Just as recently announced, we have migrated our forums to a different software today, namely Discourse.
Obviously, a lot has changed. And we know it can be annoying to switch from an old familiar tool to a completely new and unfamiliar one. But trust me when I say that we (the team and the moderators) are learning the ropes along with you.
At this point, I just wanted to let you know the most important differences and known issues:
Generally, all posts and users (with at least one post) have been migrated, so all the content should be there.
While Discourse does support BB code for formatting, it was not handled correctly during the conversion. Due to this, a lot of posts that made use of BB features (especially tables) look garbled now. We’ll fix those over time if the respective posts are still relevant.
Files uploaded to the old forums should still be there and have been converted to links embedded in the posts. Because Discourse has some nifty preview and embedding features for links, images will typically be displayed right where they belong.
Most of the old categories still exist. Note that Discourse has a slightly different approach to categories and it’s common to post directly on the parent category. Since we’ve always used parent categories just as such, please continue to open “general” topics in the “General” category, not directly on “English Boards”.
Pinned threads: With the way Discourse displays things, pinned posts take up a bit more space and we’ll evaluate over the coming weeks which ones still make sense.
“About the X category” threads: Discourse automatically creates such a thread in each category. It will take us a bit longer to fill all of them with proper content instead of the default text.
I think these are the most important things for now. As said, we have to familiarize us with Discourse as well and learn all the new features it offers and the things it does differently. Please let us know if you really miss some functionality…maybe it’s there but it’s just hard to find or works differently. We’ll figure it out!
The new private messages section doesn’t show the thread (i.e like the old one, or gmail) so you can’t see the what you’d already replied unless you close the ‘compose’ window and go back to sent.
Also, I assume it’s to stop spam, but you also can’t copy & paste the same message into two replies. This is probably fairly unimportant for most people but when I’m replying to multiple users with the same info about a private game world it get’s a bit annoying.
Also, I seem to have lost some of my private messages. I can see my reply in the Sent folder, but there’s nothing in the Inbox. We’re currently trying to recruit for Reality and I’ve lost the record of who’s been in touch.
Have you tried going here: Profile - martin - AirlineSim Community There you can see a list of threads, each of which look and work like a forum thread. So the editor opens above the previous posts, not on an extra page.
I’ve only found a setting that prevents identical titles. Does that resolve your problem?
That’s possible since we only imported user accounts that had at least one public post on the forums. Sorry if some PMs got lost because of that!
Since Discourse emphasizes conversations over boards, it makes sense to use the “latest” page to see what’s going on. It shows you every new post and thread on the forums.
If you don’t want to see - say - German or Chinese posts in your “latest” section, you can mute the respective boards. Just open it, click on the “circle button” in the upper right and click “muted”. Voila, posts and new threads from the respective boards (and likely its child boards) will not show up anymore.
I logged in to the new forums today - but all the layout and functions are in German. Mine Deutsch ist nicht gut. Is there a way to change this so the forum functions are in english ?
You choose your logo in the upper right corner and go to your account.
Then click on the cogwheel with the text “Einstellungen” (settings). On the left side choose “Oberfläche” (surface) and then you can change the “Oberflächensprache” (surface language). To save it you have to click at the bottom “Speichern” and the next time you load the forum it should be changed.
I am from a Canadian ISP…i may have logged in a few years ago when i was in Heidelburg but all my other visits have been from beautiful British Columbia
When i came here today it was again in German…once I logged in it was in English.
Or is there a way I can set those settings individually for my account? With GT I only noticed the interface was in German on some infrequently used settings, all else was translated to English.
I am trying to post about the new ORS system on another post but it keeps changing what i write when i post it. When I click on edit it shows the correct post, but the post in the forum leaves out words and changes sentences, some even sound silly and make no sense.
