• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Forum software discussion

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How do I turn photos and make smaller?

Once I have worked this out I will post more.

Just realised that I have posted this in the wrong place, can a mod fix it for me please?
 
Lurker":3j4nkc46 said:
How do I turn photos and make smaller?
Click to expand...

This forum software doesn't make it easy.

The way I do it (which may not be the easiest) is to open the image in an image editor (I use paint.net - as it's easy) and sort the image out in that.

For example, in paint.net you open the image, press Ctrl-G (or Image menu... Rotate 90° Counter-Clockwise [sic]) until it's the right way round, then Ctrl-R (or Image menu... Resize) to make it smaller, then Ctrl-S (or File...Save, or File...Save As) to save it.

You can also easily crop if you don't want to post the whole image (I do this before resizing).

Then upload it to the forum and use "place inline" next to the image to include the image in your post.

In (ahem) better forum software, I do the same, except I don't bother with Save and I hit Ctrl-A (select all), Ctrl-C (copy) and then paste into the forum software. That won't help you here though.
 
What about if we ask ever so nicely and offer to help, Mark?
 
AJB Temple":3bc5bf2q said:
What about if we ask ever so nicely and offer to help, Mark?
Click to expand...

Haha, no need to ask ever so nicely, I know it needs doing, and it will, but I need to focus on finding a new job first then I can focus on this.

Rest assured, when the time comes, which will be sooner rather than later, I will be sure to utilise all the help that the Mod's and anyone else who want to, can offer. :obscene-drinkingcheers:
 
Right, I've moved all the discussion on this into a new thread so we can clean up Lurker's thread and not derail that. Any discussion, questions, offers, whatever, relating to new forum software then put them in here so they're all in one place.

Ta
 
So much better to tolerate crap and clunky software but friendly admin, than shiny new software but a crap and clunky admin, as found elsewhere on the net ;) It works well enough.
 
Sheffield Tony":2ltm3khb said:
So much better to tolerate crap and clunky software but friendly admin, than shiny new software but a crap and clunky admin, as found elsewhere on the net ;) It works well enough.
Click to expand...

Bingo.

It's certainly fine on a PC. There are things I'd like to see improve, but I'd much rather Mark sorted his job out before worrying about sorting out our pass-time.
 
100% agree re job. We all have to get our priorities right.

Suggest we shelve this for now.
 
Thanks guys. I've no problem with anyone discussing it, making suggestions etc.

I didn't just lob the work thing in there to shut you up either, just to set expectations that I/we definitely have it on the radar (in fact Robert has already done a bit of prelim investigation) and it will happen, just not for a little while due to my having to focus elsewhere for a bit.

Cheers
 
Dr.Al":1ai0yecg said:
The way I do it (which may not be the easiest) is to open the image in an image editor (I use paint.net - as it's easy) and sort the image out in that.
Click to expand...

I do it like this,

First I get my pictures, some may be the wrong way round so I rotate them using the Photos section of Windows and crop as needed.

I have a tool installed which is called "ImageResizer" so when I right-click on a picture or a bunch of pictures selected together in a file I can select "resize pictures" and it will resize them to the specified dimensions stated which for me is 1200 x 900.

I then upload the pictures to a reliable third-party host, In my case Imgur, and then I link the image destinations into threads on here.


You can get the tool for re-sizing pictures here: https://www.bricelam.net/ImageResizer/
 
I do like the software used "elsewhere" I have to say.

Did chuckle when I first logged on here and was offered the opportunity to enter my MSN Messenger ID, since the service shut down in 2012 :lol:

Would be happy to help out if there's a need for it, I'm pretty good with tech stuff.
 
OK, as Mark is cool with it:

I will not use third party hosts for images. I prefer to keep all of my images on my own server. I've been burnt too many times with third party hosting.

The forum I administered until two weeks ago was drag and drop for images. Auto resize. No issues with rotation. Very little work for users or mods. These days I hardly every post images anywhere unless it is drag and drop, and certainly not a WIP.

Some forum software has auto-placement. So you click where in your text you want the picture to be and it goes there without having to use a menu to place it in-line.

Easy and fast editing is useful for me. I am in the habit of type and press send, without reading. This is a |do it once" approach applied to running a business (with the luxury of a PA). I only spot my mistakes and omissions later.

I like to able to thank people when they have been helpful, without having to create a thread reply to do so.

I am a Mac user but most on the forum I administered before were PC users and a lot used mobiles. Software had no discernible differences in handling any of them.

It was easy to distribute administrator duties / tasks with serious risk of cock up. However, the chairman (it was a charity) hated that and this was the biggest factor in me quitting as admin. :D
 
Sheffield Tony":39gz5din said:
So much better to tolerate crap and clunky software but friendly admin, than shiny new software but a crap and clunky admin, as found elsewhere on the net ;) It works well enough.
Click to expand...

Bang On.
 
Yes, agree with that too. To be fair though Mike the mod based in Germany at the old place, was always transparent and fair, and like the mods here actually contributed to the forum. Moderation here is grown up.
 
Sheffield Tony":1p58heid said:
So much better to tolerate crap and clunky software but friendly admin, than shiny new software but a crap and clunky admin, as found elsewhere on the net ;) It works well enough.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say it's crap and clunky, maybe more "outdated but very utilitarian". Just like a Land Rover, It doesn't look too pretty and it's not the most comfortable ride but It gets the job done.
 
And aside from my personal issues, that's the main reason why

A/ It's not been upgraded sooner,
B/ We won't rush moving onto another platform (I'd rather it be right than be soon).

Keep the ideas coming chaps, and if someone who has offered really does want to help then maybe they could volunteer to turn this chat into a wish list for what the new forum would look like/contain in terms of functionality so we don't have to go back and trawl through a whole thread to pick things out...?

Also, there seem to be a number of us who have either created, run or managed fora so any suggestions of what software to look at for our next move then please stick them on here too. Robert has already found a couple of options, some free some paid, so any other options to add to the list would be good.

The Mod's and I are happy to be completely transparent and inclusive in how we go forward here because ultimately the whole premise behind TWH when Tom first set it up was to create a proper community without the politics or nonsense that some other places became embroiled in.

Having said that, there does have to be an element of decision making and ownership so the ultimate final decision on what we do, how we do it and what features we go with will come down to the Mod/Admin team. We will of course be more than happy to share that decision making process but as we all know, at the end of the day (prior to it getting dark) the buck has to stop with someone.

Cheers
Mark
 
As Mark said I have played with a couple of options.

I was a mod on talkphotography for about 10 years from its start until i fell out of love with photography and felt I should stop modding as I'd lost interest in the subject. That was on vbulletin software at first then latterly on xenforo.

Xenforo let you build a free sample site of your own as a demo and I replicated up to a point our forum and it was relatively easy even for someone that has never admin'd a forum before. The software does cost money of course and all costs here are shared amongst the 'staff'. There are things like skimlinks that turn product links into affiliate ones that could help pay for it without advertising and adverts are something we don't want.

We are on an old version of phpbb here for various reasons some of which comes down to Mark and time to dedicate to it. I did set up a current version of phpbb on a PC at home here along with the supporting server software and it was better than we have currently but without some customisations. It is still old fashioned though.

Behind the scenes I've been suggesting we explore / invest in Xenforo.

So I don't doubt it will happen one day but for now it is a waiting game.

Oh and as to pictures i resize mine to 2000 pixels on the longest side and upload them to my own webspace. then it is just a matter of pasting the URL of the picture into a post here. I find it simpler than using the attachment system here.
 
The big change I'd like to see is actually tiny.........but to be able to make links simply by highlighting the word/s you want to make into a hyperlink, clicking the icon, then pasting in the address.......that would make life here a tad easier.

The forum software I like the most is the one used by Cyclechat forum:

https://www.cyclechat.net/
 
Speaking for myself, I would sooner use outdated looking, clunky but free software than slick software which costs money, so leads to ads and other commercialisation. I found xenforo - if that's what it is on the other place - somewhat confusing.
 
This forum software is not that bad compared to some others out there. How you post pictures on here and what needs to be done with them depends entirely on the operating system used. I use an iPad and uploading pictures is easy and doesn’t normally require any resizing that can’t be done by the OS by making a choice.
 
Having inadvertently started this thread :eusa-shifty:

I notice it's mainly recent arrivals commenting.
Hope Mr.Trim doesn't get resentful, after allowing us all to join.
Personally, I am ok now that I know. The way the forum software works seems fine to me just as it is.
 
Lurker":2pzp8yts said:
Having inadvertently started this thread :eusa-shifty:

I notice it's mainly recent arrivals commenting.
Hope Mr.Trim doesn't get resentful, after allowing us all to join.
Personally, I am ok now that I know. The way the forum software works seems fine to me just as it is.
Click to expand...

Hi mate.

No resentment at all, everything you guys are mentioning (well most) we have been discussing in the background.

I just wanted everyone to understand that despite wanting the best for this forum I have two young kids, a job (well for a bit longer then job hunting) and countless other draws on my time so the approach at the moment is that it might not be the best but it isn’t broken so we have the time to plan and do this right without any real pressure.

So long as everyone understands that and is happy to bear with me/us then great. If not then, well, I don’t know what. ;)

Keep the suggestions coming.

Andy is spot on too, the surrounds are comfortable if not state of the art, the beer (or whatever your poison) is chilled and in the main the company is good ;). Pull up a pew and enjoy.
 
I know I've made a few (slightly sarcastic, perhaps) comments on the forum software, so I ought to assure everyone that it was definitely made in jest and I wouldn't want anyone to feel pressured. I mostly got interested after someone (can't remember who, sorry) commented something like "Roll on new forum software", which made me wonder if it was in the plans.

This is first and foremost a hobby for most or all of us, and I agree that the content and people are way more important than the software. I won't pretend I won't be very glad when there's something more akin to Discourse† / XenForo / whatever that makes images a bit easier, but also I completely understand and agree that life has to come before forum software upgrades! More than happy to help in any way I can (I've done a fair amount of linux system administration and I wrote my own website backend from scratch just to see if I could, but I'm far from an expert) as and when you want to look at it, but in the meantime I'll try to shut up about it!

Best of luck Mark with finding a new job. Being stuck in a job you dislike is very very bad for your soul!

† I'm not sure if Discourse is on your list but it's free if you host it yourself, so might be a plausible option
 
I am happy to contribute.

Most of my experience in the past few years has been with Xenforo. They do seem to keep the development of it up to date and it is easy to administer and moderate compared with PHP and another package that we had before. Having until recently run the forum I was involved in, an issue we experienced in the past is moderator learning curve. The mods here though are experienced and clued up so that will not be an issue. Our forum was part public and largely private to members. The private section was very picture heavy with both stills and a lot of video. (The latter consumes bandwidth at a rate of knots). We asked members what they really wanted from the forum. By far the main driver for using Xenforo was the ease of uploading pictures for clueless and not IT savvy members.

From memory (I was not the treasurer) it cost one off $140 dollars (in UK equivalent) for a lifetime licence, and $40 per annum for all the upgrades and enhancements (which were worth it for us - but they were not compulsory), plus hosting charges. I don't know what hosting cost, but for us there was an annual charge for being a member of the club. We did motorcycle and first responder training, and most of the money went on that - the forum cost very little to run.

I've also used Invision Community software, which is PHP, running a SQL database, so similar to this forum but in a more updated skin. It was very easy to customise the layouts but I had very little to do with that one.

Mark - if you want someone to keep a log of what members would ideally like in any update, I am happy to volunteer to do that, though it sounds as if Roger & Co have it covered. Just PM or email me. You have my address.

Adrian
 
Cheers chaps

Adrian - Happy for you keep a list of wants and options. I was really just thinking about someone summarising things into a post on here and updating it as new things come in, so we have a single post within the thread to refer to when the time comes.
 
OK, if we just need a thread ....isn't this it? I'm happy to distil into a function list when it has run its course.
 
A thought from me, in case it's useful.
I'd not heard of, or used XenForo until a few months ago. When I first encountered it, I was pleased to see that it was much easier to use on a mobile than the earlier software, with decent, readable text and an easy way to upload photos of any size, which were automatically resized to display well.

As time went by, the dark side became more noticeable. Just looking at the events which were visible to ordinary members, why was it necessary to compile a log of which pages everyone was looking at at any moment? Or who had reacted to what posts?

A discussion forum can work just fine without capturing that data. I can only conclude that the point of it was to construct profiles of all the users to sell as advertising targets.

So it made sense, of a sort, on a forum obviously being optimised for short term financial gain, but I wouldn't expect to see it used for a non-profit community site. (It's against the law to gather personal data about people which they aren't told about or which is beyond what is needed for the service offered.)

I'm aware that there are many other factors that play into the choice of software, beyond the user experience and I'm sure that they'll be made by people who know what they are doing.
 
I just wanted to throw in my tuppence worth, I stumbled across this forum one day straight into the thread on Mikes oak frame build and have stuck around since. I served an apprenticeship in the 80's as Joiner in a small village workshop one of the things I really liked about that time was the number of locals who seemed to view the workshop as a meeting place. People would turn up daily and sit by the fire swapping stories and drinking tea and if help was needed, helping lift, move or cut stuff. Some guys had other skills such as electrics or metalwork etc and they would pitch in and help out, it was like a skill swap some weeks. The pace was never frantic and there was always someone willing to help a young apprentice with stuff. I say all this because this forum reminds me of those days, everyone is genial and helpful and no one thinks they know everything. there is always someone looking to learn and someone wanting to help and these days that is a really good thing. I miss my days in that old workshop with its old 1900's belt driven machinery and in particular the people that would pass through there and help out. Don’t change this place too much as that feeling of community is something that should be held onto and nurtured, so what if the software is a bit older (so am I) it is definitely the people and feel of the place that matters more.
 
For the three or so years I've been here, I've been more than happy with the forum software, its administration and moderation.

I'm in no hurry to see it change. I wonder why newer members are.
 
Malc2098":3qj6xb3w said:
For the three or so years I've been here, I've been more than happy with the forum software, its administration and moderation.

I'm in no hurry to see it change. I wonder why newer members are.
Click to expand...

It's not just newer members Malc. I'd like to see it updated too even if it just to the latest phpbb. I don't think changing the software to something like xenforo will change the nature of the forum. It will make it easier to use though with wysiwyg post creation that users of many other forums are used to.

As to data collection (AndyT post above) of who has read what we have no use for that. We have no advertising and plan to keep it that way so no one will get targeted. There was a lot of customisation possible when I trialled xenforo and it may well be possible to not have such data at all.
 
It's all about attitude. On some forums they are focussed on monetising, mentioning no names. GDPR rarely has any relevance in forums as posters have put things in the public domain of their own volition and generally agreed to T&Cs.

Here the ethos seems to be a friendly club like atmosphere. It's great. No silly arguments and no repetitive answering of the same beginner questions endlessly.

Agree fully with Robert.

My perspective on software is that the quality of posts and activity is greatly improved when it is very easy for people to post imagery. Maybe it's an Instagram generation thing. Many people who are used to drag and drop WYSIWYG, which is becoming universal on forums now, simply won't bother to do WIP posts or illustrated posts because it is tedious to size the image, then several clicks for search and place within the forum software. People drift to places where life is easier.

As to data collection, again it's all about attitude. Frankly, anything running off a database (usually a SQL or Oracle variant) is capable of storing and cutting data any way you choose. Technically, if you have access to a database, it is very easy and instant to see who has posted what, where, when and deliver that to anyone who wishes to buy the data - IF that is the ethos of the forum owner. It hasn't got a lot to do with the forum front end as far as I can see and everything to do with attitude of the people who ultimately control the forum (and hence the database).

I joined here a couple of years ago and lurked a bit now and again. It has certainly got more lively of late, which is good IMO, especially in these isolated lockdown times.
 
I'm still getting all notifications from this site going straight to junk mail, no matter what settings I alter on hotmail, but I have just had a notification of a reply to a thread that I have NOT participated in :shock:
 
The offending email;
Hello sunnybob,

You are receiving this notification because you are watching the topic,
"Forum member names" at "TheWoodHaven2". This topic has received a reply by
RogerS since your last visit. You can use the following link to view the
replies made, no more notifications will be sent until you visit the topic.

If you want to view the newest post made since your last visit, click the
following link:
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If you want to view the topic, click the following link:
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If you no longer wish to watch this topic you can either click the
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--
Thanks, The Management


Yes I have read the thread, no I have not posted to it. :eusa-naughty:
 
Adrian, I think you might be generalising somewhat if you state 'people simply won't bother' and 'will drift to where life is easier'.

I bother, because I have enjoyed the subject, the positive and constructive support, the information and education offered by those members who volunteer that. I bother so that other members, who like myself, were completely new to the prospects of building a substantial workshop and who had never ventured into that world, might have ago with that support. I bothered to post WIPs so that those members could learn from my mistakes, and I did all that by uploading my photos with previous and current methods.

Lively might be good in your opinion, but maybe not everybody's, and that liveliness could detract from the ethos of the forum and that is what might contribute to members drifting off, and not to anywhere else, because there has been nowhere else like TW2.
 
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