We upgraded the forum! Thanks Bruce!

[Julian]

Ok, when I say we, I mean @Bruce LOL

Thank you for waiting while we upgraded the forum. This wasn't a planned upgrade, but occured when @Bruce was trying to fix our Member Map that was expiring at the end of July 2024, and it crashed the forum. So he quickly decided it was a great time to upgrade our underlying "system" software (Xenforo) to the latest version - and many of the add-ins it takes to run our site. THANKS BRUCE!!!!

Below are some notable improvements in this version:

• The look of the forum is tad more modern - if you are a keen user, you'll notice the style just looks a bit nicer
• Lots of performance improvements!
• Auto Dark mode: If the device with which you are browsing the Jetboaters.net site is configured to use its own dark mode, the forum will switch itself to use the dark theme. Alternatively, you can request either the light, dark, or system-controlled theme using the gadget in the footer next to the style chooser. This will switch the mode instantly, without a page reload.
• Featured Content: this will allow us to mark threads as "Featured", which is a new tab under the "What's New". Stay tuned as we moved forward with featured content. This should be a great way to get eyes on cool threads from you-our members!
• Trending Content: Trending content is a new way for users to discover the popular content happening on your forum. We very much see this as a precursor to grander improvements to content discovery in general in the future, focusing around helping users find the content that matters; the content that is currently "hot" or otherwise popular. This is something we are working on....and will likely be added to the Forum list and "What's New".
• There are a number of improvement that make administering the forum much easier - one being emoji improvements. So we will look at enabling more "reactions"
• Support for passkeys - Passkeys are a secure replacement for passwords and/or second factor authentication. They take many forms ranging from physical devices (e.g. Yubikeys) to biometric authentication built in to your phone or computer. Some types of passkeys can even be synced across all of your devices, for example I can setup a passkey using my fingerprint on my MacBook Pro which is then synchronised with my iPhone and authenticated using FaceID. Or you may have a password manager such as Bitwarden or Proton Pass which synchronise your passkeys across different browsers and devices. They are extremely secure, extremely easy to set up and extremely easy to use. Stay tuned....this may be automatic...we are investigating.
• Progressive Web App Support (sorry Apple users-apple doesn't support this amazing technology-feel free to complain to Apple about their lack of PWA support!) - we will be working on getting this going ASAP. Stay Tuned - this will take at least 24 hours to propagate, and there are settings we may not have set quite right yet. One part of this is you will get a notice to allow push notifications.

We hope you enjoy the new look and feel, and the features!

 

[zipper]

Is this new? I do not recall seeing "similar threads" before.

 

[svana]

Not sure if you’re troubleshooting but just an FYI the logo seems to be the whole banner on a mobile (Apple) platform.

 

[Bruce]

Not sure if you’re troubleshooting but just an FYI the logo seems to be the whole banner on a mobile (Apple) platform.

It has been a banner that resizes with screen width changes. @Julian is experimenting with new features that may change that to a logo at smaller sizes.

 

[Julian]

Yeah....the new style sheet might have messed with that. I'm still investigating things here.

What everyone should now see is a the cool new "Auto Dark Mode". This will set the forum to dark mode if you have chosen dark mode on your device. You can still change your style with the drop down at the very bottom left of the forum screen.

 

[Julian]

It has been a banner that resizes with screen width changes. @Julian is experimenting with new features that may change that to a logo at smaller sizes.

The banner image looks like its missing....I haven't changed any style settings except the new one that enables auto dark mode.

 

[Julian]

The banner image looks like its missing....I haven't changed any style settings except the new one that enables auto dark mode.

What is interesting is the forum default style is the only one its not working in. The two custom styles (which are designed to work "wide") display the banner. So I wonder if the default style was broken by the upgrade somehow???

 

[Julian]

So we have fixed the banner mostly....

The default style (you can change styles in the bottom left of the page) needs some color adjustments which we'll look at. If you want a slightly different style, try one of the other options.

 

[tabbibus]

DARK MODE!!!!!!!

 

[Julian]

DARK MODE!!!!!!!

We've had dark mode for a couple of years, now we have auto dark mode where it follows what you've set in your device.

 

[drewkaree]

Is this new? I do not recall seeing "similar threads" before.

No, at least not to me, and I'm guessing more than a few folks. I think this "feature" is responsible for more than a few threads that are/were several years old being reopened or posted in, by folks that haven't taken a look at the dates to things they're responding to. I know I've found myself doing this as well - not sure if there was a warning that I turned off or what, but I know on other forums, if a thread had over X amount of time since it was last posted in, the forum would force you to acknowledge that it was an old thread.

 

[Julian]

No, at least not to me, and I'm guessing more than a few folks. I think this "feature" is responsible for more than a few threads that are/were several years old being reopened or posted in, by folks that haven't taken a look at the dates to things they're responding to. I know I've found myself doing this as well - not sure if there was a warning that I turned off or what, but I know on other forums, if a thread had over X amount of time since it was last posted in, the forum would force you to acknowledge that it was an old thread.

Similar threads has been turned on for a while (years), but you would only see it when authoring a new thread. Now you see it when replying to a thread (ok....I turned that off now!) It was set to show you 5 that it thinks are similar no matter how old they are, now its set to 20 (too many???)

 

[zipper]

Similar threads has been turned on for a while (years), but you only see it when authoring a new thread. It is set to show you 5 that it thinks are similar no matter how old they are.

Ya, I have never noticed it while typing a post, before sending it. Definitely more visible now.

 

[Julian]

We also now have "Featured Content" - which is something the admins and mods can flag, and "Trending Content" what this does is keep a log of content and tracks various metrics including view counts, reaction count, reaction score and content vote counts/scores and then shows the threads that this algorithm counts as high. We've not tweaked anything yet, but you will see these in various spots around the forum.

Trending content shows in the forum page at the bottom (was considering moving it to the top).

 

[Julian]

Similar threads showing 50 at the bottom of an existing thread is new....I will be reducing this significantly shortly! Way too long!

Trending threads is based off the following score counts:



Anyone have any opinions on what we should score?

 

[Julian]

OK, there was no way to specifically reduce "Similar Threads" on a quick reply, so I turned it off for this as I don't think you really need to see similar threads when doing a Reply to an existing thread. I also reduced the number for new threads to 20.

 

[YamahaForMe]

 

[dgfreeze]

Is there any way to add a "notes" section to our account? I would love if there a place where I could save specific threads for future reference, or just simply make notes about my boat, upgrades, etc., all in one place. Keep a list of part numbers, vendors, just anything like that.

 

[Michal]

Thank you for all the work on this, fellas! It might be just me but mobile seems so much faster and the layout is just great. I'm on a Pixel 6a.

 

[Julian]

Is there any way to add a "notes" section to our account? I would love if there a place where I could save specific threads for future reference, or just simply make notes about my boat, upgrades, etc., all in one place. Keep a list of part numbers, vendors, just anything like that.

We used to have a bookmark addon, @Bruce , but it was deprecated at some point so it no longer works. We will look into what options there are to replicate this function. Great question though....forced me to go look into bookmarks after this big upgrade!

You could create your own thread called "<Username>'s favorite threads"