BETA-TEST THE NEW MINECRAFT FORUM
Today is a very special day, Minecrafters! We are very excited to invite you to beta-test the new, improved Minecraft Forum! This beta is the final step in moving Minecraft Forum onto the Cobalt community platform, an in-house platform that provides an improved forum experience, a full suite of content management tools, and faster loading times!
So, what does this mean for you? Well, we would like your input! Head over to the beta forum, give it a spin, and let us know what you think! Try out post formatting, searching around, anything you can think of! Upvote your friends! Report me for rule infractions! Test everything! If you would like to leave us feedback - good, bad, anything at all - see below!
FEEDBACK
If you have feedback to provide, a feature request, or you have found a bug please see the following threads: Every user that provides valuable feedback during the beta will be given an exclusive forum title to use once the site is live!
FEATURES:
Cobalt provides a number of new and improved features, this includes - but is not limited to - the following:
- Member Titles: Earn new member titles and select your member title of choice via My Account > Titles!
- New Content: Watch as new posts and threads are created with the automatically refreshing New Content feed.
- Email Digests: Notification spam no more! Notification digests are now available, receive emails only when is most convenient for you, set up your notifications settings via My Account > Notification Settings. Note: during the beta emails are disabled.
- Follow your favourite content creators and get notified when they make new posts! Keep up with your favourite mod fixes and texture pack updates with ease. Visit My Account > My Subscriptions > Users to manage who you're following.
I like everything else.
I'd like to second all of those.
Re: navigation bar - I agree it needs to be attached to something; the way the current bar is attached to the background, making it look like clicking on dirt blocks, is very nice, vs. the new look of an odd shade of green bar floating above, I don't know... it just doesn't look as good.
I don't really like the smoothness, either - it looks too much like a cheesy 'modern' applet, which I personally detest with all my being (for no logical reason, but whatever :P). If the navigation bars looked more like the data/# header of each post, which feel more textured, that would go a long way in making it look better.
Re: thank you button - I agree it needs to be more prominent, and I would like the possibility of giving a thank you from the bottom right of the post, as that's where I'm accustomed to seeing it. Alternatively, make it more prominent by including the thank you button in the post header, next to the post number (e.g. #1). I think many people don't end up giving thanks currently if a post is really long, because the thank you is way down at the bottom and, especially if there are lots of comments after, is extremely easy to overlook; putting it at the top would solve this problem.
Re: grid layout - I think the grid layout looks pretty good, except for the point made above about the number of replies and topics not being immediately obvious, as one has to look at the column header to figure out what the number is. If it was more obvious, like in the current 'old' layout, I think it would be more navigable.
Re: editing posts - THANK THE LORD!!!!! How many times have I lost my entire content, or had it all garbled up... "&&" showing up everywhere in code posts (is that fixed, too?), etc. This has been a long time coming, and is the best feature of the new software, imo.
Re: white background - Looks like the background was changed from white to light blue - looks much nicer!
There are many sites have upvote dude!
Sad to see it's still not mobile friendly / responsive though. Any plans to do so? If it's a question of a missing skillset, send me a PM, I'd be willing to assist on a responsive style sheet for the site.
I don't exactly know why, but something about it just gives me a headache. I feel like the white in the middle is just a bit too bright. Dunno.
It's probably the bright colors, not just the white.
Revert the color scheme!
The white is the only bright color there..
I'm so happy that this update now has a date, I've been wondering forever when the forum would upgrade. I can't say I like the logo as much on the new platform though...
1. Like someone else mentioned, the forum icons. The reason i am not too fond is now they are all the same shape and tend to make at least to me pretty bland. I like the way it is done on this one where at least the icons have a different shape to them. Makes easier to recognize at a glance when they are not all cubes. I know there are pictures on them representing what they are, but that is not something noticed really at a glance right off. Sure probably could get use to them, as I adapt pretty well to things.
2. I agree with the others that have said it, that the upvote/thanks bit does to be a bit more noticeable/prominent, as right now it sort blends in... Too me a few glances to see where it relocated, although that is a good spot; it just blends in a bit, and being as small as it is makes it blend even more.
3.unsure what to make of the title bar, as it seems almost out of place. It isn't the colors for me, it is something I can't quite put my finger on... Maybe it is for the fact it looks like it belongs on a smart phone...O_o Not sure...
4. The layout is nice, and the collapse is good feature. However when all things collapsed or just having one/few section(s) open; makes it slightly look like a list of titles instead of actually different parts of the form. In a way no way beyond the triangle arrow and list style size being bigger font, there is to tell that they are separate sections, unless you actually knew the site before hand like myself. Might be just a nitpick on my end, but it is how I see it.
5. Also like some of the others the thread/reply count being like it was excel style doesn't help. Think it is better the way it is here, where it says what the number represents right after the number. After all those columns can get pretty long. This one might go with #1 in a way as being able to tell certain things at a glance is sometimes best. Not all things but at least this one along with the icons.
Other than that which has been already mentioned, I don't see very many problems. It definitely loads faster, and that much I do like a whole lot. Plus, no flicker like this site; that is a plus.
Edit: Seriously, the old looks so much more lively compared to the "new".
Old:
"New":
It's tempting to post that I've hacked into your new website and highlighted the problem areas in white, or to put up an image with a big red circle surrounding the entire content of the page within the background image. The former would be jokingly correct and the latter passive-aggressively correct. An annotated screenshot would be pointing to every section, and simply look like I was mocking you.
The parts of the screen that are too bright are literally all the white parts. It's most of the screen beyond the background image. and therein lies the problem. If it were done sparingly, some white on the screen would not be unpleasant, but when you put a lot of high-brightness color on the screen you're essentially turning up a dimmer-switch on the light that's in front of everybody's eyes. That's what your monitor and my TV are - lights that are constantly shining in our eyes. I have a big screen, so it's a big light. I also have a single overhead bulb in this room, and prefer that not to be overly bright and harsh - so the contrast between my screen and the rest of my surroundings matters.
Have you ever used a laptop in a dimly-lit room, seen the screen come up for Google, and winced at the visual assault? That's the new website. Maybe you could get a feel for this looking at images on your phone in a moderately-lit room? Perhaps you could simply turn off the lights in the office before or after a shift and try to read your own forum as opposed to something like Warseer (I assume some natural light will give you a dim room) to see how the contrast affects your user-base of casual gamers? I'm not sure how to explain it beyond what I have, but this might help:
Open up MSPaint and click the Edit Colors button. All colors that fall in the top 1/3 of that palette, combined with the top 1/3 of the grayscale progression, should be the minority of color displayed on the screen. It's not that these colors are intrinsically bad, it's that when they're the majority of your display they become unpleasant. If I scroll down to view the entirety of "Minecraft Discussion", the majority of my screen is white - the color which is literally my display shining as brightly as it can into my eyes.
EDIT: Also, I note that the idea of having a dark theme as well as this bright one has been casually dismissed and threads suggesting it locked and archived. When you end such discussion with a statement that there will be only one theme and suggesting that people add a third-party resource to reskin your forum so that they like using it, you're telling people not to bother with your forum because you've no interest in making it user-friendly.
Titles across half available space:
On the plus side, I like the new location for quoting, replying, etc. and the new editing looks really nice and well thought out.
A separate dark theme is very unlikely to happen because we want to avoid multiple themes, however reducing the brightness of the main theme is already on the list of things to deal with and has been since yesterday when you and others raised concerns. I certainly wasn't telling people that we're not willing to improve the theme, just that we want to avoid multiple themes, sorry if that wasn't clear!
Thanks! I want the main theme darker (more like the IPB forum's theme) too.
Thanks so much
i'll post what i think of the new minecraft forumes
i'll start with bad things:
1.the color is too bright make it same as here or little darker
2.how i can find "find content" in my profile?
3.icons are ... AWFUL i mean buckets and lava buckets for hot topics was amazing and Awesome avd very attractive
4.the is so tiny space? i mean you just like gett everything in 1x1 place and still puting more make more space in my opinion
now to the good things:
1.AW MAY GAWD ITS SW FAWST : its much much better than old one in opening i mean its like x3 faster than befoe
2.DNSLFJBLJ FWSTR NVGIT: YEP the navigation is now much much better and easier and FASTER than before
3,Awesome other features
4.OMFG IT SHOWS WHO IS THERE: yeah you can now see who is in a speacied forum like (2 views) (means 2 people viewing the post)
5.Lovely and keep the core of it
6.the editor is much better i loved it
7. its just awesome
So yeah i really hope you fix the bad things and keep (or upgrade and making better) the new good things
(THIS is just MY opinion so dont judge me)
so its like 65% better and 35% worst
and the best thing i loved it its that its much much faster than before so yeh
It was a joke, Jesus Christ can you guys not get that?
Generalizing, sarcasm doesn't always have to be a question. It was not sarcasm, nor was it intended to be. So it's not.
And I like the theme, but it could have less brown, and the background I think would look better simpler.