Sticky T2W Website Updates (New Features/Bug Fixes/Server Problems)

I've created a new Search Forum called 'Best Threads', it's one of the newer features in Xenforo, the forum software we use. As you can probably guess it pulls in all threads tagged 'Best Threads' from across the site, and conveniently displays them as if they were all lumped together in one forum. For now I've linked to it as a sub-forum of New to Trade2Win on the main forum listing page, assuming that new members will most benefit from it.

Screenshot 2022-03-04 at 09.41.20.png


You can jump to it now, via this link: https://www.trade2win.com/search-forums/best-threads.380/

PS. I'm aware these were all tagged a long time ago, and some housekeeping is in order!
 
Just a heads-up that we're taking a tougher line now on members who we suspect are posting on the site with a commercial motive, typically to plug certain less reputable forex brokers and who are not being transparent about the fact they work or are compensated in some way by that broker or marketing department. Notice this isn't blatant spam or advertising, which are always dealt with promptly by the moderation team. This is more insidious and in some ways worse to the long term integrity of the site.

Hence several regular posters have been banned and in some cases their posts deleted.

These forums are provided for an open, honest and transparent exchange of views.. and the above types of postings do not fit that criteria and therefore are no longer welcome on the site.

Please do use the 'Report' feature if you suspect a post or poster is guilty of the above, so we can continue to clean up the forums.
 
Is it just me - or is the spell check facility not working?
Actually Xenforo, the forum software we use, doesn't have a spell checker built-in because most, if not all, modern browsers do - so perhaps best to check if it's switched on in whichever browser you're using?
 
Actually Xenforo, the forum software we use, doesn't have a spell checker built-in because most, if not all, modern browsers do - so perhaps best to check if it's switched on in whichever browser you're using?
Hi Paul,
Aha, there's a surprise. Not. It's me and my browser and nothing at all to do with T2W software! I've done as you advise and deliberately typed some mistakes in this post to see if spell checker picks them up and - hey presto - it does! Apologies for disturbing you and for my computer illiteracy!
;)
Tim.
 
Just a heads-up, there'll be some changes coming up in the next few weeks. We'll be moving our hosting away from Google Cloud in favour of Xenforo's own hosted solution (that's the forum software that this site is built upon). The move should provide a more solid foundation for our hosting, whilst simplifying the work to maintain the servers - all infrastructure, backups, firewall is managed by them. It's also more cost effective. The only downside is they don't support WordPress which we use for our Articles section, so instead we'll migrate all the articles in a dedicated forum, now that they support the concept of an Article thread.
 
Morning all! Wanted to let you know that in the next week or two we'll be moving our hosting over to Xenforo's own cloud hosting service, from our current hosting provider, Google Cloud. The upside to this move is that the forum software will always be promptly upgraded to the newest, most secure version. You'll notice that the Articles section which is currently run on Wordpress integrated into Xenforo will be migrated to a new Articles format forum in Xenforo. Whilst the appearance will somewhat change, all articles will be retained.

I'll post more information on this move when I have a concrete day/time for the migration.
 
I've changed today how search works on the site.

Before today the search relevance algorithm was weighted towards newer results based on a 'half-life value'. A new post submitted would be twice as relevant as an identical one submitted a half-life ago. This just basically meant that search results were skewed to more recent content. That makes finding a recent post you read but are struggling to find easy to do, the problem is finding older content becomes almost impossible the further back you go.

Starting today I've removed the weighting, so searches will no longer discriminate based on hold old posts are. This just means the generally higher quality content from earlier years is now fully accessible. Trying doing a search and you'll see what I mean, you'll get a completely new set of results, and probably will finally be able to find that nugget from years ago you've found impossible to track down previously.

It also means that you'll now see a completely different set of results for similar threads at the bottom of every thread.

Let me know your thoughts. Obviously there are pros and cons, but on balance if you're of the opinion that the majority of trading content is timeless in nature, then it's probably the way to go.
 
Just a heads-up I'm working on reinstating the old home page again, allbeit slightly different. It'll mean the widgets you currently see on the forum list page will move over there and make the whole forum list page a lot cleaner looking. It'll also give me more control over signposting of specific content (or new tools - whatever they might be) to potential new members.
 
You may notice a bit of a housekeeping in terms of the list of forums and the categories they reside in.

For example I've merged Discretionary Trading into General Trading Chat, and split out into new new forums, 'Investing', 'ETFs, Funds & Investment Trusts' and 'ISAs & SIPPs' to better reflect our UK centric-ness.

I've also created a new 'Hedge Funds & CTAs' forum, as this wasn't previously represented within the Trading Career category.
 
I've finished housekeeping of the Best Threads which you can also find collected today in the Search Forum here: https://www.trade2win.com/search-forums/best-threads.380/

These are now all open for further posts, if desired, unless the thread starter specifically requested the thread be closed.

If you recall, a significant number of these Best Threads were duplicated by @timsk our Content Editor at the time, and the original thread was then cleaned up to remove any posts that didn't really add any value to the discussion (a painstaking job at times - thanks Tim!), leaving it easier to quicker read through the threads. We closed these threads, then linked to the new duplicated unedited thread.

This seemed like a good approach at the time. The problem in hindsight, was that the original thread was often being watched by a large number of members and contributors, so they'd get notified of new posts, whereas the duplicated thread had to be followed all over again (it happens automatically when you contribute). It also became a bit more confusing as now if you searched for the threads, two would appear.

Well I've gone through and, mostly, removed the duplicated threads and reopened the original prefixed best threads, moving any posts made after the thread was closed back to the original thread.

If you're totally confused by what I've just said, don't worry, just rest assured that Best Threads are all still available and should be easier than ever to access and contribute to.
 
Just a heads-up, there'll be some changes coming up in the next few weeks. We'll be moving our hosting away from Google Cloud in favour of Xenforo's own hosted solution (that's the forum software that this site is built upon). The move should provide a more solid foundation for our hosting, whilst simplifying the work to maintain the servers - all infrastructure, backups, firewall is managed by them. It's also more cost effective. The only downside is they don't support WordPress which we use for our Articles section, so instead we'll migrate all the articles in a dedicated forum, now that they support the concept of an Article thread.
I've moved over the old Trading Awards website (yes, it's still alive and kicking) from our Google Cloud hosting over to GitHub Pages and open sourced the static site at the same time. You can check out the repo here: https://github.com/trade2win/tradingawards and reminisce life back in the noughties here: https://www.tradingawards.com/
 
Today has been all about housekeeping of the articles. When we move to Xenforo Cloud, we'll be dropping Wordpress for the articles, and instead all 850+ articles will be converted to Xenforo's article threads format. Discovered today a bunch of problems, mostly due to them being migrated over the years from one system to another. For example I've matched up 61 author-less articles with the correct author. There are more issues I'll be attempting to tackle in the coming days.
 
These issues include the wrong images on about 170+ articles. I've spun up an old version of the website from 2018 in order to know where to find the right images from a backup. It's painstaking, but it's the only way to fix them. For example, Dave Baker's excellent article on P&F charting basics has for the first time in several years got the correct images on it: https://www.trade2win.com/articles/742-point-figure-charting-part-1-basics - you'll notice right the other issue, which is the ? character where it should be an apostrophe or a dash, that's next on the list after images.
 
Good news - all outstanding issues with Articles should now be fixed. Correct images should be displaying and the text corruption should also be fixed. With so many articles, over 850, it's quite possible I may have missed something, so if you spot anything then please do let me know.

Perhaps of particular interest to members will be the 40 odd interviews that were conducted, mostly with T2W members and now fully readable here: https://www.trade2win.com/articles/category/interviews
 
Quick update - I've added a new Tools menu, it'll be quick links to future tools added to the site. For now it just links to the CFD and spread bet broker losing accounts table, but my plan is to expand on the broker table as well as develop some useful trading related tools, whilst getting some practical python projects to get my teeth into.

Screenshot 2023-03-22 at 15.15.02.png
 
Top