Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

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orudge
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Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

At some point in the next week (I’m afraid I can’t say when exactly, as I don’t know, but it’ll likely be a weekday evening) the forums will go down for up to a few hours as a phpBB upgrade will be taking place. This long-overdue update to phpBB 3.2 will offer improved quoting, a notification system, emoji support, plus improved anti-spam systems and various other behind-the-scenes improvements.

There will also be a brand new, cleaner, responsive TT-Forums theme, which will resize appropriately on mobile devices. It may be a bit rough around the edges to start with, and will also lack most of the custom icons etc that we currently have, but it should still offer a distinctive TT-like design that is better suited for modern systems. The default phpBB proSilver theme will also be available for those who prefer not to use the TT theme. (subSilver2 will however be retired at this point.)

The forum server is also due an OS upgrade, which I may perform after upgrading the forums depending on how long the latter takes. Basically, don’t be alarmed if the forums are down (a message should be displayed) at some point during the next week!
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by GunChleoc »

Good luck and may it go smoothly :)
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

Note that I haven't forgotten about this, but it's a very busy week with birthdays and other things going on, so it may be next week before I get to it now. Sorry!
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

The upgrade has taken place, and the new forums are now here! First of all, you may need to hard refresh - potentially on a few different pages - to get the full new theme. (You may otherwise find left over icons, etc, from the old theme.)

The new theme may be a bit of a drastic change, and I know it's certainly not perfect - quite a few things need tweaking (the massive profile panel on a 1920x1080 screen for one!), but hopefully it should offer a better experience in general, especially on mobile devices. If you don't like it, you can always switch to the standard proSilver theme. Note that the old subSilver2 theme has been permanently removed, as it is no longer supported by phpBB.

If you spot anything that doesn't work, please let me know.

If you spot anything that needs improving (particularly with regards to the theme), also let me know. If you have specific HTML/JavaScript/CSS fixes, even better! ;)

I also intend to add in links to the wikis along the new slimmed down top navigation bar (next to Donate etc).

Cheers,
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Redirect Left »

Very nice to see the update finally come to fruition.

My only suggestion currently would be to possibly recolour the blue panels on the homescreen and header. It's a bit of a stark contrast to the green and grey of the rest of the theme, and wears on the eyes a bit. Perhaps change it to a grey or green similar to the colours used elsewhere.
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by jfs »

Agree that the blue headers are clashing with the rest of the theme. I think the only way to make blue headers possibly work would be to remove the grassland tile background and use something not green (but more neutral) instead, and I don't think that would fly :)
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Andrew350 »

Very nice. :) Gonna miss the old one but indeed this seems more friendly to use.

One small issue so far: I'm on my phone now and the drop down menus in the header are appearing behind the ads. Makes it impossible to use them :(

Also I agree on the blue being a bit much.
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by YNM »

I think if we want to sport the blue, then we'd need a different grey...
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Chrill »

Indeed, the massive profile panel when browsing looks funky as does the blue bar at the top. Other than that, I think it's a big improvement courtesy of it being responsive, although requiring some getting used to. Good work!

I would say that it is now more difficult to spot whether there is a new reply in a topic or not. The icons used when a topic/forum is read is too bright. If it were darker, then the unread sections would stand out more.
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Eddi »

i'm not sure if this is the right place to discuss this, but i would suggest to try to get rid of the blue and lightgrey stuff (lines, icons, etc.) to try to make it look closer to the old style.
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Pyoro »

Woo, notifications! Great job, thank you.

Maybe turn on quick reply?
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

Chrill wrote: 11 Jun 2019 07:14 I would say that it is now more difficult to spot whether there is a new reply in a topic or not. The icons used when a topic/forum is read is too bright. If it were darker, then the unread sections would stand out more.
Yes, this is something I also find a bit harder to spot now. I also find it a bit harder to distinguish stickies/announcements.
Eddi wrote: 11 Jun 2019 07:39 i'm not sure if this is the right place to discuss this, but i would suggest to try to get rid of the blue and lightgrey stuff (lines, icons, etc.) to try to make it look closer to the old style.
The standard phpBB icons were used primarily because all the TTD icons we previously used are now too low-resolution to fit nicely into the new theme. I can try to see if I can get them looking better, but we may need new icons designing perhaps (unfortunately something that my skill set doesn't really extend to!) - this would hopefully help with the issue Chrill reported.
Pyoro wrote: 11 Jun 2019 08:24 Maybe turn on quick reply?
It's turned on in the Forum Games subforum (and always has been, since phpBB 3.0 or so at least), but historically we resisted turning it on elsewhere, and I'd probably still rather leave things the way they are.

Thanks very much for the feedback everyone - I will try to work on this, although it may be relatively slow progress at the moment.

EDIT: Oof, I think the colour of those quotes could do with being changed - perhaps back to the old white/yellow on black?
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Wahazar »

Pity that "new posts" are no longer available directly after login, instead one need to pull down menu...
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Chrill »

orudge wrote: 11 Jun 2019 09:19 EDIT: Oof, I think the colour of those quotes could do with being changed - perhaps back to the old white/yellow on black?
I'd quite approve of the old white/yellow on black!
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Auge »

Hello

Nice to see a new, more responsive theme (used the old pro silver theme during the last two years) even I spotted a few inconsistencies (IMHO unsuitable combinations of colours (not only the blue bars)) here and there. Nice on the whole. ... But ...

I was a bit puzzled in the first moment because I saw placeholders over placeholders all over the place (I am a user of NoScript and uBlock origin). I.e. the icon font gets loaded from maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com instead from the own server (tt-forums.net). Furthermore the forum loads parts of its content from google.com, googleapis.com and cloudflare.com. Is it really necessary to load so many components of the site from foreign servers?

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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

Those are the phpBB defaults now (and seems to be the way the web is heading in many ways). I'm not sure how easy it is to change that (shouldn't be too difficult, but I'd need to check).

The Google and Cloudflare references have been there for some time, though (advertising and "cookie consent" script), so it's perhaps just the icon font that's new.
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Redirect Left »

Every so often, the tiled background doesn't load entirely in line with the rest of the forum, this causes a large flicker of colour, as the background colour (sans the tiled image) is somewhat brighter than the actual image that replaces it. May be worth doing some timing tricks to ensure the image is always loaded first, or toning down the background colour so its more inline with the green of the tiled background.
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by orudge »

Hm, yes, I see that on refresh - it's quite brief on my machine, but does appear. I'll add that to the list to adjust the colours. :)
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Erato »

I'm really not a fan of the new theme or forums; the blue everywhere is an utter eyesore; the rounded corners everywhere, along with the gradients remind me of how the internet used to look around 2006, which is really not a positive thing. It feels significantly more sluggish than it used to. The symbols are all either miniature or blurry AF. The
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and

Code: Select all

code
blocks are way too bright. Who greenlit non-night mode code anyway?

Also, while we're at it. Who replaced the Submit button with a Save draft button?
No pics no clicks. Seriously.
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Re: Upcoming downtime, phpBB upgrade, new theme

Post by Redirect Left »

Erato wrote: 11 Jun 2019 18:19 along with the gradients remind me of how the internet used to look around 2006
Well that is about the time work first started on phpBB3 so yeah, sounds about right.
Erato wrote: 11 Jun 2019 18:19 Who greenlit non-night mode code anyway?
phpBB team.
Erato wrote: 11 Jun 2019 18:19 Also, while we're at it. Who replaced the Submit button with a Save draft button?
phpBB team.
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