The Lemon Fool

1. Go to the main 'Lemon Fool' page, showing the grouped board areas. Screen-shot here shows those areas, and you'll noticed circular icons to the left of the grouped areas -

http://i.imgur.com/9O7ZUrM.png

2. Notice that the colour of the circular icon denotes whether the board areas has 'un-read' posts in any of the threads. We can see that most of them have (I've only just logged on this morning, with my last log-in around tea-time last night), but that the 'Bank Accounts' and 'Financial Software' areas have no posts un-read by me, so I know I can now ignore those areas because the circular icons to the left of them are not 'red'.

3. Select one of the red, circular icons to the left of one of the main grouped board areas, where an area has a read icon. I'm going to select the 'Does anyone know?' area and take another screen-shot that we can see here -

http://i.imgur.com/vyAwm9b.png

4. Once in one of the main-board areas via the red-circular icon previously, we can see a list of the various threads within that area, and to the left of those threads we can again see a circular icon denoting whether those threads contain posts that are un-read by me. Any threads that I've read completely already have a 'non-red' icon, which if hovered over with the mouse will confirm via a tool-tip that there are no un-read posts.

5. Selecting the red icon to the left of one of those threads then takes me into that thread, and positions me at a place right below my last 'read-post', as can be seen by this screen-shot when I've selected the red-icon to the left of the 'Re: Do clickable links to other places function?' thread -

http://i.imgur.com/M1jnObV.png

6. As we can see by the above screen-shot, the individual posts have a tiny little icon to the left of the author of each post, and when that little icon is blank then it means I've read the post. We can also see that I've been positioned into the thread after clicking on the red-icon to the left of it in step 5 above, right at a point of the first 'red' little icon, which if we hover over that (the one to the left of the post by AJC5001 in the above screen-shot, we can see a little tool-tip that says 'unread post'.

7. So carrying out the above process seems to me, on the face of it, the best current method to keep up with threads and posts in a way almost as close to the old 'My Fool' list that many of us were used to. It's not quite as good, but it's nearly there and I hope more improvements may be able to be made to the current set-up to help even more.

It may well not be the best and only way, so with regards to the above possible 'Sticky' post, if anyone else has any good ideas in this area, or thinks the above explanation might be helped with some improved suggestions, then can people please let me know?

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

As well as the above text, I've also created a set of screen-shots to help with post-navigation on this fantastic new site -

http://i.imgur.com/mhEbsaL.png

I hope people find this useful.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

For me I found using Quick Links easier. Top left next to FAQ. Clicking on this gives a list.
Your posts
New posts
Unread posts
Unanswered topics
Active topics
Search
Members
The team

From this I use the unread posts and then do as Itsallaguess

Another shortcut to items I am interested in or have added a post to is the Notifications

Am still playing so will add to this later.

Raptor.

Hi - Categories are now collapsible as requested - top right on the blue bar.

Hope that helps.

Regards
Stooz

stooz wrote:Hi - Categories are now collapsible as requested - top right on the blue bar.

Hope that helps.

Regards
Stooz

Excellent - you're ahead of me! I was researching various modifications last night and was going to suggest implementing this one. I'd been looking to see if there was a way of choosing only those forums you were interested in and hiding the rest, since if/when the site grows more forums it will become harder to scan through. Unfotunately there doesn't seem to be that capability and anyone who has suggested it in the phpBB mode requests pages seem to have been met with a complete lack of understanding as to why it might be needed. One programmer did say that they might work on such a system but that it was low on their priority list. So it looks as if this collapsible feature is the only option at the moment.

cheers
Spiderbill

stooz wrote:Hi - Categories are now collapsible as requested - top right on the blue bar.

Hope that helps.

Regards
Stooz

Thanks stooz. Now a lot easier to navigate. Pity developers do not see bookmark or favourites as a priority.

I may come out of "retirement" and look at how this system really works to see if I can help.

Raptor

There is a bookmark option using the spanner at the top or bottom of a thread. But the ability to jump to bookmarks seems a little long winded.
This can be improved if you give me a little time to move the bookmark link.

Do you all see the quick links option at the top?
I find the all unread informative.
I could possibly code in "all unread if bookmarked" option so you find replys on everything of interest?

However, I also find that grouping posts by topic acceptable as is. The key is to not be afraid to make a new topic for every little thing, and then you get replies grouped like that.

stooz wrote:Do you all see the quick links option at the top?
I find the all unread informative.
I could possibly code in "all unread if bookmarked" option so you find replys on everything of interest?

However, I also find that grouping posts by topic acceptable as is. The key is to not be afraid to make a new topic for every little thing, and then you get replies grouped like that.

Unread if bookmarked, works for me. I still cannot see how bookmark works, but then again have now switched to tablet and my fat fingers cause me problems.....

Raptor

stooz wrote:It may well not be the best and only way, so with regards to the above possible 'Sticky' post, if anyone else has any good ideas in this area, or thinks the above explanation might be helped with some improved suggestions, then can people please let me know?

phpbb is well used for discussion forums and many potential visitors would be aware of how to use it and have their own pet methods. If the new site ever emulates the sheer number of boards on the fool.co.uk site, it's going to get very cluttered. Are there plans to replicate the numerous individual company boards featured on fool.co.uk?

Whilst posts and users are counted, I don't think I've seen anything resembling fool.co.uk's "recs" and "best of" on a phpbb site,

No reason to replicate the company boards structure - they had died a death anyway - better to do it sector/sector IMHO.

Putting together hints from various threads and a bit of investigating of my own, I've found a somewhat clunky but (to me and so far) workable solution to seeing only the new posts on topics I'm interested in - I've described it in http://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=79#p1155 .

The worst clunkiness is that all new topics start in an "ignored" (unbookmarked) state. An option to automatically bookmark new topics in forums I'm subscribed to would be good!

Gengulphus

The TMF feature I'm missing most [and please feel free to correct me if it's there and I've missed it] is to mark all posts as read. Quite often it is clear from the subject heading(s) in a board that I am not interested in reading one or more particular threads. being able to mark them all as read at the end of any visit was useful to ensure that at the next visit I was only presented with the new posts/threads.

Otherwise I am very impressed with what has so far been accomplished - very well done.

meldrewlives wrote:The TMF feature I'm missing most [and please feel free to correct me if it's there and I've missed it] is to mark all posts as read. Quite often it is clear from the subject heading(s) in a board that I am not interested in reading one or more particular threads. being able to mark them all as read at the end of any visit was useful to ensure that at the next visit I was only presented with the new posts/threads.

The option to mark all posts as read on a board is there on an individual board basis.

Here's a snapshot showing where it is, ringed in red -

http://i.imgur.com/HH0IezR.png

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

It might be me but when I have read "unread posts" on my mobile and then, say, started using an ipad, the unread posts are the same ones as previously. Has anyone else encountered this?

On a similar theme, the sticky is a good idea but is this something that can be added to the FAQ (next to Quick Links) or is that FAQ a template phpBB Limited version and not to be tampered with?

PD

How do I remove all the notifications please? I have clicked on mark all 51 read in control, they reduce to zero, but when I next click on notifications they are all listed again! . Otherwise, I'm enjoying being a lemon . It's working for me!

Tricia

Not 100% sure, but try the spammer icon at the end of a topic.

Not sure it's what people are after as a favourites list, but you can quickly mark a poster as a friend, then you can, in your profile, view new posts by friends.
Hope that's of use.

nigelpm wrote:No reason to replicate the company boards structure - they had died a death anyway - better to do it sector/sector IMHO.

Thanks Nigelpm

That's good to know. I was concerned that company boards would mean the creation of 100s of boards that would cause a great deal of clutter - and probably sporadic use.

Clariman

Thanks for setting up thees boards so quickly.

Though for me the icons and links as described don't seem to be working the same way on a Mac. Anyone else having similar problems??

kml101