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OtLand XenForo 2 and forum changes

Happy New Year everyone!

As you probably noticed, the forum looks a bit different now. We have upgraded to XenForo 2 and you can now enjoy some new features.

Noteworthy changes
  1. There is a new skin (style) of Otland and it is very mobile-friendly. We will likely stay with this one because alternatives for XenForo 2 are not convincing, nor needed.
    I am aware that many of you would like to see a "dark" theme. Unfortunately, there are no good quality dark themes possible. If anyone has design skills allowing them to redesign the default style for darker colors and the effect would be aesthetically pleasant, we want to hear from you!
  2. Keyboard Shortcut System
    • M - Open the visitor menu
    • , (Comma) - Open the inbox/conversation menu
    • . (Period/full-stop) - Open the alerts menu
    • / (Forward slash) - Open the search menu
    • ALT+Z - Open the style chooser
    • ALT+X - Open the language chooser
    • ⌘+ENTER (Mac) or CTRL+ENTER (Windows) Submit the current form while in a <textarea> element (normally, ENTER will submit any form, but while you're in a <textarea>, the ENTER key simply inserts a new line)
    • keys 1 to 0 will activate the corresponding tab (or tab menu) from the primary navigation strip, while ALT+1 to 0 will activate the corresponding item from the sub-navigation strip.
  3. Improved code syntax highlighting. It should work for all languages that are commonly used around here, including Lua, and now looks better.
  4. Emoji support 👏
  5. Search functionality was improved
    1. Added time-based relevancy filter. Newer content will be slightly preferred but keep in mind that a lot of "very old" (>5 years) content is still very relevant and useful today.
    2. Added stemming for English language and automatic handling of accents (which should help other languages for search).
  6. "Best Answer" functionality in Support board is currently unavailable. We may or may not bring it back (share your thoughts!).
  7. The tags no longer appear on the forum view (AKA thread list). This may or may not come back.
    It was initially added for better visibility of "attached" tag. Not that all content is using attachments, it's no longer needed.
  8. Attachments currently don't show a link to a scan on Virustotal. That will come back soon.
A list of upstream XenForo 2 news is here: XF 2.0 - What's new in XenForo 2.0 (https://xenforo.com/community/threads/whats-new-in-xenforo-2-0.133426/)

Still important facts
Since we doubled down on attachments, we have saved a lot of resources from dying due to expiring links or hosting sites going offline. We currently have 20-30k attachments on Otland, providing great number of resources for you to download not worrying about dead links.

The next problem to tackle seems to be massively dying images. We have all those downloads (of website layouts, maps, datapacks) but all the screenshots are often dead. That's a problem - obviously - as you don't know what you're downloading. We may address it by enforcing using a specific reputable image hosting site, such as imgur. Attachments are not always the best way for that purpose - a lot images are too large and they are not compressed/resized via attachments.

Near future
XenForo 2.1 will be coming out soon and will bring us a lot of more changes, including bookmarking posts and desktop notifications. We will be getting that upgrade as soon as it comes out.

Updates
  • Best Answers and links to Virustotal scans are available now.
  • Added Discord field to user profile instead of some useless old ones
  • Added line numbers to [code]
 
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I enjoy the style of the new layout (at least the mobile version is nice). However, I do think that the lack of a dark theme is quite a loss.

Keep the changes coming!
Red
 
I dont mind it, it looks alright.. The main page for me just looks a little 'squished'
 
This is actually really nice, i like the new layout and not having a "dark theme" does not effect me at all since i didn't use it before.
I think its a clean look, watching and scrolling OTland on my phone has never been better i must say.

Change is always welcome.
 
Ohh nice, love it! :)
 
It looks alright, but I do think the default xenforo2 theme is an aesthetic downgrade to the previous.
I hope to see a dark theme soon because light themes get harsh on the eyes when browsing for extended periods of time

if possible I suggest getting these 2
Xenforo Styles - Dimension - XenFocus (https://xenfocus.com/styles/dimension/)
Xenforo Styles - Dimension Dark - XenFocus (https://xenfocus.com/styles/dimension_dark/)

I think the best answer feature provides some extra motivation to help out in the support section & makes it quicker to find the answer people are looking for if they have the same problem.
The only issue is that support threads are often misused (following up the initial problem with another in the same thread) which usually results in the best answer not being one that solved the problem that was stated in the main post or thread title. Of course that also makes the forum less organized & search efficient.
 
  1. "Best Answer" functionality in Support board is currently unavailable. We may or may not bring it back (share your thoughts!).
lol?

Btw the new layout or how ever you guys call it looks bad in my opinion
 
I like the new look only dislike the isnt an dark theme
 
Looks Great and I like that it's mobile friendly.
 
It's clearly an improvement, functionality-wise. As you stated, try to find someone that can help you fix a dark theme since lookwise, it was better before imo.
Also, add back "Best Answer", some people were actually motivated to help at Support Board just to get more "Best Answers".

Cool to see some updates on OTLand regardless! Good job. :cool:
 
Why would you guys remove something we want to use? like this dark theme it doesn't cost you guys something to let us use it.
 
Keeping up with the times, nice :)
  1. "Best Answer" functionality in Support board is currently unavailable. We may or may not bring it back (share your thoughts!).
This should probably be brought back if possible, was a really nice addition, extremely relevant to the board.
PS. Love the new emojis, previous ones looked quite outdated.
 
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