Check it out: Updates to Polycount

adam · Oct 2008

Hey everyone,

A while ago we updated the vBulletin software to the latest incarnation and some functionality was lost because the them we were using was supporting an old version of the software.

Over the last few days, Pedro and I (mostly Pedro) spent time updating the two primary themes (Polycount and Polycount_wide) to support the new features and make sure it all runs smoothly.

So, if you're interested, here's what we've done.

A new, more robust, User Control Panel.
- Leave public messages on someones Profile
- Easier PM management
- Easier Profile Management
- Sexier Interface
Simplified the look of the forums a tad.
- We removed the column that had those HUGE icons for thread updates. Going forwards, the 'new' Polycount forums will be very easy on the eyes and part of this is making the forums completely functional and sexy. So, removing that needless column was the first step.
As Ted mentioned here, we have 2 primary User Groups now. This should be transparent to most users, but to us it makes moderation of the SPAM we've been receiving a hell of a lot easier.
- The first post of any new user must be moderated by one of the Administrators of Polycount (Myself, MoP, bearkub or rogue13). This way when a bot shows up and posts a link to the latest Pam Anderson porn, we can remove it & nuke the account, stopping the spam from going live.
- Some of our users who have not posted in a while may notice the forum is moderating their next post. We know about this. It's a kink in the Promotion we have for going from the 'need moderation' Usergroup to the 'regular Polycounter' user group. As we see it happen, we'll validate the threads and move the users over manually. It may take an hour or 2 for us to notice it, but we'll catch it.

So, that's about it.

There's a bit of a bug happening right now when searching through threads that Pedro will look in to. Other than that, if you notice any bugs please let me know so I can tackle it as soon as possible.

Thanks!

Pedro Amorim · Oct 2008

Yeah. there's a bug going on on the searches page. that i will have to investigate. But i possibly might have commented some part of the code that is related to the searches.
No worries, tomorrow i will have a crack at that.

MoP · Oct 2008

Cool stuff guys. The new user pages are neat!

I'll be watching out for new threads which need approval too, and since we have moderators in about 6 different time zones, there should be a fairly round-the-clock watch on new posts.

Tumerboy · Oct 2008

Woot! thanks guys!

vahl · Oct 2008

thanks guys

so, when will the front page finally be updated ?

Ged · Oct 2008

sweeet thx

moose · Oct 2008

purdy

only comment would be the horizontal rules under the dates

they're a bit stand-outish, and far away from the date.

other than that, its sexytime! thanks guys for all the love! :poly106:

Zephir62 · Oct 2008

I was actually partial to the huge update icons.

notman · Oct 2008

adamBrome wrote: »

[*]Simplified the look of the forums a tad.
We removed the column that had those HUGE icons for thread updates. Going forwards, the 'new' Polycount forums will be very easy on the eyes and part of this is making the forums completely functional and sexy. So, removing that needless column was the first step.

OMG you've RUINED the site! I'm never coming here again!

Ok, seriously, looks cool... was a bit caught off guard by it though. I thought my browser wasn't loading the site correctly.

moose · Oct 2008

oh btw, my eyes thank you for the cool gray text.

Eric Chadwick · Oct 2008

Nice job, thanks.

Another vote for darkening/moving up the HRs.

Eric Chadwick · Oct 2008

If you guys have time, the Subscribed Threads is a bit weird, the column for the Thread names is scrunched while the Thread Starter names column is super-wide.

IronHawk · Oct 2008

nice job Brome and Bitmap!

Michael Knubben · Oct 2008

There also seem to be some issues with marking threads 'as read'. Everytime I come back to polycount, it seems every thread's been marked as unread, and it's a bit of a pain. Is this the case for anyone else?

LEViATHAN · Oct 2008

notman wrote: »

Ok, seriously, looks cool... was a bit caught off guard by it though. I thought my browser wasn't loading the site correctly.

This.

rebb · Oct 2008

MightyPea wrote: »

There also seem to be some issues with marking threads 'as read'. Everytime I come back to polycount, it seems every thread's been marked as unread, and it's a bit of a pain. Is this the case for anyone else?

I'm having sort of the opposite problem.

Updated Threads seem to be a light grey now while they have been using a brighter font-color before. So at a glance they all look like "already read" to me and only the icons in front of them and the font-boldness depicts them as updated threads.

Missing the bright Text

.

adam · Oct 2008

Which bright text? Screenshots would be great for this sort of stuff guys :P I'm always logged in as an Administrator so I think what I see can be a bit different than what is shown normally.

rebb · Oct 2008

Hmm, wasn't the font-color of the thread-titles etc darkened a bit ?
I only know that things were "jumping out at me" a bit more before, maybe it was just the icons.

Here's how it looks right now :

Sadly no "before" Image, as i'm not doing a lot of Screenshots of forums

.

adam · Oct 2008

Ah, not sure what to say here. The colours were copied exactly from the old to the new.

Marine · Oct 2008

Any chance of the ugly ass bars between the time stamp, post and signature being replaced with something simpler?

adam · Oct 2008

Thats what people have asked about. I will check in to it for sure :P

SHEPEIRO · Oct 2008

always good to see updates to the site, didnt really notice, probably more to do with me being the most un-observant artist in the world than your smooth and seamless implementation ;-)

Jesse Moody · Oct 2008

NOICE!!!

moose · Oct 2008

adamBrome wrote: »

Ah, not sure what to say here. The colours were copied exactly from the old to the new.

i was complementing them

Specifically, i was talkin about the the names on the left. Maybe they're the same, maybe its just the overall contrast difference thats making it look different now! i got nuthin, but i likes it! :poly142:

robioto · Oct 2008

Thanks for all your work guys, polycount just keeps geting better.

Mister Sentient · Oct 2008

adamBrome wrote: »

We removed the column that had those HUGE icons for thread updates. Going forwards, the 'new' Polycount forums will be very easy on the eyes and part of this is making the forums completely functional and sexy. So, removing that needless column was the first step.

Noooooooo. That needless column brought balance to the ensemble.

Frank · Oct 2008

moose wrote: »

i was complementing them Specifically, i was talkin about the the names on the left. Maybe they're the same, maybe its just the overall contrast difference thats making it look different now! i got nuthin, but i likes it! :poly142:

I think you're just busted. :P

Frank the Avenger

EarthQuake · Oct 2008

Right now with the "wide" preset, all the threads seem to show up wayyy to close to the edge of the screen, i mean i get i'm using the wide version, but if you think about it, you're reading thread names that start right at the edge of the screen, and then going to threads and reading posts that start 2 inches to the right, its an anooying inconsistancy for me.

Asherr · Oct 2008

yeah, i liked that column. it gave the text some breathing room like the margins of a book.

EarthQuake · Oct 2008

Heres what i mean, the current way is actually a noticeable strain on the eyes for me.

Jeremy Lindstrom · Oct 2008

Updates to signatures too:

Your signature cannot be longer than 120 characters including BB code markup.
BB code size is not allowed.

so looks like i can't change my sig or I lose the abilities it had

Jeremy Lindstrom · Oct 2008

Search also is kind of borked, when it gives you the results they are squished to the left cell in firefox.

bearkub · Oct 2008

bitmap wrote: »

Yeah. there's a bug going on on the searches page. that i will have to investigate. But i possibly might have commented some part of the code that is related to the searches.
No worries, tomorrow i will have a crack at that.

There is your answer to the searches, Dekard.

Jeremy Lindstrom · Oct 2008

bearkub wrote: »

There is your answer to the searches, Dekard.

Heh, thanks.. I have no comprehension skills

adam · Oct 2008

Joe - so when you go in to a forum the thread listing is moved in a bit or you would like it to be?

EarthQuake · Oct 2008

I would like it to be, as it is where i'm looking is directly at the very left edge of the screen, basically look half off of my screen, i would like to be able to just kind of focus on the center of my screen like i can with when reading a thread.

Eric Chadwick · Oct 2008

Looks like sigs have changed to only allow 120 characters, including BBcode. Even if I just attempt to save my existing sig, I get this message:

The following errors occurred with your submission:
Your signature cannot be longer than 120 characters including BB code markup.

Michael Knubben · Oct 2008

Yeah, that's annoying. I want a limit on signatures, otherwise I'm likely to just turn them off altogether, but with BBcode? That's just ridiculous. In the end, I was lucky that url's work without the http://, or my sig wouldn't have worked.

rooster · Oct 2008

I can't see the little ticks etc that tell you if a thread is new, or has been posted in, etc anymore. I can't tell what stuff I've already seen

adam · Oct 2008

Relax pea, it'll be fixed in a jiffy.

rooster - the ticks? You mean the icons? We removed that entire column with the idea of something else that we're doing.

rooster · Oct 2008

ah fair dos!

oh and while I'm here..
please can we have a custom skin that has all the old colours in it please!

adam · Oct 2008

Not any time soon, no.

notman · Oct 2008

Is there a way to tell if there are new messages? Or am I missing it. Something aside from the date stamp of the most recent post.

Also, I noticed the icons still appear if you go to the subcategories. (like clicking general forums) I don't know if that's intentional, of overlooked... just thought I mention it in case you wanted the consistent browsing

adam · Oct 2008

Not intentional, just missed. Thanks notman.

For the time being, on the top menu, you can click "New Posts" and see whats up! We'll sort it out for another update.

Michael Knubben · Oct 2008

Hah, sorry Adam. I didn't want to sound quite so demanding, heh.
Still, fix it, or I WITHDRAW MY MEMBERSHIP! (that's not a promise)

Jeremy Lindstrom · Oct 2008

still working on the sigs? I was going to add the link to the enviro wiki but can't

DAMN U BB CODE!!

Thanks for the tip MightyPea, I dropped the www bits and was able to fit both, just nothing else.

adam · Nov 2008

New Posts and search results pages should be fixed now. Subscriptions in the UserCP are still a nut thats to be cracked *soon*.

Here's something else I've been working on a bit whenever I can find them, its a new template we'll be using to show the web programmer that'll make the new front page. It'll be used once we're ready to go live with the new page.

Couple of points real quick before I jump back in to Far Cry 2:

We wanted a way to a great way to showcase the phenomenal work you guys do without interrupting the forums function so the background for our header will be of artwork from you guys, used with permission. All credit will be given to the artist. The idea being that every time you refresh a new image is shown.
Polycount is a forum for people to showcase artwork and we're going to let the art work thats posted here be what makes this site look as sexy as it will: Going with a simpler colour scheme and design will help the artwork posted pop out even more.
The main page will have a theme and style much like this

Tulkamir · Nov 2008

Sweet, can't wait for the new theme to get up.

Keep up the great work!

notman · Nov 2008

You tease... I want it now!

(looking good Adam)

Daaark · Nov 2008

Woudl be nice if the forum theme had a separate table for each post. That way people could post large images, and not make us have to scroll to read the other posts.

Michael Knubben · Nov 2008

I love how the part that contains the avatar is now much slimmer. As I usually browse on pretty lowres screens (laptop) without an easy way to scroll sideways, this should make a big difference for me.
Good job on the whole design, guys.

Additionally, could we make it so that large images don't deform the other posts, but instead just pop out past other posts?

Check it out: Updates to Polycount

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