This Forum Was Built From Scratch!

Hey all.

I've added a new feature to the forum index. If you click the "Forum Tools" button, you'll find a new option for "What's New?". Clicking this will pop up with a list of all topics with unread posts for you. Using the same functionality I'll be able to create a daily / weekly / monthly (whatever you want) email to alert you of what's new since you were last on the forums.

Another update to the forum / website system.

Your notifications will now update automatically when you're browsing pages across the website. Previously notifications were just generated once when the page first loaded, but now they'll be constantly checked every 30 seconds or so while you're on the website. Not a major improvement, but it does mean the functionality is now there to display alerts on your screen if something happens when you're in the middle of reading a page or topic.

If you have a notification you'll see a red circle with a number in at the top right of the screen. Expanding the user menu will show what the notification is for, e.g awards, forum notifications etc. Eventually when we have private messaging, you'll also see notifications when you have new messages.

Need an option to turn off notifications.

Ask and you shall receive. I've created a new section in the User menu for Website Preferences. You can disable notifications here which will remove the red badge from the top of the screen and disable automatic notification checks. If you expand the user menu you can still see badges next to any features which have unread notifications.

If required, I'll make additional preferences to customise which notifications you want to allow, for example you could disable award notifications and post like notifications, but still be alerted when someone replies to your post.

Additionally, I've moved the settings for Timezone and Privacy into this new section (which was previously in Edit Profile).

I've added a setting to Website Preferences to save your dark mode preference. Previously the dark mode toggle (which you can access at the top of the left menu) would use javascript and local storage in your browser to add the dark theme to every page but if you visited on a different device you'd have to toggle it again. Now, as long as you're logged in, the website will remember your choice automatically. Additionally, using the toggle in the menu will also save your preferences to the database. 

I've also made some tweaks and improvements to some of the website and forum styling when using dark mode. Quoted posts on the forums will be easier to read, and the background image behind the logo at the top of the site will display at 50% opacity to reduce the brightness.

I've updated the post editor and added an Emoji quick-selector 😀😁😂🤣😃😎👍 to make it easier to add them into your posts. You might notice the toolbar design has slightly changed on light-mode too. I was looking at adding a gif / meme selector but it doesn't seem like there's a plugin I can include to add it quickly so I might have to build something myself when I get a chance. Let me know if there's any problems when making posts.

Also, some of the links to topics include /unread on the end if you're logged in. The system calculates if there are any new posts since you last viewed a topic and takes you to the latest unread post. If you'd viewed all posts in a topic it would always take you back to the first post but I've made it so it'll take you to the last post now as it's more likely you'll want to see the latest posts rather than read the full topic again. Let me know if I'm wrong about this and I can change it back.

Was going to suggest the last post thing.

I think linking to the last post when viewing the forums would be good as well. Where the topic says who the last post was, link that.

Whenever you click on a topic link now (if you're logged in) it'll always try to take you to the latest unread post. If you've read them all, it'll always take you to the last post.

It works! It scrolls down quickly to the last post. And agreed, it's better that way 👍

I tried the emoji quick-select and it was no bueno on my tablet. It was flickering between the keyboard popping open and the emoji menu. I had to back out of it completely.