The main issue isn’t screen versus buttons per se but rather there used to be 20 or 30 things you could “do” and now there are 200 or 300 things you can “do”. So it’s impossible to represent all 200 or 300 things on buttons anymore, so a screen has to be used instead.
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I think overall, the conversion / migration went well - except that it took 64 hours instead of the projected 16 hours. Congratulations to the team that made this happen! Thank you!
I would say that I’m not sure why our favorite boards were not automatically created as categories and tags with default notifications set so that the new platform could more or less resemble the old platform. I’d say that is probably the biggest miss. If the folks at HQ could have done this, I think a lot of angst would never come up.
Just my 2 cents -
'38Packard
– I’ll learn the new interface and adjust accordingly - hope others do as well
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Yeah, the timing was annoying for us as well…some posts hiccuped and just stopped things until they could be found, fixed and restarted…and naturally it happened in the early morning hours…things that didn’t happen in the trial migration. We did consider aborting and trying agin the next weekend but then it would have just been two weekends down.
So, we converted your old favorites to categories and tag and in tracking mode so you receive notifications using the standard functionality but the sidebar? That’s still in beta with the platform provider - they released it last week and we activated it immediately because we recognize the value of it (we’ve been pushing for it for months). If it had been possible to change the migration to make put those on the sidebar instead of tracking, we would have but it’s so new, it just wasn’t possible.
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It’s not an either/or situation. A half dozen (or so) buttons for the most common things you do would be far more efficient than having to navigate a menu for everything. And that’s even more important in something like a car, where looking at a screen instead of driving is really bad. But it could apply pretty much anywhere.
Take a computer. Your tablet computer has only a touch screen. Except for the power button. And two volume buttons (at least on my iPad - can’t speak to Androids on that). And what’s a really common add on to a tablet? A key board. More buttons.
–Peter
Just thinking aloud here and trying to learn without blaming, could you have maybe shut down the old boards for an hour or two in the middle of the night, made a backup, and then done a stress test on the conversion using that backup, maybe converting all the posts from 2021?
Problems could have been discovered and dealt with and the added stresses of needing to get it done would have vanished. Plus, if it were successful, you’d have another year of posts available on the new platform. 
Of course, there’s probably a cost to that, to which I’m not privy. But would it be less than the cost of the added overtime for the highly stressful conversion? To say nothing of the human cost in ulcers and excess coffee consumption.
–Peter
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We actually did a trial migration with the real data (without maybe the last weeks worth) but something still hiccuped. Did a dry run for each migration over the course of months. I’m debating between blaming sunspots or tidal effects.
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@CMFMints Gremlins. Definitely gremlins. I’ve seen the movie about them. They’re troublemakers. 
–Peter
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Sounds like a decision to go ahead even though the platform wasn’t ready yet. Seems like you recognized the value of the sidebar as a proxy for how the boards were used but chose to proceed anyway without it.
Now if only we could get rid of the wasted space on the sides.
And show the posts as a list showing the poster name. Clicking on the list item would open that post to the full text.
@CMFMints - Are you at liberty to share, and do you know which cloud platform is hosting the new boards now? Did TMF go with Amazon Web Services or some other cloud infrastructure provider? Just wondering!! Thanks!
It looks like TMF is paying for a hosted instance with Discourse. No infrastructure, power, or physical maintenance.
tracert discussion.fool.com
Tracing route to motleyfoolfree.hosted-by-discourse.com [184.105.176.43]
No, the platform was ready and stable. In fact, we’ve had a pilot program on it for about a year, moved all the subscription services before this one, and there are 3,000 plus other companies using it.
The sidebar, which includes the tracking link to follow all your favorited boards, is the new feature. Before there was a tracking button but this is more versatile.
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No issues sharing…many folks recognize it anyway.
It’s all on Discourse…a widely used community platform.
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Do you really need to do 200 or 300 things in a car? It’s feature bloat, because the developer can. I was watching a piece on a Volvo V60 station wagon recently. Turning on the heater requires doing half a dozen things on the touch screen. In my 8 year old car, I turn a knob.
Steve
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push the 3 line hamburger on the top left to slightly help here
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That seems to just remove the sidebar which is what makes this system usable.
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yep the hamburger is a step backwards. LOL
Maybe it is an optical illusion. But on my laptop with the sidebar showing the white area with text and the date/time (mostly wasted space) on the right side I measure a 9" width. With the side bar off I measure about 10.5" wide! (wow! 16% more space)
HOWEVER, the text of a multi-line post doesn’t wrap any different…thus no gain from doing this at all. Seems like extra white space was just added somewhere.
Maybe on a bigger screen , tablet or phone it is different.
But in the grand scheme of things, this is a bit minor compared to the list of topics which has a SWR of about 1/3 to 1/2 of the old boards.
(I was going to say SNR – signal to noise ratio, but changed it to SWR – signal to white space ratio…or maybe signal to wasted space ratio)
Mike
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The unusable part is the navigation is lost.
I’m still trying to figure out how to see the Metar board in its entirety. This happens iif I use the old “Your Favorite Boards” link, but if I use the side bar I get a different view and if I get there from other parts of the site I see different posts from the other two. While I’ve set up the sidebar the way it has been suggested and it does make things a bit easier, it still doesn’t give the full view that the old link does.
Since all these links are still preserved (I’m guessing one per board, so not a crazy number of them), is there a way these could be ported as an editable document if not presorted by TMF for each user?
It seems that simply posting the set of links as a document (or on-line list) wouldn’t be a lot of work.
Jeff
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Jeff,
If you scroll to the top and click on the Metar board tag you get the full board. Also on the left most of the time if you click on the category item you get the full metar board.