left hand menus - will they return
Is nobody actually getting the point.
I do used tabbed browsing, indeed I usually have at least three open during my normal working and then perhaps two for "away from work" interests. Why should I now have to open another to look at any account information such as view my usage, and a seperate one for the forum.
Using the hiding peoples actual usernames as part of the forum change as a reason for this disjointed affair doesnt seem sensible either.
Why not just deploy a phpbb mod allowing users to elect a different "screen name" instead of showing their registered name - 10 minute modification to phpbb and its job done.
As for merging the various vISP contributors on one board, why not just merge the relevant sql databases and change the necessary phpbb configs to point to one database? Ive only had 18 months experience of phpbb and even Ive learnt that.
Anyone concerned about having their plusnet username displayed on the forums would no doubt die of shock if they realise a mass NSLookup of ip address ranges owned by PN will net thousands of PN usernames in a few minutes! So thats no real reason either.
How exactly will making the forums harder to access and removing their appearance as an integrated part of a website portal encourage more posters too?
If the main push was to seperate out plusnet usernames from the forum software, I can see very little logic in developing a whole new disjointed area instead of simply modifying phpbb to allow screen names, whilst still retaining all the functionality associated with the forum
If PN are keen to engage customers more than ever, why remove the integration of the forums with the very portal they access???
If I were a new customer and had a question or wanted support, I can go to the portal and navigate my way around. If PN wanted to engage that customer or direct them into the arms of the community, why segregate that section of the website?
An area where customers and staff can chat alike whilst still having the tools right there at hand one click away - strangely enough just like the old forums.
If people are struggling with simple issues and come to the site for support with simple issues, is it not reasonable to expect that they may not be using tabbed browsing either as its a new and advanced feature to many.
Although others must share different views, I certainly do feel from a customer perspective seeking support, this has been very poorly implemented.
Hopefully Ill be proved wrong as I say, but just looking today alone I think the level of posting is already down. It would be interesting to put together some statistics of number of posts over the last 3 months say, and the number in the next three.
I do used tabbed browsing, indeed I usually have at least three open during my normal working and then perhaps two for "away from work" interests. Why should I now have to open another to look at any account information such as view my usage, and a seperate one for the forum.
Using the hiding peoples actual usernames as part of the forum change as a reason for this disjointed affair doesnt seem sensible either.
Why not just deploy a phpbb mod allowing users to elect a different "screen name" instead of showing their registered name - 10 minute modification to phpbb and its job done.
As for merging the various vISP contributors on one board, why not just merge the relevant sql databases and change the necessary phpbb configs to point to one database? Ive only had 18 months experience of phpbb and even Ive learnt that.
Anyone concerned about having their plusnet username displayed on the forums would no doubt die of shock if they realise a mass NSLookup of ip address ranges owned by PN will net thousands of PN usernames in a few minutes! So thats no real reason either.
How exactly will making the forums harder to access and removing their appearance as an integrated part of a website portal encourage more posters too?
If the main push was to seperate out plusnet usernames from the forum software, I can see very little logic in developing a whole new disjointed area instead of simply modifying phpbb to allow screen names, whilst still retaining all the functionality associated with the forum
If PN are keen to engage customers more than ever, why remove the integration of the forums with the very portal they access???
If I were a new customer and had a question or wanted support, I can go to the portal and navigate my way around. If PN wanted to engage that customer or direct them into the arms of the community, why segregate that section of the website?
An area where customers and staff can chat alike whilst still having the tools right there at hand one click away - strangely enough just like the old forums.
If people are struggling with simple issues and come to the site for support with simple issues, is it not reasonable to expect that they may not be using tabbed browsing either as its a new and advanced feature to many.
Although others must share different views, I certainly do feel from a customer perspective seeking support, this has been very poorly implemented.
Hopefully Ill be proved wrong as I say, but just looking today alone I think the level of posting is already down. It would be interesting to put together some statistics of number of posts over the last 3 months say, and the number in the next three.
Quote from: chesterfield As for merging the various vISP contributors on one board, why not just merge the relevant sql databases and change the necessary phpbb configs to point to one database? Ive only had 18 months experience of phpbb and even Ive learnt that.
So how would that handle user fredbloggs on Plusnet and a different user fredbloggs on F9 and another user fredbloggs on FreeOnline?
Quote Also, the old PHPBB implementation was dying on its backside.
It was so heavily modded that all sorts of peculiarity's existed.For example, as an admin, all posts since January were always marked as unread.
Quote Starting with a standard install of SMF and Wordpress, the dev guys can layer in extra stuff as we move along.
How exactly does the latter differ from the former?
If you are saying the previous forum was dying because it was heavily modified, what difference will starting afresh amd modifying again make?
It all sounds like a load of bunkum myself, personaly running a phpbb board that is so heavily modified it barely resembles phpbb, and accomplishing this starting with absolutely no knowledge what so ever smacks very much that the mods on the previous PN forum must have been implemented either very badly or the reasons for creating this new "community" are a lot more to do with seperating the pottentially harmful conversations from the nice shiny adverts.
As for how would merging databases handle users with the same names for various isp's, if usernames were taged with a user id (not necesarily visible to the user) and the field username were allowed dupliactes it would work just fine.
How exactly does the current set up allow for more than one person from any account contribute to the forums?
Registration is made through the ISP portal, and if you try to register again it states you are already registered, so how exactly would more than one user from any one account access and contribute to these boards?
Running my own business and having to manage customer requirements and our own staffs time etc, it seems perfectly obvious to me why these forums have been sidelined away from the main portal, at least have the decency to be straight about it - though Im guessing the top brass have sold the concept to the support staff that this project is in the interest of the customers and making things better.
Take a look around....
The concerns over style being raised back in April have been ignored and the site has gone live anyway.
The integration with the portal is completely lost, and now any current issues or problems are not immediatley accessible and able to be seen as easily by pottential customers.
Any mention of bringing back said integration is now "put it in the wish list and it will be considered as and when time permits".
Its all fairly obvious that this is a major backward step for the consumer, but the spin doctors have certainly earnt their crust in selling this as a plus for the ISP.
Anyway, it seems fairly clear that the selling job has been a success, Ill put my efforts into other things I need to sort for now, but Im fairly confident that in a few months time this segregation of the community from the portal will have become the norm, and sadly the continuity and fully integrated nature of the old forums will be a distant memory.
I really dont think anything other than action will convince me that the future holds anything different.
Quote Wish it was a simple as that, any change like that would need to go through the full change control and QA processes.
And implementing a whole new board structure on a separate server, having users create new logins and passwords, thus creating another support channel immediatley, recreating all the moderators, transfering over necessary stickies, having to put effort into transfering post count, is a lot swifter than changing the existing board.
If there arent any ulterior motives for this drastic backward step or any conspiracies behind it, then there are certainly a lot of ill considered changes being made.
Quote from: chesterfield
As others have said, lets leave it 6 months and see exactly what these new boards do for PN.
I think that is the wisest comment you have made. In the meantime I would suggest that having made your comments very well known on one aspect of the Community site you leave it there.
I think you should start to look around and get to know how these forums work - they have many features "out of the box" which are only obtained in phpBB by adding more and more mods. For example have a look at the full list of the BBcodes available here: http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?board=22.0;sort=subject
Quote from: chesterfield
My predictions are:
Lower posting levels due to disjointed feel from the boards.
None or very few of the original portal integrations included.
Given the new log ins there will now always be the need to log in seperately from the portal resulting in this segregation feeling from the portal now being permanent.
Even if in 6 months time some of the things you predict are even partly true (I think you are wrong - I've seen several people saying that they would not post on the portal forums because it publicised their username - and yes I know that that can be got from elsewhere), the new site presents so many opportunities.
The blogs are excellent and I think it was bad that they were separate from the forums - in fact I think it is far more important that they are integrated with the forums than the forums being with the portal - everything discussing the way Plusnet works is now together.
The most constructive thing you could do is to engage fully with the new forums and not keep harping on about the one aspect. Not least because it would allow the PN staff to concentrate on building up the Community to the state they have planned and not going round and round in circles on the same aspect. If in spite of that in 6 months time you are proved right you would have real grounds for saying "I told you so".