General site suggestions

[Blue Phoenix Ace]

Feel free to contact me for all your self destruct needs. Your posts will appear to be written by a guest, as seen in the previous post.

[Kallie]

I saw that some forums show members' birthdays on their main page with a small message congratulating them. It's a small, but sweet thing, maybe we could add that?

[Ch0c0]

When acccessing the site it says that the connexion is not secure/not suporting encryption. I'm not a IT expert so I don't know what difference it makes. I'm raising this as we could be discussing heavy stuff here. Could it be improved?

[Blue Phoenix Ace]

6 hours ago, Kallie said:

I saw that some forums show members' birthdays on their main page with a small message congratulating them. It's a small, but sweet thing, maybe we could add that?

I'll look into it. I'm not sure if that's a feature of Invision or not.

 

31 minutes ago, Ch0c0 said:

When acccessing the site it says that the connexion is not secure/not suporting encryption. I'm not a IT expert so I don't know what difference it makes. I'm raising this as we could be discussing heavy stuff here. Could it be improved?

 

Encryption is useful when dealing with sensitive information. For example: credit cards numbers or identifying information such as social security number. Email addresses are not identifiable, so the concern is low.

 

You can fake all of the information when you create an account, except for email address. But you can obtain a fake email address from Yahoo for free. None of your account information is identifiable unless you opt in and include it by choice. (For example, your name could be an alias or just made up)

 

As for forum posts, it is all publicly readable, so there's nothing to hide there. If you are concerned that a " man in the middle" or XSS attack might occur and intercept private messages, then you can conduct private messaging over email or some other secure method.

 

If we wanted to open a shop here and sell aro themed pride clothes, then I would 100% add a certificate, but otherwise, I don't see a compelling reason for it.

[Ch0c0]

Thank you for the explanations.

 

The email address in user profile should be protected imho. Knowing the email you can easily find back the person with social network search engines. Saying that we can just provide a junk email is easier said than done if you wish to use the email notifications. I know that it is possible but not everyone is good with IT.

 

But I'm here nonetheless because the priority is having a forum that works and I'm thankful for this.

[Momo]

On 2/13/2020 at 11:09 AM, Ch0c0 said:

When accessing the site it says that the connexion is not secure/not suporting encryption. I'm not a IT expert so I don't know what difference it makes. I'm raising this as we could be discussing heavy stuff here. Could it be improved?

The new host offers SSL for free so we now have it enabled everywhere now @Ch0c0.

[sennkestra]

I wanted to offer a bit of a moderation suggestion - now that we have more active moderators who have also posted a lot as regular users, it would be nice to have some way to distinguish "official" mod posts vs. posts where mods just happen to be sharing their personal opinions like regular users. While it wasn't as much of a problem before when the main mods weren't very active, I think the distinction will become more useful now, especially if the moderation team continues to grow.

As an example, AVEN used to do this by having any "official" posts in bold colored text to match their user role.

• So text formatted like this is an official mod statement or warning.
• Text formatted like this is a personal post or opinion, not an official mod statement.

etc.

Even something like having "This is an official mod message: please ...." prefix might be enough - I think it can just help to have a standard that users know in advance so they can react appropriately.

[Momo]

14 hours ago, sennkestra said:

As an example, AVEN used to do this by having any "official" posts in bold colored text to match their user role.

• So text formatted like this is an official mod statement or warning.
• Text formatted like this is a personal post or opinion, not an official mod statement.

I like this. I'll raise this with the other mods.

[Apathetic Echidna]

I have a feeling I mentioned this somewhere else but..

I think it would be nice to separate the posts asking for help (those 'am I aromantic/lithromantic/other/???' ones) into their own forum. Some people coming for that sort of thing only do a few posts and it would be easier to find if they weren't buried in Aromantic Discussion. Maybe putting it in the Welcome category would be appropriate?

Quote

Aromantic Discussion

Want to learn more about what romanticism is? Not sure where you fall in the grey-romantic spectrum? Come here and discuss with other members.

Basically I just think that these two segments of the Aromantic Discussions description can stand on their own now. 

[sennkestra]

If @Magni is ok with it, would it be possible to sticky the pride 2020 thread or pin it to the top of the subforum until the end of the month? (If the forum software allows that, anyway). I think this is a useful thread that a lot of people will be interested in this month.

[Queasy_Attention]

I wish there was a forum for exclusively adult users? I'm all for inclusivity and making safe spaces for minors or people who are just uncomfortable with NSFW content-- and I also wish there was a place to post about whatever, without worrying about upsetting an underage audience. Maybe a room with a blanket warning that whatever people post or talk about in that room might be NSFW/potentially upsetting/generally adult content? An aroallo forum within that where users can reference NSFW topics? 

[struggler_]

A better looking dark mode? I physically cant use light mode, and the design of dark mode looks pretty bad and quickly thrown together like it was a very last second thought.

[illumi]

id say change the option of your status update from hide to delete. because i really dont understand the difference between hiding your status and deleting it. hiding it just makes me think it isnt permanently deleted unlike on aven which is why i really want this change

1 hour ago, struggler_ said:

A better looking dark mode? I physically cant use light mode, and the design of dark mode looks pretty bad and quickly thrown together like it was a very last second thought.

vouch. all the forums ive been to has shitty dark modes. but im used to light mode anyways so it shouldnt be too much of a bother but yk

[roboticanary]

18 hours ago, sevan said:

id say change the option of your status update from hide to delete. because i really dont understand the difference between hiding your status and deleting it. hiding it just makes me think it isnt permanently deleted unlike on aven which is why i really want this change

hide means admin and mods can still see the content, i think the justification is that if someone posts something  against TOS, they cant delete and call fake if someone screenshots. it is very easy for a mod to see what was said. for a forum with only a small number of mods who wont always be around it could be helpful. 

i could change it if people are unhappy with that, or at least i will update the site guide to make it clear what the difference is.

 

19 hours ago, struggler_ said:

A better looking dark mode? I physically cant use light mode, and the design of dark mode looks pretty bad and quickly thrown together like it was a very last second thought.

this is a more difficult problem. i'm no good at artistic design but could make some changes. is there any part of the dark theme you really dont like and i can try to see if some simple colour choices improve it a bit.

[DeltaAro]

19 hours ago, struggler_ said:

A better looking dark mode? I physically cant use light mode, and the design of dark mode looks pretty bad and quickly thrown together like it was a very last second thought.

I could redesign the header, if this is ok. This dark grey font on dark green is barely visible.

Regarding the rest, I don't know Invision but I guess they provide an interface and you don't need to seriously edit the bare CSS itself.

[roboticanary]

46 minutes ago, DeltaAro said:

I could redesign the header, if this is ok. This dark grey font on dark green is barely visible.

Regarding the rest, I don't know Invision but I guess they provide an interface and you don't need to seriously edit the bare CSS itself

On point one, that would be fantastic. I should be able to work out how to have different headers for the modes quite easily.

As for point 2. This is correct. They do have a decent interface where you can choose colours for each type of item (texts, backgrounds, etc) the limiting factor is my artistic skill rather than tech skill unfortunately. But what people could do is point to a particular piece of text/ background on a screenshot and say, e.g. that text is too dark, that background is too light, that might be better green etc and I can make those changes.

[DeltaAro]

9 minutes ago, roboticanary said:

As for point 2. This is correct. They do have a decent interface where you can choose colours for each type of item (texts, backgrounds, etc) the limiting factor is my artistic skill rather than tech skill unfortunately. But what people could do is point to a particular piece of text/ background on a screenshot and say, e.g. that text is too dark, that background is too light, that might be better green etc and I can make those changes.

The most glaring issues are the black / dark fonts:

and the icons:

and the bright UI elements:

If you turn on dark mode and visit github.com you can see one of the IMHO best dark modes:

As you see it avoids large bright areas. The UI elements are all gray.

(I mean turn dark mode on in your browser)

PS: this browser setting is ignored by Arocalypse

[illumi]

7 hours ago, roboticanary said:

hide means admin and mods can still see the content, i think the justification is that if someone posts something  against TOS, they cant delete and call fake if someone screenshots. it is very easy for a mod to see what was said. for a forum with only a small number of mods who wont always be around it could be helpful. 

i could change it if people are unhappy with that, or at least i will update the site guide to make it clear what the difference is.

i see. after all i just need is just some context lmao. thank you for informing me and i see how it can help with administration on the site

[roboticanary]

ok, i have made a theme to play about with to improve dark mode. thread here:

 

[that halo nerd]

something that tells you when you make a spelling error would be nice 

[roboticanary]

2 hours ago, that halo nerd said:

something that tells you when you make a spelling error would be nice 

agreed, sadly that is one thing i am fairly sure i cant change

[SkyTuneRein]

Some better site performance would be nice too. It's been like this for many weeks now, where it's somewhere between a wee slow to very slow or unresponsive for me.

(P.S - cloud hosting sucks for its price and numerous redundant servers, and it's best for hosting static content)

Edited December 13, 2022 by SkyTuneRein

[Lunar Nova]

IDK, no picture size limit ig

[roboticanary]

On 1/25/2023 at 7:35 PM, KoconutBounty said:

IDK, no picture size limit ig

I'm going to keep some form of size/upload limit, just because there is a limited amount of storage space from hosting (well, you can up that limit to the point it doesnt matter but that would cost a lot more), so there will still be some form of limit. But over this weekend I will have a look at where we are and what we have used over the lifetime of the site as i suspect at least for individual posts the current limits are quite small. we can probably easily be ok bumping them up a bit

[Lunar Nova]

2 hours ago, roboticanary said:

I'm going to keep some form of size/upload limit, just because there is a limited amount of storage space from hosting (well, you can up that limit to the point it doesnt matter but that would cost a lot more), so there will still be some form of limit. But over this weekend I will have a look at where we are and what we have used over the lifetime of the site as i suspect at least for individual posts the current limits are quite small. we can probably easily be ok bumping them up a bit

oki thanks