New Feature! May 2017 Site Update - New Features

There's been quite a few updates to the site the last few weeks, so here's the low down:

• Group invites to events
• 2 Letter search
• Best Posts
• Image Preview of Threads
• Bookmark Posts
• Conversation Search
• More Threads - View other threads by users
• Giphy Integration
• OP Highlighting
• Favicon for links
• Popular threads right now
• Top posters of the month
• View recent unanswered threads
• Previous and Next Thread Navigation
• New electric skateboard racing and time trial forum

Scroll down for more info on each new feature.

 

Send Group Invites to Your Group Rides and Other Electric Skateboarding Events

You can now send group invitations out to your events.

This is possible due to a new feature on the map, where it's possible to select all the forum members in a specific location. These members can then be tagged and invited to your events.

This should help increase the visibility of your events resulting in better turnouts and enabling you to meet more riders from your local area.




The feature is still being worked on, so currently only available to admins. However if you create an event in the group rides and events forum, then tag me using @Alex, I will send an invite out to anyone nearby for you.

We've used it on a few events so far and it's proving to really up the response rate and helping get word out to the right people about group rides in their part of the world.

Give it a go by creating an event for your next group ride.

 

2 Letter Search

It's now possible to see results for 2 and 3 letter terms in the search system.

This makes it much more useful for finding content that uses acronyms or abbreviations such as GT, BGT, CBT and many other short search terms.

Try it out by searching for something.

 

Best Posts

You can now see the best posts from any forum, thread or the entire site.

There is a 'Best Post' link in the breadcrumb that appears site wide and is context sensitive, so it will vary depending on if you're viewing a forum index, a thread, or the site index (home page). If you're on the site home page or index, it will show you all the highest rated posts site wide:





When you're in a specific forum, looking at the thread index, you'll also see the best posts links at the top of the list of threads:





When within a thread itself, you'll also see a link that will apply only to that thread:





Give it a go! This is a link to the best posts in the main Evolve Forum.

 

Image Preview of Threads

When viewing the new posts page, you can now see a preview of the most recent images in that thread before you visit it.

 

Bookmark Posts

You can now bookmark your favourite or particularly interesting or informative posts for easy reference at a later date.

Every post has a 'Bookmark' link in the post controls at the bottom.




To view your bookmarks, visit the Bookmarks List in your user settings from the drop down menu.

Here you'll find a list of all your favourite bookmarked posts.

 

Conversation Search

You can now search through your conversations if you have a lot of them

 

More Threads - View other threads by users

You can now quickly and easily view more threads from a specific user if you find they post a lot of content you're interested in.

If they started the thread, you'll see a link above the first post:




Alternatively you can get a link for any user by clicking on their avatar to view their member card:

 

Giphy Integration

Giphy has now been integrated into the editor so you can quickly and easily search for gifs to integrate into your posts to add a bit of character and have some fun.

Tap the Giphy button to open the giphy drawer below the editor.

By default it will show the most popular gifs on giphy that day, use the search bar to narrow down the results.

Scroll to the right and use the arrows to view more gifs.

Tap a gif to insert it into your post.

 

Original Poster (OP) or Thread Starter Highlighting

The person who created a thread now has a label on their avatar so they're easy to identify in longer threads.

 

Favicon for links

Links in posts now scrape the favicon (mini site logo you see at the top of your browser tabs) for the website it's linking to.

This can be handy to see at a glance what website is linked.

Here's you can see the wikipedia logo from this link without having to hover over it or visit the link:

 

Popular threads right now

This uses live google analytics traffic stats on the recent activity live feed page to see which threads are getting the most views at any given time.

 

Top Posters of the Month

On the forum home page in the sidebar you can now see a running total of the top posters of the month.

At the end of each month the rankings will be viewable on the top posters page.

 

View Recent Unanswered Threads

Again, on the sidebar on the home page you can now see a list of the most recent unanswered threads.

Be sure to check in on it and see if you're able to help anyone out or contribute to a lonely post awaiting a reply.

 

Previous and Next Thread Navigation

You can now easily jump to the next or previous thread in a particular forum using the links added within each thread.

You'll see these above and below the list of posts when inside a thread:

 

That's it for now!

Let me know what you think and if you have any feedback or suggestion for new features.

 

New Electric Skateboard Racing and Time Trial Section

Whoops, I forgot about this one.

There's now a new forum for threads where we can keep track of race times at various tracks around the world.




Here's an example thread where we kept a record of all our times at our trip to CycloPark last weekend.

Feel free to create a thread for any courses near you, then as we travel the world and visit other riders we can find tracks nearby and compete for the fastest times.

CycloPark All Terrain Track 1 - Racing & Time Trial Thread