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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.
I understand that most of you here want a dark theme. I want want it too. If there was a good dark theme, I would install it right away. The problem with XF2 is the lack of available dark theme of good quality (whether free or paid).

Also, add back "Best Answer", some people were actually motivated to help at Support Board just to get more "Best Answers".
I see that it motivates people. The addon we used was discontinued. When possible, I'll explore migrating the data about best answers to a different addon. It's still possible.

Regardless of if I find layout better or worse, there are some stylistic issues regarding:
Screen capture - f953092e8eacb617859c668744da7fb2 - Gyazo (https://gyazo.com/f953092e8eacb617859c668744da7fb2)
That does not happen to me. I'll need you to PM me with details about your browser/extensions.
 
Clean, sofisticated and more close to recent ui/ux designs.

  1. "Best Answer" functionality in Support board is currently unavailable. We may or may not bring it back (share your thoughts!).

This is the best useful thing in the support board.
 
That does not happen to me. I'll need you to PM me with details about your browser/extensions.
Ah, I investigated it and it's because of Grammarly extension. Weird, because I have no problem with other webpages (nor forums). But if that's just me, leave it as it is.
 
@Don Daniello UI.X 2 Dark (https://xenforo.com/community/resources/ui-x-2-dark.5866/) < That should do for us.

If you're able to edit the CSS of this mess, please fix paddings / margin here:
IsXjJ3g.png

Somehow the relations between top/bottom and left/right are ugly.

Also this feels totally weird with the padding/margins:
lJPmuMk.png


There are no separators on the recent forum posts section, it's just a personal preference, looks pretty organized when there are present or at least a little bit more space should be left blank between them....
ZwVKXLY.png


Also something else I'm mad at is that we had no poll or any kind of voting where people could choose wether to update or not, I personally don't like these changes at all.

We still do not have a Home page, I wish we had one where we could see upcoming events, some statistics like who posts most, who does this'n'that and what not.

Probably we won't have a dark theme for a while, for those like me who hate this new layout I found a solution, just install the Dark Reader Plugin on your browser, in the end it looks like this:
TwrPXjK.png


Best Wishes,
Okke
 
Last edited:
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.

We didn't delete it "because we can", we had to remove it with the xenforo update.
When we find a good one we will add it.
 
That theme is not the same quality as the default one we use and looks different. We want a dark color scheme for a same layout/browsing experience.

If you're able to edit the CSS of this mess, please fix paddings / margin here:
IsXjJ3g.png

Somehow the relations between top/bottom and left/right are ugly.
I don't see anything wrong here.

Also something else I'm mad at is that we had no poll or any kind of voting where people could choose wether to update or not, I personally don't like these changes at all.
There are reasons for that that I won't even try to explain, they should be fairly obvious if you think about it.

We still do not have a Home page, I wish we had one where we could see upcoming events, some statistics like who posts most, who does this'n'that and what not.
All of that can be found in the various pages under What's new and Members tabs. Clearly you are complaining without having explored the functionality first.

Also RIP to my 354 Best Answers, my high score :(
It's not lost.

@Don Daniello Keeping searching dark themes, please. I HATE white themes.
Let me know when you find something :)
 
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.
Looks great, happy to see progress being made.
 
That theme is not the same quality as the default one we use and looks different. We want a dark color scheme for a same layout/browsing experience.
Anything is better than the current one we have. (Not really because of the design, it's more for the reason that it's not dark and hurts mine and probably 90% of the rest's eyes)

There are reasons for that that I won't even try to explain, they should be fairly obvious if you think about it.
I'm not aware of any obvious reasons, I'd really like to read something about it as the main posts contains no reasons or anything related to that.

All of that can be found in the various pages under What's new and Members tabs. Clearly you are complaining without having explored the functionality first.
So you're saying that the Home button has just no reason to be there? Why to have it in first place?

I by no means want to harass or be aggressive / demotive on this reply, it's just that I see no reason to improve on newer engine when it's not needed, while we're really in deep need some incentive for people to help others around and promote OTServ in first place, Stigma has left and he's unreplaceable.
Having the Home page as Forum might just lead to more people creating accounts and leeching on support, which is something this community shouldn't live off.
Meanwhile having a decent Home landing page with all these functionalities that you think I haven't explored yet might be a nice feature for everyone to see what's going on instead of having only half-dead support threads with stupid and uninteresting questions no one really feels like answering.

Best Regards,
Okke
 
Anything is better than the current one we have. (Not really because of the design, it's more for the reason that it's not dark and hurts mine and probably 90% of the rest's eyes)


I'm not aware of any obvious reasons, I'd really like to read something about it as the main posts contains no reasons or anything related to that.


So you're saying that the Home button has just no reason to be there? Why to have it in first place?

I by no means want to harass or be aggressive / demotive on this reply, it's just that I see no reason to improve on newer engine when it's not needed, while we're really in deep need some incentive for people to help others around and promote OTServ in first place, Stigma has left and he's unreplaceable.
Having the Home page as Forum might just lead to more people creating accounts and leeching on support, which is something this community shouldn't live off.
Meanwhile having a decent Home landing page with all these functionalities that you think I haven't explored yet might be a nice feature for everyone to see what's going on instead of having only half-dead support threads with stupid and uninteresting questions no one really feels like answering.

Best Regards,
Okke

Just curious, what do you mean with a "home site / page"?
Before this we also had a "home" button (all that did was like today, bring you to the "start" page)
Ref; OTLand (http://web.archive.org/web/20181227213013/https://otland.net/)

I don't know why we or why 99% of the forums have it, seeing as Home / Forums redircts to the same page - maybe the template from scratch? :)

I wouldn't mind a start page in a way, atleast for new users but for me I really don't care, if I wanna go to the "start" page I just click the logo.
 
Just curious, what do you mean with a "home site / page"?

Imagine a home page without having the forum as the main container, therefore you'd have some article to read (which could be picked from the forum and then placed there as sort of "hot topic" or "good read"), maybe ongoing polls, events and whatsoever and not just the naked forum "as is".

I just think that this place has a lot more to offer than it's currently doing. Maybe something like this:

jD0Q3Fo.png


It's not really exactly how I'd put it but it goes on kind of like that, the position of the divs can be changed if desired, I just don't feel like wasting more time explaining something that will probably not take place at all.

Best Wishes thought,
Okke
 
Imagine a home page without having the forum as the main container, therefore you'd have some article to read (which could be picked from the forum and then placed there as sort of "hot topic" or "good read"), maybe ongoing polls, events and whatsoever and not just the naked forum "as is".

I just think that this place has a lot more to offer than it's currently doing. Maybe something like this:

jD0Q3Fo.png


It's not really exactly how I'd put it but it goes on kind of like that, the position of the divs can be changed if desired, I just don't feel like wasting more time explaining something that will probably not take place at all.

Best Wishes thought,
Okke
Suggestion - Newcomer landing page / link (https://otland.net/threads/newcomer-landing-page-link.260097/)
Basically the same idea I think. :p
 
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.

Imagine a home page without having the forum as the main container, therefore you'd have some article to read (which could be picked from the forum and then placed there as sort of "hot topic" or "good read"), maybe ongoing polls, events and whatsoever and not just the naked forum "as is".

I just think that this place has a lot more to offer than it's currently doing. Maybe something like this:

jD0Q3Fo.png


It's not really exactly how I'd put it but it goes on kind of like that, the position of the divs can be changed if desired, I just don't feel like wasting more time explaining something that will probably not take place at all.

Best Wishes thought,
Okke
Would love to see something like this too. Otland can be more then a forum.
or integrate atleast this: Introduction - Otland Docs (https://docs.otland.net) I do not even know if people knows that this exist... i didn't and i am here for years...

Love this.

I like that it is more modern and more compact.. but it needs some improvements... or atleast optionable...

Further i do not see why it was a issue on mobile? i never had issues browsing otland on my phone.. but i like the new feautures
but i probaly not gonna use the hotkeys (i have on my browser settings that it will search when i start using keys which overrides the function..)

BRING BACK BEST ANSWERS!

Also imgur is not reliable for me... but that's maybe because i do not have a account? i just upload pics to my server or facebook..
I MISS IMGLAND!
 
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