You may recall this thread from Aran recently, in which he announced that we were thinking of trying out a third-party forum system called Discourse. Well, there’s been a limited test of this open to moderators only for a week or so, and now it’s time for you all to get to play with it:
You’ll notice that the threads from this forum show up on there. Please note that this is because they’ve been imported. What this means is that any messages you post over there will not show up here, nor vice versa - it’s a separate environment, it just happens to have a copy of everything that was on here as of this afternoon.
Please also bear in mind that it’s a test environment, which means:
All actual discussion should remain on this forum for the time being.
What you see on there isn’t necessarily exactly how it’ll eventually be, it’s just a first attempt at configuring things - and this is the main testing phase, so there will be things that aren’t right yet. Feedback is very much welcomed!
If/when we switch over to Discourse permanently, any changes you’ve made on there will be removed to make way for another clean import. Which means…
…you can feel free to have a play with anything you want without fear of messing anything up
I like the look of it. I’ve never got to grips with importing a photo or messing with a profile on this forum, but that new one makes it a bit more enticing to do so. Good work Kinetic.
Looks like there might be a section for local group news - this would only work for us if there was notification each time something was posted on ‘our’ thread. At the moment I’m sending an email round in addition to posting briefly here. Neither feels comfortable at present.
I like this. It ‘feels’ good. I have never really got used to the forum we use now, excepting that it is streets ahead of the old old forum in terms of use on mobile devices.
Yes, I agree totally with Arianrhod, Morgs and Andy, it feels good, it has the clean look of the new forum and reminds me, somehow, of the old forum. Good work.
Thumbs up from me - or, as Facebookies put it, “Like”
It’ll takes some getting used to but promises to be more user-friendly.
(That’s the first thing I’ve said in English in a week after a superb bootcamp with Iestyn & Cat & Grwp rhyngwladol gwych in Tresaith - report coming soon)
Just a head’s up: It doesn’t seem to have a mobile interface. I’m accessing it from my tablet (which is how I mostly access everything) and the topics show up for a sec, but then they dissapear. It’s like there’s mobile css that kicks in after everything else.
UPDATE: I switched back to the tab with the new forum and the topics were there. This may have something to do with the Starbuck’s WiFi I’m currently on…I’ll test more when I’m home.
Interesting! I would have said that Discourse is much more like the current forum, certainly what it would probably have evolved into given the time and money. I really like using Discourse-based forums. Particularly, I like the feature that lets you branch a discussion into separate but linked threads. This is great for situations when a particular thread begins to develop in several directions, which can be confusing if it is read sequentially.
Great to hear that people feel positive about this option so far - and many congratulations to Ifan on a huge amount of challenging work to get this ready to play - it’s some pretty cutting edge stuff, and certainly not an easy install/integrate job at this stage.
Ifan was off on his travels again at the weekend (back to New York) - he should be up and running again today, so unless anyone would like to put their hands up and say they don’t like the new forum, we’ll be talking this week about going live with it…
Ah, yes - Discourse is looking to the next ten years of the web, and have made a policy decision not to support older browsers - IE9 can live with it (with some loss of functionality) but not earlier stuff.
For individual users, updating is the right way to go - new browsers are safer and faster - see:
For people stuck with what the IT department puts on their machines (I know you’re in this bracket, David!) it’s going to have to be about lobbying the IT department - maybe pointing senior management at something like this:
In an ideal world, we’d go with Discourse and employ someone to hack it to work for people on IE8 - but we don’t have the cash flow to do that, I’m afraid - and I’m genuinely sorry for the frustration.
Diolch Aran – to be honest I’ve ground to a bit of a halt with my Welsh over the last few months. Summer got in the way, and I’m now going swimming three times a week to try and lose some weight, and I’m finding it difficult presently to get motivated to study. But this too will pass and I’ll get back into it, I know!
Come along to the next Dorridge or Solihull meetup David, there is nothing better to get motivated again than meeting up with other Welsh speakers and having a chat!
But this too will pass and I’ll get back into it, I know!
Having a break doesn’t matter - as long as you don’t fall into the trap of believing that you have to go miles back and cover loads of lessons again - just press on from where you’d got to before when you feel like it, and it’ll all come back faster than you might imagine…
Hi David. I had a bit of a lull over the summer as well (in a curious parallel, I took up running to get back in shape), but I’ve recently picked everything back up with minimal ill-effects. In fact, the break has done me good and I’m racing ahead with areas that previously seemed impenetrable. The lesson for me: nil desperandum! All things pass!
