Posted on 10/27/2005 5:16:18 PM PDT by John Robinson
Edited on 10/30/2005 2:01:52 PM PST by John Robinson. [history]
I'm working on the following changes to the forum software:
Old links will be redirected to maintain bookmark compatibility. The new links will be more descriptive, offering the date of the article and perhaps a meaningful filename.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1510575/posts doesn't say much.
http://www.freerepublic.com/2005/10/27/freeptoon/p1 says so much more.
The timestamps on threads will change to your computer's local time zone, but only if you have JavaScript enabled. Otherwise they will be in US/Eastern. Your FR preference will be ignored (and will be phased out in favor of browser-side time zone handling.) The beauty of this arrangement is that as long as your computer displays the time in your time zone, FR will "Do The Right Thing"(tm).
No more than 50 comments per page will be shown. Your preference of 20, 100 or 250 is going to be ignored. I know this is a bit of a heartbreak for some, I understand it is a sacrifice. There are very good and very strong reasons this is changing.
Only the first page of the thread will show the article text, and will always show the article text. Subsequent pages will only ever show a summary. In the future, a little browser-side magic could make the article text appear when you click a link.
Everybody logged in or not will see the same content and links. For example, in the existing software, if you're not logged in you won't see the "Report Abuse" links. This check is going away, everybody will now see the same row of buttons.
In exchange, we'll have cache-friendly forum pages. This means:
Update 10/30/05
I've expanded the scope of changes. I'm cleaning up the information we present to search engines like Google and Yahoo. Our site will be more useful to third-party search engines and thus more useful to you. For the most part this will not directly impact our human visitors. There will be changes that could break bookmarks of certain types of pages, but the chances such bookmarks have ever been made are slim.
Thanks, John. :)
does this mean I'm off probation?
Cool.
JRB to the SCOTUS!
< poof! >
Hmmm. hasn't happened yet...
Great job, John! Those of us on dialup Thank You!!!!
Hooah.
I really like having 250 replies on long threads but if you gotta change it, you gotta change it.
Thanks for all your hard work keeping the forum going. I get nervous if FR is down for any length of time!!!
Thanks John for all you do.
I guess this means we could never have a "killfile" capability? (I.e. where entering a user's name in a killfile list will automatically hide posts from that user.)
I have learned to trust you on this. Thanks amigo, you are underpaid.
Oh, I forgot to add to my previous posts: Thanks for all the hard work!
Now if someone could change it so it's easier to post pics and smiles and stuff. It takes me too long so I don't do it. But I do love to play around with such things when I have the time.
Wow. Not only warning us that changes are comming but telling us why. Thanks John.
Does this mean I will actually have to figure out the difference between Eastern time...and Central time????
Dang...and I thought this job didn't have math....
LOL
Later read
In exchange, we'll have cache-friendly forum pages. This means:
* Faster downloads. If nothing changed on the thread you won't have to download it again. Also, local caches can store the page and deliver it much quicker.
BTTT
Ignore feature ignore feature....
I woke from my coma for this??!!??
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