I built this in about 5 min

I built this entire blog index in about 5 min.

I simply had to visit this link, type my username in and press apply.

Then I just copied and pasted the links into a new blog post entitled Joe Fugate's blog index.

I also added a link to this index page in my signature. Now when we port all the threads to the new site, I'm all set. The index page will move over, and my signature should port over as well, so I'm good!

This report is limited to 100 blog threads after which it will put a more link on the bottom to get the next 100 of your blog threads.

I will also build a how-to video and so you can follow along with me for your own blog.

That sounds like a great

That sounds like a great plan, looking forward to your instructional video Joe!

when to do this?

So I assume we need to do this before we move over to the new forum, but after we've stopped creating new blog threads, correct? Or will there be an easy way to update it for any new threads we create between now and then?

Is this going to just be a legacy index, or will we continue to update the index for new journal threads we create on the new forum? I think you must have answered this somewhere but I missed it.

Advanced search

JoeF, I know you likely don't want to request more special features, but I think posing the following question of being a possibility to the forum provider might alleviate this whole issue:

In the advanced search you can already filter by Author and only their posts in the Journals section. What you can't do is filter on "author that started the topic". If that filter option was there you could setup a URI of, for example, "forum.mrhmag.com/blogs/joef" to redirect to the specific advanced search that executes that special filter for Journals started by user "joef"

Hope the above makes sense.

Once we’ve done the heavy lifting

Two Suggestions

1.  Put the post about the index tool in its own topic.  I stumbled on it by accident, I would not normally have clicked on "Joe Fugate's Blog Index" because I thought it was just you creating your index, nothing really to read per se.

2.  Is there a way to limit/turn off comments on a blog index post?  Its not a "discussion" topic per se and shouldn't really have comments on it, they should be in the topics.

index page?

   I have blogs for three layouts so should I make three separate  index pages so folks interested in one layout can go to it speciffically?  I plan to continue only two of the blogs on the new format so maybe only make 2 separate index pages?   or alternatively just abandon all the old posts and start 2 new blogs after the changeover? ....DaveB

Turn off comments ... and how many index pages?

Yes, we can turn off comments by locking a thread. Very easy.

First, keep in mind we are going to all this trouble to preserve the archival nature of our site, so shutting down a given layout discussion might be your strategy going forward, but how do you best preserve the access to those old threads?

Second, I prefer not to let index pages start sprouting up like mushrooms -- an index page is tied to the author, not the topics -- otherwise it ceases feeling like a blog or journal and starts to beg the question: why not just put them in topics by subject?

In short, make one index page that you link to in your signature and split it up into sections by layout. That also keeps future maintenance simpler as you add threads -- just one place to go that you need to update. Just click the one link in your signature and you're there, ready to make updates.

  "an index page is tied to

This brings up the question, should I just make a new topic thread for my layout when the changeover is complete and not worry about my existing blogs? Will there be a significant difference between topic posts and journal posts on the new forum? ....DaveB

Blog index posts in Recent Posts display?

Joe, is there a way to keep such Blog Index post updates from appearing back at the top of the Recent Posts display?  Or will a simple update to an existing post not prompt such things?  I was just hoping not to have two posts appearing (one with actual new content and then the Blog Index post with a link to that content) for every new blog/journal entry.

Not really

For better or for worse, adding a new blog entry or updating the first post in a thread will affect recent posts. You can edit comments and that won't affect recent posts. But adding a new comment also affects recent posts.

So there's not much we can do to stop new blog index entries from hitting recent posts.

Thanks Joe

Thanks Joe.  So what if we pasted the links into a reply in our blog index post, so that future updates wouldn't land it back at the top of Recent Posts?

That should work

That's an interesting idea. Basically, you title the opening post "Joe Atkinson's blog index" but that's all you put there.

On the first comment, you put your index links.

The first time you do that, you will hit recent posts. But then later when you add a new entry to your index, that should not hit recent posts again.

Let me verify that. I'm going to go edit the first comment on one of my old blog entries and see if it affects recent posts. It should not.

UPDATE: Verified. I just updated the first comment in one of my old blog threads and it didn't hit Recent Posts at all.

New forum search has a solution?

JoeF,

have you seen my post on the new forum regarding the search function being able to generate a blog post listing for a single user? Just needs some conversion or forum software bugs ironed out...

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/joernaposs-journal-index-11618031?pid=1325075956

old/new link URL format?

Once migrated to the new forum, will any of the links pasted on said index post or comment still even work, or are we just creating a bunch of useless clutter?

Chris

I believe what Joe said is the links will all be updated to the new forum as part of the upgrade script.

All links will be updated

This conversion will be done very smartly with custom conversion software developed over many months.

This means all forum links will be updated to point to the proper location on the new forum. That's both external links coming into forum posts and intra-forum links. If you link to a post somewhere on this forum, that link will work just as expected on the new forum as well, jumping to the same post over there.

We're using state-of-the-art techniques in this migration and ALL links will be preserved. The goal is NO 401 not founds, ever.

If it worked on the old forum, it will work with the new forum and you will never know we moved.

Yes, great bit of sleuthing

Yes, great bit of sleuthing, but I'm holding off on posting that to the developers because I just did a big unload on them about all the existing glitches.

Not to hard

Well, Not once I figured it out

Blogs verses Topic

I'm trying to understand some of these new changes, but even the wording (and definitions) are confusing. I look at your opening post and all the words are 'blog' , So does this new index apply to 'topics' as well??

I make most of my postings as topics rather than blogs,...for several reasons that i don't even fully understand myself. I did find that images posted get picked up by google images if they are in a topic, rather than in a blog??

Second, I prefer not to let

Isn't that exactly what is happening?...new index pages popping up like mushrooms??

Isn't this something that the new software should be doing for us, rather than each individual having to create one??
 

Sounds like there is going to be a whole learning process to navigate this new forum format, ...and some extra work linking back to previous discussions?   I'm lost.

I'm not a computer nerd so I have trouble understanding both the language and the subject. But I have observed that many different softwares are often created to solve the same problem, but many of them are not fully developed by their authors,...including Microsoft ones that are often bought online BEFORE they are fully developed.
 

That other trainforum that i mentioned having changed over to new software did NOT experience a great lost of old material, nor this indexing situation  (at least I think I remember that webmaster mentioning that fact)??

Link to a specific posting?

Is this new software going to permit someone to link to a specific posting (not just the page)?
 

That was a feature offered by at least 4 other forums I participated in, but required special efforts in this (older/existing) forum. I eventually found out how to do it, but it was not an intuitive process. Why didn't the original developers of that software include that feature? I would call those developers 'less experienced' . ...they may know how to write software, but they don't have the best experience in outlining all the good features?

Link to a specific post

Brian,

Yes, you can post a direct link to a post in a thread. In fact, you can do it such that the person who made the post sees that you are talking/referencing their post (though this depends on their personal notification settings).

Have you tried accessing the new forum yet? There are many "play" threads that show and test all the different features. A large group of us has been working hard to give Joe and team feedback and they have responded quickly to fix the items that were found or are addressing them with the forum provider.

JoeF

Joe,

I believe you still need to talk to them, regardless of having unloaded on them prior. Thinking about the search function not functioning as it seemingly should, might actually in one part be a conversion issue: for example the missing 3 Blog entries from Joe Baker in the search results could be caused by the conversion triggering two distinct sets of 'Journal' categories being created. The search function only sees/uses one 'Journal' category, not the other, hence why they don't appear when searching for it. A fix after the conversion for this could be extremely painful if not impossible to fix with scripts.

Same goes for the "double thread created for a single thread with a first post that has been edit": that is a conversion issue that they likely can address while they are fixing the "split first post is missing the split-off secondary post" issue.

Getting these types of issues addressed once you have gone live will be impossible. Right now you are getting the white glove treatment to reel you in. Once they know you've gone live, you are just another one of their 50k accounts.

The other search issue, the "missing buttons unless you search then go back by hitting the browser back button", yeah, that is something you could hold off on as once you report this it would go into their 'to fix queue' as it most likely affects everyone of their customers.