Forum Improvements

I often forget to tick

I haven't forgotten yet - but this discussion made me go through the six separate threads and 'subscribe' to them all. I presume that will email alert me whenever there's any new material in each of them - though that may not address Sumitra's problem if she's wanting emails regarding replies to threads she's commented on but doesn't want emails on everything.

BTW I've rejigged my email settings so that only the most recent Forum alert stays in my in-box - any previous ones get put elsewhere.

I presume that will email alert me whenever there’s any new material in each of them – though that may not address Sumitra’s problem if she’s wanting emails regarding replies to threads she’s commented on but doesn’t want emails on everything.

Yes, Andy - that's what I meant!

Mike - sorry I did not explain what I meant clearly. Basically I was wondering if when we reply to a post, we could by default be notified by email.

I subscribe to the Obs and Img sub but there are other subs where I would prefer only be notified to posts that I have replied to, and then look whether there are new topics on my visits.
The reason I do not subscribe to everything is that I would get too many emails and would miss both new topics posted or new posts to topics I participate on.

In summary: in priority, I prefer to be notified of Obs and Img new posts, and posts to topics I posted on (so I can reply promptly).

I don't know if that makes more sense now!

If it is not possible, it's not a problem 🙂

OK, I think I understand what you need.

I've amended the forums so that the "notify me of follow-up replies via email" is checked automatically if you submit a reply or post a new topic.

It is up to you which forums you subscribe to, so no change necessary here.

Let me know if this is OK.

Let me know if this is OK.

Yes!!! Thanks, it's perfect! 🙂

"Freshness" is back on the forum homepage... can't guarantee it will stay back, as the functionality seems a little flaky. I'll continue to monitor.

A few more “tweaks” have been made to improve site performance. Let me know if you see any improvements or problems.

No doubt, I'm speaking too soon, but performance has seen a marked improvement this evening:

A couple more tweaks this morning... sorry if you've seen a couple of database errors, it's because I was upgrading the PHP engine.

We're getting pretty close to optimal performance now... page load time sub 1.5 seconds and the website is rated faster than 83% of all websites:

Certainly a big improvement on previously. I'll continue to monitor and tweak, but please let me know if you see any issues.

I know I'm going to regret asking this, but what are these tweaks?

(I tend to ask stupid questions like that when my car gets serviced - then I just nod and handover my money.)

what are these tweaks?

Not a stupid question.

Like any Wordpress site, we rely on a number of Plugins to provide site functionality, enhance security and perform backups. Occasionally, these plugins cause conflicts with each other, so it's a case of activating and deactivating plugins to see where performance issues occur. This can be a laborious process... hence why it takes so long to optimise performance.

In addition, we've added additional functionality to compress images, cache the site to generate static HTML rather than dynamic PHP scripts, and introduce compression of HTML and CSS files (this reduces page sizes by 50 to 70%).

Finally, we've upgraded PHP to improve site speed.

Further tweaks are possible, but I want to let things settle down for a few days and see how we get on.

Hi Mike

I run a few sites granted not bb usally It's Drupal and phpbb3 but I do use html, php and MySQL quite a bit so if you need any help just lemme know have you tried making the javascripts calls look in one file and the stylesheets could all be in one file as well which would help load times as the site is only looking in one place and not multiple files has helped in the past 🙂 just an idea though

– It is now easier to ‘quote’ a topic or reply, by clicking on the ‘QUOTE’ icon at the top right of the message

Sorry - I have a quote question please… I cannot see a 'quote' icon in the top right of messages. Tried another browser in case the one I was using was being special but still, no avail.

Christina code test {this could be interesting...}:

It is now easier to ‘quote’ a topic or reply, by clicking on the ‘QUOTE’ icon at the top right of the message

..Ok, so that almost worked… /sad face.

You don't see 'QUOTE' right beside the posting number (eg #8468) or in gold Upper/lower case and below and to the right of a posting?

Afraid not Andy. I have 'REPLY' beside post number… That is all.