Several New Features

[Marina]

As some of you may have noticed, a few new forum features have recently crept in.

 

- View Topics with No Replies: it's rare that topics don't get a reply on this forum, but you can now easily find any topics from the past 7 days that haven't yet had a reply by clicking "View Unreplied Topics" at the top right. This is limited to those sections where replies are allowed and where it would it would be appropriate. It is also only available to registered members and not to guests.

 

- Similar Topics: you will now see a list of similar topics at the bottom of each topic in some sections (as appropriate). This is based on the "Search" system and although fairly accurate, it does very occasionally show a not-so-similar topic. Members will see more of these than guests will.

 

This is in addition to the "Tags" system as Tags are key words you enter when posting your topic, whilst "Similar Topics" searches topic titles. Between the "Search", "Tags", and "Similar Topics" features, there should now be a fairly comprehensive system for finding topics related to each other.

 

One thing: neither "Search" nor "Similar Topics" can search for 3-letter words, so this is where "Tags" can be useful, eg: if your topic is about LDN or a DMD for instance, use the Tags feature and enter " LDN", " DMD" etc so that topics about those 3-letter words can be easier to find.

 

- Old Topics: if replying to any topic that's 90 days old or more, you will now see a message telling you it's 90 or more days old and asking you to consider starting a new topic if appropriate. This is to try to avoid situations when people accidentally reply to old topics which may no longer be relevant as they didn't notice the date of the last post.

 

- Acronyms: as the world of MS uses so many abbreviations, we've set things up so that abbreviated words aka "acronyms" are now underlined with dots. When you hover over them, they will show you the unabbreviated words so that you can know what they mean. This is mostly for newbies who may not yet be familiar with these abbreviations.

 

- Link previews: when hovering over a link, a pop-up will appear showing a thumbnail preview of the site the URL is linking to. It does, however, take a little while to gather the thumbnail preview.

 

- Spammer counter: at the bottom of the main forum index page is a counter that shows "Spammers Stopped". This anti-spam system which blocks known spammers has been in place for over a year now but the counter is new. The total count goes back to when the system was first installed last year.

 

In addition to this system, there is now also another system which blocks access to certain countries known to often spam. In the two months since it's been installed, it's additionally blocked several thousand potential spammers which, in turn, reduces the amount that might otherwise have been shown in the counter.

 

- Signatures in Profiles: these used to previously be visible in profiles but were removed in this version. It's now been put back.

[Marina]

And one more...

 

In the previous version of the forum, when clicking on a topic title on the list of topics in a section, it would take you straight to the last unread post. In this newer version, it stopped doing that; the only way to go the last unread post was by clicking on the little circle to the left of the topic title, which could be a bit tricky for those who might have shaky hands etc.

 

So, I've found a way of putting it back so that clicking on a topic title where there are new posts will now take you the last unread post and not to the very first post