Earthwaves Earth Sciences Forum

Posted by EQF on January 8, 2013

As I stated in multiple posts on the old EarthWaves board, the format of this board might be a little complex for most visitors.

Quite a few improvements could probably be made by adding help information for specific commands etc. That should not be too difficult. But it will take some time.

--- In the bottom area you might add a “Total number of visits” for the entire board’s history. It should be possible to keep track of how many times different people visited the board. Each general visit could be counted in that area rather than how many individual posts were read. That information could be valuable as it would let people know if important messages and data etc. were being circulated.

--- On the top line along with the “Member List” etc. headings you might want to add a “Send an E-mail to the Board Monitor” resource so that people can easily contact you without having to go through the various boards to find your contact information. With so few members you probably won’t be overloaded with E-mail notes. And if that did happen you could always remove that resource.

Newbie ??? (humor intended)

Let me remind you, if I can remember that far back, I was one of the two people who helped get the precursor board to the previous EarthWaves board started. Without that effort ages ago this present board would probably not exist !!! (more humor)

(01-08-2014, 08:26 AM)EQF Wrote: [ -> ]Posted by EQF on January 8, 2013

As I stated in multiple posts on the old EarthWaves board, the format of this board might be a little complex for most visitors.

Quite a few improvements could probably be made by adding help information for specific commands etc. That should not be too difficult. But it will take some time.

If you look at the top right of the page (this or the main one), there are several links including help. There are several topics already covered. This comes with the software.

(01-08-2014, 08:26 AM)EQF Wrote: [ -> ]--- In the bottom area you might add a “Total number of visits” for the entire board’s history. It should be possible to keep track of how many times different people visited the board. Each general visit could be counted in that area rather than how many individual posts were read. That information could be valuable as it would let people know if important messages and data etc. were being circulated.

At the bottom right of the main page, in the bottom brown bar, there is a link "Forum Statistics". It doesn't have all the hits of everyone just viewing the forum, although that is tracked by my web hosting tools. I have looked into some sort of hit counter but haven't found a solution I like yet.

(01-08-2014, 08:26 AM)EQF Wrote: [ -> ]--- On the top line along with the “Member List” etc. headings you might want to add a “Send an E-mail to the Board Monitor” resource so that people can easily contact you without having to go through the various boards to find your contact information. With so few members you probably won’t be overloaded with E-mail notes. And if that did happen you could always remove that resource.

Bottom left corner of every page, "Contact Us", opens up your email client and sends email directly to me.

(01-08-2014, 08:26 AM)EQF Wrote: [ -> ]Newbie ??? (humor intended)

Yes you are!!!

Brian

I've found a simple hit counter to my liking and installed it.

The hits show at the bottom of the main page in the section on forum statistics.

It shows unique visitors to all pages of the forums, and conforms to "IFABC Global Web Standards in defining what counts as a unique user".

An additional comment...

I realize it will take time to get used to the new forum's structure and features. I'm still getting used to all the stuff behind the scenes!!!

Brian

>I've found a simple hit counter to my liking and installed it.

Lots keeping me (EQF) busy these days. Otherwise I would be offering more suggestions.


That hit counter is not completely clear to me with regard to what it means or even which number on the page you are referring to. It might be necessary to simply have a counter that keeps track of the total number of posts read by anyone over the course of the board life.

And again, this is just to let people know if information is being circulated in an effective manner.


The time at the top right of the pages is UTC. But is says AM or PM, probably for the local time at Greenwich.

Could all of those times be changed so that it says UTC instead? Then people would know exactly what the time means. And they could do a simple mental calculation to tell them what their local time was when a note was posted etc.


How does the program generate the HTML code for the main Web page (if you are willing to give out that information)?

It probably creates a new version of the page each time someone posts a note. And if that is the case then you could probably easily modify the program to get the main Web page to look exactly like you want.

(01-11-2014, 07:19 PM)EQF Wrote: [ -> ]That hit counter is not completely clear to me with regard to what it means or even which number on the page you are referring to. It might be necessary to simply have a counter that keeps track of the total number of posts read by anyone over the course of the board life.

I got the hit counter right off the myBB website.

http://mods.mybb.com/view/hit-counter

There is apparently a standard by which a 'hit' is counted. It counts 'unique hits'. So, if a person visits a page for the first time, it's counted. They visit it later that day, it's NOT counted because they are not unique. There are rules by which this is all judged. Visit the web page to get more details.

Anyway, the other statistics you mention (along with the hits) are all displayed at the bottom left the main page, under the last green bar.

Additionally, in the very bottom brown bar, on the right, there is a link to "forum statistics" which shows even more information.

For me, being the administrator, I have access to yet even more levels of detailed statistics. For example, every page I see has some server statistics. Regular users do not get to see them. Here's an example,

Generated in 0.2327290 seconds (85.67% PHP / 14.33% MySQL)
SQL Queries: 17 / Global Parsing Time: 0.1023290 / Memory Usage: 3.75 MB
PHP version: 5.2.17 / Server Load: 0 / GZip Compression: Disabled

And, there's a link to even further detailed statistics that I can view.

(01-11-2014, 07:19 PM)EQF Wrote: [ -> ]The time at the top right of the pages is UTC. But is says AM or PM, probably for the local time at Greenwich.

I set the system time for the entire board to be UTC, which is effectively Greenwich. The differences are technical and looking up UTC and GMT on Wikipedia is very enlightening. Time standards can be a very complex thing, but for general common man usage it's safe to say UTC = GMT = Zulu.

However, when you log in, it may show a different time. You have the ability to select your local time zone in your user profile. I already covered this in other postings with Roger.

(01-11-2014, 07:19 PM)EQF Wrote: [ -> ]Could all of those times be changed so that it says UTC instead? Then people would know exactly what the time means. And they could do a simple mental calculation to tell them what their local time was when a note was posted etc.

I agree the date/time should always show the time zone, and it doesn't. It's one of the minor fixes I'm looking to do, once I figure out where to make the fix. Something you may not realize is that the myBB program is VERY complex behind the scenes. It's a very large program with literally hundreds if not thousands of editable parameters. I like that. I've a personal saying, "knobs, buttons, and dials!! oh my!!" The more the merrier.

But that means more I have to learn and I'm still learning.

(01-11-2014, 07:19 PM)EQF Wrote: [ -> ]How does the program generate the HTML code for the main Web page (if you are willing to give out that information)?

It probably creates a new version of the page each time someone posts a note. And if that is the case then you could probably easily modify the program to get the main Web page to look exactly like you want.

http://www.mybb.com/

The program is written in PHP. There are no HTML pages. Everything is generated dynamically and "on the fly" as you view the pages. All the data is stored in a mySQL database.

The look of every page is controlled by numerous templates. There are templates for every little detail. A single page may invoke dozens or more templates just to be displayed. It may sound like overkill, but this is what gives the high degree of customization for the board.

So, making changes is just a matter of editing the templates. But there is one downside to so many templates, figuring out which one does what. THAT part I'm still learning.


Brian