New Updates coming to the Prusa Community Forums!  

New Updates coming to the Prusa Community Forums!

Hi,

for the last several months, we have been working on the updates to the forum and before we put them online, we would like to share them with you. Our aim was to improve the overall responsiveness and add several features, which would make the navigation through the threads and posting easier.

Our web developers put in a lot of hours to get code to work together with the existing structure and added some very nice new features. There is a lot of changes both visible, but also under the hood which were a group effort between user feedback and suggestions from our web developers to improve the forums and other changes for our moderators to make the forums easier and faster for everyone. 

Each significant change visible to the user is described below and we still have more planned for the future, but as always, we look forward to how we can improve the forum for the Prusa community. So please post any feedback on the new additions, or changes you want to see below.

Summary:

• Forum Notifications and an Announcement section

• Slimmed-down appearance

• New topic labels (new & answered)

• Directly go to the first unread message in a thread **

• Improved search algorithm and search function

• Ability to share short and long links to articles

• Multi-quote feature

• Quick-quote a selection

• Preview your post 

• Other changes and updates

Forum Notifications and an Announcement section

In the main menu on top of the forum, we have a new live notification button. It is a bell, on the far right side. Here you will get new notifications for new answers, likes, and votes. A number will appear next to the bell when you have a notification so you can easily see it and respond when you want.

Also, there is a new announcement section in the top menu that will be an all-in-one location for any updates and posts from Josef Prusa and other team members, so you can have one page to see all recent updates from us (printer announcements, new firmware releases, PrusaSlicer, ...).

Showing the new announcement and notification sections

Slimmed-down appearance

With the home page listing the main forum sections, it now shows the 5 most important subsections for each printer, improving the experience for all members, but especially for those who visit the forum on a phone or tablet. It gives a better overall visual appearance to the forums. When you click on the printer a new page with all subcategories will show up. 

Old forum on the left, new "compressed" structure on the right

New topic labels (new & answered)

Now, when you are browsing threads, new topics will have a "NEW" label next to them. For threads that have been answered and are considered as solved, you will see an "ANSWERED" label next to them. 

The new labels are located to the right the topic title in the list.

Directly go to the first unread message in a thread

For new topics, threads and posts, when you start reading and either reach the end or leave mid-way through and return the post will show the last page you were on so you do not need to scroll and find the last spot you left off on. This feature will only work on newer content and can not be carried over to the older posts unfortunately. For older posts, it will return to the start of the thread. 

Improved search algorithm and search function

We have tweaked the search engine to provide more accurate results, also when you press the search icon (magnifying glass) on the top right, it will open up the search field with the text cursor active in the field ready to go.  

After clicking on the magnifying glass, it will open the search bar with it being active.

Ability to share short and long links to articles

We are adding an ability to share long and short URL for each post, so if you would like to share your post on social media, it is now easier and the link doesn't occupy half of the screen.

Showing off the new short and long links to share on social media.

Quick-quote and Multi-quote feature

You can now use multi-quote when you are replying to a post. You can either double click on a paragraph and you will see the “ icon. You would then press that and it will add the selected words would press the quote button on each reply you want to reply to in one post instead of a single post for each quote. 

Showing the quote icon to be used to add a section of a thread to reply to.

The same method can be used for a quick quote option when you want to comment on one section of a post. When you press the “ icon, a reply window will open and the text you selected will be added. 

Preview your post 

Now there is an optional preview of your post so you can see how it will appear in the forum before it is actually posted. This comes in handy if you create a post with multiple sections, pictures. For example your latest print project.

Now you can get a quick preview of how your post will look.

Other changes and updates

• While editing a post, the forum no longer scrolls down but edits it directly instead. 
• While pasting text to the post editor, only bold and italic are allowed.
• Long user names are now shortened and followed by several … so that they do not affect the layout of the new site. 
• Rich Text editor for your signatures to give our users more control and creativity with their forum signatures.
• When you make a comment to a thread, you are automatically subscribed to that thread so you can be notified of updates and can easily find the thread on your own profile page. 

We have more upgrades for the community in the works. Interactions to a seamless, fast transition between active and archived posts for users who are looking for posts on older printers, to many more options that will bring the community to a new level of interactions. We hope that you like the new improvements and if there is any more that you would like to see in the forums, please let us know. 

One last important piece of information regarding the forum update, all these optimizations and new features will require shutting down the forum temporarily. You will be notified about the upcoming maintenance in the "Announcement" section.

Looking forward to seeing your feedback!

Shane