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A few minor changes to the forum.


tuckstar

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We want to make it clearer to everyone, including our Staff, when members' Dark Site Membership has expired. While the website sends an email, it's not very clear on the website that the membership has ended. We've therefore made some changes to our website to make it easier to tell when a Dark Site Membership has expired.


Dark Site Members Area


Whilst everybody can see these forums, from now on only Dark Site Members can read the contents of them. Anybody who is not a Dark Site Member will instead see a message that these are for Dark Site Members only.

 

Here's what it looks like if you're not a Dark Site Member:

 

DSMO_POST.png?raw=1


Dark Site Meetings


We've created a new forum for Dark Site Members to arrange adhoc meetings. This works exactly as it did before except that only Dark Site Members can create topics in it, read the topics and reply to them.


Dark Site Members group formatting


Until today only Staff members and the Picture of the Month Judge had any form of colouring to differentiate them from other member groups. We've added a small red cross in front of the names of Dark Site Members. If you have this cross then you're currently a Dark Site Member. If it is removed you'll know that your subs have expired.

 

For clarity, this will only appear against Dark Site members. It cannot be applied to groups such as Staff and Picture of the Month.


EMS Official Events & Meetings


We've amended this forum so that only Staff can post new topics in it. So that potential new Dark Site Members can still attend an adhoc meet for free for their first visit, any Staff member attending the meeting will also post the details in this forum, which is visible to all.

 

Thank you for your continued support, we wouldn't have our little community without it.

 

Regards,

 

Admin.

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  • Craig featured and pinned this topic

Understood. Some feedback.

 

Personally, i don't think the red crosses are necessary. Do i need to see who is and who is not a dark site member ?

To me all the red crosses make things seem overly convoluted and less sleek visually.

 

And don't most dark site memberships 'auto renew' anyway ?

 

If thats not the case the Dark site member will see the Dark site member area 'greyed out' (won't they ?) as an extra reminder to renew.

 

I've also had a disliking for the green banner at the top of the page for a long time, and although i've raised it once or twice it appears here to stay.

 

Thanks, regards to all.

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3 hours ago, Bino-viewer said:

I've also had a disliking for the green banner at the top of the page for a long time, and although i've raised it once or twice it appears here to stay.

I share your disliking of it since I'm sick to death of the subject, but it is there for a good reason. I have, however, made it possible to dismiss it for those who wish to see it gone. It'll work by storing a cookie on the device, so you'd need to dismiss it once on each device that you use and not clear the cookies. 🙂

3 hours ago, Bino-viewer said:

To me all the red crosses make things seem overly convoluted and less sleek visually.

I could trial the use of alternative colours for the entire names rather than the crosses, in the same way as the Staff and PotM Judge groups are formatted. The intention is to make it very clear to members when their membership has expired. Those members using the content streams (e.g. such as unread content) would not see the greyed out area on the index, and there are a few member that use those specific screens according to the stats, so the group name formatting should help there.

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Thanks Craig.

 

Its not my intention to request you chop and change things just for me, but i thought i'd give some feedback on it.

If the majority of other members are happy with the alterations, then its fine with me as well.

 

And as no-one else has commented, one would assume that they are.

 

I'd be interested to know how many dark site members EMS has ?

And what ratio of them 'auto renew' their membership ?

Surely if everyone 'auto renewed' it would make life easier for everyone, certainly the admin.

I think its the least we can all do, and i'm sure the treasurer could do without having to chase members around for subs.

 

Thanks for letting us remove the green banner.

Its been duly banished.

 

 

 

Edited by Bino-viewer
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2 minutes ago, Bino-viewer said:

Its not my intention to request you chop and change things just for me, but i thought i'd give some feedback on it.

Don’t worry, I took it as intended. The disliking of the banner is one I can perfectly understand. 👍🏻

 

 Not all subs are automatically renewed as some members simply prefer to manually renew their subs, something I entirely understand given how prone I personally am to forgetting to cancel things.

 

 The last time I checked it was near 50/50 between auto renewal and not. There’s no stat to share though as I’d have to manually count them. 😂

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Another point regarding the 'red + signs'

 

Under our 'Avatar pictures' with our snippets of info ie posts, likes, real name and location

it already states if we are 'Dark site members' or simply just 'members' ?

 

Could you not highlight there that a membership has expired for that certain individual, rather than having all the red +'s  everywhere ??

Do we assume that if a members dark site subscription has expired, they will no longer have the red + ??  And would they even notice it missing ?

 

 

 

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Another big thanks for allowing the removal of the green banner.

It was doing my head in especially on my phone.

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17 hours ago, Bino-viewer said:

Could you not highlight there that a membership has expired for that certain individual, rather than having all the red +'s  everywhere ??

We always send renewal notices via email, but the only other way to notify a member of the change is a visual one. There’s simply no other way to do so in the current software. I did investigate a means to notify Staff of members’ subs expiring, but it’s not possible to do and could also be a bit pushy if every sub expiration is questioned.

17 hours ago, Bino-viewer said:

Do we assume that if a members dark site subscription has expired, they will no longer have the red + ??  And would they even notice it missing ?

That’s correct. Prior to this change only the membership group name changed, but the issue was that it was easy to miss. It was one small bit of white text in a sea of white text.

 

The small red indicator is more noticeable as it will simply disappear when the subs expire, and most people will notice changes like this if they’re used to seeing their own name formatted in a certain way. It also has the advantage of always being visible, whereas the group name is only visible in topics and profile pages.

10 hours ago, Graham said:

It was doing my head in especially on my phone

Happy to help. 👍🏻

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FWIW - here's my feedback:

 

I'm cool with the dark site area being greyed out to indicate unavailability to non dark site members - however it's irritating that the bright grey area is forced in ones face, and it can't be collapsed with the arrow top right of the area. I deliberately chose the forum dark colour scheme because it's restful to my eyes (they react badly to brightness due to my illness). It would be good to have the choice of collapsing the dark site members area for non subscribers - like it originally was.

 

I don't believe such a strong visual reminder is needed - the first time access to the dark site area is attempted and denied then a member knows their subs are due. I feel some of these changes have no real practical value, but seem to be more "for the sake of making changes".

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22 hours ago, Bino-viewer said:

I'd be interested to know how many dark site members EMS has ?

And what ratio of them 'auto renew' their membership ?

 

As someone on a pension, I do not take on recurrent expenditure of any sort. 

So I do not auto-renew my EMS membership (although in fact I do it manually.  If I don't, I'm dead.)

 

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54 minutes ago, Brantuk said:

I'm cool with the dark site area being greyed out to indicate unavailability to non dark site members - however it's irritating that the bright grey area is forced in ones face, and it can't be collapsed with the arrow top right of the area. I deliberately chose the forum dark colour scheme because it's restful to my eyes (they react badly to brightness due to my illness). It would be good to have the choice of collapsing the dark site members area for non subscribers - like it originally was.

I can't make it collapsible at present with the current display settings, but I will investigate making this available.

 

I have changed the colour to be less intrusive though, so hopefully this is better:

 

dsmo_darker.png.8f53973b3c743085681442e8d81de069.png

 

You may need to refresh (CTRL + F5) to get this to show. Let me know if that's better for you.

 

54 minutes ago, Brantuk said:

the first time access to the dark site area is attempted and denied then a member knows their subs are due

That unfortunately isn't sufficient. You'd only know your subs had expired if you attempted to access the forum, however if said subs have expired then you wouldn't know there was a new topic in there to arrange a meet. You simply wouldn't know to go and take a look.

 

54 minutes ago, Brantuk said:

"for the sake of making changes"

I'll try not to take that personally! 😆 I will say, though, that I don't volunteer to make changes unless there's a good reason. There was a need for these changes which is why they were made.

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Thanks Craig - I wasn't looking for any special consideration but yes the "dark out" rather than "grey out" is much better on my eyes - so thank you it's much appreciated.

Sorry if I seemed off hand, but honestly nothing personal was intended - I know it wasn't you who instigated the changes - but I do know I can sometimes be unintentionaly "blunt" in text.

I was really just reflecting on how I remember it used to be some time in the past. The dark site section was visible but unaccessible unless ones subs were up to date. That seemed perfectly satisfactory to me, but maybe the software doesn't provide for that any more, or maybe I don't entirely understand the need for the change.... Anyway - I appreciate your efforts and thanks again. 🙂

 

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Just now, Brantuk said:

Sorry if I seemed off hand, but honestly nothing personal was intended

It's no problem, I never read too much into it. Text can be deceiving. 👍🏻

 

I'm glad the darker filter is better. I'm still going to see if I can make it collapsible though.

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2 hours ago, Brantuk said:

It would be good to have the choice of collapsing the dark site members area for non subscribers - like it originally was.

Give it a try now, you should be able to collapse it.

 

You may need to refresh a few times (CTRL + F5) to see the changes.

 

It should still be dark and not light - let me know if not.

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Excellent! It works a dream Craig thanks. It's still dark and I can now collapse or expand it as required whichever colour it's set to.

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