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Hello users,

Today we have released version 6.1 codenamed "Structural change".

Filters

In the new release we have made some changes to the front page and added new filter options such as post type, topics or sorting. We want to make the homepage the most important page again. The filters can be combined in any way you like. For example: Show me all tutorials on 'Microsoft' and sort them by page views or number of comments. You can also specify a time frame.

Search

The search box can be combined with filters. For example, you can search for "Proxmox" only in the "Linux" topic. A new feature is the ability to sort search results by date. Relevance is not taken into account. All posts containing the search term will be displayed sorted by date. This has been requested by several users. In the future, the right column of the search will dynamically adapt to the search term, taking into account elements such as users, comments and topics. This will happen over the next few weeks. Until then, you will still see the placeholder 'Hotly Discussed'. We have also simplified the navigation in the search results (more/back/next instead of page: 1,2,3 etc).

Top Posts

For the permanent filter view, we have reduced the number of top posts, i.e. the teaser images with the headlines at the top of the page, by 3. An attempt will now be made to avoid showing the same topic images until the algorithm fails due to a lack of alternatives and randomly mixes the topics. This should rarely happen, however. The content of the top posts now adapts to the filter setting. For example: With the 'Tutorials' filter, the top tutorials will appear; with the 'News' filter, the top news will appear, etc.

News

The 'News' section (and important information) has been added to the new filter on the homepage. As we discuss news and information quite often, and new posts are regularly added by users, this section has been given its own overview and will be more visible and important. The news overview is also easily accessible via the URL: /news

Topics

Our topics will have their own URL (previously they were accessed via the 'tag' parameter). The new URL is '/t/topic_name'. This makes it very easy to jump directly to a topic, e.g. '/t/linux'. We are following the trend here.

Once a topic has been selected, the information on the right-hand side, e.g. 'Hotly Discussed', will be updated to reflect the content of that topic. This means that only the posts that appear in the topic are taken into account. This is now done in real time, without caching. More top lists will be added at a later date to the right of the threads.

Other small but important changes

• The main menu 'Instructions' has been replaced by our 'Stream'. I think the stream still has a lot of potential and we will improve it in the future (new look etc). Instructions can now be found directly in the filter on the front page.
• We have removed the 'Experience Report' post type. You can now choose between 'General' and 'IMHO'. Existing testimonials will remain, of course.
• The /latest/ and /discover/ pages have been removed in favour of the front page. The URLs are redirected to the front page.
• We have removed the pulldown next to the search in the ticker. It is not needed there.

As always, you can find all the new features in our Release Notes.

I hope you like the changes and look forward to your feedback or a click on the heart

Best regards
Frank

Hello user,

Quote button

At the request of some users, a quote button has been added to the article detail pages (it can also be found in the article menu). We have also changed the icon to make it easier to see when you are quoting.

Highlighting text anywhere now also works for quoting. Once the text is highlighted (it does not need to be copied), simply click the 'Quote' icon in the comment, post, or directly in the comment edit box, and the highlighted text will be quoted. This should now work on all browsers.


Javascript vs. jQuery

I have started to replace the previous jQuery scripts on the details page with pure javascript scripts. The goal is to remove jQuery in the long run. On the one hand this is for security reasons and on the other hand we want to have less dependencies in the source code. Also, looking to the future, pure JavaScript is now easier and faster to work with than jQuery, which changes its commands and APIs quite frequently. Node.js is also becoming more interesting to us.

As a lot of JavaScript code has been replaced or rewritten, errors can occur. This applies to all areas where comments or posts are updated or added, images are added or deleted, quoted, rated, etc.

If there is any deviation from the previous behaviour when creating a post or comment, please let me know as soon as possible.

As always, all other changes and new features can be found in our release notes.

I hope you like the changes and look forward to your feedback or a click on the heart ❤️

Best regards
Frank

As the year draws to a close, I would like to take this opportunity to thank our community of administrators for their dedication and achievements this year. It's been a year of challenges and successes, and we owe it to each and every one of you.

With the festive season upon us, it is the perfect time to pause and recognise what we have achieved. Your commitment is vital to our collective success.

Thank you to all the members who have worked tirelessly on issues and solutions to complex problems and made valuable contributions.

A big thank you also goes to our moderators for their tireless support and advice.

I am optimistic about the year ahead and look forward to continued growth, new challenges and shared success.

**On that note, I would like to wish everyone a relaxing holiday season and a happy new year.

May the coming year be as successful and productive as the past one 😎


Best wishes
Frank
Webmaster

Hello User,

with today's release it is possible to block users.

To do this, simply go to the corresponding profile and select the item 'Block member' on the 'More' button. This is also how you can unblock them.



Blocking refers to replying to posts or comments and writing messages. However, the blocked user can still read all of your posts. Without a login requirement there is no other way to do this.

Under 'Settings' there is a new item 'Blockings' where you can find an overview of all blocked users.

If you are logged in and you visit a profile which blocks you, a hint will appear.

All changes can be found in our Release notes.

I hope you like the changes and look forward to your feedback or a 'Like' (click on the heart)

Best regards
Frank

Hello User,

with today's release we are an international site.

We abandoned the previous concept of two domains and put both languages on one domain. The first try with .de|.pro domain didn't work unfortunately, because you had to switch back and forth all the time to read or reply to the content. The double login was also not optimal. Additionally Google never included the .pro domain in its index and always considered it as a duplicate of the .de domain (despite different language).

So from now on you will find both languages (english and german) under the https://administrator.de page. We have added a language setting (pulldown) at the top of the main menu (de|en).

By default the browser language will be detected and the page will be displayed in the detected language.

In addition, we give our users the possibility to select the interface language as well as the data language. I.e. you can choose e.g. German as your interface language, but display the data in multiple languages. So German and English posts at the same time. When adding a comment in a different language than the post itself, a hint to the respective language is now displayed.

For all overviews, a hint about the respective language is displayed if it does not match the current language setting.

All German posts follow the timezone "Berlin", as soon as you switch to English, the UTC time is displayed. This is the next ToDo for us, to integrate the respective time zones of the countries into our system.

I hope this "international" approach works better than the previous one.

Other changes:

• We have changed the font 'Administrator' at the top of the main menu to match the respective system font of the operating system. This usually looks better and is displayed more clearly than our 20+ year old custom font.
• The main menu can now handle small screen resolutions better.
• The stream has had some design tweaks (type, comments, language).
• The member dashboard is now much faster

As always you can find all changes in our Release notes.

I hope you like the changes and look forward to your feedback or a 'Like' (click on the heart)

Best regards
Frank

Hello User,

today we are releasing 6.0 for our international support.

The main focus of this version is the new overviews and the focus back to the start page. The previous overview ‚Current' is moved to the start page. Additionally there is a new search field and a menu, so you can find e.g. open posts directly from the start page.

The individual elements of the overviews have been revised and now show the respective avatars of the users instead of the topic pictures. Additionally, you can add your own article image to each post. Avatar and article picture will become much more important in the future. I therefore ask our users to set or update their avatars. They will now be saved in a higher resolution.

In the new elements you can already find the first 'tags'. These are currently our previous 'themes'. With coming version 6.1 we want to switch completely to tags. Then it will be possible to add multiple tags to a post. The previous theme images will only be used for the top posts on the start page at the top.

The previous item ‚Current' will be replaced by a new 'Ticker', which is a compact overview of all new posts from the day.

In general, we have changed our main menu a bit. The 'Knowledge' section now appears first, followed by the 'Ticker' and then the 'Topics'. We reduced the search to an icon that opens a new search field when clicked. Additionally, the 'Register' menu has been added to help new users join us faster.

Other changes:

• In the right column we have adjusted the design a bit, so that you can better recognize the individual lists.
• On the post detail pages, a new selection of posts by the respective author has been added under the post.
• On the post detail pages, the design of the 'Hotly Discussed' content has been updated.
• The overview of knowledge posts has been adjusted and a top knowledge teaser has been added.

As always, you can find all the new features in our release notes.

I hope you like the changes and I am looking forward to your feedback. If you like the new release, please leave a 'Like'.

Greetings
Frank