Technical Notes

[pwhodges]

This forum runs the forum software SMF 2.0 (from Simple Machine Forums).  This is the other most widely used system just a bit behind phpBB v3.1 which is used at the EvaGeeks forum.

I have chosen a default theme which is somewhat similar in style to the EvaGeeks forum, but I won't change it to become any closer than it now is.  There are other themes I have made available for my own amusement, but for now this theme is the one which I will ensure works properly before considering the others (for instance, the text in a spoiler is unreadable in the Contrast theme - I can fix that, but you'll have to wait until I feel like it).  I am happy to receive reports of issues in any theme though, in the thread created for the purpose.

Here are notes on a number of differences; there are doubtless others, but experimentation will resolve most issues without harm.

• You can edit the text of a post in place - just click the icon to the bottom right of the post.
• If you edit your post, it is marked as edited if more than five minutes has passed since you originally posted it; at EGF edits are only shown when there's another post following.
• I have not set the forum software to remove nested quotes because sometimes that's necessary to retain sense; but be sensible and do not abuse this fact.
• Title text in spoiler tags does not have quotes round it (quotes are required in the EGF spoiler tags)
• Tweets can be embedded; this happens automatically, without tags
• Videos from YouTube and Vimeo are automatically embedded (and some others); if you prefer just a link, either I can change the setting so embedding requires the [youtube] tag, or you enclose the url in [url] tags
• The handling of newlines around quotes and some other things is different - so formatted text from one forum would have different spacing if copied to the other.
• Font sizes are somewhat restricted to avoid excessive stupidity.  Font sizes can be in pixels, or a percentage change (the phpBB method).
• There are far less smilies; but in serious discussions how many do you really need?
• I think the editor can be switched to a wysiwyg mode; but when I tried it (years ago) I didn't like it that way.  YMMV.

[pwhodges]

The automatic embedding of tweets and YouTube videos is not entirely clean sometimes. 

In the case of tweets, the end of the URL may get left in the post - simply edit everything after the tweet number off the URL and the problem goes away (note that if you use the in-line edit on a post with a tweet you may have to refresh after editing to get the embedded view back).

In the case of YouTube, some URLs may cause the mod to leave some rubbish in the post after the video (e.g. "/>").  This is a bug in the mod, which I will look into at my convenience; the same code in another forum running the same software does not do this, so I suspect an issue with the theme I have selected here.

[pwhodges]

Something's happened to some of the icons in the post writing screens.  It's to do with one of the video embedding add-ons; I'll look into it sometime soon.  Probably.