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Clarity redesign

hilary

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(Only 'I Ching News' in the rather loose sense that Clarity's about the I Ching and it has some news…)

Here's a blog post about the upcoming redesign.

To elaborate a bit... bright and early tomorrow morning (UK morning, that is), Audrey-the-expert will finish moving most of the site to the new design - basically, the blog and all the pages that aren't a) forum/ WikiWing or b) your account pages.

Then I will fix the home page, and switch the forum to the new style. And once that's working I will do the account pages and assorted other tweaks. And I'll publish another blog post with a guide to the new site, to make sure you can find everything with no problem.

In theory, this will all go beautifully smoothly. You'll just see the forum magically change to the lovely new design without so much as a hiccup. The top and bottom of the page will look very different - new images, new menus - but the forums in the middle will work just the same way.

In practice, if it all looks like a dog's dinner at first, bear with me. The new forum skin has been working nicely as a test, but since lots of files it uses will be moved, I've had to change the links to all of those - and I won't be able to see whether I've got that right until after the move. The forums will keep working, though.

Similarly for your account and membership pages, except that I haven't been able to test those with the new design at all - so while they will work, they will probably look funny for a while, until they don't.

If, after any obvious dogs' dinners have been tidied up, you find mistakes/ bugs/ oddities, please assume I don't know about them, and tell me! Likewise if you're not sure where something has gone, please ask.

Once I've tied up any loose ends, I plan to disappear on holiday for a couple of weeks... :zzz:
 

Liselle

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What a huge job. Congratulations on being done! (Being done is is a feeling we sadly don't get to experience often enough...)
 

hilary

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Well, almost done. I have just checked 'write tomorrow's to-do list' off today's to-do list, so I suppose this counts as progress, in a way...
 

Trojina

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In theory, this will all go beautifully smoothly. You'll just see the forum magically change to the lovely new design without so much as a hiccup. The top and bottom of the page will look very different - new images, new menus - but the forums in the middle will work just the same way.


Intriguing !
 

hilary

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Well, that was the theory. In practice, as you see, we are still decidedly 'pale and interesting'. Visit a page outside the forum to see what the top and bottom of the page are supposed to look like.

I asked Yi for guidance for today and had 25.4.5 to 27, so this is me not panicking and instead quietly writing a note to the expert to see if she can fix this between dinner and bed-time (she's in New Zealand). If she can't, I'll poke around myself... or it may have to wait until she has time.
 

rodaki

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the new skin looks lovely - great job! :)

I don't wanna be the bearer of bad news but the free reading section is not working well for me . . (I'm guessing you took the old style readings out?). I get the hexagrams only there's no red in changing lines, which made the reading so much easier to read and no text appears right . . instead I get a couple of warnings :bag:

(I have taken a screen caption if you need to see more details)
 

hilary

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Thank you for telling me! Exactly the kind of message I need. (And I'm glad you like the skin and happy to see you can post.)

Yes, the idea is to 'retire' the old reading now. I wonder whether the new one could be tweaked to display a different graphic for changing lines... that could be something to commission from Ewald presently.

I will see if I can make the text of the reading appear instead of the error messages...
 

Trojina

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Oh no I always used the old style reading where you click once

never mind, I suppose if no one uses it. I always think those ones where you click for each line are silly

Yes very nice new design and I appear to have a new font with bigger writing
 

rodaki

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;)

a couple more things: I can't see the 'thank you' button anywhere and there's only the option of 'answer with quote' (I'm missing the simple 'answer' button)

oh and I'm using Chrome (just in case it makes any difference)
 

hilary

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Actually that makes three protests about losing the old reading... maybe you should start a petition.
 

Trojina

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I keep getting logged out :rant:

the free casting tool isn't working as there are no red lines as Dora said. I prefer the old style reading, one click and there's your answer
 

rodaki

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Actually that makes three protests about losing the old reading... maybe you should start a petition.


hmmm, maybe we should!! :rolleyes:

anyway, I've found what I was missing but they don't always show up . . haven't figured out yet when they appear and when not . .
 

hilary

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;)

a couple more things: I can't see the 'thank you' button anywhere and there's only the option of 'answer with quote' (I'm missing the simple 'answer' button)

oh and I'm using Chrome (just in case it makes any difference)

What 'answer' button are you missing? Those all look the same to me.

Hm, I can't see the 'thanks' button either. This makes no sense at all - there's no reason for that to have gone walkabout that I can think of. I'll put it on my list of things to chase later.

For now... I don't think I'm going to be able to get the contact form to work in the forum menu, so I need to replace it with a simple link to the contact page. Better concentrate, as if I delete the wrong bit of code the whole page will be sucked into the menu as if into a black hole...
 

rodaki

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What 'answer' button are you missing? Those all look the same to me.

Hm, I can't see the 'thanks' button either. This makes no sense at all - there's no reason for that to have gone walkabout that I can think of. I'll put it on my list of things to chase later.

For now... I don't think I'm going to be able to get the contact form to work in the forum menu, so I need to replace it with a simple link to the contact page. Better concentrate, as if I delete the wrong bit of code the whole page will be sucked into the menu as if into a black hole...


ok, ok no rush :) . . it's bizarre cause I either see all the options BUT can't post thru quick reply . . OR I get less options and I can post alright . . I'm guessing there's some small thing that needs calibrating

btw, the readings page seems to b working well for me (I'm on Chrome)
I'm gonna log back in later again
 

hilary

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I keep getting logged out :rant:

That could be because of some peculiarity in your browser settings, not allowing cookies to be set to track your session. I have changed the login form on the forum pages to access Amember directly and maybe that means your browser needs to get used to a session cookie from somewhere else.

Alternatively - if lots of people are getting the same problem, then it means I've messed something up with that change, and need to change it back.

So if anyone else is getting logged out more than before, please shout loudly.
 

hilary

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ok, ok no rush :) . . it's bizarre cause I either see all the options BUT can't post thru quick reply . . OR I get less options and I can post alright . . I'm guessing there's some small thing that needs calibrating

btw, the readings page seems to b working well for me (I'm on Chrome)
I'm gonna log back in later again

Since I'm not seeing the same issue, I could use a screenshot or two to explain this one. But as you say, no rush!
 

hilary

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Progress Report

Things that should be working (so if they aren't, assume I don't know, and please tell me):


  • the site in general - under 'Learn the I Ching', 'I Ching readings', 'Journal software' and 'About'. Free reading, search, links... everything should be working.
  • the blog
  • the forums - everything under 'Community'. Nothing should have changed here except the appearance.

Things that I know are still wonky (to use a technical term):


  • all pages generated by Amember

- ie any page with /amember/ in the address. That would include the 'lost password' page and the account/ profile pages available from the top right corner, and also the order forms you reach by clicking through from the shop pages. These should work - they just look odd. I'll be doing those next, unless anyone finds me something more urgent to do...?

If there's anything you can't find, see the latest blog post -
http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/answers/2016/07/23/guide-to-the-new-website/
- or use the site search, or ask me here.
 

precision grace

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Still being logged out randomly

As the title said - tried to post this as quick reply and got error message asking me to reload and log in.

Also, please count me as another voice in favour of old free readings that casts the whole hex with one click.

Also, I am probably going to be one of the rare, but inevitable few who says I WANT THE OLD SITE BACK! Waaaaaaah. Sorry. I got used to finding things a certain way and this new layout will make the navigation that much more cumbersome. For example, trying to click on the Search menu item on the top of the main page is impossible as for some reason blog menu keeps displaying - and everything is in two columns which is very strange and awkward. The search itself had gotten worse after the last upgrade and I can only imagine it will be even worse now. But considering you are probably doing this on a super tight budget I really hate to complain, specially as I don't contribute financially or even on the forums. :blush: So anyway.

Thank you for your hard work, I will shut up now. :eek:


Things that should be working (so if they aren't, assume I don't know, and please tell me):


  • the site in general - under 'Learn the I Ching', 'I Ching readings', 'Journal software' and 'About'. Free reading, search, links... everything should be working.
  • the blog
  • the forums - everything under 'Community'. Nothing should have changed here except the appearance.

Things that I know are still wonky (to use a technical term):


  • all pages generated by Amember

- ie any page with /amember/ in the address. That would include the 'lost password' page and the account/ profile pages available from the top right corner, and also the order forms you reach by clicking through from the shop pages. These should work - they just look odd. I'll be doing those next, unless anyone finds me something more urgent to do...?

If there's anything you can't find, see the latest blog post -
http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/answers/2016/07/23/guide-to-the-new-website/
- or use the site search, or ask me here.
 

Liselle

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Ooh, pretty! :D (Which is not at all to say the old site wasn't - I liked it, too.)

I love the menus - the organization of them, the way they function, the little summaries, the blog archive navigational aids, even the way everything pulls colors blissfully from the clouds. :)

And I love the cloud/sun pictures and your "Yi" rationale for them. Only...at first impression, the top one especially is so spectacular it overwhelms the site title and menu headings. Those are hard to read, which is a little disconcerting. At a normal viewing distance, it almost looks as if those things are in a slightly gray or at least off-black font color. Close inspection shows that not to be true (I think) - still, the title and headings text looks subdued.

Things may not be working completely enough for me to tell...since mousing over a heading puts a box around it...are you using bold for anything? The "Learn the I Ching" heading is currently in bold (on my screen at least), and that one is more visible.

Searching - a search menu item exists, but most of the search features are in a sub-menu under "Community". That might be confusing.

There are two links under the main search menu - "Search page" and "Search everything at Clarity." Do those each link to the same place - is that intended? If they actually are duplicates, I think I'd vote for the latter title. "Search page" might sound a little bit like "search the page you're on," what ctrl-f does.

Another little thing - Activity Stream is gone? I kind of liked the self-updating nature of that...

But in general....

:bows:

and

:claps:

and

:bounce:
 

hilary

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As the title said - tried to post this as quick reply and got error message asking me to reload and log in.

Ah, fiddlesticks. I was hoping I could blame that on some idiosyncrasy of Trojina's. I'm afraid it may take until Monday to get that fixed as Amember support aren't available until then.
Also, please count me as another voice in favour of old free readings that casts the whole hex with one click.

Also, I am probably going to be one of the rare, but inevitable few who says I WANT THE OLD SITE BACK! Waaaaaaah. Sorry. I got used to finding things a certain way and this new layout will make the navigation that much more cumbersome. For example, trying to click on the Search menu item on the top of the main page is impossible as for some reason blog menu keeps displaying - and everything is in two columns which is very strange and awkward. The search itself had gotten worse after the last upgrade and I can only imagine it will be even worse now. But considering you are probably doing this on a super tight budget I really hate to complain, specially as I don't contribute financially or even on the forums. :blush: So anyway.

Thank you for your hard work, I will shut up now. :eek:
Hm, are you accessing the site on a phone by any chance? The 'two columns' part sounds as though you might be. You might prefer the simple mobile style, which you can try from the forum settings page (as per blog post).

To search the forums you want the 'search' options under 'Community'.

Ooh, pretty! :D (Which is not at all to say the old site wasn't - I liked it, too.)

I love the menus - the organization of them, the way they function, the little summaries, the blog archive navigational aids, even the way everything pulls colors blissfully from the clouds. :)

And I love the cloud/sun pictures and your "Yi" rationale for them. Only...at first impression, the top one especially is so spectacular it overwhelms the site title and menu headings. Those are hard to read, which is a little disconcerting. At a normal viewing distance, it almost looks as if those things are in a slightly gray or at least off-black font color. Close inspection shows that not to be true (I think) - still, the title and headings text looks subdued.

Things may not be working completely enough for me to tell...since mousing over a heading puts a box around it...are you using bold for anything? The "Learn the I Ching" heading is currently in bold (on my screen at least), and that one is more visible.
Good heavens, so it is. It shouldn't be - the 'Community' one should, to indicate that that's where you are. I wonder how that happened and more to the point how to fix it.

I can have a go at making the menu links... hm... what would help? Bigger? Fade out the background image a bit? I don't especially want to make them all bold because I'm using that (in theory!) as a 'you are here' signal.

Searching - a search menu item exists, but most of the search features are in a sub-menu under "Community". That might be confusing.
You are quite right, it is. See Precision Grace's post.
There are two links under the main search menu - "Search page" and "Search everything at Clarity." Do those each link to the same place - is that intended? If they actually are duplicates, I think I'd vote for the latter title. "Search page" might sound a little bit like "search the page you're on," what ctrl-f does.
Yes, same place: that's not two links, it's a link and a description. I could make it say just 'Site search' instead.
Another little thing - Activity Stream is gone? I kind of liked the self-updating nature of that...
Oh, I thought it was doing exactly the same thing as 'latest posts' so I removed the link. If I can remember where it was, I could put it back if you like...?
But in general....

:bows:

and

:claps:

and

:bounce:

Thank you.
:eek:uch:
:zzz:

Trillion-dollar question: are you getting logged out repeatedly?
 

Liselle

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Trillion-dollar question: are you getting logged out repeatedly?

That hasn't happened to me yet. What I've had is "vBulletin Message - The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later."

That seems expected during a site redesign/upgrade, unless of course it isn't and other people aren't getting that. (And of course if I successfully post this maybe it's all better.)


I get that searching the forums and searching the other pages are separate technical things (right?), and you've taken pains to make that clear in various places. It's just that when a search item exists in a main menu, it's maybe natural to expect all the search options to be there. But since this is inherently confusing (because of the "two separate things" issue), there may be nothing better to do about it.

At the risk of speaking for Precision Grace, when she said this:

The search itself had gotten worse after the last upgrade and I can only imagine it will be even worse now.

I think she meant vBulletin site search is just plain bad. Its shortcomings have been well-noted for ages. This is of course not your fault, and, bless you and Ewald, you've gone to great lengths to compensate for it with Google site search and hexagram search.


...that's not two links, it's a link and a description. I could make it say just 'Site search' instead.

Aha - the problem then is that the mouse pointer remains a little hand over both the link and the description. "Site search" sounds good, though.


I can have a go at making the menu links... hm... what would help? Bigger? Fade out the background image a bit? I don't especially want to make them all bold because I'm using that (in theory!) as a 'you are here' signal.

Okay, yes, so not bold then. There could be a lot of options...bigger might do it, unless it'd run out of space horizontally. I like the background image & would hate to see it faded too much - I don't think it's too bright per se, if the headings could be tweaked. Hard to say without experimenting.

I'm not kidding, though, for a millisecond when I first opened the site this morning I wondered why there was a vast empty banner on top, then realized it wasn't empty at all.

I do think the site title would benefit from being quite a bit more conspicuous. Larger, maybe in italics (though maybe I'm still just used to seeing the old one in italics), maybe in one of the lighter colors pulled from the clouds, maybe a different font...no one wants a site with ten fonts on every page, but a couple would be fine, I think.


Speaking of fonts - I really like the new post font (again, nothing against our friend Trebuchet, who I started using in real life after meeting him here :)).

But - the font in the post quote boxes, not as lovely. IMO it's too small, not crisp like the main post font, and the line spacing is a bit too great. Maybe another half a point in size or so would fix all of that at once? Maybe the italic version of whatever-font-it-is just isn't very well done? Don't know.

Also the font in the Quick Search box seems a bit tiny.

Oh, I thought it was doing exactly the same thing as 'latest posts' so I removed the link. If I can remember where it was, I could put it back if you like...?

There was also an option "Latest started threads" or something. I certainly didn't use them all the time, but they were nice to have.
 

hilary

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That hasn't happened to me yet.
Good.

The 'getting logged out all the damn time' thing may be a matter of how/ when people's cookies were set and might be curable by deleting all cookies from one's browser cache.

If it doesn't get fixed today it should hopefully get fixed tomorrow, when Amember tech support come back to work.

What I've had is "vBulletin Message - The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later."

That seems expected during a site redesign/upgrade, unless of course it isn't and other people aren't getting that. (And of course if I successfully post this maybe it's all better.)

Heh. I will spare you the long story. Something was eating the memory and causing everything to keep over. Since repeated database crashes are a good recipe for irreversible data corruption (ie loss of archives) I closed the forums. Now the memory usage appears under control, so I've risked re-opening them.
I get that searching the forums and searching the other pages are separate technical things (right?), and you've taken pains to make that clear in various places. It's just that when a search item exists in a main menu, it's maybe natural to expect all the search options to be there. But since this is inherently confusing (because of the "two separate things" issue), there may be nothing better to do about it.
Or I could duplicate the hexagram search and forum search links under the 'search' icon on the right. That wouldn't hurt anything, and it might help. It will take some code-fiddling (it needs some conditional code so the links only appear when you're logged in) so I won't get to that right away.

More soon... need to check the memory status...
 

precision grace

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Ah, fiddlesticks. I was hoping I could blame that on some idiosyncrasy of Trojina's. I'm afraid it may take until Monday to get that fixed as Amember support aren't available until then.

Hm, are you accessing the site on a phone by any chance? The 'two columns' part sounds as though you might be. You might prefer the simple mobile style, which you can try from the forum settings page (as per blog post).

To search the forums you want the 'search' options under 'Community'.

I am usually accessing the site on my Surface Pro 3 - which has a tablet layout, so that probably explains the double columns. I've also tried it on my phone where the layout is the usual phone layout, so that's fine. If I select desktop view, it doesn't actually fit my laptop/tablet view, but is a bit larger. Perhaps because my resolution on the tablet is quite high? Anyway, it's not a big deal, just takes some getting used to, although it does seem that the design hasn't been optimised for tablets.

I've found the search in the footer now, which is what I am used to using, I just wish I didn't have to spend ages scrolling down to where the search box is. This item I must say I wish was different, i.e. I wish the search box was part of the Menu banner at the top. And I agree that the search box is too small.

On an unrelated note - I was amused to find that Oxford IT has named one of their servers Hilary.

PS. Not being logged out any more.
 

hilary

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Not being logged out? Brilliant! I have no idea why, but hooray.

Warning: the forums may or may not stay open. Tech support are opening them experimentally, to see whether they can run safely. If memory usage starts climbing again they will have to close them. So copy any long posts you write to the clipboard before you try to post them!
 

hilary

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The site search available from the footer is the one available from the menu at the top. Tap the magnifying glass icon on the right (or, or at the bottom...) for a search box that does everything except the forums, plus a link to the search page with everything.

For forum-specific search tap 'Community' in the menu at the top and you get forum search and hexagram search links.

If the tech support people have solved the memory usage nightmare I'll be able to get started on all these styling niggles - fonts too small, menus too invisible, Amember pages too weird. But I can't do much until the site will stay put long enough to be edited - except make a list. I am making a nice, long list.
 

hilary

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If you can't log in...

Solved a few problems, got a whole new one.

Now it seems that logging in to the site in the normal way doesn't log you into the forums. Am I right in saying that it wasn't like this yesterday morning - after the new design but before all the fun started?

Currently if you use the log in form at the top right-hand corner of the page you will be logged into all parts of the site apart from the I Ching Community.

Getting this one solved may take until tomorrow. In the meantime, you can still log into the forums, but only by using a different login form.

The simplest way to find one:

  1. Visit the forums home page by clicking 'Community' in the menu.
  2. In the list of forums, look on the right-hand side to see the names of the most recent posters. Eg "Yi debugs a plugin" and 'by Tohpol' on the next line.
  3. Click on a blue name.
  4. In the little menu that pops up, click any of the options - 'view profile' will do.
  5. Because you need to be logged in to view a profile, this will take you to a vBulletin login page. Logging in here will work.

This is not meant as a permanent solution. I am going to get this sorted!
 

hilary

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Grace, that is brilliantly helpful, thank you. It shows me exactly where the problems are, I can make a list and go and look for help with them.

A question: on the home page, you had horizontal scrolling (argh) before you clicked 'mobile site' at the bottom. (That shouldn't happen; it should detect your screen size and adjust automatically.) Does that also happen on other pages eg a blog post or http://www.onlineClarity.co.uk/learn ? Or do they work right from the start?

Do you know what your screen resolution is?

And is the menu behaving itself? It should become 'mobile friendly' at least to the extent that things appear when you tap them and you follow links by tapping twice. (I found that worked politely in Chrome on my tablet, but not in more obscure browsers.) Something you said earlier about not being able to access one menu item because another started popping up made me think it might not be.
 

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