I just put a new update out which mostly focuses on improving and extending the forums. There are also many fixes to problems that have been brought up. These things range from the MobyDark theme, to the search engine, the submission process and some of the backend things admins need to do. Check the changelog for a list of changes.

Thumbs up. The forums seem to have gone through a nice overhaul, let's hope the quoting works...

Glad to see the individual game boards are going. However,

It is no longer required (or possible) to subscribe to forums to track read messages. Messages are automatically tracked by default for all logged on users. You can still change you preferences to turn this feature on or off, along with all of the other forum preferences.

I'm not sure I understand this. If it's done automatically, does that mean by default we're subscribed to all boards? With potentially thousands of sub-forums, that seems troublesome.

yes, to the all the boards... general, mobygames.com

You can still do the same thing you used to be able to do (do/don't track messages, don't display notices on the home page, etc). What's different is that you don't have to subscribe to a board to do them. I probably didn't explain it very well since I'm a programmer.

Why is it that threads disappear from the topics list after you read them? Not sure I like that...:-( Everything else looks great.

disappear? need more detail to what you mean

Okay, if I'm in the forum index, then go to game talk, then to "Is there anyone here who doesn't like GTA", for instance, then when I go back out that thread is missing from the list of topics. Actually I just did that very thing.

Edit - And now I can't see this one on the topic list either, can only access it from the index, because it has a new post, or from my "participated in" list...

ah I see what's going on...

you have to change your sort option to sort by last post and not by status... the status sort is pushing your read threads to the bottom and the no new message ones are at the top

The idea was to keep new topics/unread topics at the top. It was meant to take the place of the "unread" tab that used to exist. Maybe it should default to sort by the last post column. Also, maybe the sort column should be remebered instead so the next time you come back it uses the same selection.

I'm open to suggestion on how to improve the sorting. I'm sure we can get it sorted out quickly.

Ahh, much better! I'm afraid I have big issues with lost things, glad to know nothing is lost after all! Thank you :-))

(groan) :-)

Sorting suggestions need to themselves be sorted into piles based on feasibility. The sort of email that would automatically sort these is not sorted out as of yet, but will be cosndered sort of in a setup to be sorted out later. The sort that would sort of be simple to improve sorting should take higest priority and themselves be sorted by date. Those sort that aren't the sort that are easy to do and would themselves take a greater amount of time are a lower priority, also sorted by date. This sort of management of sorting suggestions should be just the sort of inspiration that will sort things out among approvers and allow us to make an improvment regarding the website, of sorts.

Ohhh, my head! :-)

P.S. "Also, maybe the sort column should be remebered instead so the next time you come back it uses the same selection."

Yes, that would really help!

Everything looks really nice, Brian. Thanks for all your hard work!

mostly focuses on improving and extending the forums

Ha -- I was submitting games all afternoon and just now around 11 pm remarked that there'd been changes to the site. Ignore the forums and the frontpage and you might not notice anything different 8)

Ignore the forums and the frontpage and you might not notice anything different 8)

What?! Forums on game pages?!!@# I stand corrected.

The new game wizard has been improved to better handle creating new games versus adding platforms to existing games.

This is great, no more jumping through hurdles for that. Looks good.

The threaded forums break entirely in Safari.

grrr.. I developed it in safari (albeit tiger)..... Anyway, I have good news Iggy. I finally got a system that can run 10.3. I'm actually installing panther on it now, so i should be able to fix these problems you are having.

Okay iggy, i got the 10.3 mac up and running, and the threaded forum is working now. I'll check into the credits thing you were talking about next.

Thank you, Brian.

That's one hell of a forum update! Nice!

Game forums?!! Great! Three thumbs up!

Ah, and I'd like to thank you also for the work on the spellchecker. Now my name isn't checked anymore! :)

Yeah, that was one of those small lonely things that never make the changelog....

Small lonely things can definitely be logged... the bigger that document is, the better I feel... even if it's filled with minor fixes :D

I'm such a geek. I really like changelogs full of miscellaneous tiny details :)

MobyDark is fixed. I will not whine this year.

heh, at least until we change the hompage =P