Let's learn together!

[Evelyn Manning]

I don't know if it has been noted yet. But I think it is so handy because. I often make a mistake in my bio or delete something that I shouldn't so almost got a heartattack. But the undo arrow is so handy! Whenever you delete something by accident you can click on it!

 

[Willow Cullen]

I just discovered the site will save drafts of posts for you! Yesterday I was going to reply to a thread but ran out of muse lightning fast, and today I opened it up to try again and Ainsley's name was already in the reply box (that being the only thing I had managed to write yesterday before giving up and closing the tab)

This is a lifesaver of a tool. I wrote two paragraphs then changed accounts moved around a bit and then realised the origional tab wasnt on the page it should be. i went back and my post was still there. thank you.

Good to know, Nick

But when I forgot to censor a swear on the old forums, I don't remember it doing anything about it automatically? Or am I just mistaken?

the old site did do it automatically. I on occasions was known to get the letters in the word account in the wrong order in shouty. and it would throw in a few **** to let me know.


okay. question.
does anyone know how to search through the members and show only ones in a certain group (such as third year gryffindors) or how you can find members who's name might contain a certain name (such as all the zefarovich's on the site, or if you are looking for someone called amber but cant remember the last name)

 

[Sarah Harrington]

okay. question.
does anyone know how to search through the members and show only ones in a certain group (such as third year gryffindors) or how you can find members who's name might contain a certain name (such as all the zefarovich's on the site, or if you are looking for someone called amber but cant remember the last name)

I would also be interested in knowing if anyone has found a way to do those things. I know for the last question, if you know the person's first name but not the last you can go to the member's section from the top bar and use the Find a Member search option and as you type suggestions will appear and you can pick from those. But it doesn't work if you know their last name and not the first.

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

I would be extremely interested in a way to see all users in a particular group as well, since I've always used that both for the HM student poll and Accio 7th year PMs.

 

[Professor Cyndi Kingsley]

No, the members search doesn't have the ability to search by last name as far as I've been able to tell and it certainly can't search by group.

Admin can get you @Ainsley Lynch a list of the 7th years though when you need it.

 

[Amber Chou Wilson]

I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this, but I still think it's useful to share!

If you have multiple posts in a thread (I've been using this for bio's) you can edit both at once in the same window/tab, without losing progress on either post. So how I use it is to get code from one post and copy it into another without having multiple tabs open.

I hope this makes sense I don't know how to explain it very well.

 

[Professor Cyndi Kingsley]

This is a lifesaver of a tool. I wrote two paragraphs then changed accounts moved around a bit and then realised the origional tab wasnt on the page it should be. i went back and my post was still there. thank you.

I think I've noted it elsewhere, but if I haven't - yes, a draft will be saved...but it won't be there forever. After a day, you will lose your post.

 

[Evelyn Manning]

I think I've noted it elsewhere, but if I haven't - yes, a draft will be saved...but it won't be there forever. After a day, you will lose your post.

Yeah I had this. With my plot request topic. I could begin all over

 

[Nicolas King]

okay. question.
does anyone know how to search through the members and show only ones in a certain group (such as third year gryffindors)

I would also be interested in knowing if anyone has found a way to do those things.

I would be extremely interested in a way to see all users in a particular group as well, since I've always used that both for the HM student poll and Accio 7th year PMs.

You asked, we answered! Check out the new announcement!

 

[Willow Cullen]

You asked, we answered! Check out the new announcement!

Thank you nick.

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

Thank you so much Nick, this is an absolute lifesaver!

 

[Nicolas King]

The text editor handles smilies differently now: which means all our smilies can be displayed and don't worry if you'd be overwhelmed, there's a search box there, too!

 

[Nicolas King]

I recently learned that search allows you to use wildcards (*) which means you can complete a search without specifying a word you're searching for.
Very useful if you're looking for topics with an open topic prefix (the coloured labels).
Just type "****" as your search term and then click "Open" as the prefix you want the topics to have and voilà - all open topics!
Example!

 

[Lysander Summers]

Say I throw that into a bookmark, will that search continue to update?

 

[Nicolas King]

Say I throw that into a bookmark, will that search continue to update?

Certainly should do.
I suspect it updates at the rate the search cache updates. Perhaps daily?
Scritchy-scratch that.
Looks like Xenforo caches each search itself and the direct link to a search is the results at the time of the search.
So what you should bookmark is this, which will load the search page with the stuff inputted and you can just click "search" to get the most up to the minute results:

https://hogwarts.nz/search/?q=****&t=post&c[prefixes][0]=1&o=date

( @Lysander Summers )

 

[Zennon Baros]

OMG THIS IS SO HELPFUL THANK YOU EVERYONE!

 

[Amber Chou Wilson]

Credit to Jesse for pointing this out to me, but I found out today that you don't need to crop an image to be square for it to show up right as an avatar. You can drag it around until it fits for you. Like this:

It does say so, but I never noticed it before

 

[Stan Beckett]

And here I've been cropping all my gifs like a fool, dang

 

[Nicole Fisk]

I swear this was broken for a hot minute after the curved avatars were implemented. So glad it's back

 

[Zennon Baros]

I discovered it accidentally the first time I uploaded an av, it was on my phone so I accidentally moved it and had a hard time getting it back where I'd wanted it in the first place

 

[Professor Kalif Styx]

And here I've been cropping all my gifs like a fool, dang

Me too...

 

[Evelyn Manning]

Credit to Jesse for pointing this out to me, but I found out today that you don't need to crop an image to be square for it to show up right as an avatar. You can drag it around until it fits for you. Like this:

It does say so, but I never noticed it before

OMG I NEVER KNEW THIS TOO. I CAN USE ANY GIF NOW SO HAPPY

 

[Geovanna Adler-Cade]

On the subject of gifs.. specifically avatars..

If you're fed up of your gif being super blurry, make sure you resize it to exactly 400x400 pixels. When you're uploading an image it "recommends" you use at least 400x400, however even if you're using 420x420 for example it can come out blurry. Not sure why. I think it's an ongoing issue, and this doesn't make them 100% perfect, but it does make them look wayyyyy better once the site resizes it down to 140x140 after it's uploaded.

If anyone wants some assistance resizing too, just drop me a PM!

 

[Nicolas King]

On the subject of gifs.. specifically avatars..

If you're fed up of your gif being super blurry, make sure you resize it to exactly 400x400 pixels. When you're uploading an image it "recommends" you use at least 400x400, however even if you're using 420x420 for example it can come out blurry. Not sure why. I think it's an ongoing issue, and this doesn't make them 100% perfect, but it does make them look wayyyyy better once the site resizes it down to 140x140 after it's uploaded.

If anyone wants some assistance resizing too, just drop me a PM!

I'm glad this might help!

For the enquiring minds who want to know:
The "main" problem is that the board actually saves several different sized resizes of every avatar that's uploaded (XS, S, M, L, XL - or something like that) at pre-set sizes, and certain areas of the board are expected to use certain sizes. Avatars in topics are expected to use medium. "Medium" is 96x96px. There is no way to change what it saves as the medium file. Our avatars on posts are set in the stylesheet to 140x140px. It's stretching these images by nearly 150% of the image file it's calling. This is the problem.
The solution is for me to edit the code base to force it to use the large file (192x192px) in posts and let it resize that down to 140x140 rather than up with the stylesheet. However, this introduces its own set of problems that I have not resolved nor had the time to investigate fully.

 

[Nicolas King]

To update on the above issue - ugly avatars did get resolved in the end, hooray!

I learned, when testing out this update, that the new preview button (top right of the editor) greys out the BBCode buttons ever so slightly - so it might be easy to forget you're in preview mode and then you can't figure out why you can't type or click anything!
Make sure that preview mode is disabled if you're finding the editor annoying!