BIG Thumbs down for new format

[Diana]

[quote]'most of France does not have broadband, and out in the middle of nowhere, where I live, we will never get it. Do we really need all these yellow circle things that also take forever to set up?' ...[/quote]

I can't even find the control panel to change the font size.

Diana

[Bobc]

Can anyone answer easy questions:

The new Forum is now slower on my new superfast Dell PC with broadband than on the old 'slow' PC with 56k dialup. Everything else on the internet is instant, even our own website.

Why, when I try to reply to a posting does the Forum require me to login before typing the reply?

Tonight I needed to do a long reply - without warning the software had logged me out before doing the posting, thereby losing everything. Why?

Why do we need pictures, icons, etc which ony increase all the trivial postings.

From being a source of useful information for moving to/living in France, this Forum is losing the good professionals who contributed and is being replaced by trivia from posters who seem more concerned with the number of postings that they make and diverting threads to completely irrelevant areas (generally football!) rather than offering any useful advice.

Regards,

Bob Clarke
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/grindoux

[Russethouse]

[quote]Can anyone answer easy questions: The new Forum is now slower on my new superfast Dell PC with broadband than on the old 'slow' PC with 56k dialup. Everything else on the internet is instant, even ou...[/quote]

I'll try to answer two points - the log in should be just a click. Thats different to the 'old ' forum

As far as I know you will be automatically logged out after 30 mins. I think that can be adjusted by admin.

I'll leave the rest to the more techie members.

[Miki]

Why do we need pictures, icons, etc which ony increase all the trivial postings.

We probably don't but many people do like them, I can't answer why we have them but as we do, I have one and so have others, there are two choices, you do or you don't use one.

What harm is there in having one ? What really peeves you about it Bob? and how do they increase trivial postings?

I certainly think this site in general, is the least trivial of all French forums, sure there is triviality, that's life, imagine standing in a pub where only serious chat from professionals is allowed. Watch the dive for the doors when the anoraks come out to bore you with their daily routine job, thinking everyone is interested. So you ignore what you don't want to listen to and chat with those you want to (subsitute chat for post for this forum)

From being a source of useful information for moving to/living in France, this Forum is losing the good professionals who contributed and is being replaced by trivia from posters who seem more concerned with the number of postings that they make and diverting threads to completely irrelevant areas (generally football!) rather than offering any useful advice.

Other members arrive as other members go. Questions are still being answered, it's all part of life, nothing stays forever. You are still building, something I gave up when I arrived here (a rarity eh!) and you will too one day, life goes on. Trivia has been on here ever since I can remember and you will never stop idle chit chat, either on here or out in the everyday life.

I have to say that I seem to be one of the only ones (along with a few others) that talks about the "great game" mostly in the post bag, where isn't, anything goes, the keyword, or have I misinterpretated what the post bag is for?  So I would guess your remark has to include me?

When the forum was going through a period of signatures or not, I had some strong arguments going with the mods about allowing "sigs" for all those that helped others on the forum and so in my mind, deserved to have their "sigs" on show.

I very much supported the likes of you and the other builders and trades, a lot of it was done in private and at times it got a little heated but the Mods and Admin were slowly turned as a whole to agreeing with all of us that argued for "sigs" so that members whose help, often invaluable, could use their "sigs". 

So my point is really, just because we don't agree with what people want on the forum, think of the others as well who do want certain things. I really felt "sigs" should be allowed to be used but didn't plan to use one myself, so it was not to my benefit was it.

Mind you Bob, all that discussing to get sigs on, please get your one to work  "live" at least

 

 

[Dick Smith]

I think Bob, like me and others, can't get addresses 'live', Miki. It's one of the things missing from my reply screen, too.

[Miki]

I too am also getting "things" that don't work on the new forum, does anyone member know for sure, that everything that is meant to work, does so for them?

I didn't know that sigs don't work for some people. Surely then, if a lot of the system is not working, then it really is not much use and needs to be sent back, so to speak.

Perhaps it is basically a free "forum system" that has plenty of  known, as well as unknown gliches, if it is not "free" then I personally would want plenty of time by the "owners of the sytem" to be spent correcting something that perhaps wasn't broke in the first place !! 

 

[Will]

Miki and others, I've said this many times, but it bears repeating.

There are a lot of known problems with this forum. It wasn't free, though I don't know what Archant paid for it. It is, however, based on a free Microsoft system, asp.net, and it seems impossible to determine whether many of the problems are down to asp.net or the way this program uses it.

Some of the problems can, we are told, be cured by a 'patch' from Microsoft which Archant's IT people have to put on the servers. This, we are promised, will happen soon. Others have been identified as an incompatibility between the program and Norton personal firewall. More problems seem to affect only those who are not using Internet Explorer 6 - this is strange as you would expect a Microsoft-based program to have been fully tested with Microsoft browsers. I would personally expect it to work properly with other systems like Dick's Macintosh, but we are talking Microsoft here. A few problems (e.g. the login thing) can possibly be cured by Archant's IT people doing a tweak somewhere, but as there is no manual for the program it's not easy to find out where. It came with, I think, 60days tech support (which must be nearly up, so poor James is going mad trying to get answers to his numerous questions) - after that James has to post queries on the developers' own forum and hope somebody answers.

I'm afraid I can't answer the speed question. I personally don't have that problem - I find it hangs up sometimes, but I can 'wake up' the system by firmly re-clicking on the appropriate button, or clicking on 'refresh'.

Several things have been fixed by James, like the spell checker (for those with text options) and the over-zealous auto censor.

It is possible for those who don't get the full range of options, if you can write html, to have clickable links in signatures or in messages - you can also insert images in messages the same way - but this is a right pain in the arsenal. However if anybody wants to do it please post here and I'll try and remember exactly how it's done.

Unfortunately none of the proven, freely-available forums are compatible with the new Archant website format or the new servers, which is why the old forum had to go and why we were given this one. It could have been much worse, Archant's preferred forum type can be seen at France magazine and on some of their regional press websites.

[Liz]

[quote]I too am also getting "things" that don't work on the new forum, does anyone member know for sure, that everything that is meant to work, does so for them? I didn't know that sigs don't work for some...[/quote]

I cannot get into the Control Panel, presumably 'sigs' and other goodies are in there. I know it exists because if someone sends me a PM I can see it but the link from the main screen simply does not work. I've mentioned this before but I thought I would say it again because it is very frustrating to only have half the facilities other people seem to have. I entirely agree with the sentiment expressed elsewhere that 'Trading Standards' ought to operate, I think Archant have been sold a dud.

Liz (29)

[zeb]

shit!*****!*****!

 

sorry folks .......just testing!

 

helen

[zeb]