New Website Launch

[David]

Hello members,

We have exciting news!

We're moving to a much more current forum and community software. This transition is long overdue and we're excited to adopt a modern software that facilitates communication, registration, and support.

For the most part, it'll be business as usual when it comes to the forums and posting with some valuable new features:

• An improved layout (clean, clear and uncluttered)
• More efficient page loads and ad-free for everyone here
• Multi-device friendly and accessible (phones, tablets, screen readers)
• A greatly improved search system with better relevancy and recency!
• Watch threads and alert notification abilities
• Automatic post draft saving every 30 seconds
• Personalized push notifications (if enabled)
• Streamlined registration for new users
• Automatic spam service submission and user flagging
• Copy and paste directly into posts (including images and videos)
• And much more...

We're also in discussion about a new resources section that will properly house, highlight and make available important resources to those affected by ALS. Stay tuned.

Why Change?

We've needed to upgrade as some aspects of the old software have become outdated and we want to give the best experience possible. We're using this opportunity to upgrade the software in order to meet these goals.

Launch

We anticipate that the migration will entail 6-8 hours of downtime.

Launch begins this evening at approximately 10:00 PM est.

Feedback

We welcome your feedback throughout this process, and appreciate the time that you invest in contributing and reading the forums.

We'll have forums available for feedback, or, use the usual "Problems, Suggestions and Bugs" forum.

Additionally, if you have any issues accessing your account post launch you can contact us at: https://www.alsforums.com/contact-us

 

[Clamdigger]

Thank you for the update and thank you for all the hard work you do keeping this community running.

 

[David]

Cheers mate!

 

[markp99]

XenForo. Nice choice; looks fantastic!

 

[David]

XenForo. Nice choice; looks fantastic!

@markp99 Looks like xenforo.com, don't get confused But hey, it'll be easy to keep updated this way.

 

[ReginaS]

Thanks for doing this!!! I like it and it's easy to switch from the old forum to this one.

Can someone tell me how to get the newest posts on top of the thread? I looked around in the settings and could not find where to change this.

 

[David]

It's oldest first. There's no option for listing things in reverse. There is however a "jump to new" which will zoom you to your last read post (top right-hand corner of the post list):

 

[affected]

thanks so much David - sorry after messaging with you I found this thread and saw it's been asked. I always had threads reversed and my poor little brain is going to feel upside down for a little while but there are so many benefits to this new format that I'm loving it!

Thanks for all you do in the background here. Having set up forums before I know how much work goes on behind the scenes!

 

[wmilo]

Hi, David. Adding my thanks for the update and for all you put into maintaining the forum. The support and information it provides are greatly appreciated!

Regards,
Bill

 

[Narrowminded]

David,

Thank you for all of your hard work. Quick question, where did groups move to? What takes place of the user CP for customizing, like notifications and such?

Thanks again, this place has been a life saver for me.

 

[Nikki J]

For the user cp click on your user name at the top right and you get a drop down with permissions etc. I don’t think we have groups here

 

[David]

Thank you for all of your hard work. Quick question, where did groups move to? What takes place of the user CP for customizing, like notifications and such?

There's been lots of unavoidable changes since moving software because this software vendor is not the same as our old forum software.

With that said, there are user options here: https://www.alsforums.com/community/account/preferences

Social groups are lost I'm afraid. There's simply no replacement. There is a module we could purchase for social groups, but it DOES NOT export/imort social groups, so the content would be lost whether we move forward with social groups or not.

 

[David]

Note, for options, we recommend you do NOT enable receiving email for conversations. You'll get an email with every response and it'll flood your inbox. Instead, enable "push notifications", it works much more efficiently.

 

[David]

Quick question, where did groups move to?

@Narrowminded I sent you a private message about this as it's come to my attention you were actually using the Social Groups currently (prior to the move).