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Hello everyone. Just a quick note to let you know we are planning on changing our forum software later this month, to give a fresh new look and feel to the Sports Interactive Community Forums.

As most of you may well be aware, the forums have been an integral part of Sports Interactive and Football Manager for a large number of years, so fear not, we’re not planning on a major upheaval. All posts, users, private messages, post counts and links will be migrated across and the look and layout will stay relatively similar to what we have now.

To complete this change the forums will have to be taken down for around 24 hours – as soon as we have a specific date confirmed we will post it here on the forums to let you know.

Once we have the new forum software we’ll look to improve the look and feel over the forthcoming months, so we’ll be asking for feedback and suggestions from everyone in order to have something which enables the forums to work in the best possible way. We’ll also be looking to roll out some new features within the software with the aim of improving the general usability and functionality.

The URL of the site won’t change so no need to update any of your bookmarks or anything like that. We hope the move won’t be too disruptive for anyone and are looking forward to hearing your feedback once we’re live.

Many thanks,

Neil Brock – Community Admin

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The software is Invision Power.

Some things will be different of course, but we are trying to keep the feel and look similar to what we have now. It's not a decision we've taken lightly but it is something that has to be done.

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Just for you Gizzy, yes both those things. You'll have to wait and see for the rest.

Woohoo!!

But what am I meant to do for 24 hours without OTF? I have nothing else :D

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I'd like to make the suggestion that on the new forums the Data Issues forum be pulled out from the bugs section.

May possibly have the subconscious effect helping people think less that their perceived flaws in a players CA/PA is a bug but mostly just so its a bit more prominent and visible. It feels like its getting awfully quiet over there these days (it might not be, but it appears that way to me)

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I'd like to make the suggestion that on the new forums the Data Issues forum be pulled out from the bugs section.

May possibly have the subconscious effect helping people think less that their perceived flaws in a players CA/PA is a bug but mostly just so its a bit more prominent and visible. It feels like its getting awfully quiet over there these days (it might not be, but it appears that way to me)

The problem with having the data forum pulled out is that the list of all the forums on the index page gets very long. We need a better system for making forums prominent without having them all in one massive long list. It's something we'll consider when we come to redesigning the forums further down the line.

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eb96528ac6e2418f8839cf0a82c70dfd.jpg

Seriously though, haven't got an issue with them changing, just have to hope that the changes are good. On one hand they've been this way for ages now and I like how they look currently, but I'll reserve judgment until after the change.

Go for a Bret Hart neon pink/black style please.

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I do actually hope I can receive again the email notices of the threads i sign in.

I look forward for the new forum.

I do have question? On the new forum do we need to make new registry or our profile (and password to access it) will be transfer as well?

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Actually I quite like the Paradox forum style; as long as it doesn't extend to Karma points (or similar).

Yes, it's less bad without karma points/whatever, otherwise there will be fools trying to post just to get upvotes or that downvote people they don't like, etc...

I think that kind of thing adds nothing to the forum but trouble, when people complain about getting downvoted (as happened on Paradox forum originally, before they removed the karma points).

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It would be good if searching the forum was a bit better. I know that googling with the 'site:' command gets the job done pretty well but updates to this would be good.

While I agree that Karma has it's downsides for the reasons above, I think one benefit is that it can make the best posts more obvious. I would suggest a simple "thanks" button, with some kind of screen where the most 'thanked' posts would come up.

Another thing that I would personally like is some kind of addition that makes it slightly easier to distinguish between members without having to look at every single person's username. The most obvious suggestion would be avatars. If users could choose to turn them off then that would be great too.

The tactics and training forum should be more prominent. For instance there isn't currently a link to it at the top of this page. Unless someone directs you to it, it is really easy to not realise that it exists. The same is also true of less important sub-forums like the experiments and challenges or the stories section.

One reason this above point is a problem is that the 'quick navigation' button is flooded with every forum and sub-forum there is. If you click on it right now you'll see the only forums immediately viewable are ones for bugs. This forum we are in now appears about half-way down the list. How many people here realise that there is a hall of fame? I didn't until this very moment.

Another reason why I think the layout isn't working is that if you click on the 'parent' to "Football Manager General Discussions" then you are taken to an index with just three forums which are the general discussion forums for each of the three editions of the game. FMT and FMM discussion forums have such a small proportion of posts that I think a better way of organising it would be to have those two forums as subforums within GD, rather than as parallels to GD.

I'm looking forward to the update.

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I've been dreading an announcement like this for years. Can't help but think the negatives will far outweigh the positives... I am firmly in the camp of "if it ain't broke".

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I don't really understand why people is so negative about this change and why they are so terribly scared of it. Nobody sentenced you to death guys, nor you'll lose money :)

It's called experience.

The current forum software works pretty well (personally I believe it's one of the best I've used), and there are many other forums using software that is stupidly annoying.

I've given up on plenty of forums I used to visit regularly just because they changed to other software.

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Yes but I want to inform you you are not the only one with some experience around the web and for what I've seen so far SI seems a quite professional company to chose a proper software for a change in whatever the area.

And still, even if at the start things won't work at 100% I can't see a problem really. There are many other things in my life which concern me much more than a change of a board honestly.

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Um, I modded a board with Invision Power software, the board owner worked for them and was always trying out new stuff on us, like an arcade, a real-time chat/shout box, etc. Any chance of those?

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It's called experience.

The current forum software works pretty well (personally I believe it's one of the best I've used),

You only speak as a user- it's a nightmare under the hood, believe me. An upgrade is long overdue.

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Some will object simply because people don't like change.

As long as it works well, people will get used to it and will soon wonder how they ever got on without it.

In the upgrade, I'm hoping that notifications work when someone sends you a message as that hasn't worked for me on this one for ages, maybe ever

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Will we get tapatalk integration?
^this.

Any news?

If the forum is already setup to work on mobile, what other benefit would there be by having it on tapatalk as well?

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If the forum is already setup to work on mobile, what other benefit would there be by having it on tapatalk as well?

Well, with taptalk it's much more easy to follow the thread, sub-foruns, that we are interest.

We can pinpoint a particulary thread, and be informed whenever there are new replies, etc.

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Well, with taptalk it's much more easy to follow the thread, sub-foruns, that we are interest.

We can pinpoint a particulary thread, and be informed whenever there are new replies, etc.

You can do that on here, by subscribing to a thread - you can be notified instantly by email. I'm assuming it will be the same on the new software.

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Pessimists left and right. There have been times that I have felt the need to like a statement (and dislike).

Even more smilies? :)

Plan is to keep the smilies we've got, but we'll see. And no chance of any paid subscription type stuff either.

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The software is Invision Power.

RIP SI Forum. :p

It's now just going to be like every other forum. Aaargh, I hate Invision forums. Although I understand that they're more mobile friendly, so I guess that's driving this decision.

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RIP SI Forum. :p

It's now just going to be like every other forum. Aaargh, I hate Invision forums. Although I understand that they're more mobile friendly, so I guess that's driving this decision.

It won't be that bad :D- seriously, this creaky old thing is long overdue for an upgrade and the test forum we've had to play with is pretty cool. I don't think it will be much of practical difference for most.

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