Our Umbraco Forums: after login a user should be returned to the original thread.
When I use the login option at the bottom of a thread I am redirected to the homepage after logging in. But it makes much more sense to be returned to the original thread. Especially if I came to the thread fram en email notification.
Agreed - it's especially strange that when you use the Login link at the top of the page, that you *are* in fact redirected to the page/thread you came from.
Frankly, nothing in this forum works the way a forum should work. Click the "xx minutes ago" link to be taken to the last post in the thread and it only works the FIRST TIME. If you attempt to use the link a second time in the same browsing session you are taken to the first page of the thread.
I know I am going to get flamed for saying this (and have posted and will continue to post my opinion) but this forum (entire site) is a disaster. Umbraco is a CMS not a forum package. Why can't we just move to vBulletin and be done with this? The state of this forum (the terrible search, bugs, etc) do more harm to Umbraco's reputation than they do it good. Honestly, this is certainly not a glowing example of the power of Umbraco. The only Fourm package that I have found that is as bad as this is the forum MS is using to run their community support forums. ]
I honestly mean no disrespect to ANYBODY but at the same time this forum is a nightmare to search and use.
Appreciate your honesty and there's certainly lots of truth in there! Having said that, I know the forum will be opened up for anyone to collaborate on, fix bugs, make improvements). How's that for an idea? And whilst you're here... why not tell us what more needs to be changed in order to make this forum better (Apart from what's been said already)?
Oh, and a good alternative for searching this forum: Go to google and enter your search request and "site:our.umbraco.org" -> will surely return more answers to your specific questions.
"Having said that, I know the forum will be opened up for anyone to collaborate on, fix bugs, make improvements). How's that for an idea? And whilst you're here... why not tell us what more needs to be changed in order to make this forum better (Apart from what's been said already)?"
I have been posting some proposed improvements, but I must agree the list would get really long if we up our expectations of what this forum should be. I personally don't think it's a good way for the community to spend their time, seems like a case of Not Invented Here...
Now I understand that the ASP.NET website runs on Umbraco, but I don't think their forum does (it doesn't have 'powered by Umbraco' in the footer like the rest of the site). Maybe that's because there isn't a great forum solution for Umbraco?
Why not ask a commercial partner to develop a forum solution, and let them sponsor this forum? So the community gets a better forum, doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and the partner can make a great name for themselves.
I think that is part of my point, and I think this a a VERY important discussion that the core team needs to pay attention to.
Respectfully, I think the core and project owners have lost sight (as is the case with most open source projects) of the fact that the unpolished, spend-forever-doing-research and forever tinkering with bugs and code paradigm, is only appealing to those who enjoy open source software development in the first place. The bulk of us don't care to get elbow deep into developing a CMS or the support forum for the CMS. We contribute where we can and for most of us that is using the forum to ask and answer questions and report bugs. The problem is that people come here for help and find that to get help they need to get help with the forum first!
Users don't come to a support forum in hopes of helping develop the support forum, they come for help! At this point, this forum is functionally one of the worst most of us have ever used. It is clunky, full of bugs, missing basic features and ease of use. The fact that google search has to be ussed to find forum posts is almost laughable. The fact that this is our second (3rd?) itteration of the support forum and each pervious version and its wealth of data (that also can only be found using google) have been abandoned is also not acceptable. My frustration is not aimed at any person in particular but rather the simple fact that this continues to be a problem that no reasonable amount of coding is going to fix. The forum is an important tool that MUST work well so that the entire community can easily and comfortably and effortlessly communicate and contribute.
In simple terms: If the overall experience of the product and the support for the product have an "open source" feel, then the project is alienating MOST of the prospective users and is instead a club for those who enjoy banging out code and working on bugs.
Also, as Michiel points out, the fact that this forum needs well versed coders to develop features and fix bugs is a complete waste of resources. With a limited number of developers and no shortage of actual Umbraco bugs and missing features, why are the well versed coders wasting time and resources building a support forum when far superior products are readily available and their resources would be MUCH better utilized working with the CORE?
By far the most popular and polished forum package out there is vBulletin and it "just works". I honestly fail to see why it is not being leveraged here and instead we are saddled with developing a forum as we go. As Michiel points out, let a commercial interest build something similar and as usable as vBulletin. If it is that good, then people would certainly buy it and we can use it here. Until that happens, lets get a real forum package in place.
I will repeat that I mean NO disrespect to anybody but feel that this is a very important subject that very few are willing to bring up.
@Sebastiaan: no need to apologize for any sort of 'delay', I'm happy there is a forum and I can get answers! When I suggest something I fully expect it to go on the backlog and I leave the prioritization up to the actual developers. In my spare time I don't do ASP.NET anymore, so my contributions will probably be limited to suggestions or bug reports.
Having said that, where is the code and the work item list for the our.umbraco.org codebase? Is it possible to throw it up on Codeplex?
I have only been doing one site in Umbraco so far, and I have found that code FOR Umbraco (like document types, templates etc) is really difficult to get into version control. That could be a problem if you want to make development of this particular community platform a community driven effort.
And that last bit is mostly interesting from an academic standpoint. I think that's also what William Burnett is saying.
Suggestions and bug reports are great, no worries. I don't think the project is actually open for the public, for now, it's just to a few enthousiasts who want to work on it.
As for source control: uSiteBuilder is your friend. It doesn't solve all of your problems, but it's pretty good at most stuff you need. You know where to reach me if you want to have a chat about this though! :-)
Interesting, I am not familiar with Burnett, please enlighten me!
Our Umbraco Forums: after login a user should be returned to the original thread.
When I use the login option at the bottom of a thread I am redirected to the homepage after logging in. But it makes much more sense to be returned to the original thread. Especially if I came to the thread fram en email notification.
Agreed - it's especially strange that when you use the Login link at the top of the page, that you *are* in fact redirected to the page/thread you came from.
/Chriztian
Yes, please in addition to solving the login bug (you get logged out after closing down all your our browser windows...
/Dirk
Frankly, nothing in this forum works the way a forum should work. Click the "xx minutes ago" link to be taken to the last post in the thread and it only works the FIRST TIME. If you attempt to use the link a second time in the same browsing session you are taken to the first page of the thread.
I know I am going to get flamed for saying this (and have posted and will continue to post my opinion) but this forum (entire site) is a disaster. Umbraco is a CMS not a forum package. Why can't we just move to vBulletin and be done with this? The state of this forum (the terrible search, bugs, etc) do more harm to Umbraco's reputation than they do it good. Honestly, this is certainly not a glowing example of the power of Umbraco. The only Fourm package that I have found that is as bad as this is the forum MS is using to run their community support forums. ]
I honestly mean no disrespect to ANYBODY but at the same time this forum is a nightmare to search and use.
William,
Appreciate your honesty and there's certainly lots of truth in there! Having said that, I know the forum will be opened up for anyone to collaborate on, fix bugs, make improvements). How's that for an idea? And whilst you're here... why not tell us what more needs to be changed in order to make this forum better (Apart from what's been said already)?
Cheers,
/Dirk
Oh, and a good alternative for searching this forum: Go to google and enter your search request and "site:our.umbraco.org" -> will surely return more answers to your specific questions.
Cheers,
/Dirk
"Having said that, I know the forum will be opened up for anyone to collaborate on, fix bugs, make improvements). How's that for an idea? And whilst you're here... why not tell us what more needs to be changed in order to make this forum better (Apart from what's been said already)?"
I have been posting some proposed improvements, but I must agree the list would get really long if we up our expectations of what this forum should be. I personally don't think it's a good way for the community to spend their time, seems like a case of Not Invented Here...
Now I understand that the ASP.NET website runs on Umbraco, but I don't think their forum does (it doesn't have 'powered by Umbraco' in the footer like the rest of the site). Maybe that's because there isn't a great forum solution for Umbraco?
Why not ask a commercial partner to develop a forum solution, and let them sponsor this forum? So the community gets a better forum, doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and the partner can make a great name for themselves.
I think that is part of my point, and I think this a a VERY important discussion that the core team needs to pay attention to.
Respectfully, I think the core and project owners have lost sight (as is the case with most open source projects) of the fact that the unpolished, spend-forever-doing-research and forever tinkering with bugs and code paradigm, is only appealing to those who enjoy open source software development in the first place. The bulk of us don't care to get elbow deep into developing a CMS or the support forum for the CMS. We contribute where we can and for most of us that is using the forum to ask and answer questions and report bugs. The problem is that people come here for help and find that to get help they need to get help with the forum first!
Users don't come to a support forum in hopes of helping develop the support forum, they come for help! At this point, this forum is functionally one of the worst most of us have ever used. It is clunky, full of bugs, missing basic features and ease of use. The fact that google search has to be ussed to find forum posts is almost laughable. The fact that this is our second (3rd?) itteration of the support forum and each pervious version and its wealth of data (that also can only be found using google) have been abandoned is also not acceptable. My frustration is not aimed at any person in particular but rather the simple fact that this continues to be a problem that no reasonable amount of coding is going to fix. The forum is an important tool that MUST work well so that the entire community can easily and comfortably and effortlessly communicate and contribute.
In simple terms: If the overall experience of the product and the support for the product have an "open source" feel, then the project is alienating MOST of the prospective users and is instead a club for those who enjoy banging out code and working on bugs.
Also, as Michiel points out, the fact that this forum needs well versed coders to develop features and fix bugs is a complete waste of resources. With a limited number of developers and no shortage of actual Umbraco bugs and missing features, why are the well versed coders wasting time and resources building a support forum when far superior products are readily available and their resources would be MUCH better utilized working with the CORE?
By far the most popular and polished forum package out there is vBulletin and it "just works". I honestly fail to see why it is not being leveraged here and instead we are saddled with developing a forum as we go. As Michiel points out, let a commercial interest build something similar and as usable as vBulletin. If it is that good, then people would certainly buy it and we can use it here. Until that happens, lets get a real forum package in place.
I will repeat that I mean NO disrespect to anybody but feel that this is a very important subject that very few are willing to bring up.
First of all, the login/redirect issue is being worked on, due to holidays it will take a bit longer than expected, sorry.
@Michiel The list is long, but not impossibly long, feel free to add more issues! :)
I posted a reply to the rest of the comments here: http://our.umbraco.org/forum/ourumb-dev-forum/features/4553-Please-fix-this-forum?p=2#comment82867
@Sebastiaan: no need to apologize for any sort of 'delay', I'm happy there is a forum and I can get answers! When I suggest something I fully expect it to go on the backlog and I leave the prioritization up to the actual developers. In my spare time I don't do ASP.NET anymore, so my contributions will probably be limited to suggestions or bug reports.
Having said that, where is the code and the work item list for the our.umbraco.org codebase? Is it possible to throw it up on Codeplex?
I have only been doing one site in Umbraco so far, and I have found that code FOR Umbraco (like document types, templates etc) is really difficult to get into version control. That could be a problem if you want to make development of this particular community platform a community driven effort.
And that last bit is mostly interesting from an academic standpoint. I think that's also what William Burnett is saying.
Suggestions and bug reports are great, no worries. I don't think the project is actually open for the public, for now, it's just to a few enthousiasts who want to work on it.
As for source control: uSiteBuilder is your friend. It doesn't solve all of your problems, but it's pretty good at most stuff you need. You know where to reach me if you want to have a chat about this though! :-)
Interesting, I am not familiar with Burnett, please enlighten me!
"Interesting, I am not familiar with Burnett, please enlighten me!"
I was referring to the user William Burnett who is also posting in this thread.
D'oh... Fail! ;)
is working on a reply...