Yes, the quote parenthesis doesn't create an emoji. Thumbs up. And links are blue no matter if they are followed or not. That's great - I can tell where links are now and don't have to underline them all anymore because CSS takes case of it for me. Double thumbs up.

I'd still prefer replies have a proper timestamp (date + time) instead of "More than a month ago" (or similar). The exact date of a reply is lost which may make associating say firmware version of the "era" difficult or other associations that would pull for the actual date.

Mostly things look better. Not sure if there's a way to restore the forums that "went away" with the transition.

I kind of like how you can see someone else posted on the same subject when you're in the middle of editing. It would be "nice" if it also dynamically showed their post while still in the middle of your editing your reply. Like "pop in" their post so you could scroll up and read the new content before sending your reply. But even as-is, it's nice to know someone sneaked a reply in the middle of finishing your own. I guess you could copy your reply thus far and refresh the post to read the new reply then carry on (... if you really wanted to).

Although you can sort posts by popularity (amount of reads I guess) - you can no longer see how many times any individual topic has been read. This was, previously, shown on each topic. It was nice to know before but not a huge loss now it's gone. I think this goes into the category of "increased focus". Ok, it's a good thing (justification).

... can no longer, I mean (and I would have edited the reply) - unless you open the topic. Where the original post DOES have the statistics. Just no longer presented in the topic list.

I like that things aren't spaced as far apart, e.g. on the page that lists all the Posts, you don't have to scroll so much to scan the recent posts.

I notice that the individual posts have visible permanent numbers now, which could make things easier to reference.

I like that they fixed quoting, so that adding a quote after you've already typed some stuff doesn't wipe out everything you've already written.

Lack of at least a brief editing window (some number of hours) is really unfortunate. Lack of a time stamp for older messages is still kind of astonishing. And the search facilities are still horribly lame. I had better luck searching this forum with google, and now that won't work either, at least for a while.

From what I can tell so far, the benefits are minor, compared to the loss, i.e. external links no longer working (and who knows when google will fully catch up). So on balance, I have to give it a thumbs down for now, even though I do prefer the look.

Unless maybe the change means they were able to actually implement a proper spam filter, like just about every other forum on the net. Then I guess I'd have to say the change might have been worth it just for that.

Though honestly, if they were going to lose all the links anyway, I'd have preferred they switched to one of the better systems entirely, like phpBB or whatever.

The links have been lost countless times before as they rearranged the structure. So this is normal and periodic to me. That the structural changes impacting the indexing coincides with other updates is coincidental to me. In other words, I more compartmentalize (rightly or wrongly) the "cosmetic" changes apart from the indexing breakage which happens all the time without any other outward change in the forum.

I wish they (the web team and outsource forum partner -- that also runs MIDI.ORG) would figure out how to not break the indexing. This time when it broke - it breaks confusingly. Before the breakage would show something like a 404 or other "it's broken" type page. Now what we see looks like an empty post. At first thought something was malfunctioning with the site before learning it was "just" a problem with the links getting hosed.

I expect the links to forum posts, tutorials, etc. are all going to get jumbled up again in a few months with or without other changes.

[quotePost id=114675]The links have been lost countless times before as they rearranged the structure. So this is normal and periodic to me...I wish they...would figure out how to not break the indexing. [/quotePost]
Ah. I knew links to what should be "fixed" content (like Bad Mister's and Blake's tutorial pages) had broken in the past, but I didn't know it was a regular occurrence, or that links to the forum's user (question-and-answer) content did as well. Maybe, if we're lucky, that is something fixed in the new software, and after this last breakage there won't be any more? That, too, would be something that would make the change worthwhile. (OTOH, if that's still a problem, that's one more reason it would have been good to migrate to a better platform. Another major forum just migrated to a new system, and pretty successfully brought over all their old content... this one hasn't even successfully maintained its own content!)

Seems like some profile editing features now work.
Wondering if thread subscription does, too?

[quotePost id=114681]Wondering if thread subscription does, too?[/quotePost]
I don't even see an option for that, where is it?

At the post/thread level, the old forum had an option for RSS subscription, which was about as useful as an AOL CD. If they've actually added email notification, that would be worthwhile.

[quotePost id=114682][quotePost id=114681]Wondering if thread subscription does, too?[/quotePost]
I don't even see an option for that, where is it?

At the post/thread level, the old forum had an option for RSS subscription, which was about as useful as an AOL CD. If they've actually added email notification, that would be worthwhile.[/quotePost]
I don't think there is, at least I didn't get any email to notify me of your post. Well, I can hope.

The RSS thing is still there, if you go to the Categories section at the top of the Forum.
I do use it to see what new threads show up.

As a tip for finding things... If you use google to search for what you want (adding site:yamahasynth.com to the end of your query), it will come up with the old thread location. While clicking it won't work, there are two ways to benefit from this. One is that many of the pages have a "show cached" option (they've moved it to the 3-dot menu next to the result), which may show you what you need. But also, if you note the title of the hit (which will be the forum query that generated what you're looking for), use (only!) the main words from that title as a search query on this site, to probably bring up the thread here.

Some spaces added to prevent "real links" from forming

Previous link (Through late Feb 2022):
https : //yamahasynth.com/ask-a-question/modx-connect-not-finding-my-modx8-in-logic-pro-x

New link:
https : //www.yamahasynth.com/forum/modx-connect-not-finding-my-modx8-in-logic-pro-x

So replace "ask-a-question" with "forum" this round (a return to the 2017 structure).

And, historically ...

In 2016, when Montage started being discussed, links (for a forum message) took this form:

https : //yamahasynth.com/index.php?option=com_easydiscuss&view=post&id=6631&Itemid=851

In 2017 the links looked similar as today:

https : //yamahasynth.com/forum/users-suggestions-for-new-montage-2

and so on ...

Every so often the deck is shuffled even for forum posts.

On the topic of forum software alternatives - Dorico users seem happy with their forum experience. Since Dorico is part of the wider Yamaha "family" - it seems not unnatural to borrow good web experiences from.

Here's an exchange in a random post at Dorico:

cparmerlee
Jul '21
...
(As an aside, I must say I am highly impressed by the technology in this new forum system you are using. I started to compose this response at a restaurant using a rather undependable WiFi connection. The connection dropped before I could post it. I didn’t bother to reconnect as I was ready to leave. When I arrived home and returned to the forum on a completely different computer, the draft of my note was there waiting for me. Really clever stuff, that.)

Andro
Jul '21
@cparmerlee Its Discourse. It’s brilliant. I use it for all the forums I host and manage. It seems to be becoming a de facto standard. And open source!

I know the forum isn't going to be transplanted overnight - but moving in the direction of "Discourse" may help elevate the profile of the forum.

https://www.discourse.org/about

Given it's been in use for many years with success by members of the Yamaha family - I think it's been properly field tested. Synthesizer collaboration with the Dorico team may produce other synergies in the software department. If, that is, that kind of thing is going to happen. Hypothetical utopian silver linings.

[quotePost id=114692]On the topic of forum software alternatives - Dorico users seem happy with their forum experience.[/quotePost]
Being a Nuendo user, I use the Steinberg forums often.

Not really a fan of Discourse.

It's modern and technically good but it has a number of conventions and quircks that I find irritating (the Apple way of forcing their own "better" ways on the user).

Still, obviously, many times better than the experience here, so having that would be a huge progress.

But there are many forum platforms out there.