NSMB 4.0

Posted by: [email protected]

As I wrote a large chunk of the data migration code (Norman did a ton of fine-tuning before the launch) I'd like to add a few remarks:

Regarding the hyphenated usernames: the old forum allowed pretty much any character in usernames. The new platform doesn't. So we had to replace some characters (like spaces) with something else (like hyphen). On the bright side, the new usernames are URL-friendly so we can have URLs like https://nsmb.com/photos/user/[email protected]/.

Passwords could not be migrated because we can't read your passwords. That's a good thing, but I think it should have been communicated better that you have to reset your password before you can log in to the new site. Apologies for that.

The PMs not being migrated from the old forum was a complete oversight on my side, sorry. Also, see my next point regarding perfect data migrations.

In general, to get any data migration perfect requires an infinite amount of time. I tried to use the limited time available in the best way possible, but of course it's not perfect.

Most importantly, we moved to an entirely new (to us) technology stack which allows us much more flexibility and should scale much better than the old platform. From a technical point of view, the hardest part is done and we can now focus on features and usability.

Thanks for the feedback and let's work together to make NSMB better :-)

Data conversion of any project is always a significant portion of the total cost, but it isn't infinite.

Where management screwed the pooch was doing the conversion a week before cut-over and not telling anyone.  Hopefully the fourth(?) time lessons will have been learned and it will go smoother.

Finally, sorry to continue along the debbie-downer line, but this upgrade is a downgrade for regular forum users.  To imply otherwise makes me think of an orange man yelling, "fake news".

Whatever the case, I enjoy it here a lot and hope we make it through it.

Thx Norm. Appreciate the time you are putting in to make us happy

holy shit, Niels Bohr is writing code for NSMB - you guys are legit

just noticed that if you're reading the last page of a thread and log in to make a comment it bumps you back to the first page of the thread.

If I scroll to an article's comment section and vote a comment up or down it bumps me back to the top of the page.

Posted by: Sethimus

i'm sorry but so far this takes out the fun in posting here. this forum is useless for me in its current state. if this was designed to reengage more readers with the forum it failed big times. this should have at least feature parity with the old forum, not feeling like a time machine into the early days of the internet

Pity to see it go so abruptly eh? 

Well, it looks my Android keyboard is finally compatible, so I'll take this opportunity to bid all of you good people adieu. It's been a truly rewarding experience sharing ideas with you all these past 15 years. 

Perhaps the forum will receive the attention from management it deserves and come back to some semblance of life. One can always hope.

Good luck Norman, you poor soul. 

One man, alone in the wilderness...

😉

Some of you are drama queens...lol. Go ride your bikes.... ;)

I also seem to get logged out despite clicking "remember me"

Couldn't remember after 11 years the old email I signed up with. LOL. Allowed me to fix my user name to the correct spelling.

Posted by: Endurimil

Couldn't remember after 11 years the old email I signed up with. LOL. Allowed me to fix my user name to the correct spelling.

mine was apparently my old dropmachine email, which I'd 100% forgotten about, ha

Thanks to all of you for your feedback - positive or negative.

Yes, we care. Believe me, we're hard at work, both on the Forum experience as well as what's going on on the front page and with content. I don't expect sympathy for this, but I think it's worth pointing out that a big part of the reason that the pace of change/improvement around here is not at the same level as what you might expect from, say, google docs, is that we don't have the resources of a lot of online experience providers that you've come to be used to.

The reason for that is twofold. One, we have always shied away from doing things that would pay a lot more money, but that would also compromise our principles with respect to things like unbiased gear reviews or spiking our content with shitty suggested reading articles like "10 photos of people you wouldn't believe exist". There are other websites that exchange money for content. They may not be getting paid to post favourable reviews specifically, but they're taking money and saying "we'll review x amount of product for you this year" as a part of their ad deals. This is how print mags work as well. We may be naïve, but we also have ideals. They hit us in the pocketbook. We're working on it (not sacrificing ideals, but figuring out how to preserve them and still make money).

The second is that our business model - right now - is based on ad revenue. If you use an ad blocker, just know that while we don't make a lot from any one user anyway, you're not helping. I'm not saying "enable ads you, leech" because we want you around whether our ads serve to you or not. It's totally your prerogative. But just...think about who and what you support with what you do. Anyway, there are other things you can do. Contribute to the community. Buy some socks. Just be you. But maybe also be nice to new people because we do have a problem with welcoming newbies around here. 

I want to give a big thank you to Norman and Niels who have put a gargantuan effort into these changes. Some of them were "ripping off the band-aid" type changes that were done in order to set up future plans. Without these changes, we wouldn't have been able to keep improving the site. As Niels pointed out, we're now in a good position to continue improving and you'll see the evidence of that over the next few months.

Lastly, while Cam and I may not post on here as much as has been the case in the past, it's because there is a lot going on behind the scenes that keep us from writing articles or spending time on here. Social media has put a dent in forum traffic everywhere but that doesn't mean we don't value this community. Soon we will add some more features that will show you that we care and we're working on making it a better experience around here.

In the meantime, please keep sharing your feedback. We're listening and we do appreciate it.

I'm seeing some issues in the forums when accessed from my phone. There are huge blank sections and the replies get bogged down in formatting.

Disabled Adblock for NSMB just now.

I've been holding off on this comment, in the hopes Norm's all over it.  I'm having real trouble reading the forum on my iphone 5s. Far too many dates and user names showing, it's impossible to navigate. To the point of "i'm cured of my bb.nsmb addiction".

Oh, and where did "attachments" go?

screenshot of my bitchiness.