I’ve just registered and everything went very smoothly. My first impressions of the new forum are all positive. There’s nothing about it that I don’t find to be an improvement on EZboard (give me some time though and I’ll probably come up with something!)

This is the first ExpressionEngine forum I’ve seen but I must say I think you’ve chosen well, Dave.

Edit: just experimenting with the edit. A couple of things: Seeing ‘Newbie’ and the Post Count of 1 gave me a jolt. I guess we’re all in Boot Camp now! (And I was preparing an ode on Doc Techie reaching his glorious 10,000th post! Ah well, it’ll keep ......)

aldi, I’m going to ignore you - message me and I’ll see if it works.  Or post a reply to this and I’ll check it out.  BTW, my answer appears to be posted under the Smileys thread, although I think I’m posting under aldi’s thread.

What does Subscribe to this thread do?  Do I have to click it to get a reply posted on it?

edit: OK aldi - you can come out now.  I ignored you for a while, but I’m in a better mood now so I’ve stopped ignoring you.  You were invisible while I ignored you.  I couldn’t see your first post.

"Subscribe” will send you an email when someone replies the thread. In most cases, you probably will not want to subscribe to a thread. You can also subscribe to articles on the main site and get an email when someone comments on them. I think I set the defaults to make subscription an opt-in feature. Let me know if it is an opt-out feature and I’ll change it.

Yes, “newbie” is a bit of a shock. I can assign other labels if someone has some category suggestions or just get rid of the labels altogether. But it may be a bit of incentive to get your post counts up after I make the switch.

I seem to be automatically subscribed; at least, I get e-mail notifications when someone replies, and I don’t remember opting in.

I’d suggest changing “Newbie” to “Member” or eliminating it altogether.

The experience so far:
Speed (or lack of) is an issue.
I think smileys make a forum seem frivolous.  I’d prefer it if they weren’t available.
The results of a search should all be accessible.  At present I can only see what’s on the page, not all of them, nor do I know how to access them.
I’m not sure what the CODE button is for.
I agree with lh - I don’t like NEWBIE etc.  It’s going to encourage more junk posting, IMHO.

Edit:
Sorry - more gripes and queries.
What is the GUIDED button for?
What is the CLOSE TAGS button for?
What is the PERMALINK button for?  (ie this post is Permalink #6)
I couldn’t read all of your comments in BLOG, Dave, as I couldn’t scroll down any further than what was on screen.

"Articles on the main site” refers to all the stuff on wordorigins.org that is not in the discussion forums, the Big List, AWWW, etc.

I have no clue what the Close Tags button does. Nothing in the documentation. Where do you see a “Guided” button? I don’t know to what that refers.

“Permalink” refers to an stable, permanent url to a particular page. One that can be linked to.

Regarding the scrolling problem. That seems to be the problem I was having on my machine at work. Do you see it all the time or is it intermittent? What browser are you using?

To turn off the automatic notification by default, go to My Account > Personal Settings > Email Settings and uncheck the “email notifications by default when you post a message” option. You can still choose to be notified for individual threads if you have the need.

I’ll figure out how to make unchecked by default. But since you’ve already joined, I think you’ll need to make the change manually for your account. If I change the default it will not affect existing accounts, only new ones.

Regarding the scrolling problem. That seems to be the problem I was having on my machine at work. Do you see it all the time or is it intermittent? What browser are you using?

IE6 and XP.  It’s intermittent - can’t see all posts on some of the archived pages or occasionally on your blog, but can with others. 

Also there’s no link on some of the pages, eg the Most Recent Topics/Most Popular Threads page, to the Home Page.  You have to click on the Meta etc threads to link to the Home Page. 

No idea what I meant by “guided”.  Sorry.

When you click “Post Reply” you (eventually) get a window for composing your reply.  At the upper left, to the left of the buttons for bold, italic, etc., is a pair a radio buttons.  One is labeled “Guided” and the other (default selection) is “Normal”.  I too wonder what “Guided” means, but not enough to invest time experimenting right now.

It seems like this site is pretty consistently as slow as EZboard’s bad days.  Unless this can be resolved, I think it’s going to be a serious problem--I think that, even if people don’t drop away entirely, there will be less participation.  I’ve already had some “The hell with it, it’s not worth the time” moments while waiting for pages to load.

I take it there’s no way (for an ordinary user) to change the topic title when the conversation turns a corner?  On EZboard you can change your subject line.  I would have changed this one’s to “Guided” or something like that.  OTOH it’s easy to miss those changes, which sometimes causes confusion.  Still....

Enter Guided Mode and, for instance, click the Quote button. A box will appear to enter the quote, with basic instructions, ie Enter the text to be quoted. In Normal Mode no box appears and the Quote tags will simply be entered into the Reply box for insertion of the quote.

I echo Doctor T’s concerns about the speed. This is going to be a serious problem unless it can be fixed. It seems to be getting worse, it took an eternity for this Reply box to come up. I must say, if the speed issue continues we may be better off sticking with Ezboard.

I experimented with the Close Tag button under this assumption, but it didn’t seem to do anything.

On my vBulletin forum certain tags are available in replies , and clicking the tag sets the opening tag , and when the text, picture, or link is complete , you click “close tag” to close it . No need to insert the item between the tags .