I'd like to make a case for removing the project lists. They seem like a great feature, and I was very enthusiastic about them initially. Later, I realized that they are pretty much unusable and dismissed them. But now I'm convinced that they are actually harmful, and they make new users miss a lot of content.

I met another person who thought that there are practically no new projects on had.io, because they were only watching the official lists, which are almost never updated with new projects.

There has to be a better way of adding a project to a list, than messaging the list's curator.

Take lists like https://hackaday.io/list/4886-motor-control-projects or https://hackaday.io/list/4885-audio-projects — I'm pretty sure there are more than 3 projects in those categories each.

Yeah I can see how this could be misunderstood as a 'category' and not a curated list or favorites.

Not really sure about a solution for the lists confusion, but we are developing some ideas to help people find/follow projects in addition to watching lists or general project search.

I'm proposing an "add project to another person's list" feature. There's a "Phones" list that one person made, that I'd like to put about 50 projects in - currently, it only has one (mine, for some reason), but there's plenty of phone projects on HaD. I've messaged them with all those projects, their job is to click "add", but they seem to have left the site.

I'm proposing this system - have people be able to submit stuff to lists, for a start, those submissions have to be verified by the list creator in order to appear in the list. After some successful submissions (or a whitelist), a person could be enabled to submit items to anyone's list and have them appear in the list instantly (with the ability for the author to moderate the entry after-the-fact). Kind of like a "trusted adder" thing - current workflow involves sending DMs to list owners, which is not a viable solution for people that would like to get involved (like me).

In my entire history on this site, the request to join project feature has netted me a total of one actual contributor who seemed like a good fit and was added. He never contributed.

I'd like to suggest a radical departure.  How about curated lists that are automatically constructed from tags applied to projects. I think you would have to add a storage element to remove projects which don't actually fit, AKA they abused the tag system.

Feel free to tell me why the latter won't work.  The former was just an observation.

Update/Upload problem in the Files section.

Hi, I've re-uploaded a new file (.pdf)  in the Files section with the same name of the previous version, but when I reload it from the Files section I see the previous version instead. Of course I've cleared my browser cache (Firefox)...

The re-upload prompt should be overwriting the file if you allow it. I'll start a request to get it fixed if it isn't.

I've re-checked now. It doesn't works. Also if I delete-publish-upload-publish it shows the previous file. May be that a sort of load balancer is targeting not in-sync instances....

I just signed up today, added a project, it's public but doesn't show up on the 'newest'  list... or anywhere. Did I do something weird? 

Hi Calvin! New projects don't show up on the "newest" list immediately. We implemented this rule as protection from spammers, so you just have to be more patient. Your project is visible now. We're glad you're here...

Oh, I didn't see that mentioned anywhere? Don't know if that's something you want to inform people of or not, but it might avoid confusion if there was a comment about this by the submit button. Thanks for the reply :)

Two long standing bugs I've noticed.

1) Post two links in a row, with no text in between and sometimes they will get combined into one link.  http://youtube.com

http://blah.com

Of course now that I'm trying to reproduce it for you, it doesn't happen...

2) When replying (as the author) to the first comment on a post, the reply gets posted as a new comment, and not a reply.  The end result is the author of the first comment is never notified of the reply, as it isn't one. The workaround is to reply, reply again, and then delete the first reply.  

I think number 2 is a show stopper personally, as it prevents interaction with the first individual who chose to actually interact.

@Daren Schwenke a workaround is to mention the comment author explicitly, which you have to do in deep threads anyway.

Yeah @Ted Yapo , thanks.  I do that also. I know it happens and the results, and how to get around it.  I just imagine new people here are not aware and wonder why they don't get a reply.

Could we get an alias shortening the project and log urls?  

p for project, l for log.

Like this perhaps:  https://hackaday.io/p/37/l/1024

Instead of this:  https://hackaday.io/project/37/log/1024

or if it fits in your url model, perhaps just the bare project number.

If you have a shortened URL already, a redirect which respects project and log would be great too.  :)

This works atm https://hac.io/project/37 I'll have to check on the other urls, the public messaging shortener might also work for this.

http://hac.io/o/37 this works too

@Ivan Lazarevic That is perfect.  Now my link here from YouTube won't consume half the teaser.  Thank you sir.

Just like Github and related project organization pages, is it, or could it be possible for us to download a snapshot of an entire project at once? All posts, files, description etc.

I second that. We users have no easy way to backup our work here. I don't know the hackaday.io backup strategy but I like my own backups...

Which is (besides all the editor bugs which WON'T get fixed) also the reason I'm slowly becoming friends with github pages and jekyll...

I third that idea!  Having something like Github "releases" would be amazing, and very useful communicating when you have a new stable release and what changed since the last release.

Could the feed selector (My Feed/Global Feed) be moved to the top of the left content column please? Reason is if viewing the feed on a phone, the columns are stacked and the selector is halfway down the page and you have to scroll past everything in My Feed.

Sure I'll see if it can go in the next release.

Great I see it's been implemented. No more long scrolling down the feed page on a mobile now. Thanks.

oerm, please check the lovely comment section, not going to report them all
https://hackaday.io/project/9017-skywalker-lightsaber/log/72354-adafruit-trinket-m0-controlling-the-onboard-dotstar-led-via-arduino-ide

probably would have seen this earlier, if there was a "just me and my projects" - feed :p

It's always better to have both Norton and McAfee
q-;

is windows defender availabe for mac? I'd rather be triple safe

Bug report: When I enter an equation into a project log, the equation always shows up at the very top of the text, regardless of the cursor position. Highlighting the formula and copy-paste does not work, so it is really painful to work with those beautiful LaTex style formulas.

I'll ask about the insert position, but copy paste should work, the formula is an image. If all else fails it can be moved in html view.

Also we are taking a look at a new equation editor that is svg based instead of images.

I'll send you a pm so see whats going on. 

The photo is probably rotated via the EXIF data. For example iPhone always saves photos in landscape mode, but if it detect the phone is in portrait mode, it simple adds a EXIF "flag" to indicate that the image needs to be rotated by 90 degrees. Most browsers and photo viewer/editor nowadays can handle this, but some don't. That's when you get these weird effects/errors.

I wondered why people followed my completed projects when there won't be any updates. Then I realised they clicked on Follow without noting the status. I don't know what the solution is. Maybe make Completed more visible near the Follow button?

they could come from the onboarding process and didn't check / read your project, iirc

To me the fact that a project is completed doesn't necessarily mean that there won't be updates. You might add better photos, you might start selling kits, you might have it break and in need of fixing, you might decide to improve it...

I think it's more likely they think it's like FB.

I can only speak for myself, of course. In any case, more followers for you!

I am relatively new here, but I am clicking "Follow" on projects that I am interested in and want to come back to go over in more detail later. Whether or not there are future updates coming is largely irrelevant - I am just Following interesting projects and Liking only those projects that I really do like. So I'm using Follow as a kind of bookmark for some projects. Is this wrong? ;^)

Ok that's a reasonable case. I'm concerned for the people who think they might receive more chapters to my stories. They'll be waiting in vain. ;) If there are any major revisions, I'd probably call it a new project or post an announcement to .stack.

I do agree that the project status should be made more prominent though - especially for newbies seeing projects in the "Projects You May Like" area of their feed. (Of course, that hinges on people updating their project status diligently...)

If we follow you must update

After looking at the relay clock project, and trying to read the code examples and schematics, I gave up.  Dark red, dark grey and dark blue on a black background is not conducive to reading. I tried Firefox and IE, both give me difficult-to-read images. 

There's also a bunch of boilerplate links at the bottom of most pages that appear in grey-on-black.  Can this be fixed (i.e. made more legible)?  The black background is edgy, but dark-on-dark is a showstopper.

Can you link to a code example? The code editor colors could be improved, but if it's a user created schematic you could message the owner for maybe a higher contrast example?

Here's the schematic:

https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/7067611463572657501.png

and this is the page - on my Linux system it comes up grey links @ the bottom on a darker grey background:

https://hackaday.io/project/8683/logs

My Win10 system at work is darker -- even worse.  Team names (I notice they highlight when you hover over them, but if you don't know what they say because you can't read them, hovering over each one is a pain.  I'm not asking for black on white, but a bit more contrast would be nice.

Thanks for the quick reply!

It is a user created schematic image I would just PM them and ask maybe they have another version. As to the low contrast links I'll check in with the other devs, thanks!

The schematic is a PNG so user generated content. I find it unreadable too. I had to use GIMP to replace all black with something light to view it. Tell the author. Hmm, maybe some people take night mode too seriously. :)

Thanks, Ken -- I thought it was some formatting you guys had done to match the theme.  I've posted a comment.  Editing the schematic was above and beyond!

Well I'm just another user like you, not one of the site guys.

Can I change my account from being OAuth-based to password-based? I don't see any flows to do so. Changing password requires a current password even though there's a button to authenticate with GitHub (which just takes me back to my feed after authenticating, so why is it there?). I can't delete my account to start over either, because I need a password or to authenticate with GitHub and the latter redirects to my feed immediately after authenticating.

If your email address is current you can set a new password here https://hackaday.io/forgotpass

Let me know if you need more help.

Fixed, thanks!

How can I update my email address at Hackaday.io? I use Github authentication and I have changed my email address at Github, but it seems Hackaday hasn't tracked that. I go to Edit My Account and try to change the address, but of course Hackaday doesn't have my password so it's always wrong.

I'll PM you to get this fixed

I'm experiencing what sounds like this exact same bug in trying to update instructions.  In my case, I want to enter my first instruction but can't.  Just noticed the same javascript:void(0) text for the big button that doesn't do anything.  A few days ago I had a similar issue with adding photos.  Tried different browsers / days back then with no solution, then tried again a day or two later and it worked.  My guess is an intermittent issue somewhere on Hackaday's end.  Oh the joy of debugging intermittent issues -- good luck!

Thanks let us know if you see it happen again.

It still doesn't work for Build Instructions for my project at https://hackaday.io/project/162878-discontinuity-continuity-tester .  The "Add another step" button points to javascript:void(0).

The void link is supposed to be there. Do you know how to check the console in chrome/firefox/safari for errors? https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/9850951546026493624.png
Could also try clearing the files cache for hackaday.io.

I usually use Firefox, but it behaves the same in Chrome on a different PC with no obvious errors.  There is also no "Enter instruction title" or "Enter instruction description" for me, just a short horizontal rule between the project name and the "Add another step" button.  The webpage source code for this button is:

<input type="hidden" name="isPrivate" value="false" /> <a href="javascript:void(0)" class="gold-gold-button components-button show" id="add-instruction"> Add another step </a>

Everything else on the page works AFAIK, just no place to enter instructions and a nonfunctional add-step button.

I'm experiencing a bug in the Instructions page.  I wrote up about half of the instructions a couple months ago (https://hackaday.io/project/106885/instructions) and now wanted to come back and finish adding the last steps.   However, clicking the "Add another step" button does nothing (except a little javascript:void(0) text appears on the bottom left of the screen).  I get the same behavior with Chrome and Firefox.

Is it stuck at step 9?

Yup

Im trying to reproduce the behavior, is it just this one project, can you add instructions and steps to another project?

Thanks!  It works now on that and other projects.  So the problem seems to have resolved, did you change something?  Thanks again!

Nope may have just been a connection issue, glad it's working again.

I changed my avatar picture some time ago (about two weeks), but the old one is still hosted on cdn.hackaday.io. Will it eventually be removed?

I'll check for you.

Thanks someone will look into this.

I'm still not getting notifications properly... They do turn up in the feed, but the emails are dodgy and the ticker top of page plain doesnt work, reads zero most of the time unless I'm watching it...

I have another suggestion though. In the Feed, when someone comments on your stuff you get a reply banner with a button so you can comment back. It would be really nice to have this same banner in a Like or Follow in the feed so I can say thankyou without leaving the Feed. I dont like opening up new tabs with HaD in them, more than two or three, and hotmail, and I run out of memory for starters. And clicking out and back into the feed is unreliable.