Welcome to SFF.Network. We're just getting started.

TL;DR:
  • We've upgraded our forum, which will unlock lots of new features! As a part of this, SFF Forum is now merged into SFF Network, and the two are now one website and online experience.
  • The website as it looks and feels now is mostly the 'default' setting of our new template; this will be updated and refined over the next few weeks.
  • If you encounter bugs or other issues, flag them here and we will work to address them as quickly as possible.

Hey all,

I'm pleased to share that we've successfully updated our forum today! This release is the result of considerable work behind the scenes, much of which isn't visible to end users. That said, it's the sizable effort culminating into today's release that will enable us to begin development work on some exciting stuff that you will be able to see, use, and enjoy.

Here's what's new as of today:
  1. SFF Forum and SFF Network are now one and the same. Our newsfeed and forum are one unified website, and will imminently share deep integration, such as native forum threads for comment sections. Our domain name will also soon be updated to sff.network (though smallformfactor.net will continue to work)
  2. Our website has a new interface. Our focus for today's release was to transition the forum to a new platform, and as such the look and feel we have today is merely a sign of what's to come. Expect a bunch of changes and refinements as we turn towards creating the ideal user experience and functionality for the community, atop of our new technology stack.
  3. A bunch of new features are now available. From native support of high-DPI screens, to emoji support, to tables (FINALLY), to inline Giphy GIFs in our post editor, there are all sorts of new functions of the forum that members can enjoy, right away.
Here's what to expect in the next few weeks:
  1. Changes to our Patreon and supporter tiers. Just as we've merged our newsfeed and forum, we will be unifying the ways in which community members can support our content and our forum. We will be retiring our Patreon account and making significant changes and investments in the feature set we offer to existing and new supporters, who will now be backing our content as well as our infrastructure.
  2. New content, with a focus on mediums beyond written posts. We'll have more to share later, but are excited to expand the scope of what content is published in the SFF.Network newsfeed!
  3. A genuinely modern forum, with an interface and functionality set that leads the pack. Advanced searching, tagging and indexing; improved media and embed integration; better formatting tools and content; new capabilities and controls for creators; improved web performance... there's a lot we have in our backlog, and much of it will be deployed in the coming weeks.
As with any transition of this magnitude, there are inevitably going to be some bugs or regressions; I would ask that you flag any issues you encounter and let us know about it, such that we can address. Of course, feel free to share any questions or feedback here, as well!

We're excited for what's next. Welcome to SFF.Network!

MRW I didn't melt down our servers while updating everything:

Best,

– Joshua
 
Last edited:

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
Original poster
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990
Some suggestions:
1. On the forum title, you may want to consider to decrease the left padding to align the icons with the menu items under it.
2. Just ignore.
3. On the thread title, you may want to consider to add a block to group these elements together. The seem very loose to me. Also, the phase label (like "Prototyping" doesn't have to be so big, and perhaps they can be moved a line below).

Thanks for these suggestions!

I still do think that the old layout was far more refined, but I guess this one will get there eventually.

It will. The old one took a while too, but we had the luxury of being able to build that for a bit first and then deploy it. With the current theme, we couldn't begin configuring it at all until after the XF2 migration, and we couldn't just use the old theme since compatibility broke with the upgrade; that's why you're seeing that development happen right now.

I think offering the blue and red schemes will allay most of this friction, and ultimately provide a better experience compared to XF1 if only because users have some choice.

I guess that's not exactly what we are complaing about, ( we are mostly old people yelling at cloud right now) it does make sense as a branding direction and the update in general is a bold but necessary move. Upgrading the inner engine of the plataform so it can live longer is a really important job and I'm happy you all show really a lot of care in this
. BUT I just prefer some of the mood the old color scheme for the forum bit as I grew attatched to it XD
With that said, I feel like, for example the logo should not change colors even on the blue theme as its blue right now. a bit of red wouldn't hurt. I'm looking forward to the rest of the updates and I'm getting more used to it, and the text edditor is quite nice now that the quoting actions work again

good job yall

I understood what you meant. There are still usability issues with the way the red theme is implemented now that are bothering me - the red text especially. I need to fix some functional bugs first, but I expect a lot of progress on the aesthetics to be made over the weekend, when I have more time to address them.

Sort of have the same feeling, good job on the blue theme though and on all the fixes done since the new start. :thumb:

(Btw smilies are not aligned with the text I guess ;))

It happens that I still have the old layout on a chrome tab loading from cache, for me it was still easier for the eye than the new blue theme. A reason may be the regular font being bolder that before. Regular and bold are almost identical now:
New bold font
New regular font

Or maybe the font that is still too white and has more contrast with the background than before.
Or both...

I detest the smiles. I have implemented support for Unicode Emoji and am looking into how I can scrub the forum of smiles entirely (which are a separate, XenForo-specific character set), and move to 100% emoji characters.

I am actually planning to implement some new typography and use that as the default; right now the forum uses Roboto which is not particularly great. You are correct that the font weights are not well-implemented.

As I iterate on the Blue theme, you can expect that to approximate the feel of how SFF Forum was pre-migration.

I'd leave the red theme on if the reds were a little bit brighter ,_, it's hard to read the last I used it

Any text that is currently red will be updated to be more legible, or to not use red. Red on black is rarely a good choice.

My personal feedback:

1) Bring back the blue. The red somehow feels like too much "GAMING!!!!"; as someone said; it is a bit like MSI gaming, or Asrock fatality or something like that. In general, red on black is really not good for the eyes to look at. Was also one of the rules we learned on a presentation seminar: never put red on a black background.

2) I also agree that the more grayish-font color was more pleasant to the eye.

Otherwise it looks more clean and more organized, even if my first reaction was like "WHAAAAT! I can't find anything", but that is just a question of getting used to the new layout.

But yeah, I really want the blue back. Or even better: make it possible for people with accounts to choose the color scheme when logged in. :D

A blue theme is currently a toggle-able option in the bottom left corner of any page. Per above, I built that one quickly; in the end it will approximate the color scheme of SFF Forum before the update.

Updates to the color schemes will emphasize legibility. So that should improve.

We had UI.X installed on one of our forums... ditched it after a week. Made everything so slow and bloated.

It will take more time to know for sure (I have only two full days of usage to go on), but our analytics suggest that page load is unchanged if not improved modestly compared to our XF 1 implementation. I will also be performing some backend updates that will (modestly) improve performance as well, though that's a variety of tasks that will be spread across months.

hey uhh seriously petty request here: on the red theme, is it possible to change marking text (selection box) from black to something a bit further away (i.e. brighter) from background gray? ,_, sorry

Yes, this will be fixed.
 

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
Original poster
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990
Hey all,

A quick mention that the site will be down briefly at 21:00 EDT today, to perform some maintenance. This should be an hour or two at the most. Updates include:
  • A few backend updates to improve performance
  • Updating our forum to the latest XenForo release (which came out post-migration, but contains many bug fixes)
  • Updating our various third party customizations and themes in lockstep with the XenForo release
  • Attempting to fix a bug with embedded media (YouTube, Imgur, etc.)
  • Reorganization of forum nodes (the sections of the forum essentially) to be easier to parse and navigate for users
Obviously given the extended maintenance period for the migration, I'm acutely sensitive to downtime and will thus try to keep these short and infrequent.
 

CC Ricers

Shrink Ray Wielder
Bronze Supporter
Nov 1, 2015
2,233
2,556
Been away for a few days actually but I do find the new forums a bit busy looking. But mostly gotta get used to the search bar taking permanent residence on the top.

As far as forums colors go, I'm on team blue :) I'm really used to seeing the distinction of the SFFNetwork news website being red and forum being blue.
 

NinoPecorino

Tweezer Squeezer
Platinum Supporter
Nov 24, 2017
505
515
in all honesty, after being upset about change in general, my only complaint is that navigating a thread by page number is not available anymore. it's a bit of a niggle, but on mobile(android), i really liked the ability to choose page numbers from the top or bottom of the page.
 

BaK

King of Cable Management
Bronze Supporter
May 17, 2016
930
931
in all honesty, after being upset about change in general, my only complaint is that navigating a thread by page number is not available anymore. it's a bit of a niggle, but on mobile(android), i really liked the ability to choose page numbers from the top or bottom of the page.
Do you only see a Prev and Next page buttons?
Page numbers appear in between these buttons with a screen of a width >650pixels (tested on desktop with Chromium dev tools).
So it might be that your device screen is too small and the responsive design of the site removes extra elements.
 

BaK

King of Cable Management
Bronze Supporter
May 17, 2016
930
931
@PlayfulPhoenix
Just noticed that (on desktop) the left menu (Home / Forums / What's new / ... ) stays correctly in place when you scroll the page down, but moves up as soon as you reach the bottom banner that contains the style chooser, which hides the Home and Forums buttons under the top banner.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Phuncz

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
Original poster
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990
Been away for a few days actually but I do find the new forums a bit busy looking. But mostly gotta get used to the search bar taking permanent residence on the top.

As far as forums colors go, I'm on team blue :) I'm really used to seeing the distinction of the SFFNetwork news website being red and forum being blue.

Where in particular would you say you find it especially busy?

in all honesty, after being upset about change in general, my only complaint is that navigating a thread by page number is not available anymore. it's a bit of a niggle, but on mobile(android), i really liked the ability to choose page numbers from the top or bottom of the page.

Do you only see a Prev and Next page buttons?
Page numbers appear in between these buttons with a screen of a width >650pixels (tested on desktop with Chromium dev tools).
So it might be that your device screen is too small and the responsive design of the site removes extra elements.

I'll have to play around with the media queries and see what functionality is dropped for certain mobile viewports. I would agree that I'd want this preserved for mobile.

I've already observed a few other graphical bugs (nothing functional, just aesthetic things) that are on my backlog for mobile.

@PlayfulPhoenix
Just noticed that (on desktop) the left menu (Home / Forums / What's new / ... ) stays correctly in place when you scroll the page down, but moves up as soon as you reach the bottom banner that contains the style chooser, which hides the Home and Forums buttons under the top banner.

Yep, this has been bugging me. Another issue is that the content of the left navigation sidebar is offset from the top more on the main forum page than on any other page. I suspect this is a bug with the notice system but I have to spend time to investigate and diagnose such that I can report the issue to our theme provider.
 

miptzi

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Oct 20, 2017
95
73
In mobile usage, android phone, the side menu is slow to a crawl in dark red, but fast in dark blue. Speed it up in dark red to make it less painful
 
  • Like
Reactions: Phuncz

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
Original poster
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990
Just a quick note that I've pushed an update to the themes; Dark Red is now further refined, and Dark Blue now better approximates the feel of the forum pre-migration.

I'm expecting how we offer alternate themes and what ones are available to users, will intertwine in part with the refreshed supporter tiers. I'd be curious as to what styles you all would like to see us consider developing?

In mobile usage, android phone, the side menu is slow to a crawl in dark red, but fast in dark blue. Speed it up in dark red to make it less painful

There shouldn't be a performance difference across themes, but given that we have been making changes over the weekend you might have observed slower loads as a result (the styles have to be re-cached each time). Let me know if you notice any persistent performance issues still.

(For those curious: To date, forum load times have actually decreased post-migration on average, across all users. That said, there are some short and longer-term changes we are planning to make to try and optimize further.)

Small bug on iOS in the drop down menu

In portait view the bottom of the list (settings) cannot be clicked, once switched to landscape it can be.


Thank you for the heads up!

Did the "latest posts" area on the main forum page disappear or have I gone crazy?
"What's new" on the left side bar :p
Yes but... didn't there used to be a thing on the right side in between (or maybe above) trending? This is post-redesign. I feel like it disappeared.

That's been swapped with the Trending widget, but to be honest we are still deciding what content to put there right now. There is some interplay with the Newsfeed and Forum sidebars, and some other areas.

Is there anything in particular you'd like to see there?

It's not readily apparent how to upload images....
@darbie we don't, nor have we ever, had an imagehost. Please host offsite and then embed here :)

For context: it is very expensive to host images, which is why to date we haven't. I did implement an image proxy as a part of the migration, though, just to better understand the performance and other considerations.
 

ermac318

King of Cable Management
Mar 10, 2019
655
510
That's been swapped with the Trending widget, but to be honest we are still deciding what content to put there right now. There is some interplay with the Newsfeed and Forum sidebars, and some other areas.

Is there anything in particular you'd like to see there?
I liked latest posts there vs. trending. Trending seemed to pop up ancient threads without a new post? Maybe that will work itself out over time.

EDIT: Certainly there would be something more useful than Latest Resources, which only shows 3 things and they are separated by more than a month each post?
 
Last edited:

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
Original poster
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990
I liked latest posts there vs. trending. Trending seemed to pop up ancient threads without a new post? Maybe that will work itself out over time.

EDIT: Certainly there would be something more useful than Latest Resources, which only shows 3 things and they are separated by more than a month each post?

I don't think either the Trending or Resource widgets will remain. We're just debating internally what the best informational use of that real estate is before we make a change.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Phuncz