HIVE 3 Remoosed Beta

[Ralle]

Have you ever taken a look my HIVE changelog? Not much has changed since the beginning of 2018. That's because I have been working on the next major version of The Hive Workshop since then.

Today is a big day... For me at least. I have waited three years to finally show you what I am working on. Today we are opening beta access for Hive 3 Remoosed.

In 2012 I started working on a version of Hive for XenForo version 1 (from vBulletin 3) which we moved to on June 10, 2016.

In late 2017 XenForo 2 was released and I quickly came to realize that it required a full rewrite of Hive for us to update. What you are going to see today is that version.

It will seem different, but not very. But rest assured every line of code is new and I need help testing it to make sure it works before we move to it.

The primary goal of this version is to be compatible with XenForo 2, not to rethink every aspect of the site. But porting every piece of functionality from old to new would leave me dead from boredom, so I have of course made improvements, especially to aspects I know to be lacking. Resource search anyone?

You will find bugs, you will find quirks. You will find things you don't like, even things you hate. But please be respectful. I care very deeply about this project and it hurts when people step on it. I want feedback, lots of it. I want suggestions. I want feelings, but expressed in a non-attacking way. That's all I ask.

Now, go take a look:
⇒ Hive 3 Remoosed ⇐

NOTICE - This is the beta version of HIVE. It runs on an outdated backup of HIVE. Everything posted here will be deleted in the next run of the beta or when we finally migrate. If you want to keep doing things on HIVE, don't use the BETA. Only use this site for testing features.

---

I have attempted to make a list of changes. But it's not easy to keep track of what you've been doing for the past three years. This project is older than my two year old daughter by now.

The next major version of the forum platform Hive is based on. You can read the changes here. I won't go much into detail about it.

As usual, @Archian has been a huge contributor on the design. This time around @Mythic also played a big part. Like it or not, the design is a Reforged inspired theme. We have tried simplifying the navigation and focused on what the site is about and diverged from how XenForo typically looks.

We still plan on making a Night Elf theme. Perhaps if only few bugs are found, we'll have one by launch day.

---

Wait what? Yes... I have decided to remove reputation. Current reputation is converted to XenForo 2 reactions such as like, love and angry. The old Reputation messages are converted to profile posts. Reputation contest awards are converted to experience awards, read more about them below. I did not want to implement a reputation system when all communities these days use reactions. Reactions also happen to work better on mobile.

---

In place of of your reputation gems, we are now going to show an experience bar with your level. Experience can today be gained in the following ways:

• Starting a thread
• Replying to a thread
• Submitting a resource
• Receiving a positive reaction
• Receiving an experience award (from a contest)

The experience gained from these actions varies by the type of action (and section). E.g. a thread in Tutorials might give more exp than one in Warcraft Discussion. The system can easily be expanded to support other actions too. These are just the ones I came up with.

Down the line you might be able to unlock features on the site when you reach various levels.

---

This is where I spent most of my time in the past years. Rebuilding the resource system. It's the most complicated part of Hive. A lot of things will look familiar but there are a few changes.

SEARCH​

I made a big mistake when I decided to rely on the built-in search in XenForo for Hive 2. Today the search field is coming back to the resource section.

SIMPLER BUNDLE/RESOURCE EDIT​

Editing a resource inside a bundle now requires fewer clicks as you can edit, add and remove resources on a bundle without first having to click "Edit" on the bundle.

You can now also re-order the resources with drag and drop if you have a preference as to the order of the resources.

Buttons have been added to insert preview images into the description for a richer experience.

IMPROVED "VIEW RESOURCES IN USE" & "VIEW USAGE"​

The "View resources in use" and "View usage" systems have been accused of being incorrect in the past. This is because the system looks for file collisions between maps and resources. Sometimes a resource contains a commonly used texture or model which causes the system to present unexpected resources being used. The new system now shows a more descriptive view of what's going on.

View usage (when a file occurs in multiple resources):

Resources in use (when a file occurs in multiple resources):

EXCLUDE TAGS FROM RESULTS​

For years we've had the ability to show only resources with the following tags. Now we also have the ability to exclude all resources with a tag.

BETTER SUPPORT FOR HD/SD/Classic​

We have maps from before Reforged, maps from Reforged in SD and HD. To make it easy to find what you are looking for, we now have this switch:

BETTER VIEW IN 3D​

The "View in 3D" page is now fullscreen and has controls for switching between cameras, animations and team color.

RESOURCES WIDGET​

Back in the old days we had a widget showing recent/random/etc resources. We have all missed it. So now it's back.

SIMPLIFIED ICON UPLOAD​

When uploading an icon, you can now upload a borderless icon and it will automatically apply the borders.

---

The award medals system has been ported. Changes of note include showing a maximum of 4 awards on your profile. I know. Not a lot. But at least now you can re-order them using the new "Manage medals" page.

---

The Streams are back. The reason we took them away is because the version for XF1 was no longer maintained and the Twitch API changed so our add-on broke.

---

Please test all features of the site and submit any feedback into the dedicated Remoosed BETA Feedback forum. Leave this thread to all the "oohs" and "aahs".

 

[stein123]

such a heavy work, congratulations! will test it rn!

 

[deepstrasz]

So experience for just posting anything, no matter how useless?

First thing I seemed to be bothered by is a bit of eye hurting from looking at the new colours, background and whatnot compared to the current one.

 

[knight26]

The remoose we deserve!

There's a great increase in speed, is what I immediately noticed. A seasone themed background as per usual would not be bad I guess. Let's judge it more before going forward, though.

Thanks for the great work man. Here's hoping custom campaigns come back soon and with it the old boys from the block.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

Congratulations on the launch! I'll take a tour shortly. Quick question - support for future development in 1.27b and prior is still allowed I presume?

 

[Hazop]

Looks quite good! A fresh new look for the Hive Workshop, will still miss the old/current one o7

 

[Binsu]

Now, this new version of the site is actually good. The UI looks cleaner than the previous one and I like how it utilizes the usage of a sticky navigation bar in order for the users to have an easier time accessing other parts of the sites without having to bother themselves to scroll back up. The idea of using more visuals like icons in place of texts appeals to me too personally because it adds to the UI's compactness.

 

[looking_for_help]

It looks really great. It is nice that you can now directly see user reactions at the bottom of each post.

Just one thing: I noticed that (v)Jass code has no syntax highlighting anymore in the new Hive version. I hope it is planned to implement this?

 

[chopinski]

Absolutely fantastic, great work!!!

One thing I noticed right out the bat that feels weird is that the view as a whole is thinner. The site do not stretch to fit my whole monitor, it is centralized and I personally like when it occupy the who page, but that's my personal preference. It's great to see that so much passion is still being poured into this community, makes me happy.

 

[~El]

Finally, some good fucking news for this year and WC3.

Honestly, this is the best thing to have happened to WC3 this year. Outstanding stuff.

Kudos to @Ralle

 

[Tommi Gustafsson]

Looks good.

How about styling scrollbars in Chrome to fit the theme?

 

[wc3neverdies]

A "Reforged" done right. This looks awesome.

 

[Deolrin]

Wow! Truly impressive stuff! I'll take a more thorough look and attempt to provide more feedback at some point if I have spare time for it.
First immediate thing that I would recommend:

The "sort by" segment in the resource section could possibly be moved to the top of the resource section:

And separated from the filter segment. Sorting is a highly needed and oft-utilized part of the search system and right now it is in a hard-to-reach place, right at the bottom of the filters. Plus I feel like there's an inherent difference between a filter and sorting. I feel like it would be more convenient for users to be able to sort any filtered items quickly without scrolling down.
I have to say I already love the improvement I've seen, as well as the graphical overhaul. Gonna be weird for the Hive to be red and black instead of green, but it certainly looks a whole lot prettier now.

 

[Ralle]

Thanks a lot for all the kind words

So experience for just posting anything, no matter how useless?

It's disabled for SE, could we it will be disabled for OT as well.

support for future development in 1.27b and prior is still allowed I presume?

Oh yeah. An updated site is not synonymous with a change in policy. Please make a separate thread about this if you want elaboration.

Just one thing: I noticed that (v)Jass code has no syntax highlighting anymore in the new Hive version. I hope it is planned to implement this?

If that's the case, it's a bug.

How about styling scrollbars in Chrome to fit the theme?

Good idea.

And separated from the filter segment. Sorting is a highly needed and oft-utilized part of the search system and right now it is in a hard-to-reach place, right at the bottom of the filters. Plus I feel like there's an inherent difference between a filter and sorting. I feel like it would be more convenient for users to be able to sort any filtered items quickly without scrolling down.

You're right.

 

[Shido]

Hive 3 look decent, although i still refer giving exp for effort tho. But I still disappointed.
It’s not HWS without the legendary . Never like a false smiley looking thing that deserve to be burned down to ashes. Give it back or make great again. Long live sir haosis.

 

[Ralle]

It’s not HWS without the legendary . Never like a false smiley looking thing that deserve to be burned down to ashes. Give it back or make great again. Long live sir haosis.

We could make that a reaction at some point

 

[deepstrasz]

It's disabled for SE, could we it will be disabled for OT as well.

I'd rather have experience for resource threads (tools, tutorials etc.) and such.
From my point of view, experience is useless. I think medals would actually be the best thing to remain.
Resources already have a rating system.

 

[chopinski]

@Ralle the View3D seems to be occupying only half of the total screen, which makes the aspect ratio a bit wonky, almost like dwarfing everything. I would recommend using the whole screen available to this functionality, it will make viewing the models a more pleasant and more detailed experience.



An example of what I was taking earlier about the site not utilizing the whole available space below. It makes formatting weird.

Original: Remoosed:

 

[_lycan]

nice, just tested the new site, search works now!

 

[Archian]

I'm glad you guys like the design I'm still working on it. If you notice any area that looks weird or could be improved let us know.

Go test out everthing! See how everything looks and feels! Try the Search function! Manage your medals! Comment on the resource button on your profiles. See the new profile settings! Do you like the EXP system? How does resource pages look now? Let us know what you think

Just one thing: I noticed that (v)Jass code has no syntax highlighting anymore in the new Hive version. I hope it is planned to implement this?

This is a known issue and will be fixed

 

[A]mun]

The new functions are much appreciated!

The new colors/saturation seem too strong on first sight - but one might get used to it.

 

[ISL]

I wanted to try adding a new media to one of my albums and creating a new paste

1. Media:
Going from the main Media page to '+Add Media' and then choosing "existing albums" displays all the (public?) albums from other people.

Spoiler

The troll. I can't. LMAO

I managed to find my own album only on the sixths page.

Then I oppened the 'Your Albums' page and tried clicking the same '+Add Media' button there, expecting it to display my albums only.
It did not work as I expected it to.

The quickest way to add new media to an old album was to open that album and then click the same '+Add Media' button there.


On the current site, this can be done directly from the main Media page.


2. Paste:
I really like how you reworked the pastebin section!

Spoiler

It is a shame it still redirects you to 'pastebin/add' when you try to open it
The only way I could access the pastebin section and view my existing pastes was to create a new one.

Other:
I have also noticed an issue with BB codes, but I believe you are already working on it

By the way, I REALLY like the new design. Making new map presentations is going to be a blast!

 

[Remixer]

Checked it out really briefly, looks more fresh and new, which is nice. I noticed though, that the icons representing different resource sections are not too descriptives. In my opinion it would be best if you could tell directly from the icon itself, which section it is - I know the idea is to use Warcraft icons but... perhaps functionality over visual presentation. Also, there is no option to exclude spells (to include only systems) in the spells section.

 

[Clubbies]

Wow, props to your hard work.

 

[Juveqis]

In my opinion get rif of the whole Warcraft III classic aspect is a big mistake.

All I see are:

- Reforged menu borders.
- Reforged circular icon borders.
- Reforged buttons.
- Reforged background and colors.
- Reforged icons.​

It seems like a radical change, not very organic, even an involution.
It's, without any doubt, a risky decision knowing all the problems that the launch of Reforged has brought and the damage it has done to the community.

 

[Itachi2020]

Wow I really like it! The whole aesthetic is incredible. Really rate all of the changes mentioned and it's great there is a central place for streaming. I think as a community trying to get involved in raising awareness of Warcraft 3 on these streaming platforms is definitely important and I think this will impact it well. Is there a way to keep users watching twitch streams on hive when they decide to click on another stream? Rather them re-directing to Twitch itself.

I did a copy of one of my forum posts - [ hidden] [/ hidden] didn't work unfortunately.

 

[Ungoliath]

This looks sooo good, fantastic work!

Maybe this was just me, but I found the colours/contrast in "HIVE" a bit intense to look at. Another thought I had was regarding reputation messages showing on the profile page - wouldn't this clutter the profile page in the long run and bury other profile posts?

Keep up the great work!

 

[Archian]

In my opinion get rif of the whole Warcraft III classic aspect is a big mistake.

Good thing we plan on making other forum themes e.g. Night Elf.

Also, there is no option to exclude spells (to include only systems) in the spells section.

Thanks for the headsup!

I did a copy of one of my forum posts - [ hidden] [/ hidden] didn't work unfortunately.

This is a known issue.

 

[Kam]

This is fine work, even for a moose.

 

[StormKnight]

I am really happy for Remoosed, it warms my heart that a lot of effort is being put to make a more advanced and robust site.

I'm sure most of the issues will eventually be addressed and ironed out, however i'll speak up my only thumbsdown so far. i don't like the heavily Reforged inspired UI art, Hives current UI always looked unique for me, and belongs to itself. and i do love that fact.

[ I understand from some other people now, that apparently it was actually inspired by Vanilla W3, but i think the difference was large enough that, atleast i for one didn't really relate Hives' own cool Green UI to look like classic war3]

I can also point out some blueprints for minor things that would be cool to work on regarding this, for example. the small 4 logos of Discord, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube being all orange is ... meh, on the original one they were all gold which i did want to point out, but atleast they were bigger.

So, why not give Twitter and Discord a little light blue hue, Youtube to have a vibrant Red border and facebook have a white F.
I think i'm getting my point across here, of little things to make the site more visually appealing and icons and whatnot that are used to be more instantly recognizable.

In my opinion get rif of the whole Warcraft III classic aspect is a big mistake.

All I see are:

- Reforged menu borders.
- Reforged circular icon borders.
- Reforged buttons.
- Reforged background and colors.
- Reforged icons.​

It seems like a radical change, not very organic, even an involution.
It's, without any doubt, a risky decision knowing all the problems that the launch of Reforged has brought and the damage it has done to the community.

i'll point out some stuff.
I think specific parts of the older UI in terms of function are more compact and effective ?
Maps & Resources | HIVE
If you see here, the old resource section icons, nothing fancy, just good at getting the message across.

On the other hand, it seems like the old Maps & Resource section is no longer available as a category like that, and instead permanently always available on the home screen, and with smaller icons if you scroll down or go anywhere else and whatnot, which is good for functionality, certainly an improvement.

Though i think they can squeeze the giant icons down a little, could even be 64x64 tbh (no specific intention with this, just the size happened to be good imo), then reposition them like so:

Not the best quality, but it manages to get my point across.

 

[Goffterdom]

Hey there

I like the new design! I'll be using the BETA from now on to try it out.

I think it's an amazing thing to be moving on to new grounds.

Also I think the reputation going away is a really healthy thing!

EDIT: Removed feedback from here and added it on the appropriate forum.

 

[Chaosy]

Rest in peace rep whoring.
I will miss you more than I should.

 

[Deolrin]

View attachment 371019
I'd say reading the title of the spoiler is less clear than before.
I'd recommend increasing the font size (and maybe the button image to keep the ratio) and/or switching the golden and white (golden becoming the Shortcut color) and/or removing "spoiler" from the title and/or putting the text in all caps (even though it would make it "no longer Reforged art style").

I think removing "Spoiler:" and adding a downward pointing arrow on the spoiler tag could work instead. The color scheme is consistent with Warcraft 3 which is good. I have no comment regarding font size / image resolution, seems fine to me but I don't know.

A couple more off-hand comments before I dive into it in earnest:

There is a lot of dead space on the margins of the screen (esp. on widescreen, QHD, 4K resolutions) which should work well for mobile but looks off on PC. Perhaps an option to toggle between the two modes?

Spoiler

An option to open a user's awards to see more than 4 will be nice (e.g, a button below the medals that says "see all", I know clicking the awards brings up the rest of them, but that's not very intuitive, and opening a new page rather than a small popup is also not very friendly), and better yet if there is some sort of award count icon or counter on the UI. I also think that 4 is too little to display by default, I think 6, 8 or even 12 would better serve the long-standing users who have proven themselves over and over in the Arena.

Bringing back user titles below the username would be super nice, also. Right now they exist - but only on profile pages. Having them visible everywhere a user posts would allow that little extra bit of personal flair to everyone.

And on a related note, are signatures gone? Because I don't want them to be gone.

EDIT: I actually finished reading the opening post now and I apologize for posting feedback here. I'll copy this over and add more as I explore in the appropriate forum.

 

[Boar]

I'm a little sad to see Reputation go, as that was iconic to hive.

 

[Vinz]

Loving the new resource and search capabilities! Thank you for your hard work.

 

[Kacpa2]

Will there be a non-Reforged theme? RF assets are hard to look at for me i dont want to torture myself every time i am on hive....i would appreciate having a classic/old theme like current one

 

[TriggerHappy]

Will there be a non-Reforged theme? RF assets are hard to look at for me i dont want to torture myself every time i am on hive....i would appreciate having a classic/old theme like current one

It says in the first post that there will be a night elf theme.

 

[Kazeon]

You sir, deserves a statue.

 

[Misha]

hm.. this all sounds nice and all.. but i'm not sure what to think of it, now that i only occasionally check this site.. and mostly never beyond the front page

 

[Daffa]

This is by far, the best news in 2020 after all the chaos this year has brought upon.

One question, does posting in the beta site will remain after beta? Or it is more for testing around?

 

[loktar]

ooh! aah! Looking forward to trying it out.

At first impression, the top navigation icons are really tiny for me when scrolling down (1600x900), it's kind of eye-straining, same for the notification thing in the bottom right of the page (about the password resets).

While the design looks nice, it has a sort of "generic" feel to me, but I'm sure that's just because it's new and unfamiliar and will take some getting used to after all these years of the classic Hive theme. Still looking forward to a night elf theme, maybe consider making orc/human/undead themes as well.

My reputation though, noooooooooooo :'(

 

[MasterBlaster]

Special mention for making the 3.0 run much, much, much smoother than the 2.0 one <3

Resource search anyone?

And I was so hyped to write another essay about seach enginge design...

/seriously though, tested it and didn't find any issues good job!

Like it or not, the design is a Reforged inspired theme.

Yeah, I don't really cae about the "Reforged" part, though it's nice to see that you're open to making other "skins" (in quotes, because I'm a web design scrub and I don't know if it's the correct term ) and I'm definetely switching to a NE one when it's out.

As for the general design... it's a pretty significant departure from the current one, so it's definetely going to take some getting used to, but that's okay. Not really a fan of how much seemingly pure black empty space there is on the sides, especially on the main page. Could you maybe make it stretch a bit more? Or go with a really dark shade of grey instead?

Other than that, I dig the new design. Again, good job!

Current reputation is converted to XenForo 2 reactions such as like, love and angry.

That's cool, but about the broader reputation/experience system...

I'll be honest, I liked the reputation system, but if you want to retire it then that's fine with me. My issue is that the new "experience" system seems kinda... pointless? I mean, if you're going to get experience just for posting, then it encourages people to spam posts rather than trying to contribute to the discussion in any way.

Of course, you can have mods smack people if they choose to post semi-related posts just for experience, but is it really an issue that we need to potentially create for ourselves? I think some meter of reactions that a user has received would be better, but then that's pretty much a reputation system, just without the points.

If you're going to remove reputation, I'd much rather if it wasn't replaced by anything. Use medals to reward people for significantly contributing to the site or ranking high in contests, ratings to, well, rate resources and reactions to allow users to thank others for useful posts. I think that's enough.

EXCLUDE TAGS FROM RESULTS

It's so cool that we finally have the technology to do this!

In all seriousness, all resource section changes look great.

---

So, to summarize - not a fan of the experience system and the black space to the sides of the main page, but everything else looks really, really nice

 

[SebioL]

Very good, especially the features for models: "View in 3D", seem to have been improved, at least the HD-Reforged to all acessories editions already appear in the overview. Congratulations to the Hive team for the update!

 

[Ralle]

I cannot address everything but I do add notes to my list of things to fix.

Experience varies by what you do, take a look at the experience tab in your profiles. It can be tweaked. More exp can be gained from some things than others. We can also decide to disable exp for posts, etc. It's a system that can be modified as we find out what works and what doesn't. It's very flexible.

 

[HungryHusky]

It looks great. Good job.

 

[PrinceYaser]

Well done Chieftain, well done. Thank you guys for the hard work.

Apart from everything mentioned, I have a somehow.. good ol' suggestion. I would like to bring on a subject we've longed to see again... Director's Cut. Should it rise from the ashes, I'm sure it would serve a good feature once again.

We're all ears in case you have any news regarding this matter.

 

[Archian]

Thank you all for your comments! I want to stress what Ralle already said, that we are reading each post but we might not respond to everyone.

Also!
Just want to point out that the original inspiration for the site theme was inspired by the original warcraft 3 installer menu, not really Reforged.

But yes, Reforged also played a part.

 

[Kacpa2]

It says in the first post that there will be a night elf theme.

If it will be Reforged night elf theme then it changes little, i want to keep classic nelven theme and ideally there should be a line up of Orcish, Human and Undead ones so people have choice according to their prefferences

 

[kovadarra]

Cool stuff. Automatic icon border application seems helpful, along with the revised search system. Not really sure about experience being granted just by starting a thread, replying to one or submitting a resource (and more generally speaking, perhaps attempting to quantify a user's merit is a bit iffy as a concept to begin with and presents as a vacuous e-penis system in practice). The orange accent in the visual design gives off a comfy feeling, I like it!

 

[deepstrasz]

Not really sure about experience being granted just by starting a thread, replying to one or submitting a resource (and more generally speaking, perhaps attempting to quantify a user's merit is a bit iffy as a concept to begin with and presents as a vacuous e-penis system in practice)

Maybe rating a resource, a reviewer marking a review as useful, downloading/uploading a resource could give experience. A certain number of likes on a post could do it too.
Not that experience is useful in any way though as reputation. In the end, comments are what make or kill your day.