#11]

---

jab1 wrote:

Get rid of the 'kiddie-style' pink blobs

---

But they're part of the corporate image (look at the colour / style of the Plusnet Hub 0 and Hub 1 routers). 

[#12]

Maybe, w23 , but if they have to be there, can we tone 'em down a bit? I know I'm old, but it seems that all forums that use Lithium have a style which puts 'branding' above content.

[#13]

Maybe that's what @jelv was getting at here

[#14]

Very likely, @Anotherone , but I still don't like it.

[#15]

Didn't say I liked it either