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-RailroadPrototype: D&RGW Moffat Line 1989
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.
Nelson
Ex-Southern 385 Being Hoisted
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.
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.
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!"
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
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
While I would have like to have seen standard UBB code implemented, this is definitely an improvement.
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
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.
dehusman This new forum is slower than Christmas. It took 45 sec. for this page to load so I could type a reply
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
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.
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/ =
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
rrinker Phoebe Vet: 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
Phoebe Vet: 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.
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.
Always nice to see advancements made in the forums... guess I better start participating again. Been busy with my other hobby: my 2010 Prius.
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.
Hey Stein. I'm glad to see you remembered my name from beta testing
My hope is that some of the slowness issues will go away as the site continues to index itself. The software that we use is very cache heavy so as more and more posts get indexed pages should start to load faster since those posts will be in memory and the servers will be able to retrieve the data faster. Theoretically that's how it should work anyway
Keep in mind too that the Trains community as a whole is extremely large. Close to 2 million posts with a little over 68,000 members. That's a lot of data that needs to get filtered through by the system. It's been going for a couple days and seems to be moving along pretty well but it will probably be another week or 2 before the entire site is cycled through completely.
Phoebe Vet 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.
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
The new format looks and works fine for me. If you think you're too old to change, that actually means you're too young. Just wait til you reach my age. I can hardly remember any differences.
- Harry
Couple of extra points to perhaps help lower the stress of change-over a little:
bogp40 Page loading is exrtemely slow
Page loading is exrtemely slow
Possibly due to the database running flat out while all old posts are being reindexed for searching. Very annoying for a couple of days, but (IMO) better than waiting 4 months for old posts to be searchable, as we did the last time.
Or it could be an error. In which case Craig probably will do a stop/start of the web/app server, and then there possibly will be a flurry of complaints about people having to log in again :-)
Give it a week or so. If it still is being annoyingly slow after that, then people can start flashing Craig (who asked us to "bare" with him in another thread :-)
bogp40 the stark with/ contrast to the small font is tough on these older eyes,
the stark with/ contrast to the small font is tough on these older eyes,
Font size is configurable under user profile settings. Left side of screen - Public Profile (edit) - click on edit, select a bigger font size.
bogp40 I can't believe that no top of page or forum jump exists at the page bottom. Have to scroll to top to jump or return.
I can't believe that no top of page or forum jump exists at the page bottom. Have to scroll to top to jump or return.
Hitting the [home] or [End] key on your keyboard should quickly take you to the top of bottom of screen in most web browsers running under Microsoft Windows. [Ctrl] + [Home] and [Ctrl]+[End] should also work - e.g while inside an editing window.
You can navigate between forums using the grey links at top of screen, showing you where you are in the hierarchy -e.g. "Home - Forums - Model Railroader Forums - General Discussion (Model Railroader)" - just click on e.g. "Model Railroader Forums" to go back up to e.g. the Model Railroader Forums.
None of those are new, btw - same as previous version of forums.
Btw - I have no inside knowledge of what is going on with the servers. I am not working for Kalmbach or any such thing - the above is just educated guesses.
Smile Stein
bogp40 The initial "Forum" index is a long mixed list of all categories
The initial "Forum" index is a long mixed list of all categories
If you go in from Model Railroader Magazine (http://mrr.trains.com/) and clicks on "Community", then "Forums", you come directly to this list: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/default.aspx?groupid=8 - which is the Model Railroader forums.
You might want to bookmark that last link if you want to go directly to the model railroader forums when you access the site.
Also, you get a list of the forums, organized in an okay manner, at the bottom of your normal personal start page: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/ (under the PMs and Friend's activity - scroll down).
But I agree that the page http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/ (which many probably have bookmarked) is poorly organized, and should be reorganized in a similar matter to what you get at the bottom of the page http://cs.trains.com/trccs/
Smile, Stein
I agree with many others about the changes. Page loading is exrtemely slow, The initial "Forum" index is a long mixed list of all catagories, the stark with/ contrast to the small font is tough on these older eyes, No line? separations to individual posts and after all the changes even previous reworked Forum, I can't believe that no top of page or forum jump exists at the page bottom. Have to scroll to top to jump or return.
But MR does offer this to us Free of charge, so what am I whinning about............Oh Well
Modeling B&O- Chessie Bob K. www.ssmrc.org
It's certainly interesting, I think I'll survive with it though.
James, Brisbane Australia
Modelling AT&SF in the 90s