UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums General Off Topic Can I ride out the storm?

A week ago I was trying to encourage Basil, who found that his members did not like v7.

Well I spent the whole of Christmas Day, upgrading mine - only to find that people do not like the layout, do not like the colours and generally want to go back to the old forums

But I am not about to give up (yet!) - although it has been tempting just to shut up shop LOL

I think the biggest problem is the features which were in 6.x like ubbcode in signatures, postrow highlighting, checking if a post is a duplicate etc., are missing and so people have got used to these normal items, and can't understand when in affect I take them away and give them a poorer forum.

Well now that's not quite true. There are many other new cool things in 7.x and Rick is working/promising to return many of those features in upcoming releases.

Hang in there,
after time they will come around.

Any that you loose over cosmetics, arnt worth worrying about.

Do a What's New Topic
that shut my bunch up, and i love them really.

Ive allready turned off the shout box and there still
here the members that is.

They dont like change!!

Hang in there..

The colors are easy enough to port over and the post row highlighting will be making a return soon. This is going to worth the wait as the tweaks get applied over the next year.

Your users need to realize that all of the basics of a really nice forum are in place. Patience is going to pay off.

So you saying I shouldn't buy a new license quite yet

With the changes from 6.5 to 7, we did cut out some features that didn't fit in with the immediate rewrite. With 7.1 I think we've brought everything back except for a couple things like the highlighting of the entire row on a new post.

Ian, what's the complaint on UBBcode in signatures? Most everything can be used, we only exclude a few things like quote blocks.

Oh no I'm not.

You should break out a credit card and buy that Gold lifetime license tonight. It's well worth it.

I'd love to but think the wife would make me wish I hadn't. I will probably buy the basic tonight though. If the board does do well then perhaps I'll buy the Gold at that time.

ntdoc, I love the UBB products, been with the company since the late 90's, and don't plan to ever go elsewhere due to the friends, the easy to understand code, etc...

As for wanting to back out ian, things can only get better :nod:...

though you should install some of my themes if they're whining about colors lol

Well I'll probably have to "borrow" or make some myself soon.

Yeah I've been using UBB for the past 6 years as a user, 3 as a Moderator and now past couple months as Admin and I really like the product. Like this site and the guys here to. Seems like a nice atmosphere for getting support.

.

please please....

To be honest I have not installed any of the themes uploaded here yet, because there are some minor changes from 7.0.2 and 7.1 to the stylesheets and I have yet to compile a lit of what has changed as far as the stylesheet is concerned. And knowing my users of which there are a few thousand, they will moan about the bits that don't quite work with them LOL

Colours apparently do not work. Thanks.

All of mine work for UBB7.1 since thats what I built them on :nods:

I ought to add that I have no intention of switching back to 6.x My version of 6.x was a security risk ( I could not upgrade to the latest 6.x version as I was using too many hacks)

I guess the biggest complaint I have is that it looks cluttered. As the days go by I will try to get out of my users what they mean.

Personally I think it is on some pages where previously IIP could be supressed - whereas I have made the left hand column compulsory due to links/navigation etc.

Yesh, the hardest things at times is to make users help you to understand what they are saying that they don't like EXACTLY... Things like "its too cluttered" can take forever to get an answer as to what exactly think is the problem...

agreed - I think it is purely a problem with showflat / showthreaded where they are not used to left or right margin when viewing posts. However hopefully they will get used to it

'eh life is about changes, and getting used to those changes ... it'll just take a little time lol

Ian, how are they trying to put colors into their signature? As you can see from my sig, colors do work.

Maybe their trying to specify the funky colour spelling in the markup

Make sure they are using

[color:green]Green[/color]

or

[color:red]Red[/color]

Before upgrading BowlingCommunity.com I created a separate "test board" where I imported all the members and a single forum from the existing community and also created a test forum and a suggestions/questions forum. It was up for only seven days. I heavily promoted it throughout BowlingFans.com, linking to a features/change list and explained everything and why the change was needed so all the active members knew this is they'd soon be using.

I got a few questions about the new features. But mostly compliments. The biggest complaint my users had was the number of ads and the addition of ads between the 1st and 2nd post so I removed a few other ads from the left column. And the complaints stopped.

I believe if you give your users a preview of whats coming and the opportunity to make suggestions BEFORE you make the change the resistance to the change is much reduced as they feel more involved.

lol Rick, perhaps we should add colour tags, you know, conform to the ukers :nod:

I just forced UBB7 on my people, posting was down, traffic was up; still really the same thing so i basically did things for me

Hi,

I did put up two test sites - the later one being 7.1b2 - problem is hardly anyone bothered to visit it...

I remember moans when I switched from classic to threads about 4 or 5 years ago, and probably had similar moans when I switched from whatever I was using to classic - simple truth is that people dislike change...

I am really not too worried, but sadly I am partially disabled, which has side effects like a loss of brain power and depression - so I must apologise if I sounded off in my earlier posts.

Hopefully I can get my head around a couple more stylesheets and this will keep them happy.

They are still posting - so it is not all bad

As I told ou at UBBDev, give me your old styles

I think I have figured out why it wasn't working - the tag had got altered some time ago on my previous forums. Thanks.

Hahahahahahahahaha

Oh I'm so glad that I am not alone.

I think *every* upgrade I have ever done people have bitched and moaned about and made me regret spending the days and days to get it done.

I am worried about moving to 7.x and I think I will wait for 7.1 before I do as I do not want to loose features that people may be using, but like it or not, it will be upgraded and if they don't like it, then they know where they can go.

The biggest pain for me is the stylesheet change.. I really don't have the energy to update my stylesheet to the new format.. ill post up and see if someone fancies doing it for me (for a small fee of course!)

I am more than willing to create styles, I won't charge much so long as they're something basic (if I have to completely create somethign from scratch with no starting paramaters I may charge a smidge more lol)