Welcome to our New Forum!

[BigMike]

Hello Marlin Crawler Community Fans!

Welcome to our new forum! I have upgraded the entire forum to the latest & greatest open source technology! I've been running the old system since early 2004 so this is a huge update promising increased performance, stability, and security. It opens us up to a ton of great improvements, additions, and features that I plan to unroll over the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

This has been a really busy weekend for me to unveil this new forum software, so I apologize for the large delay.

I am still on the road heading back to Fresno and while I originally planned to not open the forum up until late tonight, I've decided to open it ahead of time to let you guys get a feel for the new forum to better assist me in working out bugs and/or issues, as with any major update like this there are bound to be some that I'll have to massage out over the next few days.

So enjoy the new forum, expect some bugs, and I look forward to getting everything running smoothly with a lot of great new features coming soon!

Regards,
BigMike

[BigMike]

A few notes...

If you click on the toggle icon during a full reply, you'll activate the new WYSIWYG rich text editor.

The new Shout Box is (finally) database driven using fast AJAX technology for an improved experience, and features a pop-out window so you can chat while browsing our forum in multiple windows.

All of the old missing attachment pictures have been brought back to life!

The framework I used to compile our theme was very complicated, and it was a lot of work getting it to feel like the old theme. I am aware there are some layout and alignment issues that I still need to fix.

I focused on reducing the number of images required to load to decrease load time on your end while also reducing server overhead and requests. For example, I've replaced nearly half the background images using your browser's built-in CSS to achieve the same look.

Much more to come!
BigMike

[BigMike]

Last note before I leave,

I am aware there will be some bugs I'll have to work out. I will not be able to address these until later tonight as I won't be around a computer for a few hours from now.

Thanks and enjoy!
BigMike

[46&2]

Thanks for your hard work. New forum looks great. 

[abnormaltoy]

Thanks...I hope it wasn't too big of a PITA!

[brainlessfool]

looks good mike, seams faster too.  is ya bringing back the game room?

[THK Matt]

Very nice Mike! I used to play around with html and website designs. can be pretty fun.

[emsvitil]

Bug report:

Shoutbox doesn't work at all with IE9 (empty box)

Looks ok with firefox

[emsvitil]

Need to turn back on the spam filter...........

And lower the 60 seconds for reporting spam to moderator.

[ToyotaObsession]

It looks awesome! I get the feeling more people will want to use it now! 

[83 Crawler]

Good work big mike!!!

[fordh8r]

  8)

[zembalayan]

Nice!

[BigMike]

Just got back to Fresno! Thanks for the positive replies guys, and thanks as always emsvitil for the good tips.

Brainless: I do plan on bringing back the Arcade system, just might take a few weeks. Got something much better in store first

I am going to increase the font size in the shout box and provide some more contrast for better readability.

-BigMike

[emsvitil]

When are we getting the turtles?

[46&2]

When are we getting the turtles?

Yes, moar turtles!!

[BigMike]

Adding a couple nice features...

While viewing the thread index of any board, you may now hover your mouse cursor over the top of the Subject of a Thread to get a popup showing the first few sentences of the opening post without having to click and enter the thread to view this.

You can now quote multiple posts by using the "Add Multi Quote" link of any posts you wish to quote, and then clicking Reply. Note this only works for a full Reply, not the Quick Reply box.

BigMike

[BigMike]

When are we getting the turtles?

Magic Turtles!! Ohhh man that farm has been shut down for years. Not sure if it will ever reopen

[Rocksurfer]

Nice job MIKE!!! It's slick and quick!

[HogCanyonHopper]

whats up with the shout box     

[Rocksurfer]

If it is blank and you are on IE that may be your issue, an earlier post indicated this.

[HogCanyonHopper]

 

[Rocksurfer]

I see it on firefox

[HogCanyonHopper]

I see it on firefox

I don't see it on IE. seems pretty ridiculous that this is a BIG update and people can't even use shout box with IE. If it aint broke, don't fix it.

[Rocksurfer]

I'm sure it's just a setting, can't believe that you will never see it again if you use IE, give it some time. Also try logging out, clear your cache and then log back in see if that helps.

[Rocksurfer]

Hmm, just checked IE and I can't see anything either, tried posting too and it doesn't post it.

[BigMike]

Hey guys,

Sorry I didn't see the IE + Shout Box issue, sorry about that! I do all my testing in IE8 and it loads fine on my system. I test with IE8 because it is the most common IE that our visitors use. I just checked this and now it has actually become very close: 47.6% of our IE visitors use v8.x compared to 41.5% using v9.x. IE9 is really coming on strong, and those numbers are close enough to justify an upgrade on my end which I will do today and then trouble shoot the issue with IE9.

Thanks for the information guys!
BigMike

[BigMike]

If you guys were ever curious, here are current usage statistics of our site visitors:

Browsers 1    Internet Explorer    34%          2 Safari 23% 3 Firefox 18% 4 Chrome 15% 5 Android Browser 8% 6 Mozilla Agent 0.8% 7 Opera 0.5% ... 10 Playstation 3 0.05%

Operating Systems 1    Windows 64% 2 Macintosh 13% 3 iPhone 9% 4 Android 8% 5 iPad 4% 6 Linux 0.7% 7 iPod 0.6% 8 BlackBerry    0.2%

[THK Matt]

I used to use Firefox, until the sizing and scaling of the site was not working correctly and the site was severly disconfigured. I love firefox much more then IE. but iirc, firefox runs slower?

[emsvitil]

With IE9, if you use compatibility view; the shoutbox works