First impressions and suggestions

I've only been tinkering around for a short while but I've noticed five main things so far:
1. The best change - the introduction of Alerts. A lot of people, including myself, have wanted this for a long time. The Preferences Tab is extensive, but will we have to "Watch" all threads we want to be notified of responses to? On other forums, members don't always tag/mention you and therefore, you still miss the notification.

2. It's noticeably faster than the VB version even with Ads enabled.

3. Has successfully kept the familar feel of BHW (although the scaling is a little off - I do have to zoom out a bit)

4. Honestly you could get away with bigger banners here and they really wouldn't be much more instrusive.

5. Perhaps my biggest gripe - the search function. Although the it now offers some Advanced Options without having to open it in a new tab, it's still unable to provide results for exact matches. Eg. When searching Panther28's username and am provided with No results. I have found a workaround though...place their username in the "Posted by Member:" field and when they appear in the drop-down, right click and use Open in New Tab. You'll be taken to their User Profile.
Similarly http://gyazo.com/fb4d6a8dec2f11c90bae8172409bc7f6 is the result when searching for GSA SER. I don't think the KW is too short...perhaps it's too common but ultimately, a working Search Function would be a great addition. 'site:blackhatworld.com gsa ser' obviously works fine but it would be nice not to have to.

In summary, well done for the Alerts which I can see are already working as I've JUST been awarded a few Trophies. I'd have the Search Function be your next focus and you'll have satisfied the majority of users' two biggest moans.

Thanks for the comments Deleted member 364366 -

Quickly on search - We've got some great elastic search functionality coming up. Should give us 99% of what most users will need.

Re your comments:
1. Alerts - yep and @mentions as well. Not sure what you mean by "Will we have to watch all threads that we want to be notified of responses to" as with the current BHW you can watch a thread and be notified on an as it happens, daily or weekly basis for updates. But if you don't let us know what you want to watch then we can't really help. There is an auto function in the profile where you can set it to watch anything you create.

2. Thanks - this is currently only on the demo box. Nice new hardware coming soon (before full / live launch).

3. Noted will take a look at the scaling.

4. We've gone full dynamic (check it out on your phone). That's one big ass screen you're using there mate to get those ads so far apart . Will look at restricting the max width for those using cinema screens

5. Search is a work in progress at the moment (all done just a case of plumbing it in).

Completely agree introduction of Alerts system is great. But not sure if you guys keep like system or not ? It may be abused like rep system.

Thanks Nut-Nights

the intention with the like is that it replaces the current thanks on BHW. We will create vids and documentation to make all this clearer - but this is definitely the place to make those points.

Nut-Nights said:

Completely agree introduction of Alerts system is great. But not sure if you guys keep like system or not ? It may be abused like rep system.

Click to expand...

Diamond Damien said:

Thanks for the comments Deleted member 364366 -

Quickly on search - We've got some great elastic search functionality coming up. Should give us 99% of what most users will need.

Re your comments:
1. Alerts - yep and @mentions as well. Not sure what you mean by "Will we have to watch all threads that we want to be notified of responses to" as with the current BHW you can watch a thread and be notified on an as it happens, daily or weekly basis for updates. But if you don't let us know what you want to watch then we can't really help. There is an auto function in the profile where you can set it to watch anything you create.

Click to expand...

That was exactly what I was hoping for but hadn't noticed the option.

4. We've gone full dynamic (check it out on your phone). That's one big ass screen you're using there mate to get those ads so far apart . Will look at restricting the max width for those using cinema screens

Click to expand...

I definitely think it's an IM thing. We love our widescreens! That would certianly be a good compromise to keep it dynamic though.

5. Search is a work in progress at the moment (all done just a case of plumbing it in).

Click to expand...

Good to hear.

Nut-Nights said:

Completely agree introduction of Alerts system is great. But not sure if you guys keep like system or not ? It may be abused like rep system.

Click to expand...

I thought that may be the case too, particularly at the moment because my "Likes Received" show posts I'd been given Rep for in the past. This would result in new members (many of which care A LOT about their stats) having 0 Likes following the transition to XenForo. However as DD has said it will be copy of Thanks there shouldn't be a problem there and Rep was only abused more than Thanks because it wasn't shown publicly so that's that probably avoided too.

Trophies will be the next thing people try to game although this will mean most regular members will achieve every Trophy just for logging in - as they've already been achieved.
Are those going to be kept, Damien?

Trophies are going to be kept - they are a combination of BHW rank (the stars) and status (the levels).

I love the improvements made, it looks better and easier. But, when I tried navigate through threads, I have noticed, that all of them looks same, I mean when You look on titles of threads You need read all of them carefully, it makes it hard to find what's trending or which threads are interesting. Then this image on left side of thread title - avatar image, disturbs from reading titles. My point of view is that old version of navigation through threads were clearer and simple, that helped people find things what would interest them.

This is only thing I see should be changed to make it more friendly for reading. Overall, platform is much better.

1st Impression: Great thing that the look and feel is kept as the existing forum.
Just logged in for the first time, here are some of my own (very basic but may be important for some members) findings:

1.
The new site is so familiar to the earlier one, that I have to constantly check the tab and the url to see if I am on this new platform or the old one. lol. On the new platform, the favicon is missing, while we have the normal BHW favicon on the current platform. I suggest that we have a similar favicon but may be in a different color temporarily to show that we are on the new BHW site. As I use many tabs in Firefox, and I cycle between many of those tabs while checking this site, it gets somewhat confusing because I have to look at the URL and also the favicon (present or missing) to make sure I am on either current BHW site or on the test site.

2.
Always loved the Gold+Black theme, but I would suggest that some more themes selection option (like on current BHW) could help some members. I am sure that this one too is on the drawing board would be appearing soon.

3.
Inside a thread, I think that an important feature: the "MultiQuote This Message" is missing. This is a very important feature enabling posting multiple quotes in one comment. Please bring it on again. Without it, members would have to use separate and multiple comment/posts to respond to other members...

4.
Another important feature, in the Quick Reply window, the "Smiles" button isn't still showing the different smileys for selection purpose.
Example:



Another important feature from the existing site is missing imo:
Please see the image:



The "Disable smilies in text" is much needed. Without this feature, it would be hard to help others when we want to write words like: "filetypedf". For example the result would be like the following image where a smiley replaces the "" in the text automatically if the Smileys are not disabled optionally.

Example:




5.
Another feature I would like is the indenting of the quoted text/post inside a post. Example:



Suggestion:
The above can be made to look like this sample from our existing BHW platform (taken from this thread itself ):

The quoted text (font, size, color, etc) in the following example is better imho compared to the new one which is shown in the above image)... So can we have the similar effect please?

image:



_____



These are my initial findings that are missing at present, but there are other good and great features now available which I am liking very much! I know that everything will be sorted out and our new forum will be having super-advanced features, and will be loved by everyone.


~~~

Thanks for the new platform. It is lovely, and am grateful for getting the opportunity to test it at this stage.

Looks good and loading fast enough. Will get back later with more feedback. Great job guys.

P.s: Below a small bug I've stumbled upon.

Everyone here who has tested beta version is coming up with some points..
I think most of the points have been discussed already ..
I've taken a look and I liked it a lot ..

There are few very good things.
Keep up the great work DD

Many thanks to all Jr. VIP beta testers - this release is now closed. Full beta going live soon acknowledging feedback that has been provided here.