Welcome to the Microsoft SQL Server forums at SQLTeam.com. These forums are for Microsoft SQL Server specific questions.
Looks nice! Hopefully my post count will migrate and no one else's! 
1 Like
I've looked migrating post counts but I think this software will just reset them. Not sure how to get around that yet.
Is there raw DB access that we can update? BTW, this has moderation features correct? I imagine the spam handing is also different? Would there be a way to manually flag spam?
what's the software running this?
also, how come new forums? I thought you pretty much called it quits on forums.
It's running something called Discourse. You can find out more at http://www.discourse.org/.
I'm still a fan of forums. It seems many SQL Server questions don't lend themselves to QA formats. I was just getting frustrated that no changes were being made to Snitz and I really didn't want to code in ASP to add new features.
Hopefully this will be easier to use 
Wow, pretty cool! After years of .NET coding I'm getting back into much more SQL in my latest job, looking forward to a SQLTeam revival!
Seems critical to me to preserve an indication of post count. I don't care about the numbers, but if everyone starts from zero there is no indication of old-hands / experts etc.
Is there no import of existing threads etc? Huge amount of know-how encapsulated in those. If you just close the old forum (even if available for Google, but read-only) no ability to ask follow up questions in the original thread, nor to continue any existing discussions etc. Confusing for people it we link to answers there, but then no ability for people to Post (without navigating back here ...)
Personally I would have preferred conventional forum software, such as Xenoforo which has superb and extremely time-efficient facilities for regular posters. I assume that conventional Forums are familiar to folk, more so that this format is, thus more likely to be at home with the formatting options like [code] etc. , but I'm happy to give this a go for now.
EDIT: I changed this at 12:02 UK time on 08-May-2015
I'd LOVE to preserve post count. Unfortunately the software recalculates automatically. There just isn't an easy way around that. My work-around is gradually bringing titles across and bumping up our high count users to a higher trust level once they create an account.
I looked long and hard at importing posts and it was expensive in either time or money. I just wasn't willing to expend either to bring that content across. I've thought about this for a LONG time and it's what kept me from doing anything for quite a while. I finally just had to do something.
The old forums will exist in read-only mode for a long time. The content may get imported at some point but no promises. It really is a fair bit of effort.
Is there any way to style or customize the layout, preferably per-user? I know whitespace is all the rage but it aggravates me that 4 1-line posts take up the whole vertical screen. Also, let's put the reply an other buttons off to the right where it's currently empty and close up the vertical. Even Snitz had too much vertical space in some places.
Hey there,
looks great so far.
Glad to be here.
Have a great day,
Nevarda
I haven't been around for ages but this is an exiting and fresh restart. I might just try to hang around more often now! I miss you guys hehe...
[quote="graz, post:9, topic:8, full:true"]
I'd LOVE to preserve post count. Unfortunately the software recalculates automatically. There just isn't an easy way around that. My work-around is gradually bringing titles across and bumping up our high count users to a higher trust level once they create an account.[/quote]
Thought: Allocate "badges" to users recognised as making a valuable contribution? i.e. some inidcation so that Newbies asking a question can add some "weight" to posts from knowledgeable people
It seems to me that:
-
You want the maximum number of questions asked so that the forum is vibrant and thriving.
-
You want some regular, knowledgeable, users to answer questions.
Presumably new people with questions choose a forum based on seeing other questions answered, and the style / friendliness / whatever of the people providing answers.
I'm not sure without an import from the old system that an index of a few posts is going to give reassurance, to Newbies, that this is a busy forum. Perhaps that could be solve by having the links to Registration / "Ask a Question" on the old forum just bring people to this new one. Time will tell if the absence of a huge repository of past threads (in the new forum) continues to attract a decent number of newbie questions.
As someone who provides answers I want the best possible tools to maximise my productivity for the time I have available on here:
Ease of reply. At least the new forum remembers where in the thread I have read to, so links directly to next available post. That saves time. I've not yet explorered how the new forum remembers threads that I have participated in. Based on my experience with other "modern" forums I like:
List of threads I have participated in
Ability to add a thread to that "follow" list (without replying)
Ability to remove a thread, no loner of interest (even if I have replied in it)
Then I want good editing tools. This typing box is far too small. On the old one at least I could resize the box (but I had to do it every time). I can "hide preview" to make it the full width of my screen, but on a wide-screen that makes it hard to read too! Taller (or auto-growing on long messages, or via a CONFIG option) would help me.
EDIT: I've now found the thumb-tack to pull the edit box taller. Will be interesting to see if it retains that as a "preference" 
(couldn't find a Fingers Crossed emoticon )
EDIT2: Hiding the Preview is persistent, increasing the height of reply box doesn't seem to be. Not sure it bothers me having to increase it WHEN I need to ... but if it does I'll report back ... of course!
I haven't tried much in the way of replying yet, but I'll be interested to see how Quoting and [CODE] tagging etc. work. The QUOTE I tried quoted the whole post (much like the old forum of course). On newer forum software I used (on other, non-SQL forums) they have the ability to highlight text in the original post and then a "Quote" popup appears. It is thus possible to quote several fragments from user(s) previous post(s), which I have found very efficient when replying. No idea what plugins etc. are available for Discourse, so just talking out-loud in case any of my thoughts are useful.
EDIT: Yeah, well I should have tried it first, eh? Just highlight some text in a previous post and popup appears. If not already constructing a reply then the popup say REPLY and it opens REPLY box with highlighted text quoted, if REPLY box already open it adds the quoted text to it. Great feature!
I'm dyslexic so probably more vexed by these things than others. Screen clutter (particularly moving adverts and the like, but also Signatures, Avatars and so on) means that the rate at which I can absorb and digest information on screen is hampered, so on normal forums I have all those turned off, and use Ad Blocks to get rid of any "Moving stuff"
I'm not sure how much control we'll get over the layout. I'll look into it.
Hey Lumbago, how are you? I'm seeing lots of familiar names in this process
I've updated my earlier post (not sure if that is obvious if you've already read it). Old forum used to set the "date" on the thread to "now" if an old post was re-edited, so maybe my editing it brings it to light ...
(By the by, if not, then is there a risk that spammers go back and re-edit old threads to add LINKs? Maybe spam is now impossible? --- Ah! and I've just seen a herd of pigs flying past my window 
)
I haven't explored it fully, but clearly there is a lot of control over "tracking" of threads:
(Just dragged that image from my Windows Explorer into the Reply box, previously tried that via the IMAGE toolbar icon, which also works, but clearly very easy to just drag & drop into a reply)
1 Like
@Kristen, covering off on a few of your points....
I think as people get more posts on here we'll be able to explore better tools to recognize valuable contributors. One thing that people can do is like a post. I'm curious how that will play out.
(And I just noticed I can scroll the thread while typing a response. That's handy!)
The link from the old forums to here is going up this morning.
I was also looking for a way to make the reply box bigger. Thanks for finding that!
I think that posting code will be pretty easy:
SELECT *
FROM dbo.MyTable
WHERE Formatted=1
Highlight it and hit control-K.
I notice I can edit a TITLE, change a CATEGORY and add (maybe change, didn't dare try!!!) TAGS. not sure whether I have just acquired that ability, through "activity count", or because you have set me to a privileges user, but either way I think it is an excellent feature. I don't feel anal about fixing these things, and my abillity to sell correctly is limited to what my spell checker spots - which of course does not include spelt-correctly but used-wrongly but I'm happy to fix the occasionaly thing, particularly that a foreigner might mis-type in a Title.
Re: Importing old threads.
Is that something I could help with? I'm sure you are far more able than me, and know the new forum already, but we do a lot of data gathering from clients' sources that are not fit for anything!! and I'd be happy to explore exporting from SQL database into the format that you need for import. Let me know if you think there is any mileage in that? (I'm thinking of sorting any LINKs back to SQLTEAM threads, changing [B] to two-stars and all that sort of stuff.
I think I could do with writing an Aunt Sally on features available here. I wanted STRIKEOUT earlier, which is not in the Toolbar (that I could see) but might well be in the formatter's abilities. I'll have a go at an INFO post when I have a moment