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  • Member since
    March 2008
  • 148 posts
Posted by Wazzzy on Thursday, September 2, 2010 11:02 AM

what i like about the new forum is i can now post messages unlike the old version. yes, i tried everything: new account name, e-mails to the web site, a few phone calls, etc.

  • Member since
    January 2006
  • From: Alaska
  • 459 posts
Posted by modelalaska on Thursday, September 2, 2010 11:12 AM

Always nice to see advancements made in the forums... guess I better start participating again.  Been busy with my other hobby: my 2010 Prius.  Big Smile

  • Member since
    September 2007
  • From: Charlotte, NC
  • 6,099 posts
Posted by Phoebe Vet on Thursday, September 2, 2010 12:26 PM

rrinker

 Phoebe Vet:

Thumbs Down  They have eliminated my favorite path into the forums.

I used to go straight to the forums and to the block on the right that showed the most recent posts.

I hope this is a work in progress and not the finished product.

 

 

You mean this: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/

Works for me. lLthough I find that page useless, always have. I post in too many threads to list there. I just go to modelrailroad.com and hit community,forums to get here. After I finish perusing any new news items and whatnot.

Editing's fixed.

                                         --Randy

 

Nope.  That's not it.

Dave

Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow

  • Member since
    April 2008
  • From: Northern VA
  • 3,050 posts
Posted by jwhitten on Thursday, September 2, 2010 8:23 PM

Allegheny2-6-6-6

Well as of right now I don't like it at all. I personally didn't see anything wrong with the old one other then the archive search being a little challenging. Maybe it's just me but it appears to have .a very stark appearance, probably just a poor choice of back round colors I guess. Well by the time I finally get used to the way things are now they will go and change it again. I guess they never heard of If it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

I agree with you about the colors. I liked the colors of the old site much better.

Modeling the South Pennsylvania Railroad ("The Hilltop Route") in the late 50's
  • Member since
    February 2010
  • From: Colorado (the flat part)
  • 607 posts
Posted by Colorado_Mac on Thursday, September 2, 2010 10:44 PM

Despite agreeing with many of the problems mentioned, the site works better for me, on my Mac, than the old one.

Sean

HO Scale CSX Modeler

  • Member since
    December 2002
  • 1,511 posts
Posted by pastorbob on Thursday, September 2, 2010 10:49 PM

Really don't have any bad comments about the new forum.  I found it easy to get used to, speed is at least as good as before, not that hard to figure out.  My desktop likes it, haven't tried it with either laptop yet.

Bob

Bob Miller http://www.atsfmodelrailroads.com/
  • Member since
    October 2004
  • From: Modeling the Seaboard Air Line Ry.
  • 531 posts
Posted by citylimits on Thursday, September 2, 2010 11:02 PM

Smile

  • Member since
    June 2009
  • From: Gibsonia, Pa.
  • 12 posts
Posted by chooch_42 on Thursday, September 2, 2010 11:37 PM

everything seems to be working waaay better/faster today than since the change-over.  I'm no power user, so no opinions on any changes (I don't know much of what it WAS like !). Glad you are ALL still here...I've gotta lotta stuff to learn.  Bob C.

James Thurber - "It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
SRN
  • Member since
    July 2010
  • From: US
  • 110 posts
Posted by SRN on Friday, September 3, 2010 6:27 AM

The system was extremly sluggish downloading trackplans last night, when I noticed my browser was pulling in stuff from Facebook. I thought what the heck, so I looked at Kalmbach's page source, and sure enough, they were loading a script from connect.facebook.net. That script, which I was unable to view, apparently was doing something with www.facebook.com. I quickly blocked both URLs to stop whatever nonsense was going on.

This morning, the sluggishness is gone, and so are all references to facebook in the page source.

I'd sure like to know what that was about.

 

 

Recovering former former model railroader.

  • Member since
    June 2001
  • From: Anderson Indiana
  • 1,301 posts
Posted by rogerhensley on Friday, September 3, 2010 6:52 AM

Well, I am not impressed. I found my way around the main page by putting just those that I want into Bookmarks. That way I bypass all of the stuff on the main page.

I do not need that.

 

Roger Hensley
= ECI Railroad - http://madisonrails.railfan.net/eci/eci_new.html =
= Railroads of Madison County - http://madisonrails.railfan.net/

  • Member since
    September 2003
  • From: Omaha, NE
  • 10,619 posts
Posted by dehusman on Friday, September 3, 2010 6:56 AM

This new forum is slower than Christmas.  It took 45 sec. for this page to load so I could type a reply AND its my second attempt because the first time I tried to reply I started typing before the 800 images all loaded and it failed (I ended up with part of my reply showing in the white space between the reply box and the "Tags" box below, outside the reply pane.)

Trains used to be one of my first places to check when I had a minute of free time, now its one of the last because I don't want to burn the few spare moments to see whats going on waiting for pages to load.  I can literally look at two other different forum sites in the time it takes MR forums to load.

Navigation sucks.  The Home-Forum page has the forums scattered.  I used to start there and vist several forums in both trains and MR, now there is no really good way to navigate between magazines.  If you go into the presonal profile area, there is no really easy way to navigate back out of there to the forums area.

The whole friends/converstations/personal messaging thing has never really been clearly explained and is not at all obvious.  I don't do Facebook so I don't want to screw around with that whole social media thing. 

Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com

  • Member since
    September 2003
  • From: Omaha, NE
  • 10,619 posts
Posted by dehusman on Friday, September 3, 2010 7:07 AM

dehusman

This new forum is slower than Christmas.  It took 45 sec. for this page to load so I could type a reply

It took 40 sec from hitting "quote" to when the page loaded.  That would be really cool in 1985, but not today.

Navigation sucks. 

Case in point.  After I submitted the previous message, the message posted screen appeared.  At the top of the pane was the bread crumbs:

Home-General Discussion

Any other screen gives you :

Home-Forums-Model Railroader - General Discussion

After you submit a reply  there is no way to cleanly navigate back to the MR forums directly.  Really poor design.

Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com

SRN
  • Member since
    July 2010
  • From: US
  • 110 posts
Posted by SRN on Friday, September 3, 2010 7:30 AM

The main forum page has load to 105 KB  of boated source, before it loads any graphics. external scripts, or linked advertising. It is painfully slow on a dial-up connection.

This is all too common these days. I blame it on the developers and corporate IT types, all of whom have access to very high speed Internet connections at work. They don't seem to ever think about the users who don't have access to fast broadband connections.  It has come to the point that many web sites are functionally unusable for dial-up users. Even my one megabit connection seems slow on many of them.

 

 

Recovering former former model railroader.

  • Member since
    September 2007
  • From: Charlotte, NC
  • 6,099 posts
Posted by Phoebe Vet on Friday, September 3, 2010 7:32 AM

I'm reserving judgment at this point.

I am not sure how much is "I don't like it" and how much is having to learn my way around a system that works differently than the old site.

I definitely liked the old Forum main page better than the new one.  It definitely is slower than the old page.  I have no interest in the connections to the various social networks, but they are easily ignored.

Right now I am unimpressed.  Time will tell if my opinion improves with time and use.

Dave

Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow

  • Member since
    March 2007
  • 599 posts
Posted by Milepost 266.2 on Friday, September 3, 2010 8:37 AM

While I would have like to have seen standard UBB code implemented, this is definitely an improvement.  

  • Member since
    July 2004
  • From: Carmichael, CA
  • 8,055 posts
Posted by twhite on Friday, September 3, 2010 10:28 AM

Well, so far I'm not having any major problems--and we're talking Basic Computer Challenged here, LOL!   

Though I did have a little problem finding the "Forum" section until it dawned on me--"Oh yah, try COMMUNITY!" Embarrassed

One thing I did find a little challenging was that if you post a photo and follow the instructions to click the little blue 'film' icon before posting, all you get is a "Photo Moved Or Deleted" message from Photobucket.   I re-edited, ignored the Icon and loaded the photo just like I used to on the old forum, and it came through just fine. 

So I wonder if that little Icon is really necessary? 

But other than that, I'm not having many problems with the new site at all.   

Tom Smile

  • Member since
    January 2010
  • From: Denver, CO
  • 3,576 posts
Posted by Motley on Friday, September 3, 2010 7:33 PM

The problem is that it takes too long to load. Other forums load instantly, why can't the "new and improved" had improved with speed.

I thinks it's actually a little slower than the old site. And that was way to slow. It's not my connection, I'm on 20mb cable.

Michael


CEO-
Mile-HI-Railroad
Prototype: D&RGW Moffat Line 1989

  • Member since
    October 2005
  • From: Nashua, NH
  • 430 posts
Posted by Cannoli on Friday, September 3, 2010 10:34 PM

I do like the new layout, though took a moment to figure out where everything moved to, but that's always the case with any sort of upgrade like this.

 

In regards to performance, even after a few visits and caching by the browser, its managed to speed up a bit since my first visit but still slower than the previous version of the site. As previously posted, hopefully once the site is done indexing itself it will speed up over all for everyone, fingers crossed.

 

I do find I get the best performance using Firefox as my browser than with IE8 or Google Chrome.

 

Overall its still usable, could just use a bit of a performance tune up.

Modeling the fictional B&M Dowe, NH branch in the early 50's.

  • Member since
    July 2006
  • From: New Joizey
  • 1,983 posts
Posted by SteamFreak on Saturday, September 4, 2010 1:39 AM

Apparently the little film icon is better for more than just posting pictures. This works in preview, let's see if it works when posting.

[View:http://cs.trains.com/trccs/themes/trc/utility/ :550:0]

I pasted YouTube's embedding code into the media dialog. This is a random video, and is not my work.

  • Member since
    August 2004
  • From: Amish country Tenn.
  • 10,027 posts
Posted by loathar on Saturday, September 4, 2010 10:36 AM
This is a VAST improvement over what Eric did on the last upgrade!!! Not having any problems at all. Nice to see video imbedding too. Nice new list of smileys. My hat is off to who ever is responsable!!
  • Member since
    January 2010
  • From: Denver, CO
  • 3,576 posts
Posted by Motley on Saturday, September 4, 2010 12:51 PM

Ok this is strange, today it's working lightning fast!

Also, I just noticed I don't have to keep on logging in every day. LOL very good.....

Michael


CEO-
Mile-HI-Railroad
Prototype: D&RGW Moffat Line 1989

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