New XenForo Interface FAQs

Hi All,

As of today, 2nd August 2017, the Forum 'engine' has been migrated from MyBB to XenForo software.

The reason for this change is to deal with a number of technical issues:

• Inability to upgrade the 'The Cure' theme from MyBB ver 1.6.10 to ver 1.8
• Errors on attempting to insert more that 3 images or links in a post
• Errors on attempting to open new threads

These issues progressed to a point where I had begun to be concerned that both user experience issues and security weaknesses were developing to such a level that operating the Forum might become untenable.

Hopefully these issues are now behind us.

The downside of course to all this is that users, including myself, are going to need to learn a new interface in order to participate in the life of the Forum. Hence, I have opened this thread in order to address any issues which may arise during the transition period.

A user manual for XenForo forum software is not currently available, though there is an online Guide for Administrators here on their site. This is not suitable for the end user and so I would hope to put together a user friendly version over the next month or so.

In the meantime, I will attempt to deal with any questions here in this dedicated thread - but please bear in mind that I am also learning on the fly as we go!

Regards,

Pat

 

First FAQ:

A number of people have emailed me today asking where has their private messaging gone?

The good news is that all your old PMs are safe - they are now called 'Conversations'.

To access your Conversations, click on your profile icon on the top right of the page as indicated in the screenshot below:

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Once your Profile Page pops up, you have access to all your personal stuff, including your Conversations (aka PMs).

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi Charles,

I have been on to Mike last night regarding this problem and he thinks it may be just a permissions issue. Could be related to the fact that all members with 'Researcher' status appear to have lost their stripes - but I as an Administrator cannot access or even see the Green Room either!

This issue is getting priority Charles.

Regards,

Pat

 

Charles,

Can you see the Green Room and all its sub sections when logged in now?

Thanks,

Pat

 

Hi Guys,

Yes, that is an issue as apparently XenForo does not support html coding in posts like MyBB did (when that option was turned on in MyBB).

Basically the html tables I had set up in the Resource Files section are not rendering due to this limitation. I have searched for an addon to overcome this problem and found what appears to be a good one here. It requires a small purchase fee and an installation process which hopefully is as simple as its described in the link!

The reason for the limitation in allowing html formatting and coding in posts is that it can be used with malicious intent and hence is either turned off by default as in MyBB (I had to turn it on in each section in which I used it on the old forum), or is just not an option as in XenForo.

Personally I like the extra formatting it allows such as html tables and embedded PDFs in posts and I therefore intend to purchase this addon over the weekend and install it. As you can see from the link, its usage permission can be restricted by a forum's Admin team and, unless somebody here wants to use it, I intend to set usage permission to the Admin group only.

Once its installed, I presume the html tables in the Resource Files section will render correctly, though I may have to recompose those threads to get that to happen - not a huge issue (I hope) as I have all the coding used in each thread saved on my PC.

Thanks for the feedback guys,

Pat