Quick Start Guide to the New Platform

Welcome to the new platform! As you can tell, there are a number of things about the new AVS Forum that look and feel different. While we're excited about the new direction, we also wanted to be sure we provided opportunities to make the core experience of using the forum as consistent as possible for our loyal members.

 

There are a few changes on the new site that I wanted to call out as slightly different and walk through in detail in order to help you get as comfortable with the platform as possible. Although we certainly encourage you to try out all the new tools and features, if you simply want to post like you were before, click here for a quick list of setting recommendations or here for a walkthrough of subscriptions. There's a lot of stuff below, but hopefully it's worth the read.

 

 

New stuff in Forums/Threads:

 

From the main Forums page, you'll see that threads with new posts are indicated by the green check on the Forum Icon:

 

 

Looking at a subforum page with a thread list, you'll see that threads you've posted in are highlighted:

 

To jump to the first unread post in the icon, you can click the icon that identifies threads with unread posts:

 

 

Preferences:

 

Probably the most important initial preference is the site skin. Many of the core users made use of the dark or retro skins on the old site. We've imported all those users to default to the dark skin on the new platform, but you can switch back and forth and decide which you like best. We don't currently have plans to offer the retro skin, but still acknowledge that purple is awesome. We've used a mix of the dark and light skins in the below walkthroughs so you can see how both look.

You'll notice that the User CP is gone. Instead there's a My Profile tab in the navigation that will allow you to access everything you'll need to customize your AVS experience. You can customize your Community Profile from here, but the place to start is the "Edit Account Details" tab:

 

You can tweak a number of settings here, but let's skip ahead to Forum Preferences.

 

Forum Preferences:

 

 

 

 

Note that you can also change all these settings from threads (see the "Preferences" button at the top and bottom or every thread)

 

 

Default to the Full-Page Editor: 

When this box is checked, any time you click any "Reply" button on any forum post, quote or multi-quote a post, you will be directed to the full page reply editor, with the last 10 posts in reverse chronological order, rather than defaulting to the Quick Reply editor at the bottom of every thread page. The Quick Reply will still be available on all thread pages.

 

Full Page Editor:

 

View Forums Full-Width:

This preference allows you to view all forum pages (including the main forum area, all sub-forums, all thread pages, and the All New Posts page) at the full width of your browser window. Note that the posts below or on a Widescreen monitor.

Regular Width:

 

Full Width:

 

Constrain Threads to Constant Width:

This preference constrains all threads to the main column inside of a thread view page. With the default setting (No) the posts after the right column wrap.

 

Constant Width:

 

 

Not Constrained:

 

 

Hide User Avatars:

Previously, only certain users had avatars. On the new site, all users have them, but we've imported the ones that were set on vBulletin. We've provided a few options for avatars, but the default Avatar is the winner from this thread (LINK) . If you'd prefer not to see these avatars, this preference allows you to hide all user avatars from thread pages. It's a great way to reduce scrolling. You'll still see them in Profile Pages.

 

Thread view with Avatars off:

 

 

Hide User Signatures and Hide "My Stuff" in Signatures:

The new platform has a ton of functionality with signatures. You can add lists, reviews, galleries, and articles to your signature. That said, some users might not want to see all these new item, or prefer to hide signatures entirely. These two preferences allow you to do so.

 

Compact Thread List Page:

 

This preference removes the Last Post post line in the thread list page to reduce vertical space.

 

Compact Thread List Page:

 

 

Regular Thread List Page:

 

 

Hide Right Column In Forum Threads:

This preference, granted to AVS Club Members, removes the right column in forum threads to give the first posts more horizontal space. AVS Club Members can also disable ads.

 

Regular View:

 

 

Right Column Hidden:

 

 

Posts Per Page:

 

You can set anywhere from 10-100 posts per page, depending on your preference.

 

AVS Power User Recommended Settings (Bold Settings should be ON) :

 

 

Subscriptions:

 

You can get to your subscriptions at any time via the icon at the top of the page:

 

 

The Subscription Activity Feed is designed to work as a series of on and off switches that allow you to drill down in to specific content or broaden your view, rather than a series of tabs that allow you to jump from type to type. Those tabs exist, as you can see below, but the activity feed was designed to be a more living representation of what's interesting to you on the site. Click here for more on subscriptions.

 

Subscription Preferences:

Your subscriptions and settings should have imported to the setting you had on the old platform. If you didn't change from the default, your default setting will be Don't Subscribe to new content. You can change this so you'll be notified immediately, daily, or weekly on any updates to threads, articles, reviews, or lists you create or reply to.

 

Following Notifications:

More information here, but we imported followers from the "Friends" functionality on vBulletin. Note that you didn't have to friend a user for them to friend you, so that would explain any seemingly new users following you.

 

Site Preferences:

Invisible Mode: Activating Invisible Mode will cause you to not show as a Currently Active User on the site. You will be shown as Currently Offline.

Remove Homepage Carousel: You have the option to remove the image carousel you see now. If you turn it off, the home page body will be the first thing you see:

 

Remove Nested Quotes in Replies: When a post you're quoting has quoted a previous post or posts, if you want to display those quotes along with the post you're quoting you can turn this off.

Preferred Editor Type: All users should default to the BB Code editor. For more on the difference between the two editors, see here.

 

Mute Reputation Display: Reputation is hidden, so this isn't an issue currently.

 

We do use a lot of javascript functionality in core platform features, and unfortunately we don't have a low-javascript offering at the moment. I definitely get your concern about privacy and depending on your browser there are certain tools you can use (e.g. this tool to load these queries locally, although it might not work perfectly with every site) but unfortunately not much flexibility with the platform itself as we're dependent on those calls for certain important functions.

We're very close to releasing the HTML5 mobile skin of the site, which can in some ways function as the "low-javascript" offering.

We don't have a support for Print View at this time. Do you use it to print the threads, or just to have a lighter version of the site? If it's a lighter version you're looking for, again I think the HTML5 version will be helpful there. I apologize for touting a solution that hasn't come out just yet, but we're very excited about the functionality and flexibility of the mobile version. In the mean time, Subscriptions are a good light view of activity, and there's forum RSS feeds available as well if you make use of those.

Definitely understand that the new platform is quite different from the old one. Hopefully this thread helps a little and you're of course entitled to your opinion, but it sounds like at a high level all you really want to do is stay up to date on the threads that are important to you. I'd suggest subscribing to those threads and monitoring them via your Subscriptions page. That way you'll get an activity feed of the new posts in those threads, without having to deal with much else. You can even click the "plus" sign from the feed (once you've subscribed to a few threads) to read the latest posts from there.

Check out the post here for more info on this, but you can tweak your subscriptions to show threads with new content via the Edit Your Subscriptions tab. If you don't have this turned on, you can also click the "plus" icon to see the last 10 posts.