[Report a Bug! [Read OP first]]

The new software and hosting are performing well, the hosting is just running out of space which brings everything to a halt.

[SNES Classic Mini]

This actually looks great, I wasn't fussed about the NES one but this is a collection of games I'd actually love to play. Definitely going to try and get one.

[New Software!]

Before we spend too much time on themes I'd like everyone to give the default a go for a bit. Most of peoples' aversions to it I think will just be because it's different. The old forum had very harsh, dated table-cell lines between posts that's been far from the norm for a long time.

Personally I find the new layout much more readable after giving it a chance for bit.

More themes can be added in the future of course but lets let the dust settle for a bit first

[Report a Bug! [Read OP first]]

Recent errors this morning were unrelated to the old issues, and arose because we ran out of disk space - partly because we still had copies of the old database etc which are very large. May mean we have to upgrade a bit in the future but for now it seems ok.

[New Software!]

I haven't experimented with it but I believe there's a pretty comprehensive way to browse new posts using filters and all sorts. 

The background processes have completed at last so these features should be up and running.

[New Software!]

Responsive design means there is essentially no mobile and desktop versions. Everything just shuffles about as you resize your browser, different style rules depending on the width of your screen. You can see it by just resizing your PC browser down to mobile size. Looking at that screenshot I'm guessing  Android and Apple behave differently when requesting desktop though because for me on iPhone it has no effect (because they're not different templates). Android is presumably essentially breaking the page by modifying a meta tag that delivers the screen width to the browser in order to make it zoom out like that.

I can't imagine why you'd want desktop on a phone now as its all the same content and styling but with a lot more pinching and zooming, and I hope people will consider the mobile template as I think it's the fastest, cleanest and most complete way to browse on a mobile. That said as long as everyone has a solution they're  happy with it's ok!

[New Software!]

I don't know what you mean by floating/unfinished, the majority of this theme is IPB's default theme. Not sure what dead white space you're referring to either?

The only thing that I think looks a bit wonky/unaligned is the announcement but we don't use those much anyway so that'll be gone soon.

The "unseen"/"last post" type features require the index to be up to date, which as mentioned yesterday could take as much as two days.

[Netflix]

Just now, bob said:

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

Oh good it does work then

 

[General TV Thread]

I've really enjoyed Better Call Saul consistently. Gutted that the season has ended already!

[Metroid Samus Returns for 3DS (2D Metroid game)]

I'd really like that keyring but otherwise I'd rather just go digital

[New Software!]

9 hours ago, dwarf said:

Maybe I just need to get used to it

 

This is the case more often than not :p I remember an outrage when we switched to vbulletin and avatars were 150px wide instead of 50px.

[New Software!]

Tapatalk should be on, not sure if anything needs changing in the app though.

in the mean time consider the mobile site, it has lots of new features

[Report a Bug! [Read OP first]]

I didn't really mention this along with the new software, but we're also on new hosting, just for the forums for now. Early days yet but hopefully it's much more reliable.

[New Software!]

32 minutes ago, Magnus said:

I'm so conflicted. On the one hand, I love new stuff. On the other hand, I hate change.

The forum looks nice, though.

You're just mad cos your avatar doesn't fit in a circle.

[New Software!]

I'd... be quite surprised if switching to desktop mode did anything since it's a responsive design not a mobile theme.

The broken buttons were an issue with my custom header, should be sorted now.

[New Software!]

Ok those big ads are a bit more intrusive than I realised, no idea they hijacked links, I've turned them off.

[New Software!]

@Happenstance Is that just the discardable ones or the ones that are there all the time? Can you send me a screenshot? Thanks.

[New Software!]

The links work now that I've turned off Friendly URLs, I'll try turning those back on after reindexing/after support gets back to me!

[New Software!]

Quite a lot more homepage links are down than I thought. Reindexing is crucial for that apparently and taking longer than expected.

[New Software!]

See, told you we'd do it!

Known Issues

• While the contents have been transferred it needs to be rebuilt and reindexed.  A lot of this has already happened, but some of it (particularly posts) may take a few days (from what I recall of a test we did a while ago it took about 2 days).  You shouldn't notice many issues and should be able to continue posting without a problem, but just be wary if things seem a bit odd that may be why.
• The rebuild will also fix the custom codes (such as colour, center, font size etc) so at the moment they're not working.
• The Twitter tag currently isn't working.  It looks like we might have to manually convert these and if we do we'll just do it for 'recent' posts (no defined timeframe at the moment).
• The old emoticon used a space in vBulletin, but this software won't allow it so old uses won't work here (although obviously you can use it as I have done, it is just the only old emoticon that won't work in old posts that have been transferred).  Again, we'll see what we can do with that but having to wait for all the reindexing to take place before we can assess the impact.
• Avatars and signatures are still being transferred over so don't worry if yours isn't available yet.
• A lot of links on the homepage, as well as forum listings, aren't working.  They were when we tested earlier and we assume its while the rebuild is going on, but we've put in a support request.

Things not being transferred

• We have decided not to transfer attachments because we didn't use them much anyway and they take up space on the server.

Themes

We have just two themes now - a default one and a Switch one. I know before we had a number of character-based ones but we know they weren't used much.  We may do colour variances (which is what the Switch one essentially is), but if you guys have any pressing desire for certain ones let us know.  They may change ever so slightly when we find new things/sections that we hadn't seen before and haven't put a matching colour on.

To change the theme use the drop down at the very bottom of each page.

New Features

We are still getting to grips with this new software and obviously by and large trying to replicate what we currently had, however I have started taking advantage of the calendar feature to create a Nintendo Release Dates Calendar.  You should be able to view and 'RSVP' to these events and also review them (in this case it would be a review of the game obviously).  The future plan is to allow users to add events themselves but have them moderated.

• Calendar (discussed above)
• Profiles have cover photos now so feel free to upload one.
• User tagging is now dynamic (start typing the name and a list is displayed)
• Polls can now have up to five questions with 20 options (we can change this limit if there's a call for it)

Once the dust has settled we'll start looking at exciting new things. 

Any questions or concerns pop them here.

[Love? Relationships? Boy girl stuff? Complaints and appraisals! Gifs be welcome.]

Nice one Don't leave it too late or she'll make other plans! Where are you going to suggest? Pro tip, a firm suggestion of place and time makes things much easier than "I dont mind, how about x, I can do any day after x, what's good for you" etc..

[Game of Thrones, Book or TV?]

So how did @Animal get on, did you manage to suspend your TV watching to read all the books?

 

5 years ago when people were recommending books, they probably thought there'd have been a new one by now!

[The new anime and manga thread! [Use Spoiler Tags!]]

I just want to chime in and thank whoever, probably @Emerald Emblem, recommended My Hero Academia. Much fun watching, was such a shame when I caught up all too quickly.

[Possible New Forum Software - Have your say]

If I'm honest I've never been sure what brings it down. I think sometimes it gets hammered by bots, sometimes malicious ones, sometimes they are search spiders which are maybe struggling to navigate the lengthy network of pages etc., either way the site gets huge "non-legit" traffic spikes that cause connection errors across the board. Cloudflare's caching alleviates some of that pressure, but means you don't always see up-to-date content, and on it's best setting, blocks access from Tapatalk.

 

Anyway, I've bought new hosting and I've been playing with Invision all day today and it's looking great, very excited to make the jump.

 

Secretly a bit happy that I just got a 520 error while editing this post the first time because that makes the effort/money worthwhile

[Report a Bug! [Read OP first]]

We rebooted the physical machine and it seems to be running well for now. However, I still want to get moved to new software and new hosting as I'm sure it'll come around again soon enough.