For those who use the Latest Posts page/feature you will undoubtedly notice that the format has changes. You can now browse the entire KitMaker Network for recent postings without changing domains (sites). You can also now look further back than the 24hr time limit via the NEXT pagination system at the bottom of the page. Also the public and site pages are now cached which will speed up the delivery of the page for most users. This was one of the primary goals of this change as the LP overhead on the database was really high.

USER TIP: As a general rule most users will need to look at TWO pages to see all the topics they are normally interested in. The first would be either the "All Public" (shows all forums across the network that are public forums) or one of the site pages (AeroSale, Armorama, etc). And the second would be the "All Member" link as that will show any posts in member or group forums. I realize this will take some adaptation on your parts. But considering all users will be able to easily click from this interface and see quick summaries of all the various forums, not have a single (slow to load) page with all the forums was the trade-off.

Several features have not been completed yet. Those are:

1. A "New Post" flag of some kind that will work with the cached pages and show that a topic has been posted to since your last visit (or more accurately since the time/date on your cookie).

2. Cleaning up some of the Forum name translations.

I hope you like the new look.

Thanks,
Jim

Jim

The new look and feel will take a bit of getting used to, but anything that improves the speed of access (not that it's bad anyway) is a step forward.

Andy

Would it be possible to restore the 'Sort by Forums' feature..?

I've always sorted the Latest Posts by Forum, just feel it's easier that way...

$0.02

acav out

I may be able to do that but I will have to give it some thought. The page pulls up to 500 posts for browsing through so if it was simply sorted by forum you would not get the same effect as before. It would have to be a secondary sort of just the results on the first page.

Jim

Sorry, but I have to give it a big thumbs down. Just seems to inconvienient compared to the old version.

I've got used to it - not taken long really.

Keep up the good work Jim

Andy

I'm a lazy forum surfer. If I do not see a topic title that interests me on page one, I just go to another forum. I liked the ability to see the other sites' LP along the right hand side.

Works okay for me.

That in a nutshell was why the old system had to go. Two massive real-time queries that could not be cached with hundreds of users hitting those pages hourly. Recipe for disaster I'm afraid.

But you Rob... a lazy forum surfer?? Hardly... as I know you visit quite a few and many of those don't even have a latest posts page.

Cheers,
Jim

Yes, actually. I rarely venture into multi-page topics. At ML, HS or FSM, I rarely even scroll down beyond what appears on my screen when I enter the site.

What I liked about the LP along the right side was that I could see a if a certain forum (MSW, Aeroscale, MG, etc.) had a subject title that caught my eye. If it did, I would visit that topic and perhaps its parent forum's LP page.

No real loss to me and if it helps the site's overall operation, then I'm all for it. I just liked the capability,

I like it, You guys put alot of work into the site. Keep it up

I enjoy visiting the site but it just seems that every time I log on the look is different. Ads are moved. Tabs are different colors. The layout and navigation have changed. The only constant is change.

I don't know if it's trying to solve immediate issues with reliability of the site or what but it gets a little annoying with changes happened every so many weeks. Maybe I'm wrong about the timing of these little upgrades but that's just the way it feels. Is it at all possible to save all the changes for a bigger 6 month upgrade than all these little ones?

It doesn't work for me at all. The link is completely dead. I use Firefox, this may have something to do with it. But I know my use of the website is down because of this...it's a real pain to have to check each subforum to see what's been posted.

I use Mozilla at home and have no problem with any of the tabs or buttons. I have IE7 on my laptop and home PC and IE6 on my work PC and ditto... no problems...

I'll say it again, and this is not because I'm a staffer, but I love the new tab format. I get to visit the HF LP page without the annoying "noise" of BST, Junk Drawer, et al and then I move onto the ALL tab and see what the rest of the sites are doing.

Never mind...it turns out to be operator error. I didn't realize that the links were actually to the right of "Latest Post". Too subtle a change for this ole' dawg.