Will this forum ever be fixed?

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Prior to Peplink “upgrading” the forum platform we could do things like dismiss posts that were irrelevant after looking through recent days posts, and actually find and follow posts in which we had an interest. And then this new forum platform was thrust upon us… To say it “has issues” is kind. Is this forum situation being addressed? Enough time has passed, and nothing is improving. It’s bad, Peplink. Really, really bad.

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I am not getting any email notifications

I am finding the new forum to be vey distracting, the old one was simple, and best of all it worked!

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Hi,
You should now receive an email notification for any post that you have subscribed to. Please note, there are 3 variations on when you will be notified (Normal, tracking, watching).

Also, for areas that are not working please submit via the feedback button and our developers will look into the issue.

Thanks

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Please find below an update on the progress of performance enhancement for forum.
Resolved issues:

  • Speed
  • Notifications
  • Image sizes on post
  • Post unread/read marks
  • ‘Yellow circle’ indication next to post- this indicates that post has been created in the last 3 days.
  • Muted post
  • Visible categories
  • Order of post response -‘sort by’
  • Advance search button
  • Basic details when clicking on profile Icon
  • Search bar responsiveness

Pending (high priority):

  • UI/UX improvements
  • Hidden/ dismissal of post improvement
  • Customization of categories
  • Indication on which user liked response on the post
  • Draft area for post creating
  • Unresponsive hyperlinks
  • Responsiveness of scroll bar

Thanks for your patience.
Last updated: 9/15/2021

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‘Will this forum ever be fixed?’
It will eventually. It is painful to use at the moment for sure.

To be fair though, this forum is brand new, custom written by the devs at Peplink. It doesn’t have the 8 year legacy of the old off the shelf one.

Keep on smashing away at the feedback button. @Shereen and the team are working flat out on it, and have already implemented many changes and fixes.

Feature parity with the old forum software will get there sooner rather than later, and then they will be able to work on the exciting new Peplink specific community features.

Personally - I would love to see a Trello board showing whats being worked on and outstanding issues just so that we know where we are.

Until then feedback, feedback, feedback :wink:

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The big problem is that is IS “brand new, custom-written by the devs”. The “devs” are great at making mobile-friendly routers and similar equipment. That gives them no experience whatsoever at creating and managing a user forum, and it shows. So, Peplink’s customers gained nothing, and lost much. I don’t know much about the forum software/service industry, but I know I am a member of a few others, all of which work perfectly well. None of them appear to have attempted to create their own, because it’s not what they do. This was a bonehead move, it shows, and instead of just going back to the perfectly usable proor platform or some other commercially available platform, they “devs” did this. Not a good move.

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Respectfully - I disagree.
This Peplink community is arguably a cornerstone of Peplink’s identity.

Listening and talking to partners and customers on here and watching what they can achieve (and learning where things go wrong) has worked its way into the DNA of the products and services Peplink deliver.

Peplink wants to build on this community, it wants to break down the barriers between users and partners and service providers so that new products and services and technologies can be created that we all need - and problems or issues can be identified, prioritised and resolved.

Considering then how important the forum is to the core business of Peplink (now and in the future) even if they didn’t want to build custom integrations, I would think it a massive commercial risk to outsource that to a 3rd party that they have very limited influence over.

Yes this forum is not yet ‘as good’ as the old one, but I expect it soon will be, and I hope it will then become considerably better.

For now, like you I am struggling with the changes too, so I feedback when I see things that don’t work like I want them to and when there is something that I think is broken.

Could the changeover have been managed batter - perhaps. I got to test the beta version a few weeks before it went live and reported issues I found - they were all fixed before the launch so there was an attempt at making this as painless as possible.

But just like their other products and services, what they want and need from us is feedback and guidance now so they can get the community foundation right to build the future forum features and capabilities upon.

Hang in there - it’ll come right, and if it doesn’t work out I’ll crack open an old emergency copy of vbulletin and we’ll fix it ourselves. :wink:

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will email notifications work for previously subscribed (normal, tracked, watched) threads on the old forum? i hope the subscriptions carried over…

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peplink custom coded the forum? that seems like a waste of time/resources… tons of off the shelf options are available!

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Hi Mystery,

Yes, this was a feature that works exactly the same as discourse, and subscriptions have been carried over. We can see you are currently subscribed to 1751 posts.

Let me know if you’re still experiencing any issues. Thanks

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“devs” don’t have to the same team. The team who make the router software don’t have to be the same team who make the code for forums.

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I agree with @MartinLangmaid . Only constructive feedbacks can help, and it will eventually be fixed and even be much better than the old forum.

I gave my warnings before the migration because I saw what happened to Ubiquiti’s forums, twice. But the devs are working hard to fix the problems and they listened to feedbacks. So I gave them a thumbs-up on that. Their response to feedbacks was faster than what Ubiquiti did, so let’s give them some time, and I believe they will be able to do it.

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I’ve submitted a few what I consider bugs via the Feedback button. We’ll see …

But as someone who has only been a forum user here for a few months, and now there’s new forum software, I have a few general questions:

  1. Will there be documentation on use of this forum? Because right now I could use it.
  2. What exactly does UNREAD mean in relation to the UNREAD text across the top of pages and in View All → Sort By → Unread? Or is UNREAD still broken? When I use either of these I get zero posts.
  3. On the LATEST page I have many posts showing yellow circles with some number inside of them. If I read those posts I would expect that circle to disappear. It doesn’t.
  4. How do I tell what posts I am either Watching or Tracking? How many? Can I see a list of them? (I assume those labels mean I’m subscribed to them)
  5. Will there be keyboard shortcuts?

Thanks,
festus

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When checking an old post with hundred responses (e.g. https://forum.peplink.com/t/peplinks-social-media-post), I need to select “Sort by Latest” every time to show the latest response instead of scroll through hundred pages to view the latest one. Can it go to first unread one in the thread (this is the old forum’s behavior)? Or remember “Sort by latest” preference?

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Hi Festus,

Appreciate your patience.

Please find my response below:

As of now, this is not something we have but it is something we can look into producing once key areas have been improved.

For ’ UNREAD’ to work, a setting of one of the following would have to be made:

  • Any post: Tracking or Watching
  • Any Category: Watched or watching first post
  • Any Tag: Watched or watching first post

Note: This is not a new feature, follows the same logic as discourse.

Example:
image.png

You may notice there a two yellow circle on one post at times. Circe 1 would indicate that the post was created in the last 3 days. Whilst circle 2 would indicate the number of replies that have yet to be read.

Note: Circle 1 will remain in place, until 3 days since creation has passed. Circle 2 will disappear once replies have been read.

Option 1:
Manually set each post status via the bell icon under each post (as the image below)
image.png

Option2:

Click Avatar Icon> User preference> Settings
Here you will have the option of setting your preferred subscription status
Example:

image.png
image.png1149×574 36.7 KB

Note:

  • We are working with UI/UX team to fix this area for easier navigation.
  • Currently, there is no point on the site where you can view all your subscriptions. However, if this is something users would be interested in having we could push for it in phase 2.

We are in the process of releasing a post on shortcuts for the site. I will have this released shortly, once we have finetuned a few key areas.

Thanks

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Hi Richard,

This is a known issue in our high-priority list.

We’re working on fixing the scroll bar first. Once done, we will implement the logic whereby the page will auto-scroll to the last unread post.

Thanks

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I wrote up a long response yesterday and then just deleted it. IMO, it’s a ridiculously bad use of resources for ANY company to develop their own forum platform unless they intend to go into that business, because there are many options commercially available that work much better than almost anything they would likely build on their own. This forum is a textbook example in my opinion, but it’s not my company or my resources, so that’s that.

What I can control is my time and money, both of which are being pushed away from Peplink by this forum and Peplink’s more recent marketing activities (e.g., promoting their marketing posts to the top of the forum day after day). That’s not a big loss to Peplink, for sure. Unless it happens again, and again, and again, for customer after customer. Time will tell… For me, I’m just removing it from my daily reading list. Best wishes to all. It’s just too hard to try to wade through this mess as a regular place to visit, for the value now delivered.

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Hi @Shereen you wrote -

For ’ UNREAD’ to work, a setting of one of the following would have to be made:

  • Any post: Tracking or Watching
  • Any Category: Watched or watching first post
  • Any Tag: Watched or watching first post

screen-shot-2021-09-15-at-6.png
screen-shot-2021-09-15-at-6.png728×962 52.5 KB

I am only getting a notification for 1 post. And when I go to UNREAD no posts are shown. When I go to LATEST and read ANY posts, the circle with unread count does not clear. It’s like I never read them. This is about 6 hours after reading them.

EDIT: I just checked my Spam email and I am getting email notifications. I am NOT getting notifications up by the bell. And, when I try to turn email notifications off and save, it turns back on as soon as I refresh.

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Hi @festus77

We have now resolved the issue. The UNREAD tab should now show your tracking post and the unread count should also auto-delete once read (logic is 1 min). Please let me know if the issue persists.

We have the logic in place, but require some time to fix this issue. Please bear with us. I Will let you know once it’s ready so you can give it a test!

Thanks!

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Merci beaucoup !!!

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