New PLCs.net Site Features and Design

[geniusintraining]

BUT my one huge request would be email notifications of new threads. Lots of days I'm too busy to browse the threads and by the time get a chance, discussions I would have liked to participate in have died out. However my email is always up and if I saw an interesting thread come across I would come participate.

Maybe we don't want you too .......Just kidding

Tim have you clicked on "Subscribe to"

 

[TimWilborne]

Maybe we don't want you too .......Just kidding

Tim have you clicked on "Subscribe to"

Unless I've missed something, I can click "Subscribe to" on individual threads which I do as they interest me but I have nothing to contribute to them. But what I'm looking for is a single email for a new THREAD that is added to the forum.

 

[geniusintraining]

Phil,

Whatever you do please keep the 'old' search, I use it and I think others also use it a lot.... it's better then anything I have used and has saved my as many times

A YouTube maybe good for a 'how to use' would be nice if you made a lot of changes

 

[geniusintraining]

Unless I've missed something, I can click "Subscribe to" on individual threads which I do as they interest me but I have nothing to contribute to them. But what I'm looking for is a single email for a new THREAD that is added to the forum.

For every thread? That's a lot.... of emails

 

[TimWilborne]

For every thread? That's a lot.... of emails

I get a lot of emails. But it is one place to check as oppose to 20 different places.

 

[mk42]

For me, this site IS the forum. However, I think the jobs wanted/offered and parts could use a revamp.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank you so much for offering this website, it has saved my *** on more than one occasion.. Thank you Phil!

If I can do anything to help you doing all this, let me know

I'm with boneless. I had honestly forgotten that there were parts of the site besides the most excellent forum.

 

[Steve Bailey]

I'm also in the group for which the forum IS the site. The only time I go to the tutorial is when someone posts a question about something in it that confuses him. I also check the help-wanted area occasionally.

I think it would be a good thing to expand the list of topics in the tutorial. As it currently stands, it describes the "classical" way PLCs operate; Synchronous I/O scan, RLL programming, etc. The state of the art has moved on since Phil put it together. But a beginner today will have to deal with tag-based variables, programs with a mixture of languages, UDTs, AOIs, and many other features not covered in the tutorial.
Perhaps we could put together a Wiki-type collaborative to develop an introduction to some of the more recent additions to the automation developer's toolkit. Multiple editors/contributors could help prevent the topics from becoming too brand-specific.

 

[rankhornjp]

I would like to see a "my replies" button/link that would show me a list of all the threads I've replied to, instead of having to search for my name.

 

[JesperMP]

"Agree" and "Thank-you" buttons, and you can see who tagged posts with these buttons (important).

 

[JesperMP]

I dont think that the forum should be split into sub-forums.
Instead, it should be a requirement that threads are more easily searchable.
It could be by tagging, but there would have to be many tags, and they should then be moderated (so we dont get many almost identical tags).

An alternative to tagging, is that it could be mandatory that thread-starters define the specifics in the 1st post. IMO, that thread-starters dont care to jot down the technical details, and what the problem REALLY is, is the one aggrevating thing on this and other forums.

 

[Peter Nachtwey]

It is easy to add the ability to enter LaTex or MathML. Our forum supports MathML and LaTex. There was a free package that was added.
I think we used Mathjax.
I use the Daum equation editor if I only need an equation or two.

 

[Donnchadh]

Hi Phil

First thanks for all the great work you put into the site as the amount of times this site has got me out of the s**t I could not even start to count.
I am delighted to hear you are leaving the format as is
If I could suggest one thing I would like is been able to mark a post that I could easily find again. I use the flag marker in logix 5000 a lot to mark rungs of code and some of the posts that Peter, ken, jasper, George and many others post have great detail and sometimes I like to go back a few weeks later and have another look over it.

But to Phil I owe you more than I can ever start to repay and I hope some day that I could return some of the help I have received here over the years

Donnchadh

 

[Paullys50]

Like a few others, I only come here for the forums. If you didn't have them I would never come here. I suppose some suggestions would be:

- Automation news/notable events
- Articles, see if people would create articles based on projects they have done, products used, events attended.
- Product overviews

I guess my suggestions are more about generating content to supplement the forums versus any design/feel of the site.

Unfortunate to hear the forums aren't being touched, would be nice to have 'mobile friendly' forums for browsing from a phone/tablet.

 

[kolyur]

The forum is great as-is but I'd love to see the Subscription feature expanded:
- Automatically subscribe to all threads that I started or replied to
- Automatically subscribe to all new threads that contain specific keyword(s).

It would be handy to get emails when posts appear that match these criteria.

 

[OdinIII]

Unfortunate to hear the forums aren't being touched, would be nice to have 'mobile friendly' forums for browsing from a phone/tablet.

Since Paully threw it out there, I'd love to be able to access this forum with the Tapatalk app. This is one of only 2 forums that I frequent that do not have the Tapatalk plugin. It is just so convenient to be able to view and post from my phone. I haven't used a mobile version of a site yet that was remotely as easy and fast as a Tapatalk enabled site.

Thanks for this forum and thanks to all the posters who make it as great as it is. I'm definitely a better technician because of you guys.