Gary Lewis

Looking for an extension or plugin to make inserting a URL easier/less unfriendly. Here's the only one I found out of 389 hits for "link": userfriendly URL-input while posting Note that this one says "Warning: The author of this contribution does not provide support for it anymore." This isn't looking good for phpBB. But I've written to Greg, my Nabble mentor, to see what he know since he's moved over to phpBB.

I'm having a hard time seeing "new laces" as being a fun Easter gift. Chocolate, yes. Other candy, maybe. But laces? Take care, Jim. In all seriousness, this sounds ... serious.

NO! Please take it easy, Jim!

Well, it isn't truly broken. It is just out of alignment. So instead of fixing it until it is broken I'm going to align it until it isn't - misaligned. But with the grandtwins due Wednesday for a week and the clock ticking on the InVision forum decision I'm waiting to do the alignment. In fact, the noise in the steering column and the power steering leak have higher priorities than the bumper.

I'm guessing that the clutch plate/friction disc was installed backwards, as you suggested. The interference has apparently caused slippage and the flywheel looks to have been badly heated - and may be ruined. If it isn't installed backwards then maybe the mismatch of parts caused the interference?

Grandpa Jeff - Unfortunately that plugin just shows a link to the post. In other words, it does what clicking on the title of the post does, and makes it easy to get the link to the post so you can send others there. But it doesn't allow you to insert links easily into a post, which I think is a requirement. As you said, we can't expect the users to be HTML programmers. And anything less than what we have is going in the wrong direction. Here's a pic showing where they put the link - below the post:

Jeff, aka Grandpa - I am so glad everyone is well. You are going to really, REALLY love being grandparents. Spoil them and hand them back to their parents to sort out the problems. Our grandtwins show up Wednesday, along with their mother/our daughter, but she's leaving them with us for several days and we are dreaming up all the ways we can spoil them. As for the forum, InVision is soooo easy. And the native phpBB is sooooo hard. But I'm looking at the link you sent. Perhaps it'll solve that problem. (Then we need to solve the bulleted list and numbered list problems, and ....)

Looks great! Glad you got the tailgate figured out. And I'm glad you got the parts catalog figured out as well. It is very helpful, but can be very confusing as well.

Congratulations!!!!

Gary, I found this example on the web. Is this useful for pasting a hyperlink too? Yes, that is the same process I used in this post on phpBB. Man, it was SO easy to do that in Nabble. Just copy the link, type "this post", highlight it, click the Link button, and paste the link in. I really don't want to go backwards, and unless there is a plugin to fix that then phpBB would be a big step backwards. And since nothing I've found suggests a plugin exists, I'm doubting it. But, Jeff, please tell me your thoughts. Can you make the link bit work on phpBB? And by work I mean highlight some text to be a hyperlink instead of pasting in some horribly-long URL. I've seen some URLs for things from Amazon that have gone on for 3 rows of text, and I don't think it is acceptable to paste several of those in the middle of a post. Also, can you figure out how to do bulleted lists in phpBB? How about numbered lists? If so, please enlighten me as I've not twigged. And then please go try the same thing in InVision. Links are exactly like Nabble, and bulleted & numbered lists are dead simple. I'm really having a hard time with phpBB unless there are plugins to fix the problems.

Jeff - There is a way to get a permalink on phpBB. Just right-click the title of the post, the one circled in red below. Then click Copy Link Address and you have it. However, that's certainly not intuitively obvious to the casual observer, so I gave it an orange thumbs-down in the spreadsheet. On the other hand, clicking the three dots on InVision isn't the most obvious thing either, so might that be an orange thumbs-up? And, how do either of those work on an phone?

Yes, good idea!

Jeff - I'm seeing the same thing. But I'm finding that it is far easier to see the red vs black on phpBB than the bold vs plain on InVision. And I'm liking the layout of phpBB more than I am that of InVision. I like the clean look of phpBB, shown on the left. But what do all y'all think? Jeff - I need your help. I'm coming to the conclusion that phpBB is not going to do what I think we need it to do because: I can't figure out how to get a permalink to a post in phpBB. I think Chris said he'd see what he can do when he gets back from his trip, but maybe you can? The ability to post a link is poor. Yes, you can click the chain link icon and it'll drop in the html code with the curser between the two brackets so all you have to do is paste in the link. But I'd like you to try to cause it to make a link out of a word instead of having the whole link showing in the post. And creating bulleted or numbered lists is not happening for me. Could you try? So if we can't get the permalink and link things working I think we shouldn't go any farther with phpBB. The bulleted & numbered lists things are just "ought to haves", but permalinks and the ability to turn a word or words into a hyperlink are required.

Jeff - I'm seeing the same thing. But I'm finding that it is far easier to see the red vs black on phpBB than the bold vs plain on InVision. And I'm liking the layout of phpBB more than I am that of InVision. I like the clean look of phpBB, shown on the left. But what do all y'all think?

Also, what's your view of both phpBB and InVision's board index/main page? Do you see my recent posts highlighted?

Yep, not really often but sometimes it happened that I was searching for something and wanted to jump couple of pages ahead (or back) of the listed ones. The only way in Nabble is to click one by one. That could be a plus for easier browsing, even though not a major issue. Yep, you’re right. And this is a more important issue (IMHO). Seeing at a first glance what’s going on is a major point. Nabble offers that. I'm confused with phpBB. Below is my view of the "board index" and it would seem to show that there are several threads I've not read because they are in bold. But that's not true as I've read the ones in red and even created the one in green. And after going to read them all again it still looks that way. Please post a time or two on phpBB so I can see what, if anything, changes.

Happy Easter! And happy grandchild!

Well, I suppose it’s 100% or zero. It’s possible, or it’s not. For this feature, Nabble gets zero. We can’t jump to a page which number isn’t displayed. Not sure for the other platforms. I’ll have to test. Yep, I did see that. But I’ll have to play around and look how it works. Question: Is there a way to see if we read or not the most recent interaction that have occurred in a thread? I mean similar than the blue vs purple in Nabble? For the moment, seems that we only have the date in InVision (and phoBB if I’m right) no way to see if I have read or not. If so, there’s a certain loss of time to go back to a thread in order to verify if we already read it or not. Jeff - If I understand what you mean by "We can’t jump to a page which number isn’t displayed", this issue is that there are 368 #'s to display and not enough real estate on the page to do it with. So Nabble shows you seven pages around the page you are on, three pages ahead of and three pages behind. I don't know of a better approach, but I agree it isn't ideal. Maybe the problem is with the guy that wrote so much? Don't know how either phpBB or InVision handle that as we obviously don't have that many pages to test. But both of them do show the pages. In fact on desktops InVision shows you a list of page numbers when you hover over the thread so you can pick where to start. And the InVision post/page limit was set at 25 so I took it down to 10 so we could have more pages. As for the notifications that someone has posted, it is hard to tell with so few of posts. Maybe you and I need to post more on both platforms?

Clean looking truck. And expensive at $28,500. But it may get it. Didn't realize that back then there was a 9' bed. Makes it look loooong.

We know that's not true. But apparently you "accidentally" miswired it?

Well done!

Ok, I now understand why my first impression is that phpBB is more rigid and a bit “cold”. That’s a bypass, we can certainly deal with it. But I’ll search if there’s a way to have members topics on the main page. Who knows. About the Platforms Comparison Chart, I would add in the « Ought To Have» section: When navigating in a thread, ability to directly jump to a specific page number. Ok, we have "When navigating in a thread, ability to directly jump to a specific page number" in the comparison. But please tell me how you want each rated. And the General Discussion thing is in InVision also. Appears to be across both platforms if I'm not missing something.

Bummer! I've wondered why mine is rock solid and yours isn't.

I've made some progress wrapping my head around how InVision works. Still not quite there, but this page on the InVision Community has helped. It says: I've not played with Questions or Redirects yet, but have done quite a bit with Categories & Discussions. Turns out that Categories are what I'd call a folder that will hold Discussions. You cannot start a thread in a Category but you can in a Discussion. The issue is that Discussions must be in a Category. Given that I've set up an overarching Category called Bullnose Forum and within it I've added things we recognize, like NMSH, Projects, etc. But since you can't start a thread in a Category you cannot post directly in Bullnose Forum. Given that I've created a Discussion called General Discussions which houses WHYDTYTT as well as all other threads. Does that make sense? I'm really struggling to figure this out, so please tell me if it should be done differently. And, by the way, you can pin topics. WHYDTYTT is pinned to the top of General Discussions.

Jeff - I don't think your understanding of Nabble is exactly right. There really are only forums, sub-forums, and topics. Pinning just keeps things at the top of the list and has nothing to do with the structure. Something with a folder icon is a forum and can have another forum within it, which would be a sub-forum. And forums can have topics within them, meaning threads. BUT, don't get hung up on understanding Nabble as both InVision & phpBB are different from Nabble and from each other. And I'm struggling to understand them. I don't know that it is phpBB's fault that it feels too rigid. That may be my fault for the way I've put it together. Ditto for inVision. So what I'm trying to do at the moment is to structure both of them essentially the same way - the way we have Nabble structured. I'm pretty much there on phpBB, but the biggest difference to Nabble is that it doesn't appear that you can have topics/threads in the main section. So I created General Discussion for everything that doesn't fit in the forums above. Does that make sense? What suggestions do you have? Please remember that many of the issues you are seeing are not problems with the platform but the way I've implemented it. And since I don't have any experience with that platform I may well not have done a good job and need HELP!