Welcome to the New Forums! Please Read!

[Albert]

Welcome to the new AtariAge forums! These forums have a fair amount of new features over our previous forums, and we hope that everyone enjoys the improvements. Please don't hesitate to ask any questions or offer suggestions on how we can further improve the forums.

 

Here are some of the new features available to you:

 

Local time support. You can now specifiy your time in relation to GMT, so posts will show up relative to your local time.

[*]Built-in Calendar. Easily see when upcoming classic gaming events are, and other important events (such as the birth of Atari or Nolan Bushnell's birthday).

[*]Private message support is much improved.

[*]Much better Avatar support. We can setup multiple Avatar Galleries, and users can now upload their own Avatars. Also, Avatars can now be up to 120x120 (vs. 64x64).

[*]Much improved search capabilities, not to mention immensely faster. Makes it much easier to track down discussions that took place a year ago.

[*]Topic Views. You'll be able to see how many times any given topic has been viewed.

[*]More moderation features. For instance, we can now split individual posts from one topic into a new topic. This is useful when a topic strays a bit too far from the original subject.

[*]You can now "watch" any thread and receive email notification when someone responds. UBB only allows you to do this for threads you have started.

[*]You can easily view posts since you're last visit, view your posts (to see if anyone has responded), and even view unanswered posts.

[*]Memberlist function that lets you view all the members and sort by name, joined date, location, number of posts, and more.

[*]Profile supports entering of AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, and MSN ids. If you enter these, icons are displayed at the bottom of your posts allowing people to send you messages.

[*]Who's online: You can see who's online, where people are, and even see who's reading the same forum as you are.

 

There's considerably more, but these are a start. The new forum is also a great deal easier to modify, and we will be able to accomodate requests more easily than in the past. Plus there is a large mod community already out there creating great additions to the software, some of which we've already installed and others that we'll add in the future.

 

One thing you may notice is that your login name is now what is displayed publically. That is because this software does not have a separate "Display Name" that our old software did. To change your login name, go to your profile and change it to what you had publically displayed before. You will then need to use this as your login name. You can also now upload your own avatar, and while their dimensions can be larger than before (up to 120x120), they can only be 15K in size.

 

Please bookmark the new forum index, as the URL has changed from the previous one. The new URL is:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums

 

Again, if you have any questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to speak up. You can respond here, or drop us a line at editor@atariage.com.

[MattyXB]

Great Thanks. First it looks very great.

[moycon]

Awesome!!! I like it!!!!!

 

But why does this smiley ( )have a upper lip muscle spasm!!??? Poor fella!!!

[Albert]

But why does this smiley (     )have a upper lip muscle spasm!!??? Poor fella!!!

 

I have no idea, but we'll probably install more "smiley packs" (as they're called) once we've had a chance to look a few over. Maybe he's just really eager to get a bite into your new Bologna Avatar?

 

..Al

[Han]

The new forum is looking sweet! I love the atari joysticks instead of the stars .

[Jobf]

The new forum is looking sweet! I love the atari joysticks instead of the stars  

 

Yep, I can get used to this. Good job!

[Jobf]

Pfft, except I just noticed I've been demoted to a Newbie from a Snr Atari Fan

[Noble Kale]

This looks pretty cool so far

Thanks Al's :) :)

[Noble Kale]

Large avatars == A++++

:)

 

Oh, and what are the requirements for more stars? I notice stanjr doesn't have his stars full anymore....

[lonesome_pa]

The new site is great. But like Jobf mentioned, I also noticed that titles have changed. But other than that, I love what you have done to the place.

[Tyrant]

Maybe I am the only one who has a strong dislike for this new board then... I doubt it tho, if you take the time to look at all the little things that are just... wrong... boundless enthusiasm for all that is new can be a big mistake, learn to be jaded and cold like me and you'll live longer

 

Oh and I must ask.... WTF is that little tray of 4 flowers doing just left of the (overly large) "Forums" word?

[Albert]

Oh, and what are the requirements for more stars? I notice stanjr doesn't have his stars full anymore....

 

The highest level on the old forum was 1000 posts, so we added levels for 2000 and 5000. And we were never completely happy with the names for the previous levels, so we changed those as well. However, we'll probably solicit feedback to come up with a better ranking scheme, and unlike in UBB, there is no limit to the number of ranks we can add here.

 

..Al

[Albert]

Oh and I must ask.... WTF is that little tray of 4 flowers doing just left of the (overly large) "Forums" word?

 

That's actually four little, faceless people, although I got a chuckle out of your description..

 

..Al

[Tyrant]

Oh and I must ask.... WTF is that little tray of 4 flowers doing just left of the (overly large) "Forums" word?

 

That's actually four little, faceless people, although I got a chuckle out of your description..

 

..Al

 

Something tells me they'll be killed off as soon as possible.... right?

 

They really dont fit with the rest of the site, neither do most of the graphics you've used, like the post new topic buttons... they look nice, but they dont look like the rest of AtariAge, so unless your planing to change the grfx throughout the entire site (a mistake in my humble opinion), I'd try to make everything look the same, that is what I loved so much about the old board.

[Noble Kale]

hmm, I must agree though, the overall 'look' doesn't quite gel with me. However, I'm sure that given time I'll get used to it. Just a shock difference from the old boards I guess

 

Edit: Oh, btw, I notice that we're limited with regard to our signatures. I went to put a few more things in mine, and it said it was too long :(

[King Asmo]

How do we view topics that people posted to today using this new message board?

 

Overall, I really like the look and feel of this new interface.. I think I've used message boards using this software somewhere else before, but I'm not quite sure where.

 

Cheers,

 

KA

[Malix]

Change is good.

 

I like the new look.

 

Hope the board is as good as it sounds.

[Tempest]

Ok this maybe a stupid question, but how do I view all recent posts? I see an option for all unanswered posts, but not one for all posts posted today.

 

Tempest

[Junie]

I like the new board. :wink: The new Joystick status, the message thread layout, the new page options available (View Posts Since Last Visit, etc.), the AA message images. Also the "Notify me when a reply is posted" is a very nice option for posting :wink:

 

The new message board looks highly configuable. One thing that I really like is that if you want to add a Smiley or other code in the message before it is posted-- It posts it where the cursor is at in the message (The old MB always added it to the very end of the message so I would have to cut and paste it to the proper place, Not Anymore! ).

 

I have noticed that there are some options that are missing though, like a e-mail button next to the other insert tags like "Quote", "Img", etc. and other things. Maybe they will return, if not it is a good trade for the new tags like

 

Very nice all around Al, after a little getting use to it will be a better MB than ever before

[Tyrant]

Are you really sure the colour and size options are a good thing? Sure idiots could post like this using html, but people who know html know not to post annoying messages like this one (yes this is an example of how anoying someone can be very easily with the new board features.

Remember the price for flexibility and freedom is anarchy and chaos. Sometimes a little anarchy is a good thing, on a nicely presented website, it isnt.<--- This line is imposible to read because its so small and in a low contrast colour.

As you can see from this example (dont forget the tiny text you can barely read), too many options is a bad thing in the hands of the imature, and for example posting an entire message in blue is an example of how easily a message board can become totally chaotic and ugly. AtariAge has a very nice look to it, lets try to keep it that way, please?

 

And yes, I know my post looks hideous, that was the point, my appolagies to the eyes of everyone who reads it.

[DuckandCover]

Overall, I like the new forums. (I'm kinda bummed that I got demoted to "Atari Amateur", but hey, I'll get over it. :wink: ) I know that making the changeover and transferring the database had to be an enormous amount of work. Sure, it'll take some getting used to, but I really like many of the new features. Thanks, Alex and Albert!

[Junie]

too many options is a bad thing in the hands of the imature, and for example posting an entire message in blue is an example of how easily a message board can become totally chaotic and ugly.

 

I think that it adds "personality" to a message having color, instead of being all done in black. From your other recent messages I am wouldn't be surprised that you use nothing more than a text-browser like Linux.

 

I grew up using BBS'es and then text Internet browsers until something better came along. Same with the new message board, it has more bells and whistles so why not use a few?

 

I do however agree that the font size could be a problem as you showed. Of course you are the first person to actual cause this problem, so I doubt if it will be a problem

 

If you have that many problems with me Tyrant may I suggest you use a "Ignore User Post" commands or such, then you wouldn't have to view my messages with smileys , Color, or whatever else I do that offends you.

[Adrian M]

I must say, this forum is much improved. After my lengthy hiatus, it sure is great to be back with the rest of my fellow Atari fanatics! Good job on the new forum.

[Tyrant]

I am very analitical by my nature, which may make me seem resistant to change, but this is not the case entirely. I am resistant to change that has not been fully thought out. In any environment, the colour scheme should be very limited, on AtariAge it consists of two highlight colours, black text, and white (or very pale grey) backgrounds. This is good... until you give people the easy ability to post in whatever colours they want... yes its nice to be able to highlight key words in a different colour, but when used excessively it really spoils the look and feel of the site. If it was up to me, I would make three highlight styles availible, bold black, bold orange and bold blue, nothing more. With that simple subset you can make quite attractive posts, while maintaining the feel of the site perfectly.

 /"

/ ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN

X AGAINST HTML EMAIL

/ AND POSTINGS

[Tyrant]

Two more bugs to add to the list...

 

html <pre> tags dont work, as can be seen above, the board dosnt cope with the end of line being an actual end of line, I think its trying to make it an end of paragraph, but inside <pre> tags everything should be treated like its pure ASCII text.

 

Also, editing posts takes forever, you click submit then wait in excess of 30 seconds before anything happens. Whereas, with the old board, I never noticed any slowdowns at any point ever.