Opinions on New Aneros Forum Site

Posted by: @ggringo

Posted by: @theeagleandwolf

@ggringo

Ive been here sine 2006 you divvot! i lost my username in the transition to this new forum, which is garish, slow and tbh too way too long to implement.

@theeagleandwolf I did not mean to offend you with my comment.  I'm also a member since 2016. Aneros and this forum has changed my life for the better.

As for your lost username and posts, it would be a shame to loose everything you wrote since your inception.   Maybe aneros support can help you retrieve everything as they have done for me and a few others.

How did you retrieve your old username?

usually I press shift space for page up. Now shift space is page down. Please fix...

@alover2

Send a msg to websupport@aneros.com or click on the red button (chat) and get them to reestablishing your old credentials. They've done it for several other users.

Good luck

The person responsible for the forum software did not do a good research before switching/updating.

the new forum engine is still terrible in terms of usability.

- navigation is a nightmare with old-fashioned paging

- topic subscription functions are very limited

- profile settings are trivial

- search functionality is bad

- tags, filters, category subscriptions etc — all missing or poor implemented.

This looks and feels as outdated software from 2000.

Please switch to a contemporary solution like Discourse Forums.

I agree on grey background with darker grey type which is small is really hard to read....

It would be nice to be able to set black background for easier reading on my phone. 

I like the new site, but I agree with those that say the new font in the forum is hard to read. I don't have any vision problems but this font is very tiring to read for more than a few minutes at a time. Perhaps a bolder serif font? 

Lots of complaints about font, faint, thin, small, grey on grey.....????

VERY hard to read!

Still no solution or fix ?   

Sorry double post....first time in 3+ years on this forum ...

Lots of frustration trying to use this 'improved" forum.

Hard to enjoy and relax while using it.

I find the change of font an enormous improvement. Thanks a lot @support !

Posted by: @sowithoutaneros

I find the change of font an enormous improvement. Thanks a lot @support !

You're welcome, we like it too!

Your Aneros Team

I hate to Debbi Downer, but I am having a hard time with the font.  I happy to have the site back, so I really don't want to complain, I guess it is time for glasses...

My starting posts seem to be invisible to everyone. Says awaiting moderation next to them.  Not sure what's going on.  ???

@Spikester71

All of your posts should be visible now. If you're still having difficulty viewing them. Please let us know

Your Aneros Team

Finally I am able to login to the site...

As for the changes...I got greeted with a ridiculous merging of my e-commerce account and my forum account which in turn attached an actual pic of me with my real name...that's crazy

Hey forum admins thanks for all your hard work, the site is definitely improving!  After using for the last month I have a few more observations. 

While I like that the text is slightly easier to read now, I'm not a big fan of it being in italics.  Anything that is italicized is now double italicized.  <---  For emphasis I'm currently underlining but I feel like there's something missing from my tool box.  I can't help but think that a different font is in order, and preferably something larger than 11pt for standard, so I put this in 14pt as a test.  And every paragraph requires me to manually change it again!

All the old links are broken, I don't know if that's an easy fix or not, but when someone like Rumel replies he usually has lots of links to helpful threads, but all his old comments are somewhat obsolete and it can take several minutes to track down the thread he's talking about using the search engine--searching for the title doesn't always work immediately.

And of course the polls don't work anymore either.  I hope all that old data is stored somewhere....

Back to 11pt size again, too lazy to change it.

It seems fine overall, but I do find it an odd choice to use a Wordpress plug-in for forum software, considering that there are MUCH better solutions out there that would make the user experience a lot nicer and more fun, such as XenForo. I run a site with over 1M posts that is based on XenForo and I really like it. Pretty easy to manage.  Anyway.... 

The most obvious thing that needs addressed in my opinion is the scrolling function when using a browswer on the desktop. It's very erratic and glitchy.... extremely annoying actually. On mobile it's butter smooth since no mouse is involved, so that's probably the best place to view the forum now. 

Then, a very minor one... when logging in, you get plopped into your "My Account" page, forcing to navigate again back to the forum.  It should put you back right where you were when you click "Log In". 

And there seems to be a  glitch with the font. It is now in italics for all of the post titles and text for some reason.

Other than that, all seems good!

Posted by: @ratfink

Then, a very minor one... when logging in, you get plopped into your "My Account" page, forcing to navigate again back to the forum.  It should put you back right where you were when you click "Log In".

@ratfink , if you use the 'Login' button on the charcoal bar, 1/4 down the page, it should take you to the forum.  When you use the 'Login' button on the top right part of the page, it takes you to your account.

Posted by: @faith-manages

 

All the old links are broken, I don't know if that's an easy fix or not, but when someone like Rumel replies he usually has lots of links to helpful threads, but all his old comments are somewhat obsolete and it can take several minutes to track down the thread he's talking about using the search engine--searching for the title doesn't always work immediately.

@faith-manages, Yes, I have spent many hours going back through some of my posts to correct the broken URL links. I think all my most recent posts (since the new forum format) have the correct linkages but if you find broken links please let me know and I will try to correct them. It is a long process to gradually sort through these older posts and correct the links as I find them, it is especially difficult to go back through the chained posts to correct those as well, I hope you'll bear with me as we transition to this new forum.

Good Vibes to You!

@rumel you respond to everyone with links, might have to go back through every post you've made with a fine-toothed comb! 😀  Time consuming, good luck with that!  There are already quite a few sticky threads, but maybe you need your own with all your favorites for the quickest reference. 

ONE MORE OBSERVATION: I like the new notifications but I don't think they're working 100% yet, I'm getting them occasionally when I'm tagged/quoted but not consistently. 

Posted by: @faith-manages

There are already quite a few sticky threads, but maybe you need your own with all your favorites for the quickest reference. 

@Faith-Manages, actually I do have a sticky (sort of), I have included several of my most frequently referenced posts in my blog post Rumel's Ruminations - Part IV and some of the most influential information links I have read on sexuality and prostate massage in my blog post Rumel's Ruminations - Part V.

Good Vibes to You!

@rumel links to these blogs should be in your signature!

"last post: 50 years ago"? Didn't know! Really?

Why not celebrating the 50th anniversary then? 😉

Seems like another construction site ahead (Looks like default date 01-01-1970 somewhere):

The new forum seems to be based on WordPress (it's plastered all over the HTML source).

Given WP's history of problems, please, please, have someone regularly keep up to date on all security advisories in the software.

Previous problems with the forums and chat would appear from an outside observer to have been due to software not being updated when it should have been.

@twlltin , a few more users expressed their concerns about WP and some have shared their opinions with @support.  I don't have the experience to say if it was a mistake to adopt that platform or not but I hope it will work for all of us (and Aneros).

@support why don’t you switch to a contemporary forum engine like Discourse and enjoy all progressive features of a world known and well tested software?

This new experience is so out of the date.

Posted by: @iphone7

@support why don’t you switch to a contemporary forum engine like Discourse and enjoy all progressive features of a world known and well tested software?

This new experience is so out of the date.

Actually, "contemporary" and "well-tested" tend not to be synonymous.

You're better off using an actively used but mature platform like phpBB3 or vBulletin. However, whatever you choose it doesn't matter a fig how good it is initially if you don't keep it up to date with security fixes.

Personally, I feel Discourse is a security breach waiting to happen as the client side scripts are held centrally on Discourse's own servers and you can't use the forum without using them. All it needs is for someone to hack Discourse's site and thousands of forum users are compromised.

@twlltin Discourse is fully open source. It is a major player and used by communities from small to very big worldwide. You should be misunderstanding something about the product or just not paid enough attention to see who’s behind it and why it’s one of the most starred repositories at GitHub. It’s created by Jeff Atwood, a Stack Overflow founder, and his team, and it has a great mission and is already battle-proven by thousands of big and active communities, like Ubuntu, Docker, Educational organisations, gamers communities, and many more. Just read through their .org website and check the use-cases. Let me know if that helps.

@iphone7 All that is indeed true, and I still trust it as far as I could kick it. Anything that has an external point of failure, with scripts served from a central point, is a massive target for a hacking attack of the sort that affected a very popular web script a few years ago. If you don't have any control over what your website is fetching because you've delegated it to a third party, then beware.

@twlltin What scripts are you talking about? It is an OPEN SOURCE product - you can host it on your own server fully, and you can evaluate every single line of code.

Vice-versa, WordPress with its non-verified plugins from 3rd parties pose the biggest risk and is a threat to everyone's anonymity. It is known to have vulnerabilities and exploits, and leak data again and again, year after year. For a forum where anonymity is one of the keys - this is dangerous.