📢 ALERT New message board format & enhancements

[Chris Harmon]

Rivals has updated our message boards.

New Features

• Native emoji support
  • Use real emojis in thread titles and post content from your favorite device
• Light / Dark style themes
• User-selectable font scaling
• Modernized profile popups / pages
  • Mouse-over (or tap on mobile) usernames to see new User Profile card
  • Click/tap on card name to go to new User Profile page
• Unread alert & conversation icon/count in browser tabs
  • Number of unread alerts/conversation messages in title text
  • A red dot over the tab icon indicates at least one unread item
• "What’s New" content menu
  • New forum navigation menu with additional ways to find new and unread threads and posts
• Automatic url summary blocks
  • Pasting in a url (that isn't an embed) into a post will auto-create a box with title, thumbnail, and summary (if available from the destination)
• "Quick Thread" new thread tool
  • A new box at the top of the thread list for quickly typing in a title and composing a new thread all at once without leaving the page
• Last Post avatar shown on forum lists
  • See avatars in thread and forum lists for the most recent poster

Updated Features

• Enhanced embedding from other sites
  • More (and better performing) embed types for sites like Twitter, Facebook, reddit, etc.
  • Drop the url in the text of the post and it will auto-embed if recognized
• Optimized mobile experiences
  • Tap-optimized interactions
  • Layout and style tuned for smaller displays
• Lots of additional streamlined functionality

 

[Chris Harmon]

If you guys find any bugs, have problems posting or accessing the boards, please post here and tag me using @Chris Harmon, and I'll then forward those items to the Rivals engineers.

 

[Chris Harmon]

A couple tips/tricks... If you'll scroll to the very bottom of the forum, you will see an icon with two arrows pointing at each other, and a block that says "Rivals light".

• Click the arrows icon to change the width of the message board. When I clicked it once, it stretched the forum all the way across my screen.

• Click the "Rivals light" box and you can change to "Rivals dark", which uses a pretty cool dark theme.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but this one seems new. It's cool.

 

[Chris Harmon]

This is from the Alabama publisher, but it's a good tutorial for when you see Notices at the bottom of the screen, as well as prefixes at the beginning of posts...

 

[Chris Harmon]

How to change Font Size on the message board...

 

[Gmoney4WW]

A couple tips/tricks... If you'll scroll to the very bottom of the forum, you will see an icon with two arrows pointing at each other, and a block that says "Rivals light".

• Click the arrows icon to change the width of the message board. When I clicked it once, it stretched the forum all the way across my screen.

• Click the "Rivals light" box and you can change to "Rivals dark", which uses a pretty cool dark theme.

I don't have the arrows pointing at each other on my phone or pc. But it's fine as is. Overall, not having explored it in any real depth, I very much like this makeover. It's the first makeover that I have really liked. The makeovers before have been ok, but this one adds a lot of useable stuff and a lot more very convenient features. Haven't come up against anything on phone or pc, that bothers me in the least. The arrows in the bottom right hand corner that take you to the top and bottom of the post are definitely convenient on both pc and phone. The way my phone always has the back button to the forum you are looking at a post in, or the Other Forums, is much more convenient. Before I had to scroll halfway through posts to get that back button to appear and it was half obscured at the top of the screen.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

The only thing I don't like is the same as it(ever) was in the old format on a phone. If you are on the main/home page of the site with the,

Headlines
All Football...

...and the headline story changing every five seconds, then you have to hit triple line graphic to the left of the INSIDE Tulsa SPORTS logo and you get a menu. If you select Forums, then you get another menu, and have to pick an individual forum without seeing whether there are any new posts in that forum.

The convenient way to do it would be, when you select forums the first time, that it does not give you another menu. It should take you to the forums screen where it shows you which forums have new posts. But that is outside of the new format. You do not get into the new format until you pick an individual board to go to in the second menu. It would be nice if the first selection of forums took you to the new format, instead of having to pick an individual board in the second menu to get there.

 

[Chris Harmon]

The only thing I don't like is the same as it(ever) was in the old format on a phone. If you are on the main/home page of the site with the,

Headlines
All Football...

...and the headline story changing every five seconds, then you have to hit triple line graphic to the left of the INSIDE Tulsa SPORTS logo and you get a menu. If you select Forums, then you get another menu, and have to pick an individual forum without seeing whether there are any new posts in that forum.

The convenient way to do it would be, when you select forums the first time, that it does not give you another menu. It should take you to the forums screen where it shows you which forums have new posts. But that is outside of the new format. You do not get into the new format until you pick an individual board to go to in the second menu. It would be nice if the first selection of forums took you to the new format, instead of having to pick an individual board in the second menu to get there.

There is a "What's New" tab at the top now that has a drop down to New Posts, Your news feed, and Latest activity. I haven't tried it out though.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

There is a "What's New" tab at the top now that has a drop down to New Posts, Your news feed, and Latest activity. I haven't tried it out though.

I'm talking about doing it on a phone. On my pc you can click on the forums header on the home screen and it takes you directly to the forums screen. Easy greasy.

But on the phone you have to 'click'/touch on the triple line graphic, then 'click'/touch the forums menu item, then you get another menu, which is where it goes wrong. On the phone, there is no 'What's New' menu item in that first menu where you pick forums.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

If you guys find any bugs, have problems posting or accessing the boards, please post here and tag me using @Chris Harmon, and I'll then forward those items to the Rivals engineers.

Two nice recent edits to the boards, post unveiling of new format.


A) When you typed out @Chris H..., '@Chris Harmon' would pop up on the screen but you couldn't click on it/touch it to get it to fill the rest of the name in. Now You Can! That always bugged me a little, and now they fixed it.

B) They previously just Bolded the Boards and Posts that were new, and sometimes it wasn't obvious which one was bolded. So after the rebuild they probably reacted to some minor complaints about that. Now it is Bolded and Blued, on topics and boards that have recent posts. Bravo, much easier to delineate!

Note(if you read the unedited post): That feature wasn't working before I posted this post. Then the arrows suddenly appeared.