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Hey, everybody! I'd like to do a bit of work on the forum in July.
To those of you who are active here every week, what are your biggest annoyances? It can be design related, tasks that require too many clicks, new channels to add, or features we haven't implemented.
And if there's some lingering bug that's been around for a year, let me know. I'm writing everything down, and will do my best.
I'll give you a - probably unpopular - gripe of mine...
I hate the light theme for the forum. If so many of you hadn't complained when we introduced the dark theme, I would have removed it entirely. It's annoying to maintain, and doesn't look nearly as good imo.
@JeffreyWay nice!
@JeffreyWay thanks for keeping it!
This shows a lot about you =)
@JeffreyWay Please keep the light theme. I have severe astigmatism and only through this theme I can read the sentences, when I'm on a dark theme everything is blurry for me :(
@JeffreyWay I am using the dark theme, but keep please keep the light one.
@JeffreyWay I know it may be a bit annoying to maintain, but I'm sure some of the guys here are very thankful that you maintained it, as do I even if I'm not using it cause others still do benefit from it
...I would have removed it entirely. It's annoying to maintain, and doesn't look nearly as good imo.
Isn't that you just look into the maintainer's point of view, instead of consumers?
Honestly, I am a big fan of light theme. I am sure there are many users like me.
...what are your biggest annoyances?...
It will be most annoying for me if you completely remove the light theme. So, re-thing about this topic will be a request from my side. 🙂
@JeffreyWay In my opinion dark theme is good.
I have no appreciation of the performance pressures on the site, but I find the caching of the forum annoying. If I reply to one of the first few posts I expect the page to show the update. If I go to a couple of other posts then come back and see the top post still has the OP's name against it, I'm not sure if they have replied. Invariably they haven't and my own post is the newest, but the cache has not yet been flushed.
@Snapey I think I fixed that about a half hour ago.
A couple of months ago, we were getting hammered daily by either a DDoS attack or all of these new AI scrapers. It was killing the performance of the forum, so I got pretty aggressive with the caching (and also throttling clearly automated requests).
If you reply to a thread, it'll immediately be reflected on the first page.
@JeffreyWay What time were you using before resetting the cache. coul help me on my project getting hammere as well.
@coachben can you rephrase your reply to JeffreyWay? I couldn't understand what you mean. maybe I could help you
@skeith22 I guess they meant to known what TTL Jeffrey was using for caching to avoid DDoS
"hammere" would be hammered, then
Reporting spam is a lottery. Sometimes something happens, mostly not. I'm sure there is some logic behind processing spam notices (I appreciate the logic needs to be opaque) but maybe 'elite' could have greater weighting?
@Snapey All reported spam goes into a feed that I review. I remove a lot of it, but sometimes there's just not enough to confirm that it's actually spam.
For example, in that thread a few days ago where a guy was complaining that Laracasts isn't free, it got reported by multiple people as spam. It's an annoying thread haha, but it's not spam.
My general rule for removal is:
Otherwise, it can remain on the site.
@JeffreyWay I agree about the negative thread. I don't class objectionable views as spam. And the fact that its a manual process will explain some of my experience with reporting spam at 8am which you won't see for quite a few hours. The concern here is that google seems to crawl your site seemingly every 30 minutes!
Please keep the lite theme. To many here the lite theme is better and can be seen better. I think the dark theme hurts some peoples eyes.
There's nothing I hate. Be nice to have a forum FAQ that newbees had to look at first.
Things like how do I put laravel on a production site. It comes up so often but has been covered so many times.
Edit:
For example, in that thread a few days ago where a guy was complaining that Laracasts isn't free
That was a very irritating post.
+1 on the FAQ, specially on tips on code formatting. That would help a lot
A newcomer posts a question with code. Then someone needs to have the talk about backticks.
It might help if there was a button like Add a code block that just did this:
// Paste your code here
But then again, it might not.
@JussiMannisto I agree with this, new members/comers could benefit a lot from this, or even add a suggestion note like you may use backticks to code, something like that
@skeith22 We could make it more clear, I suppose, but we do say on the reply form that you can use Markdown with Github-flavored code blocks. And that links directly to a tutorial for how to use them.
@MrSuddenJoy oh dear, what a child.
@MrSuddenJoy Are you saying that colleges should teach courses like php, java, .net core for free since these are free technologies. Please unconfuse me on this.
@MrSuddenJoy Oh yea. You could close down your account. No one would even notice, let alone be sorry. I am sure.
You said in another comment that you don't hate Laracasts, and knowledge presented in any form is useful. Still, your profile says you watched a single lesson.
It seems you are not a troll overall, but have an obsession about Jeffrey.
I am not interested in the backstory, but thought to tell there are people who can help: health professionals, personal advisors, support groups. Please consider accepting help.
I hope you get well soon. Peace.
@MrSuddenJoy You’d be sorry, as you’d no longer have anywhere to needlessly post.
@rodrigo.pedra I wonder if Jeffrey needs a restraining order. 😒
Hi @jeffreyway Few days ago I've found one issue with the profile section. Adding an emoji in the profile description causing the breakdown of the forum. Thread
Not really a forum request but more a payment option.
But being able to pay with ideal would be lovely.
It's true that it would be nice to have a little toolbar in the text editor for those who aren't comfortable with markdown.
For the rest, I find the forum quite efficient and I don't mind the "light" theme: it's the one I use 😎
What do you hate about the Laracasts forum?
@jeffreyway As of five minutes ago? This new font for headings 😅
There's nothing I hate about the forum, but I have a few suggestions.
1 – If it is a question that the AI will answer, it could appear before posting the question.
2 - There could also be suggestions for questions that have already been answered before publication, to avoid repeating questions
@gfucci I believe the current behavior is a marketing & SEO strategy. Even if AI could answer it before posting, there is still long-term value with that post being an indexed result with the problem + solution ready for the next Googler. Who knows when that new user becomes a paying Laracast customer.
The only annoying thing about the forums is how after replying to a post, you have to hit back twice to get back to the forum thread list, rather than what I intuitively expect to be one. It's like when the new reply it posted, it's adding an additional page load to the history and so I need to back out twice instead of just once. I'm not even sure if this can be fixed (I think you can do something like this in Inertia by adding replace: true to the router.post call, but I'm not sure if the forums are Inertia or Livewire) but if this is fixable, it would be extremely appreciated! ❤️
@nexxai Can you perhaps explain better as I don't have to do that.
The new reply shows up right away. Or to move on to something else, I hit All Threads or My Participation.
@jlrdw The new reply shows up right away, but after it's been posted, if I hit the back button, instead of taking me back to the thread list immediately, it basically just reloads the page to the state it was in before I left my reply. I have to hit back a second time to get back to the thread list.
@nexxai Other forums are similar. Actually, the back button is not a good choice ever in a web application? Just follow the link.
Just my opinion and experiences.
@jlrdw I'm really glad you found a way that works for you! I just find that if the site is trying to be a single-page app (with no full page reloads when a comment is added, for example), it should act like that in reverse as well.
I'm ok agreeing to disagree here. Totally personal preference and opinion.
@nexxai This is fixed. You only have to press "Back" once now.
@JeffreyWay Holy crap, thank you so much!!!!
@JeffreyWay well that was fast
@jeffreyway, hate no, find annoying yes. There are a some people that resurrects threads that are years old, just today we had one such resurrection. Sometimes they are valid, but that is very rare, so here are some things that might help mitigate the experience.
Locking threads that are older than dirt by default, and only allow "likes" to be added might be a good thing in some cases, or at least warn the poster that the thread is very old, and they need to go through some extra steps to reopen it. For example starting a reason for them to reply to that ancient post, and based on that reason the forum could recommend actions.
@Tray2 "This answer comes up high on Google searches, but the answer is out-of-date now" should be another good reason to add comments to old threads.
Just one small improvement. I love to win that Chatty Cathy badge, but I don't know the number of replies that I made so far.
I would like to see the date that the thread posted at in the homepage. It's annoying sometimes when someone spamming years old thread, and there's way to know it's an old thread unless opening thread's page.
Yup. It's now been added in the main forum view.
@_adrian *Best feature since sliced bread ;)
Not being able to include URLs and being told it's my first day....been here quite a while now :)
@PeteBatin You have to participate around the site a bit more before you can post links. Watch videos, reply to threads, etc.
@MrSuddenJoy We get it: you don’t like the site nor its business model.
Have you thought about not visiting if it offends and irritates you that much? 🤷♂️
@MrSuddenJoy You've stated your opinions. Nobody's on board. Please don't spam anymore.
@JeffreyWay It would be more helpful if it said that instead of "You may not include links the first day you sign up.", it's not my first day, I've been a member a month.
@MrSuddenJoy I've waited a month and still get told "You may not include links the first day you sign up."
Sometimes the backticks just messes things up and leaves my some code out.. Saw it with couple questions.
@JussiMannisto Thank you @jussimannisto .
Well... as a newbie, Laracast almost have everything. I just wish it has mentor and mentee system, and chat features to your Laracast. Just a suggestion :)
Also can the character count or textbox section under chatwithlary [AI] option be expanded to maybe 3000 characters. Some questions can easily be answered by the AI instead of posting to the forum but the character count reduces forces us to post it to the forum
Hello, I am new to the whole Laravel and Laracasts ecosystem and have not yet found a way to be automatically informed by e-mail about new Larabits. For example, I first found out this morning via Youtube that there is a new Larabit about popovers. I think it would be great if there was a general option to be informed about every new or updated Larabit. For example, I am already informed about updates to the "Path" by e-mail.
I found out when I leave this page for too long (like 2 hours?), I get back and create a thread, I click post and nothing happens, I refreshed and everything I typed is gone, samething happens when I ask Lary. Is it possible to tell user that the token is expired so I can refresh page before I type.
@russellxu sessions do expire after some time. If I get a call as example, I try to do a quick copy and paste in notepad as to not loose what I typed. Just my opinion but two hours is a bit long to leave something.
@jlrdw Laracast is the website I pinned, so technically I'm not leaving it. That's a good idea to type it first on a notepad. But sometimes I just forget about it. It's annoying when the things I typed is gone...
@russellxu I never leave it either, but I always do a refresh just before attempting to post anything.
@russellxu I agree for a site like a forum. But when I worked for the State of Texas you could not even leave a terminal without logging out. It was actually against the law (a privacy thing) It was DADS (Department of aging and Disability Services).
So from habit I usually close all down when done. Just FYI.
I know this is a bit old, but there was a thread about leaderboard rewards.
There were some ideas, but I don't even know if any of it was implemented.
@MichalOravec We're working on it now.
The main navigation on the homepage could be improved. I've been a member for a month but a viewer of the forum for sometime. I've only just realised that what looks like a illustration of a code block on the homepage is the navigation! I've been scrolling down to the footer to get to the forum (or Google'ing "laracast forum" for ages)
On the social feed, I can't ctrl-click any links to open them in a new browser tab, and have to resort to right-click and selecting from the browser's context menu.
From inspecting the DOM, it seems Cloudflare's rocket loader adds an event handler to each link, which might be interfering with this.
The weird thing is that it only happens on the social feed (/discuss/feed)
For debugging purposes, I use Firefox on openSUSE Linux.
@rodrigo.pedra I have the same issue on Mac using Chrome, but clicking the scroll wheel opens it in a new tab.
@rodrigo.pedra You are most welcome my friend.
I’m one of those people who truly dislike dark themes in nearly everything – everything is blurry and difficult to focus on, my eyes get tired, and I quickly end up with a headache.
For that reason, I was very saddened to see that even the light theme now has the dark background. It’s not as bad as all-dark with white text, but it is still a lot more straining and difficult to read and use than when the background was light as well.
I get that maintaining two separate themes is extra work (and I’m very grateful that you do it), but does changing the background really make that much of a difference in that respect?
(For the sake of completeness, I don’t mind the nav header and the footer being dark – those are smaller elements that don’t fill the screen, and you don’t generally spend a lot of time reading or typing up against them. It’s just the main page background that’s straining.)
Some additional feedback - "* You may use Markdown with GitHub-flavored code blocks." it would be better if the link to this went to a page that only includes the Markdown that is supported. I tried to include a list on a post "You can make an unordered list by preceding one or more lines of text with -, *, or +." but it didn't work.
@PeteBatin You need to put a space after the star. I fixed it for you.
@JeffreyWay cool, thanks and thanks for the tip!
Just a reminder: https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/code-review/issue-when-vreating-posts-on-laracast
Not a big bug, but annoying for sure :)
Not a crazy issue but I see a whitespace at the end of every laracasts.com pages. I'm using a 27" 4k monitor
Any way to allow multiple best answers? There are times when multiple answers would work. Just thought I'd check.
@jlrdw Probably not. I'd rather keep it simple.
@JeffreyWay I thought you liked hard to program. 😊
My hardest is a tube bending program I did years ago in Basic and recently rewrote it in Python for Freecad.
I would like to see the posted date of the thread. Some people pump 5 years threads which is annoying to find it was 5 years ago only by opening the thread page.
A copy link for a specific reply, so we can post it on other platforms and they don't need to scroll and find the reply on that post.
@Jonjie The forum already has that? You can get a permalink for a particular reply by copying the link from the text that says when the comment was posted:
@martinbean Oh okay, cool. Thanks :)
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