# Welcome to the Forum!



## pjk (Jul 11, 2007)

Hello all,
I just wanted to welcome you to the new forum. I hope you like it a lot better, and enjoy your time here. I will continue adding new features, fixing problems from the transfer, etc.

A couple things I want to point out:
*-The search function*. You should now be able to utilize the search, while the last forum had a very weak search function.
*-PM Count*: Members max storage is 50 right now. We can change this as time progresses. If you are over that, you will need to delete some messages. To all members, please check your PM box and delete any messages you don't need. This will save us a little bit of our resources.
*-Your settings.* Please go to your User CP and update all your settings. Please browse through your options, etc. to make sure you have everything set to what you want. There are a ton more options on this new forum, so be sure to check it out. None of the attachments (this includes avatars) were moved over. Feel free to go back to the old forum (here) and save your avatar and bring it over here. There are some limits and sizes, but those are default, I can tweak those a bit in the next couple of days based off what you all think.
*-Your login.* If for some reason you can't login, click on "Forgot Password" and type in your email to get a new password. I believe all of the passwords were moved, but I can't guarantee it.
*-Your signature.* I have decided that I want to keep signature fairly short and simple. I have disabled all images in signatures, and will set a limit on the amount of text you can have. Please keep your signature short if you have one. I will tweak these settings over the next couple of days.
-The old forum will be left up for a couple of weeks as "Read Only". Please do not post there or link there anymore as it will be shut down soon. It is only being left up so that any miscellaneous data can be moved over (like avatars, 4 posts that were posted during the backup since the forum lock didn't work, etc.). The new domain of the forum is http://www.speedsolving.com , although I will direct rubiks.has.it to direct here as well.

I think that is it for now. Please reply here with your general thoughts of the new forum, and any suggestions/comments you may have. I will be working on tweaking settings and whatnot a lot over the next couple of days. I have put about 14 hours into this over the last 2 days trying to not keep you all offline too long. Now that it is back up, get back into the cubing discussions and competitions.

Enjoy,
Patrick


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## Erik (Jul 11, 2007)

Wow, this is totally a different style and to be honest... I liked the other one a bit better...
First thing I notice is the order of threads, it seems that each time I visit for instance 'speedsolving' old threads and new ones are mixed, so I have to do: ->Sorted by last posttime and -> Descending, over and over again each time I visit one of these, I couldn't find how to lock it that way in the User CP and it seems like it doesn't save it automatically. 
Ok let's bring it all up right away. Where are the smileys to pick from when making a message? I always loved the smiley board. 
How can you see which threads contain a message I haven't viewed yet? Are the envalopes blue then? 
Ok don't worry here's my final point, why oh why does this forum take so much space for only one message? I like a forum which is compact and quick to oversee, but the names only are like in font 300 now...
Ok done complaining now 

p.s. I like the old smileys more 


Update: I found how to see new posts now


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## ExoCorsair (Jul 11, 2007)

Totally agree with Erik.


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## Mike Hughey (Jul 11, 2007)

Patrick, is there any way for you to change the default sorting to last thread first (as Erik suggests), like the old forum was? That is certainly my biggest dislike of the new forum, and since the old one defaulted that way, it would certainly be appreciated by most people here, I'd think.

Other than that, I rather like the look of the new forum, and it seems to respond a lot snappier than the old one as well.


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## Worms (Jul 11, 2007)

where are my arcade games and the competition from this week????


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## pjk (Jul 11, 2007)

Erik: If we wanted, I could make this forum look pretty much identical to the other forum. What exactly did you like better? I can try adjusting as needed. One common thing is whenever you get used to a forum and the forum changes, the users tend to dislike it at first. When you get used to it and all the new features, you will most likely begin to like it. As far as the order of the threads, I have corrected that. Sorry about that. There are a lot of minor settings that I still need to do that I haven't got to yet. I finally got the forum setup at 3am so you guys can start analyzing and letting me know what you think, but I still have to tweak a lot of stuff. In regards to the similies/emoticons, you select those below the post. Click on new thread, and you can select them there. Is that what you are looking for?

Exocosair: Can you elaborate based off my reply to Erik above? I want to correct any problems that you may have.

Mike: Done and done. That is just a minor setting that I had to fix. Of course we all want all the threads to be in order by date, that is obviously the most logical. Sorry about that, and it should be fixed now.

Worms: In regards to the arcade, vBulletin (this new forum software) has some excellent arcades I can install. I will work on that soon, but I can't guarantee it will be up and running just yet, since I have hundreds of other things to setup. The competitions for this week should be setup soon. Keep checking back to the competition area.


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## Mike Hughey (Jul 11, 2007)

Thanks. For me, the order is now working for all the forums except Blindfold Cubing, which is still backwards. Did you just miss that one, or is something caching wrong on my machine?


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## pjk (Jul 11, 2007)

My mistake... it is now fixed. Thanks for letting me know. If you have anymore problems, please let me know.


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## Erik (Jul 11, 2007)

Ah thanks the order is now good.
Exactly what I don't like is the build up of one single post, it takes too much space where the old forum is quite compact (is this the correct english word here?) and easy to find something.
Also when I look now at speedcubing for instance, everything just looks very crowded and unorganized to me, and I'm sure this is not only because I'm not use to it.
And I still don't like the smileys , like this one does not even work... :S (and this one too)


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## ExoCorsair (Jul 11, 2007)

Yeah, the thread order was bugging me, and the smilies too. 

Edit: More skins would be nice, for those that don't like the current layout too.


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## pjk (Jul 11, 2007)

Erik, ah, are you referring to the width of the forum? On the other forum it was set to a standard 800px size, while this one is 100% (in other words, it stretches as wide as your screen). I can probably create an option that will allow you as a user to change that for your particular viewing. I will look into it.

Exo: I will see what I can do about the smilies. And I will see about the multiple skins as well. Give me sometime to do that though, as I have a ton of other things to take care of before I start customizing all that stuff.


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## Worms (Jul 11, 2007)

thanks pjk, i'll wait


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## KJiptner (Jul 12, 2007)

I think as soon as some layout issues are handled better, I'll really like the new forum.


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## ExoCorsair (Jul 12, 2007)

No rush, it's a reasonable improvement over the old forum anyhow.


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## pjk (Jul 13, 2007)

For those of you who want multiple skins, what type of feel/look do you want? What colors? I will begin working on this soon, so I want to make sure you guys get what you're looking for.


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## HelloiamChow (Jul 14, 2007)

If theres a way to make the stickied topics kind of...like divided off from the rest of the threads, that'd be great. So it'd look like, 

Big Blue Bar
Stickies
Big Blue Bar
The rest of the threads

I dunno, just a suggestion, I think it draws more attention to the stickied topics.


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## pjk (Jul 14, 2007)

Sure, that won't be a problem, I will do that soon as well, and will also get the layout selections going soon. Anything else?


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## pjk (Jul 16, 2007)

Okay, I have added the following:
Link Exchange Page
Donate Page
Sticky/Normal Separation
RSS Feed

Will add layout changer next, along with an easier way to subscribe to forums via email.


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## pjk (Jul 20, 2007)

Alright, I will be adding news styles soon, which you will be able to select your choice in the bottom left of the page. So far there is only the Default and the Default w/ Fixed Width (Jon, you wanted it, so there you go). I will be adding more skins and changing the actual default skin for everyone soon. I will update when I have done so.


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## pjk (Jul 22, 2007)

Alright, still working on the new skins/styles, but should be done soon. Also please check this topic:
http://www.speedsolving.com/showthread.php?t=1027

Okay guys, what do you guys think about a "Fewest Moves" forum, we people can discuss fewest moves techniques and whatnot for that event? For one, I am very interested in learning more. And I have a lot of reading on the Yahoo group. Onside of that, what about a video forum? Yes, we have strangepuzzles.com and youtube full of vids, but it would be cool to have a collection on here as well. We have that embed feature where you can embed youtube videos directly into posts. So for people wanting to see fellow members vids, this would be a good place to look. What do you think about this? Please give me your input on these ideas when you read this. And if you have any other ideas/suggestions, please let me know. Thanks


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## AvGalen (Jul 22, 2007)

A video place is a good idea, we have quite a lot of that already.

A fewest move place is not such a good idea. Yahoo is the place for that!


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## pjk (Jul 22, 2007)

Okay, I will create a video forum shortly and see how it works out.

As far as fewest moves, we will let that slide for a bit. If we can get enough interest here, I think it is a good way to go. Yahoo also has a speedsolving forum.... why isn't Yahoo the place for that? Arnaud, lend me your reasoning behind your statement


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## AvGalen (Jul 22, 2007)

This forum has been pretty active on the video-front and there is no central place for this on the internet yet. That is why I think a video forum is a good idea.

This forum hardly ever discusses anything about Fewest Moves and there is a seperate forum for this on Yahoo that has pretty much every piece of information so far bundled centraly. It took months before Fewest Moves got 10 votes for the next competition.

This forum has proven it's worth on the speedsolving-front many times over. It is used by many top speedcubers and is very active on all types of information.

Conclusion:
Speedsolving: Keep it 
Video: Start it
Fewest Moves: Don't

But all of that is just my opinion


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## pjk (Jul 22, 2007)

I understand what you are saying. You do you know that if we wanted to, I could transfer all posts from any Yahoo group onto this forum, of course, if the majority of people wanted that to happen, right?  Thanks for your opinion Arnaud.


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## AvGalen (Jul 23, 2007)

I don't think copying content from Yahoo is a good idea. What is the advantage for the community of splitting/forking the knowledge about Fewest Moves?


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## pjk (Jul 23, 2007)

No, it wouldn't be copying by any means. I would only move all the content if people wanted to move any Yahoo group over (whether it is FM, Speedsolving, BLD, memory, etc.). The reason I brought that up so this comment:
"This forum hardly ever discusses anything about Fewest Moves and there is a seperate forum for this on Yahoo that has pretty much every piece of information so far bundled centraly."
Well, if we did get it rolling and people prefered it, then we could move. However, at this point we won't be doing that. We would need to get enough interest first.

Pat


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## pjk (Nov 7, 2007)

*Just a little note:*
If you see a "Moved" post, it obviously means it was moved, and you now see a redirect. You may think, "what is the point of moving it if there is still a "post" redirect still there". Well, most of the time, they are expiring redirects which are set to expire in a defined period of time (normally 1 month). I do this so next time any user comes to the site, they can find it easier, and don't get lost, and two, it moves the post to the appropriate place so we don't get them all cluttered.


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## pjk (Nov 20, 2007)

New Feature - *How to Exclude Forums from "New Posts"
*If you want to exclude certain forums from the New Posts page, simply go to your User CP >> Click on Edit Options >> Scroll to the bottom to the "Exclude Forums from "Get New Posts"" section, and edit your options there. If you want select multiple forums, hold down control and click the desired forums. If you have any problems with this, please send me a PM.

Also, these are some other features I am working on, I will update when I complete:
-Cube applet to embed w/ BB code
-Stickies as first search results
-BB code integration for Competition time outputs
-Member global map w/ vB


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## karaoke99 (Nov 28, 2007)

I don't know if you are aware of this, but the name of this forum is misspelled. I should be "Announcements".


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## pjk (Nov 28, 2007)

Fixed. Thanks.


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## Stefan (Dec 2, 2007)

pjk said:


> New Feature - *How to Exclude Forums from "New Posts"
> *


Thanks a lot again! It works great!

A moment ago I also put the first person on my "ignore list". However, his posts still appear in the thread, just with his text replaced by "This message is hidden because NAME is on your ignore list". With that I can live, but if his post is the only one added to a thread since I last visited it, I don't want this thread to appear on the "New Posts" page. Right now it does, I just tested it. Can you fix this? This is the main reason I put him on my ignore list in the first place, as he already made me open several threads just to see a stupid remark. Btw, when I click a username, one of the options I get shown is "Add NAME to Your Buddy List". I suggest an equivalent option for the ignore list.


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## pjk (Dec 4, 2007)

Stefan,
As far as making an "ignored user" not show in the new posts:
-This will be tough. I am guessing with the way the new posts are written that this will require was massive modifications. However, I will definitely look into it. Sounds like an interesting project that will come in handy. Christmas break is coming up, so I should be able to work on it then (after finals). I plan on making some sweet additions soon. I am also hoping to get some sponsorships going so I can give away some puzzles on the forum.

As far as adding the Ignore feature when clicking on a username, are you referring to the pop-up feature? You want the ignore button added to that? If so, that would be easy. If you are referring to adding a ignore button when you are viewing a profile, that already exists. It is in the middle of screen when you are viewing a profile.

-Pat


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