New Muppet Central Forum Features

[Phillip]

Welcome to the new Muppet Central Forum. We announced two weeks ago that major upgrades to the forum were coming. We've been preparing for this upgrade for several months. We hope that you like the results. We believe that the more you use our new forum, the more you'll like it.

Here is an overview of just some of our new features...

 

[Phillip]

The following posts focus on changes to forum appearance.

Enhanced mobile-friendly style

Our new custom style is the first thing you will notice. The entire style has been redesigned with a fresh new appearance, but also with mobile browsing at the forefront of the design. Around half of our visitors are using a mobile or handheld device. When the screen shrinks, on-page content shrinks. Content also shifts and reorganizes automatically to optimize the browsing experience for all displays.

 

[Phillip]

Avatars

We now have round avatars as they are more aesthetically pleasing. The maximum size of avatars has also increased to 400x400 pixels. All existing avatars have been ported to our new forum, however, we strongly recommend that you upload a higher res avatar.

If you have not uploaded an avatar, you'll be given a new dynamic avatar based on the first letter of your username and a random color. Seeing these letters throughout the forum seems totally appropriate for a Sesame Street and Muppet-based forum. You can upload an image of your choice if you'd like to replace your default dynamic avatar.

Speaking of avatars, we've also added last poster avatars to the front page forum list.

 

[Phillip]

Site Navigation

You'll now see consistent Muppet Central logos in the header, mobile view and in our favicon on your browser.

Concerning site navigation, we had to make a difficult decision. Since nearly no devices natively support Adobe Flash and because Adobe has announced that they're officially ending support of their ailing plugin by 2020, we unfortunately had to remove our Adobe Flash menu designed by @jvcarroll from the forum. Jamie's beautiful menus have stood the test of time as they've been a part of the site since 2002.

All of the sections of the main site can currently be accessed by clicking on the "Home" dropdown menu or through our footer links.

A sticky header automatically activates when the window is scrolled, allowing the most important top navigation controls to remain available at all times.

 

[Phillip]

The following posts focus on changes to forum posting.

Quick thread

Quick Thread is brand new. Above the list of threads on an individual forum page you will find a title entry box. Clicking this box and starting to type a thread title will load a quick message editor, in which you can post the content for the first post of your new thread. This makes the process of creating a new simple thread extremely quick and easy.

 

[Phillip]

Content Reactions

The "Like" button has been expanded to now let you choose from a variety of emoticons. The behavior of the "Like" button isn't significantly different. You can still just click or tap the button to give a like (or remove the selected reaction) but to access other reactions you can hover over the link (or tap and hold on touch devices) and a tooltip will be displayed with your active reactions.

You'll also notice that the primary statistic listed on member list items, member tooltips and member statistics is no longer just a simple "like count" but instead we're now tracking an overall "Reaction score". This metric is the total number of positive reactions minus the total number of negative reactions.

 

[Phillip]

Enhanced message editing

Rather than opening an overlay, editing messages is now done entirely in-place, with the content of messages replaced by a full-fledged message editor that allows the complete range of editing and posting actions.

Speaking of editing, some of you have requested that we increase the time limit on being able to edit your own posts. We've heard you and are glad to say that the time limit on editing or deleting your own posts has been extended to 24 hours.

Keep in mind a history of all post revisions is saved and can be accessed by staff as needed.

 

[Phillip]

New media embedding features

The BB Code Media system has been significantly enhanced, and now supports embedding Facebook posts, Tweets, Instagram photos and a whole host of others.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1129010690948255745

 

[Phillip]

URL unfurling

When a URL is inserted into content and that URL exists on its own line within the content, it will "unfurl" it to a richer preview which includes the page title, metadata logo, description and favicon.

Like so:

"Sesame Street's 50th Anniversary Special" to air November 2019 on HBO and PBS

LOOK WHAT'S STARTING TO BE FILMED!!!! https://www.instagram.com/p/BxdR0rXgUEM/

muppetcentral.com

 

[Phillip]

Emojis

In addition to our beautiful Muppet smilies by @jvcarroll, you can now also insert emojis into your posts directly from the smilie menu.

You can also view emoji and smilie suggestions in realtime as you type. Often this can be more convenient than clicking each smilie one-by-one. As soon as the editor detects : followed by a couple of letters, it starts searching the entirety of our smilies and emojis and immediately shows you the results. You can then pick the desired smilie or emoji using your keyboard or with a click tap.