R3VLimited Beta Site Preview

[James Crivellone]

R3V,

Over the past few months I have been working behind the scene on an upgrade path from our ancient version of VBulletin up to the current shipping version of 5.1.1.

During our upgrade testing, the 5.0.3 --> 5.0.4 upgrade portion of the installer was causing several database corruption issues that I needed to wait on Vbulletin developers to solve.

Soooo.. A few weeks ago they released this update and I was able to bring us up to a current version.

http://beta.r3vlimited.com/board5/

Here are a few known facts about this beta forum

1) It is based on a database from 1/2/2014.. so its old and for testing only
2) The colors are not final, far from it in fact.. this is mainly for functionality.
3) Its slow.. I mean really slow.. the dev server is far from the piece of hardware we run on every day, so be patient.
4) Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one, and the more detailed you are the more I'll take it to heart when I go to correct anything found. Simply telling me, IT SUCKS, ITS UGLY, won't get you anything. Those who actually post constructive criticism will get a gold star.

E-Mail notifications, alerting, etc does not work. You can attempt to register but it won't email you, so for those who joined after 1/2/2014, you can look, but won't be able to register.

If you changed your password on the main site after 1/2/2014 you will need to use your old password.

Let me know what you think, and any questions.

Thank you

[kronus]

woo beta. thanks for the hopefully upcoming upgrade!

looks like there's no way to get to the last page of multi-page threads straight from the subforum listings. can that be a thing again? it's useful.

[JinormusJ]

R3VLimited Beta Site Preview

I'm for the update. It's nice upgrading to a more modern database.

However, I've never liked the mobile or streamlined versions of anything. I've grown to love the r3v I use every day, however; progress is progress. We'll all adjust, love or hate it. I use Tapatalk mostly, so it won't affect me much besides me trying to use r3v on my iPad or desktop.

The main thing is the fact that the admins still care to invest in the boards, and that's more than any dedicated forum member can ask for.

Excited to see what becomes of the board in the near future

[Cabriolet]

i hate change. older is better

reasons why it does not flow as easy top to bottom. seeing peeps avatars seems worthless. however this only applies to the the home screen. the threads look amazing.

[McGyver]

It looks good, but are we going to start using "karma points"? (or whatever you call them) I assume that the little grey bars under the names are some sort of karma system...

[Liquidity]

The side bar takes up a lot of space on the home page.

No divider between posts in threads is a little confusing.

The auto-scrolling going from page to page in threads overrides when I'm trying to scroll. It's especially confusing when hitting the back button because the page jumps to the top of the current page before the previous page loads. Leads me to believe I'm on the previous page already. All of it seems quite gimmicky and very counter-intuitive.

Any option to add a *thread starter* label for the OPs posts? I saw that on another forum and it helped makes things a lot less confusing on really long threads.

[Cosmic Serpent]

Looking good.
One thing that I can think of that is used on other forums,
when you put your mouse over a title it will give you a small summery this can be very useful.
Thanks

[Sailor37]

Awww man...this site is so classic as it is. Hate to see it change.

[rturbo 930]

Looking good.
One thing that I can think of that is used on other forums,
when you put your mouse over a title it will give you a small summery this can be very useful.
Thanks

Yes! Most other forums I'm on have this, and it's a really useful feature.

I'll be honest though, I'm not really loving the new site. Maybe it's just because I've been using this basic layout for the last ten years that I've been on various forums, but I really like what we have already. Simple and easy to use. The new look is cleaner and more modern, but looking at the front page, I think the current version is better laid out. Forums and subforums on the left, new posts on the right. The new version is like that too... sort of. The main forums are on the left (ie, General, OT, etc), and the new posts are on the right, but the subforums (ie, 24v swap forum, M20 forum, etc.) are spread out along the bottom, and IMO it looks sort of cluttered. I don't know if that's something that can be changed or not.

[mrcheezle19]

I'm In for more smiley options. I like everything about it so far. Checked it out on my phone and I have no complaints.

[nrubenstein]

My real concern with the change is just how much it impacts ease of use in search.

The extra step required to search within a specific forum is mildly annoying, but the results display makes it much harder to skim results. It's better than the impenetrable disaster that S14.net has turned into, but it's a step backwards imho.

[James Crivellone]

I removed the right hand nav bar to give it a little more of a classic look.

Keep the thoughts coming, I'll tinker with it more as we progress

[Cabriolet]

"Mark channels read", would be better named "mark topics read." it also does not have functionality.

the Home > Forum > .... would be nice to have 2pt larger.

[kronus]

is today's posts the same as new posts?

[nrubenstein]

is today's posts the same as new posts?

Usually, that's been posts within the last 24 hours or so.