Spring 2016 Community Goal 2: Biohack.me site overhaul



  • I love the mobile layout that Discourse has to offer, and I'm loving the feedback thus far. Importing the current database into Discourse was a huge obstacle which presented numerous bugs, so other then then the logo on the top - there has been NO modifications made to the actual appears of Discourse. I do plan to make adjustments based on all feedback we receive so let's keep them coming in!
  • edited October 2016
    I've used a few forums running on Discourse and I have to say I really like the way it all seems to just make sense. LittleBirdElectronics and ForgeUnity (RIP) are two that come to mind.

    @Meanderpaul the reason the users page looks the way it does is because the users are by default being sorted based on a metric that doesn't exist here (and therefore hasn't been ported over) and because it's only tracking those scores for the current week (as it stands 13th - 20th October)

    Night Mode
    For the sake of night eyes, it would be nice if there was a night mode or a darker theme (switchable theme if possible, otherwise maybe just more middle greys so it doesn't blitz your rods, or a purpley theme like the widgets here) Any website that has a night mode available I usually stick it on permanently.

    Avatars On Posts
    I also think you'll come to find the fruity dots more useful once some people change away from default avatars, it's useful for finding at-a-glance discussions with a high number of regular users or a discussion with only a few users. Overall, if you do decide to change the background colour I think they'd pop less as well.

    Here's a screenshot of a more fleshed out forum with more users that have set avatars and more threads with varying poster counts (nearly all of the dev site posts have 5+ contributors so the effect is less pronounced)

    Keeping with the at-a-glance stuff, if you're planning to keep the category system, I'd recommend making the colour marker larger somehow and obviously also moving some of the categories off the light brown colour default.

    Lastly, maybe some abstract monochrome background images to fill in the blank areas on the left and right...

    Disclaimer: I'm no web designer and really have no idea whether any of these ideas are popular
  • edited October 2016
    The user page just seems to have useless information. I mean, I get what the purpose is and the information it contains - but who really cares?

    The overall theme will be customized - I'm all for darker colors. I think BirdMachine will be taking the lead as far as covering CSS. I'm not a design person.

    Avatars - I want to write something to port them over. Kinda low priority. Just like password hashes - I'd like to explore options so that we wouldn't have to all do a password reset.
  • @bobotheepic i do Get that IT is doing IT basen on limited info but the fast that ypur still limited on the searchability sont chang with the more data puls. I Took a look at that link and i think once an avatar does Get loaded IT would be better but maybe use something for a default other Then the fruity Colors.

    How about having a number of users in the thread vs having the avatars? I think (assuming there's no limit) that if you run into a thread with 10 people actively talking you will end up with a ridiculous size user box.

    I do agere with a night mode that would be Greta for the eyes and Even simply changing some border colors would hjelp.

    @mmuyskens that page is pretty useless. If IT was not There i dont think It would be missed. Maybe a currently online count instead of showing users?

    It is a far better mobile site then this one. I did notice my iPad changing the language again and fixed it but as you can see there is still some in the post... it's simply a pain to correct but I hope you can get my point with what I've posted.
  • edited October 2016
    If we could get a few widgets into the site like the one below that would be amazing 
  • Not sure what you're referring to as far as "the one below"?

    You mean a reply box? On the new platform, it pops up once you click the reply button.

  • Looks like he hyperlinked this:


    in the word 'below'... not sure how an anatomy viewer would help the forum style though.
  • Ok, I missed that. It's kinda cool, but yea - not sure how it would fit in with the site.
  • Anyone else get a email about a emergency test system from here? It didn't work for me....
  • edited October 2016
    the update already makes it nicer on the eyes. i did finally log into it which opened up a few more things for me to look at. i posted to the EBS with some input so if you want to see it you need to check out his Page HEHE more hyperlinks


    because i can...anyway...i cannot upload a custom avatar instead it has me do a gravatar or system default. not sure if I'm just not aware of how to use the system or what but figured i should add it.
  • Finally got it to load haven't created account yet but this seems so much better then what we have now.
  • Sorry JohnDoe, Just realized it spammed out some "digest" related emails. I'm disabling it globally now as I don't want notifications being sent while it's in development.

    Your account should of been copied over, and can be accessed via a password reset if you would like to test it out. As it's in development, nothing will be saved when we do go live. It's specifically for testing for now.
  • edited October 2016
    Meanderpaul - looks like the avatar issue is something that was recently bugged, and appears to be fixed as of this morning;


    I'm rebuilding currently so the avatar option should be fixed in a bit.
  • Okay. So, just read the whole thread. Joined the slack discussion and I'll post here what I said there, I'd like to contribute. I just don't have time these days to contribute anything that takes time, like coding or graphics design. What I do have is a 2GB VPS hosting tiny websites that hardly see much traffic these days. So Im perfectly willing to contribute hosting space. Also, big fan of Discourse. Started hosting a Discourse forum for a small community I led a while ago, but that never really took off due to not being able to move over from vBulletin at the time without a ridiculous amount manual work. Anyways, I'd like to offer aforementioned hosting space. I'll also say that Discourse would be my preference for moving the forums side of things. The "wiki" style posts are nice too (you can make a post a "wiki" allowing anyone in an approved group to edit it).

    If anyone takes my offer for digital hosting space, I'll also revise you that it'll end at "setting things up" my part anyways, after that you're more or less on your own for managing anything, I simply don't have the time to do more than set things up and pay the yearly $200 for the server. Again. Highly recommend Discourse, only I don't like is the use of Docker, I like that is open source though. Anyways, the server I mentioned is perfectly capable of hosting said Discourse Docker image, and doesn't see much traffic these days (but the other things would stay there). This could be the main server, a backup, or hosting something completely separate from the forums themselves. Just let me know if you guys need/want use of the server and I can go about setting things up to get you access as needed. If it matters, currently using Nginx with a multisite configuration where one of those sites is already a Discourse site.
  • On the topic of chat bots that have been frequently mentioned. I really don't see how useful it is, I'd rather just read a web page if I were looking for information. But I wrote a regex based IRC chat bot that utilizes multiple terms and could be configured to respond with user specific details, like username, channel, thing specific to the received message, not just a predetermined response. I'd also be willing to reconfigure that for use if anyone wanted it. Though I'd rather just fork over the source code and let someone else do something with it. It's not terribly complicated, if you're comfortable with C#, which I'm told is complicated (personally I think PHP is much more complicated, but I guess it's a matter of experience).
  • just out of curiosity are you paying to use discourse currently and if not how can i get my hands on it to mess around with it?
  • @Jupiter - why not docker? I'm curious about your thoughts against it.

    @Meanderpaul - was this directed at me? I don't pay for anything hosting related, it's all using the resources of a past employer that I still do work for. I'm sure you could setup a server on Vultr to play around with it, there's a $50 promo credit kicking around I'm sure you can google to find.
  • Yes sorry forgot to tag ya. I saw a few promos while checking it out. I'm curious how it works.
  • I pay to host my own server, Discourse itself is free. I'll get a blank site online one of the next couple days so you can check it out if you'd like.

    I'm not a fan of Docker just because the primary reason they state they use it is so that all setups are basically identical and thus there aren't any user specific setup issues. I'd rather have it run as a basic webserver and website and a separate database system. Or just all in the web server. Mostly it's because the entire Docker container needs to be able to be loaded in memory all at once which requires 2 GB of RAM to do. It's a little thing, but basically means that even with 10 users and 10 posts a day, still needs the same hardware as 100 or 1000 posts a day would.
  • It should be a simple fix, but one little bug I've been noticing for awhile now is that when you make a post and put a break in without manually going and writing/editing the HTML code for your post, if you try to tag anyone with the usual method immediately after the break, it won't do it correctly, because there's no space character between the ampersand and the "<div>" or "<br>" tags there. I figure that a simple if-then loop could fix that.
  • If we move to another software, like Discourse, that shouldn't be an issue anymore. Admittedly it's probably fixed in the newer version of Vanilla as well.
  • edited October 2016
    A new mobile interface would be pretty nice to have, it sounds like most people access the site on their phones.
  • @Birdmachine spent some time customizing the theme to have a darker look.


  • im a fan of the darker colors, definitely better especially if your on your phone at night. only thing i can suggest, and its nit picky, but id say making the initial format be the categories of the different discussions just so youre not assaulted by all of this information you might not know what its is if youre newer to the site. other than that, id say the new site looks awesome!

  • I'd say it's looking pretty much perfect from a user perspective.
  • I can code whatever for Linux server-side (including device drivers, i.e. LKM's/LSM's, etc. if need be.) Don't hesitate to inbox me if you need help. My day job consists of web app pen testing, net vuln assess, code review, host hardening, etc. I'll be joining Slack soon..do you guys have it bridged with an IRC channel out of curiosity? That might be easier for some people (like me) and I know it has that feature.. 
  • @decal I'll check. We bridge it at work and that's awesome :) Also thanks! I'm sure we'll take you up on the offer to help.
  • I feel like a dirty, dirty spammer but all the top level categories have a post about the change. I know from experience that you can't over-communicate a big change. We'll still have some people in for a surprise over the next couple of weeks. 
  • You are a dirty dirty spammer, you cyberlass you! Thank you again for all your hard work! You and everyone else involved in the process.
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