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Forum Resident
#151 Old 7th Sep 2013 at 3:19 PM
How can I use the old theme. <_>
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Sesquipedalian Pisciform
retired moderator
#152 Old 7th Sep 2013 at 3:54 PM
Forum Resident
#153 Old 8th Sep 2013 at 4:40 PM Last edited by leefish : 8th Sep 2013 at 4:49 PM. Reason: Remove unneccesary comments.
Quote: Originally posted by leefish
@ residenteviloutbreak >> http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=511141

@Volvenom http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=511235


Thanks. I have gone back to the old theme.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#154 Old 9th Sep 2013 at 1:05 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Volvenom
A point I have is the lack of a main feature on the home page, it's a bit cluttered. May just be me having the wrong settings though.


I'd just like to point out that the old front page doesn't have a "main feature" either and it, too, is cluttered.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#155 Old 9th Sep 2013 at 1:15 PM
Quote: Originally posted by CatOfEvilGenius
The "additional parameters" on the body shop filter, especially for clothing, is massively useful. I found the filter when looking at all Sims 2 downloads, but when I look at an individual creator's downloads, the filter seems to be unavailable. Talking about this here:

Customise your view with Compatible mode, Featured uploads, Favourites and more! Show filters...

Many creators have over a hundred items of clothings. In the past, I have often narrowed that down when looking for specific things, like elder men's underwear, or children's separates. Please allow filtering of downloads on individual creator pages again. Thanks.


Ask and ye shall receive.,...

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Not actually evil.
#156 Old 9th Sep 2013 at 11:10 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
Ask and ye shall receive.,...


Thank you, Delphy, for putting back the body shop filters on individual creator's pages. Just what I needed for better searching!

Please spay or neuter your pets. --- Cat Music Video! --- my meshes
Lab Assistant
#157 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 2:01 PM
I like the new style but I miss the 'Thread Tools' option, mainly the 'Show Printable Version' because I like to print out all my downloads. If I right click on the page to print from this new style, I get a lot of gobble-de-gook at the top of the page. I'm using Google Chrome. Can this be fixed or are there 'Thread Tools' here and I'm just blind? Thanks in advance.

Sarah_Sims
NRaas Industries
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#158 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 8:59 PM
rose: I think you're about the only person I know of who prints stuff anymore... You can still access the print option it's just... sort of hidden. If you go to http://www.modthesims.info/printthread.php?t=XXXX where XXX is the number in the download URL, it should work

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Lab Assistant
#159 Old 14th Sep 2013 at 12:04 AM
@Delphy: I had a feeling I might be the only one who prints lol! It's the only way I can keep my downloads organised. I do have over 900 of them (mods & cc).

Thanks for the workaround but (you knew there was a 'but' coming, didn't you?) is there a chance there might be an easier way in the future? Pretty please? Thanks heaps.

Sarah_Sims
NRaas Industries
Test Subject
#160 Old 15th Sep 2013 at 6:48 PM
Default New Theme
This is awful! My computer can't load most of the page and it's not at all easy to use. Can I have my old theme back please! I knew where everything was and it didn't take forever to load usually.

Gayla

Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
Hi All,

TL;DR: Themes + code reverted. New style will go live eventually. Nothing to see here, carry on.

So the news yesterday was the introduction of a new theme here on the site. This garnered a LOT of feedback from users, with some nice breakdowns, some good constructive posts, and a whole bunch of polarised opinions thrown in for good measure.

So what went wrong? Well, firstly, and this is a valid point - not enough end-user feedback was gotten during the construction process. Secondly, the colour schemes chosen weren't "good enough" for a lot of people. Thirdly, the layout of the download browse pages and the member profiles came in for a lot of flak. Lastly, there seemed to be some client and server side performance issues. All of these I will be addressing. But the main point is that I've reverted the entire site *and* the codebase back to the old version. It's just not possible to run both at the same time so this was the only option.

What went right? Well, I believe that HTML5 and CSS3 *are* here to stay, same with the larger thumbnails and responsive design. A lot of you *did* like the new styles, but enough of you where unhappy that I've rolled the design and code back.

So, whats next? Well, for one, I'm going to be providing an alternative site at https://www.modthesims.info/?styleid=40 - this will be constantly updated with the latest bleeding edge code the same as we have on the staff only server.

Next, and I want to stress this - the old themes *will* be going away eventually. Once Bootstrap has been more thoroughly tested and tweaked then I'll announce a changeover date and get more feedback at that time.

Lastly, I realise that this was a shock to a lot of you and that it probably wasn't the correct way to do this. I'd like to apologise for the hard cut, and rest assured that next time it'll be a bit more gradual. I'd also like to thank a lot of you for being level headed and providing bug reports and constructive criticism. I've archived the thread for now, but I'll be reaching out to specific people with more questions and feedback. To those of you who played with alternate themes, I hope you can understand the ease and power of the new layout in how quickly and easily it is to style.

So the priorities for now are to tweak, adjust and generally find both a set of colour schemes *and* a layout that satisfies the majority of people (I realise that not everybody will like any new changes), but also incorporate some of the old layout features like more "row" based downloads. I'll also be adjusting some of the client side javascript so that it runs smoother on lower power computers.

Thanks for listening. Please do try and keep comments constructive.

Delphy

ETA: I've setup a Bootstrap feedback forum here: https://www.modthesims.info/forumdisplay.php?f=671 You can give specific feedback there. Theres also an input thread to do with postbits.

Life is a b*tch and then you die, and then you get reincarnated.
Mad Poster
#161 Old 16th Sep 2013 at 10:36 PM
piqued, you may want to check out this thread> http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=511141

My deviantART, MTS Yearbook Origin ID = Alistu
Test Subject
#162 Old 18th Sep 2013 at 12:07 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Menaceman44
piqued, you may want to check out this thread> http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=511141

Thank You!

Gayla(piqued)

Life is a b*tch and then you die, and then you get reincarnated.
Top Secret Researcher
#163 Old 28th Sep 2013 at 2:55 PM
I've been using bootstrap for months now and no way would I go back to the old layout. The new version is awesome. Took a bit to get used to where things were .... as with anything new!! The appearance is very pleasing and navigation a breeze. Great job Delphy. Thank you.
Test Subject
#164 Old 29th Sep 2013 at 5:25 AM
I'm not too keen on the new design, but I'll get used to it. I've yet to see a decent backend web developer make a great looking website and vice versa in regards to decent web designers, so it's not a big deal to me provided MTS' backend stays solid.

In terms of useability, why does it take numerous clicks to filter downloads? Javascript should improve site navigation, here it hinders it and seems more cosmetic than useful. For the 'classic' version, I used adblock to disable the jquery and css to get rid of the buttons (which have no logical function) and to view the entire web form and make my filter selections in a single click. Since it looks like I'll need to do this again with the new CSS, I just thought I'd let you know that it's an annoyance.

Also, while you're updating MTS, would you take a bit of time and make a more intelligent downloads search query? Your query requires an exact phrase so searches for 'window' will only pull files that have the word 'window' in them and no files that have the word 'windows'. This requires multiple database queries for a single item. I'm a bit surprised you don't have wildcard searches, but if it is because of the database load due to heavy traffic, then I could understand. If it's simply because you haven't thought about it, or you're concerned about results relevancy, then I'd suggest comparing your query results to another heavy traffic sims site like TSR (which has better filtering as well).

I hope this feedback is useful for you. Thanks for your hard work.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#165 Old 29th Sep 2013 at 8:54 AM
barbarat: Thanks for the kind words - thats exactly what I had hoped for with Bootstrap.

wtfever2: You are probably in one of the extreme minority with regards to turning off Javascript and CSS (mostly because then the entire site ceases to function well). When you do that on the download browser page, you end up with a LOT of filter options (since, well, there are a lot of things to filter on). Having these shown on all pages is something I've experimented with in the past but the main take away is that it simply takes up too much room on the page - this is why they are "hidden". But the tabbed way of browsing the filter hasn't actually changed from the old theme to this one, so it's still the same way it was. I guess you just don't like how it was before either

As you are no doubt aware, natural language matching is, well, a pain in the ass. It works fine adding a wildcard on words like "window" to "windows", but doesn't really work for words that are contained inside another word. The search mechanism I'm using currently is simply a FULLTEXT search on the title field, so it's a bit finicky.

I actually don't have any stats currently on how often searches are triggered from within the download browser, so I'm working under the assumption that searching isn't used as much as simply browsing by category (ie drilling down to Lots & Housing then Residential). In any case the simple display of the filter boxes is something that ends up being very awkward on the page unless you have a sidebar for it to sit in. I'll keep your comments in mind when I next come to review the download browser pages.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Test Subject
#166 Old 4th Oct 2013 at 10:30 AM
Quote:
wtfever2: You are probably in one of the extreme minority with regards to turning off Javascript and CSS (mostly because then the entire site ceases to function well). When you do that on the download browser page, you end up with a LOT of filter options (since, well, there are a lot of things to filter on). Having these shown on all pages is something I've experimented with in the past but the main take away is that it simply takes up too much room on the page - this is why they are "hidden". But the tabbed way of browsing the filter hasn't actually changed from the old theme to this one, so it's still the same way it was. I guess you just don't like how it was before either


Ah, sorry I wasn't clear. I don't disable Javascript or CSS on this site, I only disabled it for the search filter. Here is what it looks like disabled (screen: http://x8k.org/mts/filters.jpg). The filters are hidden as you intended, but when they are needed it only takes one click to modify them and I can see what I clicked beforehand without having to click through all the buttons again. It does take up space, but only when a user wants to use them. Once the search is submitted, the filter hides the options again and they are preserved so the user need only click once to make edits as opposed to having to click multiple times or remember what filters were selected initially. Frankly speaking, I think you've done a great job with the overall javascript on this site, and I'm not just trying to pat you on the back. I really think you've done and you continue to do a stellar job with your site. I only mentioned filters as an annoyance because I had to disable the CSS and javascript again with the new design, and since the site design is being updated just thought I'd recommend perhaps another look at it (again, just for the sake of useability).

Quote:
As you are no doubt aware, natural language matching is, well, a pain in the ass. It works fine adding a wildcard on words like "window" to "windows", but doesn't really work for words that are contained inside another word. The search mechanism I'm using currently is simply a FULLTEXT search on the title field, so it's a bit finicky.


And that's putting it nicely I can understand why you query using FULLTEXT, but (if it doesn't significantly slow your DB) would it be possible to add a wildcard IN BOOLEAN MODE to your statement for a fuzzy search? Or something like that? At the moment, searching for words like 'window' doesn't return anything related to 'windows'. In the best case scenario, there are skewed results (ex. http://x8k.org/mts/querybcs.jpg), but in the worst case there are no results (ex. http://x8k.org/mts/querywcs.jpg). While this won't change anything for 'strawberry' vs 'strawberries' it should output more relevant results for the downloads on this site.

Anyway, thanks for being open to feedback, and I'm sure all of the users here like myself understand that you're doing what you have to do to keep MTS running smoothly. Take care and much respect.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#167 Old 6th Oct 2013 at 11:19 AM
wtfever2: I've actually been redoing the filters based on your feedback (it was on my list anyway), and going back to a more longer list rather than tabbed. To be honest the general way that the filters work needs work in terms of being able to find content, so this is definately high on my list.

What I currently have looks something like this:



It needs work though

With regards to the FULLTEXT, I'm already using the IN BOOLEAN MODE since I found that a normal FULLTEXT didn't work right for the kind of searches we do. What the search actually does is search for both title *and* the keywords (download search, of course - the normal search works on post text).

match(thread.keywords, thread.title) against ('+\"".$tag."\"' in boolean mode)

Here, tag is the search term you fill in. For those 2 searches could you possible paste me the URL in the navbar? That should give me all I need to recreate it and see why they are coming up odd or blank.

ETA Okay I think I know whats going on. The tags contain stuff like "#black chair, #desk chair, #maxis recolor", and of course "desk" matches what you've actually typed in. So that explains the weird matches.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Test Subject
#168 Old 9th Oct 2013 at 4:32 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
What I currently have looks something like this:



It needs work though


Thanks for the update. It looks rather good so far, and I think it will yield desired results faster for us end users.

Quote:
match(thread.keywords, thread.title) against ('+\"".$tag."\"' in boolean mode)

Here, tag is the search term you fill in. For those 2 searches could you possible paste me the URL in the navbar? That should give me all I need to recreate it and see why they are coming up odd or blank.

ETA Okay I think I know whats going on. The tags contain stuff like "#black chair, #desk chair, #maxis recolor", and of course "desk" matches what you've actually typed in. So that explains the weird matches.


The URLs are:
windchime vs windchimes and desk vs desks

I think the following might work to incorporate the inclusion of regular -S plurals (not for -ES / -IES)
Code:
('+\"".$tag."\"*' in boolean mode)


If it works and doesn't significantly affect load times I would suggest that. I think enclosing the * within the double quotation marks will yield funky results, thus I believe the wildcard must be enclosed within the single quotation mark that encloses the search string. If you'd like me to test it out on my own DB, I can, but I won't be able to do so until a fortnight.

Anyway, thanks a bunch for taking the time to look at this. Trust me, it is much appreciated!
Lab Assistant
#169 Old 13th Feb 2016 at 6:31 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
rose: I think you're about the only person I know of who prints stuff anymore... You can still access the print option it's just... sort of hidden. If you go to http://www.modthesims.info/printthread.php?t=XXXX where XXX is the number in the download URL, it should work


@Delphy: Back in September 2013 when the site's theme changed, you very kindly gave me the solution above to enable me to continue printing pages without getting a load of code at the top. I've been using this method since then with no problems but just recently it has stopped working. After I press Enter, the address reverts back to the same as the download page. In other words, this "http://www.modthesims.info/printthread.php?t=571738" becomes this "http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=571738".

I know I'm probably the only person in the world that still prints things out but would really appreciate it if this could possibily be fixed if/when you have the time. Or maybe an alternative way to do it now? Many thanks.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
Original Poster
#170 Old 13th Feb 2016 at 7:38 PM
Hi Sarah,

Thats right because printthread is supposed to only be used for threads, not for downloads, so a few days ago I noticed a bot spamming the heck out of printthread URLs for downloads - thus, I changed it. Just out of curiosity why do you still need to print download pages?

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Lab Assistant
#171 Old 15th Feb 2016 at 1:31 AM Last edited by Sarah_Sims : 15th Feb 2016 at 4:17 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
Hi Sarah,

Thats right because printthread is supposed to only be used for threads, not for downloads, so a few days ago I noticed a bot spamming the heck out of printthread URLs for downloads - thus, I changed it. Just out of curiosity why do you still need to print download pages?


Oh I see. Thanks for explaining.
I like to print out the details of any mods I have installed in my game so they're easy to refer to whilst playing. I have over 300 mods so it's a bit difficult to remember what they all do. It also helps having a printout if/when my internet goes down, which it does quite frequently, unfortunately. I'm assuming from what you've said, that it's not possible to print decently anymore then? If so, that's a shame but I'll live.
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