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General discussion

FORUM Annoucement: Forum bug fixes and added features- to deploy 6/08

Jun 7, 2004 7:26AM PDT

Hi folks,

Sometime tomorrow morning 6/08, we will be deploying some changes to the CNET community forums--some will be enhancements and some will be bug fixes. So please be aware of these changes and please report any bugs or weirdness to THIS thread. thank you! -Lee

Here is the list of things that are going to be deployed in the forums:

Forum Bug fixes

1. Duplicate posts have been resolved by adding a confirmation page after submitting a post. It is one extra step for users, but this will ensure that duplicate posts will not occur.

2. Text limitation in replies: Limitations have been removed in replies, no more "Part 1, part2..." for posting large amount of text

3. Active X script running in forum templates has been removed

4. Forum Discussion list will now include additional columns of info:

Title/Author, Thread creation date, Last Post to thread date and time, and number of posts in the thread

5. Alt tags have been added to buttons -- We might have missed a few alt tags here and there, but the important ones are covered.

6. Reply to post page, will show entire content of post that you are replying to, rather than it being cut off.

7. HTML template has been cleaned up in hopes to improve forum speeds.


User functionality enhancements:

1. Increased tree thread views to show 250 rather than 50 messages So rather than having user page through the tree of messages, 250 messages will appear on the tree for ease of following long discussions. Anything after 250 posts will initiate the paging of the tree.

2. The red "NEW" indicator for new message to disappear after 12 hrs rather than a lengthy 24hrs

3. User thread subscriptions: User will now be able to subscribe to threads and get notification on activities in those particular threads. Please check out the revised Forum FAQ page to reflect thread subscriptions: http://reviews.cnet.com/4002-7600_7-5083783.html Once you have subscribed to a thread, if there is any activity in the thread(s) that you subscribed to, a summarized email of your subscriptions will be sent to you. Emails will be sent every 4 hours. If there are no activities in your subscriptions, you will not be notified.

4. Forum Search added to all forum pages

5. Next and previous message button has been moved to a more prominent and fixed location rather than bouncing around depending on the length of the message.

6. Added a "Back to main Forums page" link and "Jump page" at the bottom of collapsed forum pages

Other Stuff:

1. CNET Editors/Employees will receive a red ball "C" icon.

2. Co-Branding of the CNET help.com with CNET Reviews
Going forward --to invite more members and participation in our forums, we have co-branded our forums to have the look and feel of CNET Reviews. Once these forum changes have been deployed you will now be able to view the forums with the CNET Help.com look or the CNET Reviews look. All content is shared, but just the header and footer template will be different.

Here is an example, but it will only work after the forum changes have been deployed to live:

CNET Help.com Windows XP forum:
http://reviews.cnet.com/5204-6142-0.html?forumID=5

CNET Reviews Windows XP forum:
http://reviews.cnet.com/5204-6142-0.html?forumID=5&tag=cnr

3. Subject line display will be limited to 50 characters.

4. Register user can now only send Offensive message alerts now. Only registered/logged in users will have the ability to notify us of offensive messages.

5. Discussion threads can be locked by our moderators. If we see that a discussion is going no where, but south, moderators will be able to lock them down. Locked down thread will be indicated with a pad lock icon.

Things that will unfortunately remain the same:

1. 7 layer deep thread...we tried but the wrapping of subject lines made the thread almost impossible to follow, so it was ultimately decided not to increase it

2. No thread jumping links...we implemented it at first, but because the forum pages are dynamic and any new posted message to any discussion will bump the thread to the top of the forums--it made the previous and next thread button appear then disappear which made it a pretty confusing experience. So we had decided for the sake of not confusing users, this piece was pulled at the last minute.

3. Remaining logged in. This is actually a larger issue and will require additional resources to look into to fix, so given the resources I received this time, I was unable to get this resolved.

Discussion is locked

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(NT) (NT) Well said, Glenda... You hit the nail on the head! ;)
Jun 17, 2004 12:17AM PDT
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Try this. Because your browser may be tainted by the Reviews
Jun 17, 2004 5:29PM PDT

co-branded forums.

Clear your cookies. Log in and don't use any of the Reviews co-branded forums at all and only use the Help.com forums and see it that works.

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I really don't think so.
Jun 18, 2004 2:47AM PDT

I have yet to see the read v/s unread marking of post on the forums after having closed MSIEv5.01SP2 and Win98FE, and then returning.

I've used exclusively both templates with and without &tag=cnr which doesn't have any effect.

My CNET cookie dated with 6/18/2004:

purs_4
63e9989107ba6a3becbd17d4ff4dfdef40d2dfa819679374086576137481041227027502!219!01lnX7u0wXY1PeqCWi!dBTgsWxCuXDpovJI%2FOmQt0ypt4fO0FSuPLJQWJUxU9sR%2FCion987pg%3D%3D%00
cnet.com/
0
1942382976
32107919
3770892320
29644080
*

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Re: Lee... glad to clarify -- Use your Ctl-F browser search!
Jun 17, 2004 7:01AM PDT

Hi, Glenn

If you know the date or time you seek, a browser search should find it quickly!
-- Dave K.

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(NT) (NT) We will get this ironed out soon
Jun 18, 2004 9:40AM PDT
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red "NEW" indicator for new message to disappear
Jun 20, 2004 10:42PM PDT

"Windows">http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6618-0.html?forumID=6&threadID=26574&messageID=298485]Windows 95/98 Forum", 6/21/2004, 7:30a.m. Texas time, each item is still marked with the red NEW.

Bill Gaston