Welcome to the new Tree of Souls!

[Eltu]

Hello everyone, and welcome to the all-new Tree of Souls! As the first Avatar 2 trailer is coming out, I felt now was a good time to get around to properly migrating the site to a brand new platform.

First things first - I'm still around and will always be! Throughout the release of the Avatar sequels and beyond, Tree of Souls will continue to be a home for everyone who wants to be a part of it

New members​

Welcome to Tree of Souls! We are one of the oldest Avatar communities on the web, dating back to 2010. What sets Tree of Souls apart is a focus on community - we're an Avatar fan website, yes, but moreover we are a community of friends who found each other through a passion for the movie. All are welcome here, and we discuss subjects both related and unrelated to Avatar. I hope you will very much enjoy joining in!

Returning members​

If you're returning to ToS, welcome back! Below are a few things to note that have changed due to the update and migration.

Tree of Souls is now at tree-of-souls.net​

The most significant change beyond the new forum platform is one made out of necessity - as of right now, the address to access the new ToS is tree-of-souls.net (rather than .com). Accessing the old address will simply redirect here, but I'd still recommend updating any bookmarks you might have. I am hoping to move back to the old address, but I've been unable to reach HumanNoMore for some time and HNM is the only one with access to do this. HNM - if at any point you come across this thread, reach out if you can and we can move things back to the .com domain!

All existing accounts still work​

If you already have a ToS account, you can log into the new forums with the same account credentials as before - this has been entirely migrated over. The only thing that hasn't migrated over is custom avatars - I did manually restore the avatars of the top 20 posters and a number of others automatically through Gravatar, but many are still missing. If you're missing your avatar, you can of course update it yourself to anything you want!

State of the forums​

Categories, threads and posts, private messages, and profile comments are all migrated over. Custom galleries, user groups, and local attachments are not, although they make up a very small minority of content so hopefully this will not be a huge loss.

Visually, I am constantly making improvements and changes to the forums - there's a number of visual glitches around currently but I'm hoping to iron those out in the near future! You will also notice countless improvements to the general readability and usability of the forums, such as a WYSIWYG editor, a responsive design, far better typography and much more! Please feel free to use the forums in any way you'd like and report any issues and such here. I'll be around pretty frequently at this point to clean things up and improve the site!

Welcome back!​

Finally, let me welcome everyone back who may come here following Avatar 2-related announcements or Avatar 2 itself! Tree of Souls is here for you, always

 

[Eltu]

Known issues

• Various UI elements have color and alignment issues.
• The design is not yet fully responsive on mobile devices or other small-screen scenarios.

 

[Aaron]

Thanks for the hard work, Eltu! I hope HNM resurfaces soon and can assist with the domain stuff. It’s been sad to watch the date of his last activity recede years into the past. I hope he’s ok, wherever he is.

 

[Tsutey]

Nice work! The new board looks like very good! Thanks!

 

[Eltu]

Made a bunch of updates!

• The chat should now be fully functional.
• The site is now usable on mobile devices - but please let me know if you encounter any usability issues!
• Donations are now once again set up for those who wish to help contribute to hosting expenses. Donators receive a special emblem and the ability to set a custom user title. Note that all existing donators have been migrated over from the old site.
• Layout, color and typography adjustments have been made in various places.

Again feel free to let me know if there are any issues anywhere, I will continue to make improvements over the next weeks!

I would also like to ask - would it make sense to merge the Avatar sequel subforum into the general Avatar subforum at this point? In general I tend to prefer fewer subforums (especially as the community is now a lot smaller) and there'll probably be a lot of overlap, so maybe a more general "Avatar series" section makes more sense than individual categories for each movie? Feel free to offer your input!

Also, is profile visitor messages something that people appreciate as a feature? I know it's been used to some degree in the past but it's also something that could be streamlined away if we'd like - in one way it makes for a more integrated community that way since it then funnels conversation into the main forum boards, but again feel free to give your opinion on this.

 

[Aaron]

Merging the forums makes sense to me. Patterns may emerge in the conversation later that suggest a different factoring, but for now...

To your question about visitor messages: I happen to like and use that feature on other sites that I'm a member of, so I'd vote in favor of keeping it. In theory, yes, it could take some action away from the forums, but I haven't seen that happen in a big way elsewhere. Seems like people mostly use it for topics of a somewhat personal nature that don't quite rise to the level of being private, and as a result it tends to reduce the number of private messages being sent, not the number of forum posts being made. Fewer PMs is a good thing, IMO.

EDIT: Indeed, mobile looks good now. Thanks for the effort!

 

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

interesting, i am looking around

 

[Eltu]

Let me know what you think! All feedback is appreciated, and I'll strive to make the forums as good as they can possibly be

To your question about visitor messages: I happen to like and use that feature on other sites that I'm a member of, so I'd vote in favor of keeping it. In theory, yes, it could take some action away from the forums, but I haven't seen that happen in a big way elsewhere. Seems like people mostly use it for topics of a somewhat personal nature that don't quite rise to the level of being private, and as a result it tends to reduce the number of private messages being sent, not the number of forum posts being made. Fewer PMs is a good thing, IMO.

Noted! Visitor messages will remain for now

 

[Wameyn]

Im also for combining sub forums, when there are too many it’s overwhelming, especially for new members.

Checking out the new TOS on mobile currently, will provide feedback later, so far everything’s working really well.

 

[Eltu]

Yeah, ToS has always been a bit overboard when it comes to subforums!

Right now I think we're at about half of what we used to have, which is probably a good middle ground.

 

[Wameyn]

It looks great! Hopefully with new Avatar content coming out for the next decade you won’t need all the random subs to give everyone things to continue talking about! We should be able to have actual Avatar conversations again!

 

[Wameyn]

Two issues I’ve seen, there is no “attach files” button in this sub, and the chat isn’t working for me on mobile (iOS)

 

[Eltu]

I haven't enabled chat on mobile yet as I'm still working out the mobile-specific chat layout. As for attachments, that should be fixed now!

Also, if you have set a custom user banner it now also shows up on the left of any of your posts (as seen in my post here)! Anyone can set a user banner, so it's a nice way to personalize your posts a little more

 

[Wameyn]

Fantastic, and yes I have the button now

Love the look of that banner!

 

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

i like the new look, just wondering if any of the stuff like original join date, location, post count, stuff like that, will be displayed or is that info not part of the new forum here?

 

[Eltu]

All those things are indeed present here! If you view the full page of any member, the join date, post count and location is all visible

 

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

ok thanks also i was wondering will there be support for visible twitter and instagram posts at some point? jw

 

[Eltu]

That should actually work already! If you just post a link, it shows as a link, but if you click the Media button and paste the link there it will embed right in your post, as such:

 

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

oh silly me, i didn't see the media button. thanks

 

[Woodsprite]

Also wondering; in the "About" section for personal profiles, is it possible to edit one's own section? Is there a button I haven't noticed?