Posted By: Fearghas[/usernameSo, I've been thinking about bringing this up for some time, then it came up in a thread about something else on the newbie board so I decided to pull the trigger and say something.
I think it would be helpful if the forums had a post preview feature.
Preview is just one feature that other Forum Software options provide. Better threading is another feature that could be improved. All we have here is flat or tree and people often reply to the wrong post, thus adding to the confusion.
Because there is no copyright or other message at the bottom of TER pages ("This site runs on XYZ Open Forum Code" or similar), I have speculated that TER code was developed in-house by TER staff. The thing is, thousands of other websites drove the other (open software groups) to continuously update and improve their (free) products. TER is probably more than a decade behind in FEATURES even though the code still runs and, it seems, runs securely.
There are sites that compare forum software, such as:
http://www.forummatrix.org/ and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software One really BIG PROBLEM when changing from one forum software to another is preserving and porting the archived posts. Modern options usually include code to change from old-software-A to new-software-B that has been debugged and tested by hundreds of users on different sites. TER is a one-of-a-kind, I think, so porting the old to the new could be a HUGE, make that HUUUUUUGE problem.
People who use other forum software as users or Admins have their preferences. I hope they will chime in here. TER users might want to chime in and say whether they could tolerate some glitches and loss of ACCESS to old posts in exchange for a newer interface.
Saving Drafts in Reviews (Private Mail has a Drafts feature already) is not FORUM software, but another application of the Preview or Save as Draft code.
We've all seen busted links attached to posts. Hell, I did that once or twice before I figured out what my phone was doing, but it wouldn't have happened because I always use the preview when it's there. I would just look at my own post right after I make it and edit if necessary, but alas: the moderating. If I become busy before my post is screened, even if I see later that I messed something up I can't fix it if I missed my four hour window. I've PM'd providers to tell them their pics weren't appearing on the photo board. They were surprised and grateful for the info.
Keep in mind that sometimes missing pics are due to the picture hosting site. Your own ISP might reject a picture link as coming from a questionable source. If someone links to really HUGE picture file (15 Mb instead of 250 kb), the servers and hardware might run too slowly and force a "timeout" error and the appearance of an empty box or broken icon. Sometimes it's an error that can be quickly fixed in Preview, sometimes the post and info are correct and the problem is elsewhere.
I feel like a preview button would help with a lot of this. I'm obviously not a guy who's been on hundreds of forums, but I have been to quite a few and I think this is the only one I've seen that doesn't have it. If I have seen any others without it, this is by far the biggest and busiest, and the only one that takes in money from the users. Why don't we have this?
Actually, that's not my question, that's irrelevant. My question is can we get a post preview?
I hope your post generates some more feedback and maybe even some contributions or comments from TER Admin.
EDIT: After posting, there is a short window for Edit Message which then adds a "Modified on 4/17/2016 3:03:00 PM" string of text. I have seen posts with 5 or 10 such edits as people try to edit typos, grammar or just fix and improve their posts. There will be more "Modified on"s than actual content!
Here's another one:
-- Modified on 4/17/2016 3:07:58 PM
