Forums Update [1/04/2020]

[Nutter 15,168]

Not really anything too extreme that'd be worth noting, but incase any errors appear, I'd like to be able to backtrack to what changes caused them.

 

Mobile Users

I have gotten rid of the default "Responsiveness" module of IPBoard

This module caused issues because it determined the size of your screen, and adjusted your view of the forums accordingly, with no other factors.

As a result, monitors with a low resolution would be treated as a mobile devices, and no space would be allocated to the sidebar, where recent posts would otherwise display

 

This issue was reported to me numerous time, and I saw a significant drop in our mobile users interactions due to the forums being disnegaging. I went ahead and recoded a portion of a forums with a buddy of mine, and also purchased a third-party plugin which would display recent posts with subjectively better mobile support.

 

Screenshots from mobile displaying the new way forums will display on mobile can be found below:

 

 

PS here's a nice graph of our user engagement over the last 4 months (doubled)

 

anddd

immediately after all the quality of life improvements, super-strict forum moderation (I almost felt like a Nazi in November) and removal/deliberate killing of Shitpost Central

You can see the upward trend.

 

 

 

Performance & Donation Portal

Our donation portal has been reverted to a significantly older version, as the new version caused frequent crashes and errors.

Additionally, I have purchased another VPS to run our server on as to isolate the forums from the donation portal, so you get top-notch performance on both. I thought this was a warranted change seeing as we have been seeing significantly more user engagement on the forums ever since cracking down on shitposters and grabbing a couple forum moderators (albeit none of them have yet to figure out how to warn users?), and overall, I just find the community to be much more welcoming when it comes to the forums at this time.

Issues such as packages not assigning automatically have been resolved, as the donation portal has as much dedicated resources as our forums, however, I have decided to take out the automation of Custom Classes seeing as I do not like the way through which our donation portal handles their creation. I will shortly create a subforum under which players who purchase a custom class can detail what they'd like in them, and also, abolish the ridiculous "Class owner has to be online for a class to be accessible"

 

Forum Account Merging

Lost an old account of yours due to issues with Steam forum integration? (Cough, Evity broke it)

Look no further: 

https://garnetgaming.net/forums/index.php?/forum/132-account-merging-requests/

 

 

 

Finally, the font of the forums has changed