Forum issue

[Bat 'n' Ball]

Hi peeps,

I've not been on for a while so I hope everyone well 🙂

A change I've noticed since my last visit is the background colour of posts from 'admins' and 'staff' in the forum. The colour change appears to be a ‘Floral White’ to make those posts stand out a bit. See pic1

That’s lovely! 

But, this shade of white doesn’t display correctly for folk using the Netduma Dark theme (i.e. moi). The text from admins and staff is now invisible, see pic2, whereas before it appeared fine just like the rest of the thread.

The only way I can now see admin or staff posts, is to highlight the text, see pic3, or to use the Netduma (Default) theme.

While the above resolves this issue, someone asking for support might be unable to see a reply from admin or staff, if they have chosen to use the Netduma Dark theme.

I’m assuming most people use the default theme anyway but if a dark theme is made available to people, it should work.

For those that don’t know, the theme can be changed at the bottom of Netduma forum web pages.

pic1

 

pic2

 

pic3

 

 

 

 

[Netduma Fraser]

I used the dark theme all the time so once I saw this happening I immediately let the team know, I will chase them up on it, thanks for the reminder!

[Bat 'n' Ball]

I was a web developer for the NHS about four years ago and, although it could be anything, my guess would be that the forum software installed on the server (or the theme itself) has recently had an update. If that's the case some manual editing of the HTML styling (CSS) file/s should do it , but if DumaHQ are paying for their software, a support ticket to https://invisioncommunity.com/ should be sent.

It's good to use the forums in a darkened room while playing games. I find the default theme is sometimes too bright for my liking.

[Bat 'n' Ball]

There doesn’t seem to be any word on this being patched, so if you miss the Netduma Dark theme as it used to be (as I do), here's a work-around for Chrome users. This takes around five to ten minutes of ‘geeky stuff’ but it's fairly simple, it's permanent and it only needs to be done once.

Install the Stylish extension from the Chrome web store. You may or may not need to sign into your Google account. This extension enables you to tweak the appearance of how certain web pages, which you specify, appear in Chrome.

Once installed, copy and paste the following URL into the address bar of Chrome and hit Enter:

chrome://extensions/

Look for the Stylish extension and click Details. Then, click Extension options (five from the bottom).

Click the Write new style button on the left and then paste the following code, in its entirety, into the Code 1 text box:

.ipsComment_highlighted.ipsBox:not(.ipsBox_transparent):not(.ipsModerated):not(.ipsComment_selected):not(.ipsComment_popular ), .ipsComment_highlighted:not(.ipsBox_transparent):not(.ipsModerated):not(.ipsComment_selected):not(.ipsComment_popular ) .ipsAreaBackground_reset {
    background-color: #120203;
    border: none;
    box-shadow: none;
    
}

.ipsQuote .ipsQuote_citation a {
    color: #a6121a;
    text-decoration: none;
}

Under the text box, click the Specify button and change the URL dropdown menu item, to URLs on the domain.

To the right of this dropdown menu, enter the following URL:

forum.netduma.com

In the top-left-hand column, enter an appropriate name for your new style like ‘ND Forum’ and then click the Save button underneath.

Now, when you view the forum using the Netduma Dark theme, it will look like it used to do and, as a bonus, the “On DATE at TIME, USERNAME said:” will be visible. Before, the username variable was invisible because it was the same colour as the background.

After this workaround, the Netduma (Default) theme might look a bit wrong in a similar way to how the Netduma Dark theme looked wrong after the forum software was updated. But, if you only want to use the Dark Theme, this shouldn’t be an issue.

Note:
If you get multiple ‘Don't use adjoining classes’ advisory messages after pasting the above CSS code, don't worry. You can safely ignore these messages. They only apply to IE6 and who still uses that!? The validity of the code can be checked via the CSS Validation Service website. Click the 'By direct input' tab and paste the main CSS code above into the text box and hit the Check button. You will see the code is perfectly valid.

Before fix:

 

After fix:

[Netduma Fraser]

Good tutorial thanks for that, I'll poke Josh to get on this!

[Bat 'n' Ball]

On reviewing some of my old posts, I've just spotted another small display issue with the forums...

If the Netduma Dark theme is being used and someone wants to use a Code box to highlight some code, it appears as a very dark grey colour - it's almost invisible. I think it used to have a white background.

   10 REM Bat 'n' Ball's awesome BASIC program!!
   20 REM ©2022 Bat 'n' Ball
   30 A=0:C=0
   40 FOR A=1 TO 100
   50   C=RND(9):C=C-1
   60   COLOUR C
   70   PRINT "Bat 'n' Ball Rocks! ";
   80 NEXT A
   90 PRINT "Bye!"
  100 END
>_

For those that don't know, the theme can be changed at the bottom-centre of any Netduma forum page 😃

[Netduma Fraser]

Thanks for the heads up, will pass that on!