We're Changing Our Website Tech

Website & Forum Changes
#1

Hi everyone, we’ve built a new website architecture for selling and delivering our courses. There will be some changes to how this forum works in the short term and long term:

  1. In the short-term the formating of this forum may be a little wonky and not match the new site. We wont be making any big changes to the layout of the forum just yet, but will do so in the future.
  2. We’re moving towards a Single Sign On option (yay!) so that you don’t need a different login for our forum and our courses. When we change to our new system you’ll be asked to use your GameDev.tv login email (the one you use to access courses) and reset your password. As part of this process you’ll be able to access this forum with that same account. If you have any posts with that email address they should be retain. If so some reason you use a different email address for this forum compared with the one you use for our courses then your posts wont be merged.
  3. For our new website we will have better integration of Q&A on the lecture page which means less need to come to the forum to ask questions. Over time we’ll repurpose the forum to be a better discussion / sharing / hangout place rather than a place to get help from a Teaching Assistant. We’re not sure on the timing of that transition, but it wont be for a while.

As with everything, we expect some bumpy patches with our change over so please do let us know if you have any issues with your logins or if the forum is misbehaving in unusual ways.

Thanks!

13 Likes
#2
#3

I hope the new system has better spam protection in the forums. I just now flagged about 5 or 6. Though I do have to say, flagged stuff does get taken down quicker than that book site for faces where even trojan horse/virus links, or fake profiles copied from people you know trying to friend you get a “This post did not violate our terms of service” response.

#4

Hi Todd,

In the past we have watched words that flagged the posts automatically to the moderation and admin teams so that we could manually check that it is correctly detecting the watched words and not genuine posts.
Recently i have changed the system so that we are now adding these watched words to automatically be blocked so they cannot be posted at all.
Obviously bots and users do eventually change their wording so we constantly update the list but hopefully this new system will prevent a lot more being posted and so reduce the amount we see.

We do appreciate yours and other students efforts to flag those posts that we and the system do miss!

Sorry its taken a while to respond to this as you can imagine its been an incredibly busy few days but i wanted to drop a message that we are aware of the issue and working towards better solutions

All the best
Marc

1 Like
#5

I like the general direction here of having better Q&A, but one thing that I think is missing at the moment is linking lectures to ‘showcase’ part of forums. A lot of challenges end up with “show off your work” (or at least they used to when I was taking courses before remasters) and in general encouraged to share the work with other students. Of course there are many avenues to do that, but previously having link right away to forums (and already pointing to correct subforum) was really convenient.

4 Likes
#6

I’ve raised this with the team as i am not sure on a potential solution that works for both us and students with the new system.
The forums are going to get looked at in the future but as i currently dont know the plans this limits what i can suggest to solve this potential issue.

Thanks for raising it :slight_smile:

Edit - It should be the same process as on Udemy in which Lucy’s community video indicates where to show and share.

1 Like
#7

I hope you give users more autonomy over their profiles and their messages here on the forums.

I had to ask a moderator to fully delete my previous account because I couldn’t freely change my username, neither delete and edit my comments and posts.

Sometimes users engage in conversations they later regret or they might share information that they don’t want public anymore.

Also we already have Discord, there’s no need to repurpose the forums to be more than just a place to get help from a TA because we need a “stiffer” place like this.
We need a place where only specialized educators with proper etiquette have the louder voice to guide the customer/students.

Compared to Discord where unverified random students can dominate and rule over channels, or get very opinionated and rude, I consider the forums to be a safer space where people are more polite and where it’s easier to get specialized help from trustworthy TA’s.

5 Likes
#8

Just wanted to briefly add that forum [safety, etiquette] tips would be a nice thing to make more visible (in the future, when crunch-time is over and everyone’s had a chance to relax again). Maybe that could be in the form of an additional section on the new help page, and/or added to Discobot’s (or future equivalent’s) onboarding process.

I’m assuming that doxing in any form, even if accidental and targeted at one’s self, should be flagged asap under “Something Else” for exactly this reason.

1 Like
#9

Hi,

I was wondering if this would still include all the courses that were on the previous website? I am currently unable to find some courses that were in my library but i hadn’t completed yet. Is there any way to access these?

Thanks!

#10

Hi Simba16,
Yes, they will transfer all of your classes. Mine have been coming through in waves. On Saturday, I only had about 15 of them. Now I have about 80. Give them a few days. There is a lot of data for them to move.

1 Like
#11

I don’t know if this is part of the migration process but my account has been deleted completely. I tried changing my password like it was recommended but the system did not recognize my email in the first place.

Is the migration still ongoing?

#12

Hi @Joseph_Selwan, did you use the same email for the courses log in and the forum? They were two separate accounts. That is one of the improvements planned. Also, they are still working on moving all of the data. Try again. If you are still having problems on Tuesday then email support:
support@gamedev.tv

#13

Hi Ed, thanks for the reply. For the forum, my original email was not recognized. So I created an account with another email of mine.

Anyway, I sent an email to support with screenshots and the rest.
Regards

#14

Yes the Forum Q&A is miles better than the Udemy system bar one aspect, the ability to link back to the specific lecture and open it (for those with the course or a TA). Current forum tags things are one way and highly opaque for anyone to match to even a course let alone the specific lecture.

It is also far easier to search and look up previous related answers on the forum system.
These modern systems like Discord have their place but are instant and ephemeral.

2 Likes
#15

Thanks for the great work you guys put in. The new site looks great and is a lot faster. Moving the table of contents to the right-hand side and fixing the video scaling means I can remove the browser plugin I wrote to do it.

A couple of feature requests:

  1. An option to favourite a course that would move it to the top of the dashboard.
  2. A preference to turn auto-play off for the videos.
1 Like
#16

you can use browser extensions for turning off autoplay such as McAfee Web Boost

#17

Do you have a time table for the new changes to the updated website for single login?

It’s a good idea, I created 2 password for both the login and the forum. Having a single login will make things easier, so thanks.

I’m waiting for this change before I linking my Udemy courses by GameDev.tv to the website. Will it use the same procedure to link our courses?

Thank for all your hard work

Rob Conn

#18

First off, great job on the migration. Was back into my course (RPG Dialogues/Quests) within 24 hours and everything is going smoothly. One question - not sure if this is the right forum but here goes…

I understand the plan to separate the Q&A associated with the courses from the forum conversations. That said - in going through the courses, the historical Q&A associated with each course available right below the lecture video was very valuable. Great feedback from the instructors and super helpful discussion from the community. However, these comments are no longer attached to each lecture - as far as i can tell. How can i access the historical comments from course lectures? Right now i’m trying to search with various keywords in the forum archives - but this is very difficult and hit and miss. Is there a way to search for the comments associated with each lecture from a course? This was very, very helpful material in learning the course content and navigating pitfalls.

And again, great job on the port!

Cheers!

3 Likes
#19

I’m in the same situation, I agree with everything you said

#20

So when will the changes be available? I tried to reset my password but I never received the email. Can we have a timetable?

1 Like

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