I really, reeeally don't get V5

[LILITH]

gaia-gear.freeforums.net/

YEAH. SO. I have tried. And tried. AND TRIED. on v5. This is technically my second skin using it but the other I gave up on half-way through. NOW THIS THING. See, I had made the skin for this site using v4 until I realized we were being forced to upgrade at the end of the year. I understand you cannot keep both running. BUT. Now I am lost and seriously thinking about moving everything to JCINK. I could of just kept it the way it was on v4 until December but I would rather not deal with that when I have a lot of members on the board. I don't know, it made more sense to me to just upgrade it. 

On to the questions. There's a lot of them. Bear with me. I've figured out quite a few things on my own.. 

1. How is this easier than v4? I have seen this stated numerous times. Stop lying to people. It isn't easier. At all. 

2. How do I edit my board title? I have google web-fonts installed and I want the board title font to change but the only thing I seem to be able to change on it is the size. I've tried all I can think to do. I have the web-fonts inserted in my headers and footers. 

3. What is going on in the posts? I mean, I can still add style to everything but the old table style tags don't work? 

4. Why am I afraid of change? 

5. I was wondering if there's anything similar to the MYO board mod. Seems like I've seen something like that somewhere around here. I can vaguely remember editing something before but for some reason I can't remember how now.

6. I wanted the main tables black. Not the navigation menu and /everything/. Just the thread lists on the main-pages and sub-boards. 

7. Have I messed anything up that I shouldn't of? If so let me know. If I can't figure this out I am strutting my butt over to JCINK. 

[Michael]

Hi LILITH,

Let me just say that this is all coming from someone who used v4 heavily, but was never an admin of a forum. This is all my personal opinion.

1. I genuinely think that v5 is easier to use then v4. The biggest impact for me? The admin panel. Going back and trying to find things in v4's admin panel is a pain. There are links to things that are arguably under the wrong subject area, links inside areas that I would have never thought to look, and customizing the board is a lot of copy and pasting (if you didn't write it yourself). Themes make v5 so much easier to use. In v4 you had to copy and paste a code, and then stumble through it to alter the way it looks? Difficult. In v5 all you have to do is import the theme. Custom buttons/images/template modifications all come with it. You then have an awesome graphical user interface to tweak the theme to your desires. Overall the admin panel is easier to navigate, and with really great tools, and clear interface that makes setting up the forum so much easier.

As a normal member, you have the new navigation tree. You can get from a subboard of a subboard to a subboard of a different area in a single click. Posting is just as easy as it was before, and you have notifications to let you know when someone has quoted you, sent you a message, or liked your post. I don't have to keep multiple tabs open to know when someone responds to one of my threads, thanks to the Participated button. I could go on, but I know this will already be lengthy, and I don't want people to skip too much.

If you think something in v5 is more difficult then it was in v4, let me know. Everyone here at ProBoards has worked very hard to meet every feature request and make v5 the easiest to use, yet the most powerful forum platform available.

2. You can edit your forum title in the Admin Panel>Settings>Forum Settings>Forum Title. To change the font. Go to Themes>Advanced>Header(Top)>Forum Banner>Banner Text. You can change the font family here.

3. Tables still work! Correctly formatted table tags from v4 work (and convert) just fine in v5. Tables have more features then before as well. Colspan for example, which didn't exist in v4.

4. You really shouldn't be afraid of change. The forum that you linked too looks awesome, and you seem to already have a decent grasp of what you're doing. As someone who also had to learn v5 at one point, it can be a lot to take in at first, but before long you'll look back at v4 and wonder how you ever got by with it. 

5. I'm guessing that means Make Your Own board mod? This is plugins! Just like themes, plugins are nice neat packages that you upload to your forum, and then you can use a graphical interface to use them. No more codes. The plugin database grows larger every day.

6. I'm not totally sure what you mean here. What tables are missing? Thread lists on the main page would be super easy to create a plugin for, if there isn't one already (or a template mod?).

7. Messed anything up? Not that I can tell. You might want to adjust the images in the Info and Stats area so that you can read the text easier? I seriously think your forum looks awesome. 

Please give v5 a chance. I wouldn't be sitting at home in my pajamas writing this response to you unless I really believed that v5 is everything we have promised, and more. There is a gigantic support community here that is extremely enthusiastic about helping people, all you have to do is ask.

[LILITH]

Aww. Thanks. xD I spent most of my morning working on this. Sorry I wasn't very clear to begin with, about the table thing. I normally have to think things through better to make much sense to other people.. anyways that's off topic. 

I have to agree, I mean the forum looks pretty good so far but I know what I had before I upgraded it to v5 looked so much better and I am finding it difficult to duplicate the same look. I found editing the banner and menu easy enough, really I have been editing things more directly. I find the skin editor confusing. Seems like it's lacking certain bits of CSS that I would love to be able to change in the visual editor. If that makes sense. There were quite a few instances earlier that this would pertain to but I can't remember what they were, sorry. 

But back to the table thing. Looking at the main page you can see the categories and everything. Under the cat titles are the board tables and descriptions, etc. If you look at the provided link you can see that everything is black. This was intended, however when I fixed the subboards to look similar it changed the navigation-tree to the same black and I wanted the tree to remain a whitish color. I admit I was probably being lazy. My biggest issue with v5 is that I find it hard to find things. Where you think it's easier to edit things I think the exact opposite. I would much rather edit the codes directly. In that way I can assure that I reach the intended effect that I wanted to begin with. I've already had to let quite a few things go that I had on my v4 copy. I could make another v4 forum and show you what I had on it originally if you think you might could help me make v5 closer to that. 

As for the MYO board mod thing, are there current plugins for /that/? If so am I able to edit them?

The table tags I had in very many posts that converted over to v5 when I upgraded my forum. They were used with the advanced table tag code for v4 and had style and such to them. They did not work at all. But I edited around for a while and I think I figured that out. 

Honestly I could probably figure this out if I had the time/patience. I was stoked about the forum I was creating and hoped to have it up and running soon. Now it seems like that won't happen for a while. 

I'll be taking notes as I progress through this on what I find harder on v5. I'll be sure to let you know. xD And I have given v5 a chance. Honestly I think I might of caught the grumps from other Proboard Members who hate the upgrade. A lot of those have already changed their forums to JCINK. I heard a lot of negative things about it before I ever even dabbled in it, I hate to say I went into v5 with a bad opinion to begin with. I'll try to remind myself to form my own opinion as I keep going. Sorry for being such a sour apple. 


I think a lot of people have went into v5 with the wrong mindset. Most of us were already expecting to hate it so really my mind was made up about it before I even touched it. I figured a lot out that I didn't think I'd figure out easily and it took no time at all.


OH. and oi. I didn't mean my forum title.. I meant my forum's board's title. ... Like, where it says "Laws of Gaia" and etc. 

[Thomasss]

Hi, you can change the navigation bar back, by going to


Admin >> Themes >> Colors and Advanced CSS >> Header >> Should be the last option in that part.



Not sure what you mean on the MYO mod thing..

[Jordan]

The MYO Board mod is no longer needed because you have direct access to the HTML on the page now. Go to Admin > Themes > Layout Templates > Board > Board List to modify the board.

You have access to all the HTML and CSS on your forum now so you can redesign your forum without a code. What I have noticed people are having trouble with is editing all the CSS in Admin > Themes > Advanced Styles & CSS. I'm not sure how familiar you are with CSS, but let us know if you have questions. The best thing to do is to look at the existing source code on your page and see how it is coded, but again, if you are unsure we can help you out.

The thing about v5 is it may seem overwhelming at first, but once you get your head wrapped around it, it's a lot better. It just may seem a little difficult at first since you are so unfamiliar with it and so used to v4, but once you learn a few of the CSS classes and understand how templates and themes work, it becomes a lot easier. Also, the plugin database is growing and more and more v4 codes are being converted to v5.

[Michael]

It seems like a lot of people came into v5 with a lot of preconceptions. I aim to change this.

If you can give me a list of things that you think are missing in CSS that you would like us to add, I can talk to the devs either about adding things, or possibly showing you how to accomplish the same task in a different manner. So many things that people think are missing in v5, aren't missing at all, they're simply named something else, or have been integrated into another feature.

You may think that finding things in v5 is difficult now, but I am sure as you use v5 more, it will become second nature. ProBoards support staff member Brian has been helping people convert v4 themes to v5 themes. If you have any coding questions, he'll be posting again on Sunday. I'll be sure to let him know about this thread so that he can answer any code-related questions. 

I think I still don't quite understand what the MYO board thing is? I'm sure we could find the new equivalent of this, or could plan on a plugin for this in the future. EDIT: Jordan posted above!

If there is something you don't like about v5, let us know. Tell us why you dislike something, and tell us how you think it could be better. We take every suggestion seriously, and there is a lot of discussion here at ProBoards HQ about every user-suggested idea. You guys are our customers and we want to make you happy.

For the board titles? Go to Admin>Structure> Categories and Boards> then hover over the board you want to change and click the cog wheel icon. (Sorry for the confusion, sometimes people call their forum their board, and vice versa...I never quite know. )

[LILITH]

Actually I figured out how to modify the boards today and I have to say things with my forum are going fantastic. I've almost duplicated my previous layout. 

Jordan: 

I figured it out! Yay. I used a board mod someone posted on here in the template board. I edited it to suit my needs and it looks great. At least to me it does anyways. I am more familiar with CSS than anything else. But I have to say it can be pretty annoying to find exactly what I need to edit in the css, directly in the sheets not in the visual editor. this is what I was talking about. I used it previously but I had a tough time locating it again. 

Michael:


You can refer to the above paragraph to find what I was talking about with the MYO board mod. I realized you had to edit the HTML directly but my knowledge in anything but CSS is shaky to say the least. Honestly I have no more code-related questions! But just some serious praise and thank yous and of course apologies. I've not looked on v5 very fondly but now I think we're going to get along just fine. Thanks for the responses. I think yesterday I was just stressing over it all and I don't work well under stress. Today when I returned to mess with my forum some more I figured out everything I had sought to do yesterday and it was so simple I should kick myself. 


I don't enjoy all the editing you have to do, whereas on v4 it was copy/paste and normally the skin editor on it would change the colors to what you want. One more question and then I think I'll be all done. I think, anyways. There's this random red color behind my reply button. HERE is a picture of it to avoid confusion. Let me see if I can word this right. 

Why is it that there's so much to edit? That is, from what I can see, the only red I can see on my entire forum There was a lot because that's the colors I had on my v4 forum when I transferred it. I had to go in and gut it all out and replace it with the colors I want. Even after I edited it for a while this stupid, little reply button is still red. It's still red. Really annoying to me. 

[Michael]

The way I usually do it (and someone more experienced in coding can jump in and suggest another way if I'm making this more difficult then it needs to be) is visit the page and find the thing that I need to change. Right click on it and "Inspect Element" (in Chrome). Then look where the object you're trying to modify is located. In this case it is:

<div id="content" role="main">


<div class="container threads">
<div class="title-bar">
<ul class="controls">
</span><li>
</span><a href="/thread/new/2" role="button">Create Thread</a>
In the last bit, you can see (in the Matched CSS Rules) that the background-color is set to #b50000; (red). From there I go to the admin panel, and using the above as a guide in the Themes>Advanced: Forum>Body(Content)>Containers>Title Bars>Buttons. There is your #b50000 color!

[LILITH]

Yay! That worked perfectly. I'll try and keep your technique in mind.

OH. You know how when you're editing things and you press CTRL+F to search through to find specific items? Well, I find it less than helpful that it doesn't let you sift through the results, like the search thing you use that's equipped with the browser. I may be doing something wrong but I just thought I'd bring that up. It would make things 100 % easier to me if the search function in the code editor areas worked the same way the browser ones do. Also, I've tried just using my browser's (Chrome) search function and it doesn't work. It won't find all the text I type in the boxes for some reason. AGAIN, I tend to not make sense. I hope this makes at least a tiny bit.

[Stinky666]

Mar 15, 2013 14:39:19 GMT -8 LILITH said:

Yay! That worked perfectly. I'll try and keep your technique in mind.

OH. You know how when you're editing things and you press CTRL+F to search through to find specific items? Well, I find it less than helpful that it doesn't let you sift through the results, like the search thing you use that's equipped with the browser. I may be doing something wrong but I just thought I'd bring that up. It would make things 100 % easier to me if the search function in the code editor areas worked the same way the browser ones do. Also, I've tried just using my browser's (Chrome) search function and it doesn't work. It won't find all the text I type in the boxes for some reason. AGAIN, I tend to not make sense. I hope this makes at least a tiny bit.

For using the ctrl+f method of searching, you have two ways to do so. One being the PB built-in search, and the other being your browser's search.
I too find the PB one annoying and useless (most times, sorry to say that guys. Yes it highlights all, but you can;t go to "next"). So, to make sure you don't end up using the PB one, make sure you are not in the text area when you hit ctrl+f, that way it will (or should) use your browser search.

[LILITH]

I realize this. But it doesn't seem to pick through the code boxes like it should. At least not for me.

[Stinky666]

Mar 15, 2013 16:19:39 GMT -8 LILITH said:

I realize this. But it doesn't seem to pick through the code boxes like it should. At least not for me.

I've used IE 9, Firefox 19, and Opera, and they all pick up words and sentences I search for perfectly fine in the style sheet and layout templates.

[LILITH]

I guess it's Chrome then. v---v;; Maybe I'll start using Firefox while editing things.

[Brian]

If you right-click on something in Chrome and tell it to inspect the element it will usually tell you which CSS selectors the element is using. That's the easiest way I can think of to find which class affects what in the CSS (although I much prefer using Firebug ).

[Sophia]

Awesome thread, what a classic example of how a few nice words can change the world around Thanks everybody for a great read (may it continue in the same spirit)