Hello everybody,

Just want to let you know that we continue to fine-tune the new forum to fix bugs and bring back previous features that weren’t available when the new forum first launched. For example, when the new forum first launched, whenever you’d post to a multiple-page thread, you’d be returned to the first page of that particular thread. Annoying at first? Yes. Has the problem been resolved? Yep!

Thanks for your continued patience as we tweak things on the back end. Below is a list of improvements that our development team rolled out today.

Please keep an eye on this Community Assistance section for future updates.

Thanks again for your continued participation in the Trains.com forum. Your contributions are what make this the greatest exchange of railroading-related discussions on the Internet.

Bergie

UPDATE: 10/22/08 I'm locking this thread so I can limit it to updates that I'm aware of.

If you have a forum issue that you're experiencing, please click my username and send me a Private Message so I can either help you individually, or so I can let our developers know about the issue.

Help Guides:
Here are some help topics that may answer many of the common questions about the new forum.

On Trains.com:

Trains.com Forum FAQ  Covers many of the frequently asked questions about the forum software. For example, "What are tags?"

On Kalmbach.com:  (Since many of the questions are common to all of our forums, we've put them in one universal place, on our corporate site.)

Forum First Steps  A guide that covers many of the new features in the forum.

Forum - More Answers  Answers to many common forum questions

Unable to Login  FAQ about login problems.

 

Browser compatibility:

- PC users: the two browsers that we know offer full functionality are FireFox (2.0 or higher) and Internet Explorer 7. I wouldn't recommend jumping to IE8... it's in beta and a couple of users have commented that it does not work with out forum. (If you've jumped to IE8 and would like to go back to IE7, install IE7 before removing IE8 from your computer.) I also just tested Google Chrome. While you can post, you don't get access to the message editing tool bar (font size, bold, smilies, etc.).

- Mac users: Here's the word from Rene at GardenRailways.com who uses a Mac on the forum:

Safari 3.1.2: You are able to post messages, but can’t use any of the extra functions. What does NOT work is similar to the old forum software: quotes, smilies, can’t create a link, basically you don’t get the toolbar to come up when you reply.

Firefox: 2.0.0.17: All functions appear to work.

 

Bugs we've fixed:

Text editing:
- Everyone should have the enhanced text editor now, which lets you change font size, color, etc. when posting.

Navigation:
- "View Previous Thread" & "View Next Thread" links have been added to the bottom of each thread.

View count:
- View count issue has been resolved.

Last Post:
- At the top of each forum section (where all the most recent posts are listed) there's a column called Last Post which displays the date, time and username of the person who was the last to post within the given topic. Similar to the previous forum, there's now an arrow that will direct you to that last post. UPDATE: 10/22/08 This feature is now working as planned.

 

10/24/08 update:

Large image resizing in Fire Fox: 
There was an issue with some Fire Fox where their window would resize after clicking an image to enlarge it. This problem has been resolved. 


Old posts not turning up in Search results
10-15-08 The indexing of old posts is taking far longer than expected. I can assure you that all old posts were transfered over to the new forum, the search function needs to index them before they display in search results. Again, this process is taking much longer than expected. 10-28-08 update: This process is still moving, just at a slower rate than expected. There are 1.5 million old posts to index, so you can imagine the magnitude of the task. 12-18-08 update: This problem has been fixed and everything should be indexed. Hurray!!!

01-08-09
Who is online
The "Who is online" feature at the bottom of the opening page of the forums is now working properly and showing an accurate count of how many people are online.

 

 

 

Things that cannot be fixed / added / brought back:

10-29-08
Forum Jump
The old forum had a pull-down menu (listing each of the forum's sections) located at the bottom of each page. You could select another section and quickly jump to that section. Unfortunately, due to the way the new forum is structured, we can't bring that feature back. (It's the same structure set-up that keeps us from carrying some of the features from the right column (Shortcuts, Tags, My Discussions, etc.) through the entire forum, and why they only appear at the very top level of the forum.) Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. (Now you have to scroll to the top of the page (or hit the "Home" button on your keyboard to go up their quickly), hit the Trains.com Forums link in the "breadcrumb" (that's located just above the forum section name), then select the forum section you'd like on the subsequent page.)

Issues we're aware of and investigating: 

10-27-08
Send e-mail feature
We're looking into the three following issues:
- The size of the message field in the Send e-mail box is small and only shows two lines of text.
- The enhanced text editor isn't offered in the Send e-mail feature.
- There's no acknowledgment displayed once a person sends an e-mail.

10-28-08
Email Subscription Enabled
You may notice that at the top of each thread there's a button that, by default, says "Email Subscription Disabled." If you click on it, it changes to Email Subscriptions Enabled and you're supposed to get an e-mail each time someone posts to that thread. It's not working, and we're aware of it.

A different e-mail option is Forum Subscriptions which is found in the Shortcuts box on the right side of the page on the opening page of the Trains.com forums. If you go into Forum Subscriptions you'll see that you can be alerted any time someone posts within an entire forum section. The good news is that that feature works. The (somewhat) bad news is that you will most likely get bombarded with e-mails because, after all, each time someone posts to that section you get an e-mail notifying you about it. Therefore, I wouldn't recommend this feature.

10-29-08
View Next Thread
Working as planned in most sections, but in some areas it's jumping to odd places.

Some old URLs not working
Apparently, in some threads (from the old forum) some of the links to other threads (from the old forum) aren't working. We're looking into this problem, but there's a simple solution in the mean time.

First, note this link doesn't work: http://cs.trains.com/forums/1/1487687/ShowPost.aspx

However, if you remove the "1/" after "forums/" and before the thread ID number, the link will work. In this case, the link would change to http://cs.trains.com/forums/1487687/ShowPost.aspx  and it will work.

11-18-08
Your post is being moderated
We're noticing that random posts are being flagged as "moderated." As such, a moderator must review and approve the moderated post before it goes live in the forum. This is a usually a glitch, and when we learn of it we quickly approve your post. If you receive an e-mail stating that your post is moderated and is awaiting approval, please let us know and we'll approve it. Again, this is a glitch. If you get this message, please don't jump to conclusions and feel that you're being singled out for something. (If we choose to moderate a user, we'll let that user know.)