Re: Hi there - is my free Nabble forum going to have advertising on it?

Posted by GregChapman on May 25, 2015; 9:26am
URL: https://support.nabble.com/Hi-there-is-my-free-Nabble-forum-going-to-have-advertising-on-it-tp7594848p7594863.html

Hi,

Deanna Freedom wrote

Normally when you're on the web, hitting refresh refreshes the page.

There seems to be some confusion about what to expect here.

When you refresh a page it fetches a new version from the server. If that page happens to include a link to some other server, then it calls for that link as well - exactly as you would expect and exactly the link that appears in the original page. It happens everywhere on the web - you'll see it happen with embedded Google Maps, embedded YouTube videos, embedded anything.

Of course, if you've been zooming the map or watching a second video with a link after the first has played and you refresh the "outer" page then the original links in that "outer" page are refreshed too, to show what was originally shown on that page.

However, unlike Google Maps, YouTube and the rest, Nabble offers a "Refresh" link on every page. so if you want to refresh the forum, you click the forum's "Refresh " link! Simple!

the same problem would occur if you navigate away from the thread you're on and then go Back.

I don't understand what you mean by "the same problem"?

If you mean you want to jump back to the page that is specified as the one that is embedded on the site's main page, well then you would use the browser's refresh facility, and not the forum's "Refresh" link.

There are some interesting features of Nabble. All the integration with email lists/newsgroups and the fact that you can take part via email will have its uses. I was tempted by that email thing a bit, and I'm emailing my reply now. OTOH, it's not a great deal different to clicking on a link to take you to the topic in a browser.

Be very careful with your terminology. "Newsgroups" (aka "Usenet")  uses NNTP protocol and that does not relate at all to email any more than email does to the web. Mail Lists and newsgroups are significantly different technologies. Nabble does not provide a gateway to newsgroups.

As you rightly suggest, far more significant, is the impact of mixing email and web users of a Nabble forum. I always caution those who get excited about Nabble's integration of Mail List and Forum capabilities. It can lead to very frustrated forum users, as you have already worked out... (because of the clutter created when someone makes a short top-posted one line replies over multiple quotes of earlier messages.)

I would always advise being very clear to users whether you are providing a forum, when all replies should be posted via the web, or a mail list archive where you should lock all topics and only allow replies by email.

The ultimate would be disabling the reply facility, which is possible with tweaks of the NAML code.

I'm looking for a forum I can set up for general users (an allotment association - and some of us are getting on a bit) and I also find some of the Nabble features and layouts pretty confusing.

To fully appreciate them you need to experiment. I believe it is essential to create a test forum with three or four sub-forums, all with meaningful titles and descriptions and a number of topics and replies, several, to each topic,
You need all that in place to appreciate the differences in the "Applications" to help you decide what will suit your requirements and target audience the best.  You also need all that in place  to check out how "Topics View", "Main Page" and the "Classic", "List" and "Threaded" views work.

Replying last time, which I did in the browser, I wanted to put that bit in bold, and there isn't a bold button.

Yes there is. It's a very traditional "B" button over the message composition box. Select the text to be emboldened and click the "B" button! Couldn't be simpler!

 OK, I'll put it in html, I thought, easy - forgetting that all my paragraphs would be concatenated unless I put paragraph or line break tags in as well!

I view the HTML option as for those using the "Blog" and "News" applications only. However, I do use the feature for the locked posts I create my FAQ sections of my forum.

For your audience and market I'd tell them to ignore it.

The topic sections and topics all seem to be mixed up on Nabble, which is confusing.

I can only assume you have not found the appropriate application or have unpinned sub-forums that have been created, have become confused by switching away from "Classic" view, and "Main Page". I do not recognise  as the norm, what you describe.

And yeah, for people like me, a good upkeep of the help files is really important.

I am not going to attempt to defend Nabble's extremely poor level of documentation, the more so when there are near weekly updates to the code, often minor bug-fixes, but sometimes significant changes the the user interface, that go completely undocumented.

I've found another embeddable forum host which, for about the same money (less, in fact) for the ad free version, does a much better job on the things that are important to me. It might be bad form to mention them by name on a rival's help forum.

I'd say mention the name. Nabble will then know what users consider their rivals are and have a chance to improve their offering (and I've have a chance to look at the alternative too!).