Site Changes

[Oyabun]

You'll notice we've added a welcome box to the forum. We'll continue to tweak it a bit over time.

It's fairly self explanatory, although you may not notice that the text is also links, for example the forum name listed as your "Most active forum:" is also a link to that forum. Similarly, the number next to "Your Posts:" will show a listing of all your posts, and "Your Topics: all the topics you've posted in.

[Edit] Added your current rank and number of posts until next rank reached (if appropriate). [/Edit]

As always, any questions just ask.

Any feedback, appreciated, would be.

[Oyabun]

If you are subscribed to any topics you will notice that the notification emails now come from a new address, this is because the forum's email address has changed.

So, now any official board emails will be from "forum" at "samuraikids.com.au".

[Oyabun]

You may notice at the bottom of the main index page and on the index page for each forum there is now examples of the various topic icons and a short description explaining what they mean. Like this:


You may also see some icons that have a little red star on them, like this one:

They indicate that you have made a post in that topic.

Having the listing of what the icons are is to help people, like me, who can never remember what the various icons mean.

[Oyabun]

There is a new link in the navigation bar (the bar above with the links in it) next to "View your posts", called "Who quoted me?"


If you click on the link it should show you posts in which you have been quoted by someone else. It's not perfect because it just searches for posts that have the terms "quote" and your username. So, whilst it will find posts in which you have been quoted it will also pick up posts in which you are mentioned, along with a quote, in a quote by someone else, or the where the word "quote" is used. Therefore, don't take it too seriously, it's just meant to be a bit of fun, and something you may find interesting.

If it doesn't show any results that should just mean you haven't been quoted by anyone.

[Oyabun]

Found a better way to show more smilies (emoticons) in the posting window (posting_editor), the panel you type in when you click on the New Topic or Post Reply buttons.

Now they are in a box with a scroll bar on the side, so you can see them most of them in one page, which should be quicker and easier than having to click on the View more smilies link.

If you don't like it I can always change it back again.

[Oyabun]

Have installed a new feature, "Similar Topics", that list topics that are, hopefully, similar to the one you are looking at. I say "hopefully" because it is done just by looking for similar words in the topic titles, so Ask a Samurai Kid will show, for example Samurai Kids Characters. It will list up to five similar topics.

The Similar Topics listing will show as a frame at the bottom of topics that have topics with similar names. Therefore, it doesn't show in this topics, like this one, for which there are no similarly named topics.

Thought this would help people find things.

This will only work properly if, when creating topics, you use words in the subject field that the topic is actually about. For example, if you create a topic about, "Ki-Yaga's past", but give it the subject, "A Walk in the Park", it won't come up as a similar topic to say, "Ki-Yag'a Future".

As always, if you notice anything that doesn't look right point it out and it will be ignored looked into.

[Oyabun]

This forum uses the phpBB prosilver style. However, if you are getting bored with the colour scheme there are now some choices available.

If you go to Board Preferences in the User Control Panel you will now have an additional 6 colours to choose from in the "My board style" listing.


prosilver_blue


prosilver_gold


prosilver_green


prosilver_pink


prosilver_purple


prosilver_purple2

I realise the colours may be a bit over the top at the moment, but I was basically experimenting and the colours may be changed in the future.

As always, feel free to offer suggestions or comments.

If you're wondering why there are two purples it's just because I happen to like purple at the moment.

[Oyabun]

The modification that we had installed that allowed you to alter the number of posts and topics you viewed per page has had to be removed. It seems it was causing a problem that may have been stopping new people from registering.

You will just have to put up with the default of 25 topics per index page and 10 posts per topic page.

[Oyabun]

You will notice there is now a section on the index page above the welcome box showing random quotes, not surprisingly labelled, RANDOM QUOTE.

Basically, it will show a random quote from a character in the Samurai Kids books series each time you return to the index page.

At the moment there aren't many quotes entered into the database and that's where you can help. If there are any quotes you think should be added post them in the Samurai Kids Book Quotes! topic in the Samurai Kids forum. What we would ask you to do when posting a quote is to include:

1. The quote.
2. The name of the character who said it. If the character is unnamed then a short description, like, "village boy".
3. The book it's from.
4. The page number it's on.

If you have several quotes please include them in one post, not multiple posts each with one or two quotes, because it will make it easier to enter them into the database that way. And one last thing, keep the quotes short, one maybe two sentences.

[Oyabun]

There is a new feature when you are on the index page of each forum - the possibility to see a "topic preview".

If you hover the cursor over the topic title you will see some of the text from the first post in the topic. Like this:



You won't see anything on the board index (main index) only on the index pages for the individual fora (forums) because on the main index page the function doesn't know what topic to show the preview of.

The function makes use of the tool tip facility that all modern web browsers have, so you shouldn't need to do anything to be able to see it. The colour and style of the box that pops up is determined by your web browser and cannot be altered.

If you don't like the topic preview function it can be switched off in the User Control Panel > Board Preferences > Edit display options, just change the "Display topic previews:" to "No".