The move to vBulletin Update

[WILL]

Hi Darthman, I'm glad you want to donate, every little bit helps. Every big bit helps too.

The account that takes donations for PGD and Pascal Gamer Magazine is held by PayPal so all means of donating money electronically is done by PayPal. I've been told that specific regions have a hard time with PayPal due to policies or availability. This is unfortunate, because the main reason for using the PayPal service is to be able to record, track and manage all donations paperlessly. It would be too much to retain records for legal reasons should any of these were to be on paper only. And yes, I do keep very good records of every donation and transaction of expenses.

If you want to see just about every way to donate to a PayPal account, you can go to www.paypal.com and read what options they give you.

At one time we had merchandise that we were selling through an online storefront (Cafe Press) with PGD logos and such, but it wasn't a huge success. This is something we could start back up should the interest re-spark.

[JernejL]

I am not very happy with vbulletin upgrade, or mostly the theme.

The forum and topic graphics - icons and colors are now super-unclear on indicating what is new and what was already read.

Also there's still too many forum sections, i said this around 5 years ago.. there's forum sections with like 30 threads total and last updated earlier than 2010.. In essence the forum still looks like a mess

Edit:
I think there's better and more functional free forums such as PHPBB V3, there's no real reason to use vBulletin.

Also.. [pascal] [/pascal] doesn't work..

[chronozphere]

The forum and topic graphics - icons and colors are now super-unclear on indicating what is new and what was already read.

I agree that the Icons on the forums could be made alot clearer, but I don't see why you shouldn't just use the "what's new" button?

Also there's still too many forum sections, i said this around 5 years ago.. there's forum sections with like 30 threads total and last updated earlier than 2010.. In essence the forum still looks like a mess

This has obviously nothing to do with vBulletin. But I agree. we could remove a few forum sections, for example:

> Jobs and resum?©s (noone seems to use it)
> PP Compiler forum
> Kylix IDE/Compiler forum
> XCESS GD kit forum

It seems to me that only popular libaries (and those with alot of threads) deserve their own subforum.
Also, the whole sound/music section could be merged into one subforum. Same for the story/documentation and graphics/modelling sections.
We should keep in mind the PGD forums are mainly geared towards programmers. Artists and storywriters will most likely ask their questions at Gamedev.net or somewhere else. I rather see 10 subforums that are actively used than 30 subforums that are deserted and outdated.

I'm pretty sure that merging forums can be cumbersome (never done it myself), so I don't expect anything to happen soon. Just saying that I agree with delfi's point.

[JernejL]

An odd issue when posting a new thread: There is no formatting toolbar anywhere.. it's there in quick reply but not in new thread / post advanced form.. wtf?

[WILL]

The [pascal] BBCode tags were just a mod that we used when running under phpBB, we don't plan on modifying any of the site software's code as it impedes updates and site stability. The [code] tags work just as well however.

One of the nice things about vBulletin compared to phpBB or SMF for example is that you can collapse and expand sections of the Forums so you don't have to see everything at once. Should you close your browser and revisit PGD, you'll notice that the forums will stay organized as you left them. Also What's New is the new 'Posts since last visit'. It also includes News Post comments too.

If you are really keen, you can use an RSS Feed reader to read all the latest forums posts if you like.

As for the formatting tool bar, there is the simple one if you hit quick reply, but if you want more advanced options you should select 'Go Advanced' instead and you can do more to format your post content. Including uploading images and files that will not get lost by referencing external hosting services.

No one likes things to change all the time, but I'm sure you will see that the site now out performs the old one and has many more clean features than any of the previous versions of the site.

[Murmandamus]

I've said before that I don't care one way or the other, as long as it is usable and readable without too much hassle or eyestrain.

That said, don't bother comparing forum features/performance between phpBB, SMF, vB, etc. They all have pretty much the same featureset and performance within a percentage point or two. I've run most of the "popular" ones at one point or another for various forums, and the differences are almost too small to worry over. The important thing is to choose the one you feel more comfortable with, and stick with it.

What I would like to have is a main index display mode which, by default, collapses everything that has no new posts. I know there is the "new posts" link, but meh. Just would like for it to come up with that by default.

Yeah, the RSS reader helps, but I don't really use it all that much.

[JernejL]

As for the formatting tool bar, there is the simple one if you hit quick reply, but if you want more advanced options you should select 'Go Advanced' instead and you can do more to format your post content. Including uploading images and files that will not get lost by referencing external hosting services.

Sometimes i WANT to embed a picture or a link or format text, there is none of those options in "go advanced".....

[WILL]

Sometimes i WANT to embed a picture or a link or format text, there is none of those options in "go advanced".....

Actually you don't need to go to advanced to upload an image. You have to upload it from your computer to be able to format it later. You cannot upload the image from a foreign URL. I think that might be the problem.