I cannot tell the difference inside a thread between old and new site. Here's a screenshot of the old forum: And the new: The differences aren't that significant. The list of moderators and who's online are now in a column on the right. Instead of all the threads having different colored envelopes next to them: there's the thread starter's avatar, very small. The OT subforums are displayed on the new site in 3 columns in tiny font. Saves a click to get to Denny's List, for example. The subforums are rendered in a different style than the thread list, but it's perfectly intuitive how they work and the stats and stuff are there. The thread list looks identical to me, with all the same information. The [1][2][3] jump to pages appear on the new site if you hover over the thread instead of being there all the time. Both vb4 and xenforo have thread prefixes, but xenforo has nice style to them. We just didn't use them in vb4 because they were ugly. So we have a column on the right and found a way to make more use of it than just the who's online list. Does that right column prevent you from looking at the stuff rendered in the huge left side of the page?
Biggest difference for me is the pics as mentioned before. I had them all turned off. Img codes, tweets, the avatars, etc. Like the pics of avatars on the left of each thread topic.... what purpose does this serve? I liked the simple green light that indicated if I had posted in it. Maybe I just need to get used to it .... hate the inability to turn off pics though
Migrating the site was not a trivial thing. I probably spent 60+ hours just preparing for the move. I practiced the import over and over again until I got it down to the fastest possible. I configured a bunch of servers. I googled for all sorts of add ons that we were certain to need. Once we finished the move, lots of little things that were just broken. Skin with wrong colors in wrong places in places I hadn't seen. No skin other than the default blue S2 one. There are LOTS of small details that people don't consider. All the URLs to the old site and threads in google and peoples' bookmarks and in posts on this site no longer worked. Those had to be addressed, and I'm not perfect. Ask those guys who tried to open the 2015 football recruits thread. The thing is, I've pretty much been able to get done what needs to get done so far. I'm still working on making it better, and will be forever, like it was with the old site. All I ask is a little patience. Thanks
Also realize for every 3 people who want no avatars and signatures, there's probably 200 who want really big avatars and signatures. I'm doing my best to please everyone
Oh yeah you're doing a great job. It is such a nice looking forum after the conversion. I don't mind avatars per say, I just like to streamline when/if the option is available! Good work and go blazers
So here's the deal. The addon to hide avatars and signatures simply does not work. It was written for xenforo 1.2 and we're using xenforo 1.4. The guy who wrote the addon has not maintained it/kept it up to date. I tried it, but it made it so user preferences threw an error and I could not even change any of the other settings. When I removed the add on, I saw that preferences worked again. Something caught my eye: That's half the battle, no? Is that enough, or do you really need the avatars hidden. The difference is this: (that IS from the old site, with avatars turned off) vs. If hiding avatars is really a big deal, I can make it happen. I need to noodle on the right approach. The question is whether to prevent the server from generating the HTML including the avatar (harder to do) or to hide the avatars using a CSS rule (trivial) and a tiny bit of JavaScript. Please be patient with me. I'm not going to mess with it during the game / game thread time. And let me know if hiding the avatars is a requirement at all before I even bother.
And this is what you get without avatars: I opened the chrome devtools console and entered: $('avatarHolder').hide();