This week we launched a new forum site for the AnyScript community ✨ The new site replaces the old forum which has served for the last 10 years as a place for new and experienced users to receive help and give advice on the AnyBody Modeling System.
The old forum has served us well, hosting roughly 10,000 posts and 1,800 topics since 2009. However, the old forum was starting to come across as a bit outdated. So it was about time we upgraded our community page.
The choice for a new system fell on Discourse. Discourse is modern forum system which works well on both desktop and mobile devices. It has a lot of nice features:
Conversations and not pages:
Posts are structured by conversations and not spread across multiple pages, avoiding the hassle of constantly clicking to the next page. Instead, you just have to scroll down and the new content loads automatically.
Effective search:
Search now works infinitely better than before. Just type in your search terms
to easily find related posts.
There are also options to search individual topics and apply filters to refine the search to specific dates, categories, tags, users etc. So now it is much easier to find the relevant information without having to make a new topic.
Nice editor with preview:
The editor is really user-friendly. It supports a live preview pane, markdown formatting, math using LaTeX, drag-drop images, and much more. Even if you are not familiar with markdown syntax it is easy to use with the buttons on the toolbar.
Migration to the new forum system
We migrated all posts from the old forum and the user accounts of those who had previously posted on the old forum. However, we were unable to migrate passwords, so you will have to reset your password the first time you log in. Just click the ‘I forgot my password’ link the first time you access the new site.
If you have never used the forum system you will have to create a new user account. The same is true if you now have a new email address or if you just want to start from scratch.
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