Posts Not Updating New Entry Correctly

[cowinger]

I just tried replying to bsobel but the post still shows him as the last person to leave a post instead of me.

[simplextech]

I saw your post. But the forum is being weird. It's showing me posts from last April and May as being "New" and also not marking things as read or showing the "go to last post" icon. So something is up....

[cowinger]

OK, thanks John. I was hoping it wasn't just me.

[randy]

There are many real problems with the new forum software, some of them are baked in and others may be corrected in configuration. There are many, but here are just a few

• As the topic of this thread states, even though a thread may show up in the New Unread Topics index, it may not be updated with the most recent member who posted
• We can no longer find posts by a specific member. With the built in search on the old forum, you could choose search words, a specific forum or all forums, threads or posts, and the member name. On the new forum’s built in search, searching by member was an option if you drilled down enough, but it didn’t work. It was generally useless anyway. Switching to Google search improves the hits, but is miserable on granularity. There is no way to narrow it to a specific forum or member. I have been completely unable to find old threads for reference when I knew some unique keywords and the author. This always worked on VB3. The member name and signature are stored by tokens, so a Google search will never be able to find them.
• This is somewhat redundant to above, but you cannot search within a specific forum, this was very useful and is now gone
• There is no way to disable smileys on a post - very important for many posts that contain snippets of code
• We do not have and apparently will never have the ability to receive a single daily email with a digest of the updated threads to which we subscribe.
• I have 15 pages of posts under My Recent Posts, yet about half from the last week are missing.
• The image and file attachment is clumsy at best. It is very easy to attach a file or image and even embed it in a post, but the sizing options do not always work and if you edit the post or even change it while you are creating it, you can end up with the embedded image as well as it showing as an attachment or the image size will be changed. Fortunately this behavior is predictable and can be caught, but I see it bite many other posters
• The WYSIWYG editor mages it very difficult to fix the formatting on posts when you edit them. While you can select a plain text view, on the old forum you could select your preferred default. I am a prolific poster and I am very conscious of how my posts are formatted. It was easier on the old forum.
• There are hundreds of posts I have seen that lost all of their text in the transition to the new software. I have found a workaround to fix them as long as I have privileges to edit them. I have fixed 74 of my own posts and several dozen other members posts on the forums where I have moderator privaleges. This certainly should have been fleshed out during transition testing

The above is far from a complete list. Suffice it to say, despite the flaws in the old software (VB3), it was a much better tool for this community than we have now. The search limitations alone completely hobble this new forum’s usefulness for its intended purpose and audience.

Please understand that I have built several successful forums and a number of narrow focus smaller communities over the last two decades. I have experience from listservers, to UbbThreads and nearly 15 years with vBulletin. I have transitioned two very large communities to both completely different software or version upgrades. We always had a plan in place to protect the archive of data, assembled panels of our members to participate in weeks or months of evaluation of the plan before it was executed. As a result of this we had vanishingly small numbers of surprises when we went public with an upgrade or a complete transition. This transition has been flawed to say the least.

I have made HST aware of my experience in this area and have offered to help on many occasions since I joined nearly 5 years ago. They have not accepted and frequently have not responded to my offers to help. I am astounded that they did’t involve me in the evaluation of the transition plan. When we made our transitions, we went to dozens of members for our evaluation panels and would have loved to have a single one of them with any knowledge of the software underpinnings.

My frustrations go well beyond the forum software. I think (despite many flaws) HomeSeer software is the best tool I have found for home automation. I care very much about this community and put a tremendous amount of time and effort into adding value. I don’t do this because I need attention, I only want to give others the benefit of anything I may have come to understand about the HS ecosystem. Despite it not being the motivation for my effort, I get a tremendous amount of appreciation and support for my effort from other members, both privately and publicly. I haven’t received a single message initiated by HST offering any acknowledgement or appreciation for my contributions. I have received quite a few messages and even a few posts within this forum over the years accusing me of being a shill for HST. I do not receive any discounts or special treatment from HST. I get no compensation whatsoever. I do email HST whenever there are identifiable and repeatable issues with the software and they usually do respond, but it mostly feels like I am annoying them. There are many correctable issues I have repeatedly pointed out through the now abandoned Bugzilla or direct emails, that have been completely ignored. I have made several suggestions that would probably eliminate many of the problems that affect new users of the software. There has been no movement or discussion by HST. It is beyond frustrating.

Sorry for the rant, but I am very annoyed at the moment because of events last week directly brought about by the amount of time and effort I put into this community. I am faced with a decision which may preclude my ability to participate in this community going forward.

[jon00]

Randy,

I couldn't agree more and you rant is 100% valid with me!

I absolutely hate the new board software and cannot understand how VBulletin can release software so buggy and yet do nothing to rectify these reported bugs. Mark posted in another thread that daily emails had been broken since 2012 so they obviously have no interest in fixing anything.

Its recently got worse since Mark changed search to Google and now I cannot find anything from past threads. I believe that was changed because the external search plugin corrupted the database.

As you may have noticed, I've now taken a back seat. Visiting the forum is not a pleasant experience for me.....

[donstephens]

I also am not in love with the new board. Most of the tools that make the board useful don't work or so clumsy that it isn't worth the trouble. Mark, I understand that you have a lot of time invested in this, but to me, this board is not an improvement.

Please consider another platform.

Thanks

[randy]

Randy,

I couldn't agree more and you rant is 100% valid with me!

I absolutely hate the new board software and cannot understand how VBulletin can release software so buggy and yet do nothing to rectify these reported bugs. Mark posted in another thread that daily emails had been broken since 2012 so they obviously have no interest in fixing anything.

Its recently got worse since Mark changed search to Google and now I cannot find anything from past threads. I believe that was changed because the external search plugin corrupted the database.

As you may have noticed, I've now taken a back seat. Visiting the forum is not a pleasant experience for me.....

Thanks Jon. It is not simply “not a pleasant experience” to me, it is a valuable tool that has been removed from my kit. I have put a lot of time and effort over the few years I have been here and this change cost me more time. There is a limit...

[rjh]

There is an update to the forum software that is pending and we will apply shortly. We looked at other boards but we would have lost all the user accounts so we decided to stick with VB. We did switch to VB5 a couple of years ago and it was so slow that we went back to VB3. We assumed most of the issues would be worked out by now.

Randy, if you have any suggestions that we may not know about I am open, we are not forum experts. VB3 worked great for a log time without much intervention.

[randy]

There is an update to the forum software that is pending and we will apply shortly. We looked at other boards but we would have lost all the user accounts so we decided to stick with VB. We did switch to VB5 a couple of years ago and it was so slow that we went back to VB3. We assumed most of the issues would be worked out by now.

Randy, if you have any suggestions that we may not know about I am open, we are not forum experts. VB3 worked great for a log time without much intervention.

Rich. It is way too late in the process for me to have any desire. The time to enlist my or anyone else's input would have been been before the switch was made. I have offered my help with regard to the forums since I came on board in 2014.

As I stated, when I made transitions we had a select board of members essentially participating in a beta test of the transition to catch issues before we went public. Even a version transition required a month or more of testing privately. After the process was completed we left the old forum in place for almost a year in read only mode for archival purposes, should we discover issues in the db transition that were not discovered during testing. If you had a board of testers, they didn't do a very good job. If you were working according to a carefully crafted plan, it wasn't a well thought out plan. Almost all of the issues I brought out above would have been fleshed out in testing allowing you to get ahead of them or abandon the transition if unfixable or fix them if possible. After all the communication I have had with you Mark and Rick (I know he works elsewhere now), it eludes me as to why someone from HST didn't reach out to me privately. I made all of you aware that I was an experienced vBulletin Administrator I am not presenting myself as the sharpest tool in the shed, but I am experienced. One of the communities that I helped develop generated a low 6 figure sum when sold and the value was based upon the "phenomenal growth, high standards required of administrators and moderators and the overall look, feel and function" of the community. I communicated all of that to HST through Rick Tinker in early 2014. In our exchanges it was clear to me he was discussing it with the principles at HST and that they didn't consider me a "good fit". By the end of 2015 I was convinced my communications were considered more of a nuisance than helpful.

I had never touched HomeSeer software at the end of 2013. I installed and purchased HS3 in January 2014. I completely understood the software within a month or two. Despite the frustrations I had with HST management, I began helping people who were unable to find the answers they in the documentation and were missing the nuances of basic HomeSeer nomenclature. I took the initiative to create and build the Event Clinic forum for HomeSeer which we started at the end of 2014. One would think that any business that enjoys such cost free participation and contribution, would recognize it and avail itself of that asset at every opportunity.

As I wrote above, these all may be moot points for me in the near future.

[simplextech]

I can agree with the frustration over the forum upgrade and failure. With the degree of functional loss and historical data now gone or inaccessible it makes the original argument of staying with vBulletin a moot point. Moving to a newer software would have incurred the same or even less amount of frustration and "learning curve" as this new version has caused and would have been justified being a new system. Instead vBulletin feels like the same OLD piece of software with a face-lift and minor (very minor) feature updates. At the very least I hope there's a backup of the older V3 system available and that can still be brought online for historical purposes of searching material if not then it's much more of a loss than I had thought.

Your posts are and have always been of value to the community and as I have seen in most of the other communities where the platform is propped up by the community the parent company doesn't provide enough support or even interest towards the community which in turn causes a loss to the community when valuable people leave. Either they find a better solution or they stop investing their time where they don't feel it's wanted. Advice to HST is simple, HST exists because of the community.

[rjh]

All I can say is I'm sorry the board is not meeting your expectations but we are not a large company and we don't have the resources required to do what some of you have suggested. We did back the database so nothing was lost but we ran into database issues when we moved to VB5 and lost some posts. I had hoped the transition would have been seamless and VB hinted that it would be, but alas there are always foreseen issues. I think for the most part the board is working ok, but if you see any issues please post them and we will attempt to get VB involved if we cannot resolve.

[cheeryfool]

I do miss this community, but after several failed attempts to get anything close to forum usability, I am now about a twice per month visitor, instead of multiple times per day. Too bad.

[simplextech]

All I can say is I'm sorry the board is not meeting your expectations but we are not a large company and we don't have the resources required to do what some of you have suggested. We did back the database so nothing was lost but we ran into database issues when we moved to VB5 and lost some posts. I had hoped the transition would have been seamless and VB hinted that it would be, but alas there are always foreseen issues. I think for the most part the board is working ok, but if you see any issues please post them and we will attempt to get VB involved if we cannot resolve.

Resources to do what?

1. vBulletin is expensive so it's not financial resources
2. Staff/Knowledge? It has been said already that there's people within the community that are willing (or have been) to help


I like HS3 even with it's quirks I still think it's better than the other options. However it's not perfect and I won't pretend it is, but this community sees this and this forum is the PRIMARY support mechanism for HST. Without this community HST support would be completely overwhelmed with phone calls and e-mail. So I think it's in the best interest to put whatever is needed into the forum and community. This community keeps HST alive and people sticking with HS and sticking together as a community to help each other. HST should as a small company realize this and also utilize the community when "resources" are needed.

[rjh]

Knowledge issue and human resource issue. No one has come to us with VB experience and offered to assist. Randy mentions that he has, but he has offered to assist users, not assist with board maintenance. I had no idea that he knew anything about board maintenance.

If anyone knows how to manage a VB board and is willing to assist I am totally open to that and encourage you to email me. Maybe we can compensate with some product.

We are all super busy here and just have not had enough time to learn everything that is needed to fix open issues. We are looking to VB to see if they can offer someone to have a look at the board. The search is one of the biggest issues we would like to fix.

Resources to do what?

1. vBulletin is expensive so it's not financial resources
2. Staff/Knowledge? It has been said already that there's people within the community that are willing (or have been) to help


I like HS3 even with it's quirks I still think it's better than the other options. However it's not perfect and I won't pretend it is, but this community sees this and this forum is the PRIMARY support mechanism for HST. Without this community HST support would be completely overwhelmed with phone calls and e-mail. So I think it's in the best interest to put whatever is needed into the forum and community. This community keeps HST alive and people sticking with HS and sticking together as a community to help each other. HST should as a small company realize this and also utilize the community when "resources" are needed.

[randy]

All I can say is I'm sorry the board is not meeting your expectations but we are not a large company and we don't have the resources required to do what some of you have suggested. We did back the database so nothing was lost but we ran into database issues when we moved to VB5 and lost some posts. I had hoped the transition would have been seamless and VB hinted that it would be, but alas there are always foreseen issues. I think for the most part the board is working ok, but if you see any issues please post them and we will attempt to get VB involved if we cannot resolve.

I don't know whom you were replying to, but if I was included, you completely missed my point.

You have vast resources in your membership. I can can think of a dozen or more members who would likely have helped with a private shakedown of any new software. A small company with a large and devoted user base can be a very powerful thing. I have a fairly close relationship with a few plug-in developers and none of them feel that HST is interested in a two way dialog to help improve the software. Being a small company is no excuse for failed communication. If I was able to point out the single weakest element HST, I would point to communication

Failure to keep current customers happy causes churn. In a small business churn is vastly more harmful than conquest can overcome. After owning and controlling 3 of my own small businesses since 1980, believe me, I know whence I speak.