All,
Sorry, been very busy over the last few days so haven't had time to reply to the questions but will do that now and give an update on other changes.
First, I have made some changes over the past few days:
1. If the forum was accessed via a link from one of the emails the forum sends out, e.g. when a reply is made to your post, or any other forum-specific link (e.g. as needed by Graham) then the forum opened on it's own, that is outside of the overall Association web site. That is now fixed and the forum will always open within the Association site.
2. I have removed the text and SMF logo and space above the forum menu so that the useful stuff in the forum moves further up the page and there is less scrolling to do. I thought this might be a good idea because the forum now sits beneath the main website menu and graphic so we don't want to waste even more space.
3. Clicking links that should take you to a specific part of a web page, e.g. when you click the a New button to see a topic's latest posts, took you to the correct page but the page wasn't scrolled up. Again that was because the forum is embedded within the Association web site. This is also fixed. This was a difficult issue but I think the fix is working 100%. Let me know if you find it isn't....
4. Changed "Home" link on forum menu to be "Forum Home" to distinguish it from the Association menu bar.
5. The links to the latest forum posts on web site's home page now take you to the last post within a topic and not just to the top of the last page.
David - You asked "What are the different colored squares for under the name of the poster?". These indicate the group you belong to. If you are a moderator or an administrator then there are 5 coloured (or colored!) blocks and these are green or red respectively. Hence I have 5 red blocks. For all other members, the group is dictated by the number of posts you have made. The groups and the number of posts required to join that group are as follows and in brackets are the current number of members in each group.
Newbie 0 (262)
Jr. Member 3 (21)
Full Member 8 (43)
Sr. Member 250 (2)
Hero Member 500 (0)
So, Julian's role as a Sr. Member is because he has submitted more than 250 posts and is no reflection on his age
. Maybe we should change these to something more interesting and relevant?! Given that I'm currently reading the Swallows and Amazons series with my son, the following sprang to my mind but I'm sure someone else can be more creative!
Ship's boy
Able seaman
First mate
Captain
Graham - If you take the URL from your browser's address bar then that will be for the overall Association forum page. To send someone a URL do either of the following:
1. Click the "SEND THIS TOPIC" button at the top of the topic and enter the recipient's email address, etc.
2. Right click on the dark blue topic name at the top of the topic page and from the pop-up menu select "Copy Shortcut" or "Copy link address" (depending on your browser) and then you can paste the URL in to an email. You can also use this method to send a link to a particular post within a topic by clicking on the link immediately above the post.
Finally, I think the security on the old forum is working and I can't find any ways to bypass the logon screen. It could well be that the forum is recording attempts to access a page, and reporting them as people looking at pages, regardless of whether the page is actually displayed for the visitor or if they end up at the logon screen. I can't promise that's what's happening but it seems plausible.
Let me know if anyone has any other suggestions, problems or comments. At least the bad weather has given me time to make these changes but if the wind drops to a nice F3 then I might be a little less responsive
.
