Forum Upgrading Tommorow

[Admin]

Tommorow I plan to upgrade the forum, this will be a major upgrade, things are going to change significantly. Tons of new features but it'll take some getting used to, hopefully it'll run faster too.

The upgrade itself will take about an hour, during which time the forum will be down. Afterwards the forum will be up, but it will take some time for me to get the design/colors back and whatnot.

[Admin]

okay, so the upgrade failed a little bit, and I had to restore the forums from the midnight backup last night, and then redo the upgrade.

So.... posts/activity that took place after the midnight backup about 22 hours ago and around 9 hours later when I started the upgrade process were lost, sorry, no way around that.

[qimissung]

If at first you don't succeed, etc., etc...

[Admin]

but hey, its working, and its way way faster than it was.

There are a bunch of new features I haven't had the opportunity to turn on yet either.

[Charles Darnay]

it is way way faster, so much appreciated.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

For some reason, I can't search my recent posts. It says no matches come up. This the case for anyone else? I can search other people's just fine.

But it is a lot faster. Does this mean we can do away with the silly thumbnail rule? :D

[Charles Darnay]

It looks like some posts were lost that were made today. At least for me. I hope the people who posted poetry saved it somewhere else.

Also, I can't search my recent posts. It says no matches come up.


okay, so the upgrade failed a little bit, and I had to restore the forums from the midnight backup last night, and then redo the upgrade.

So.... posts/activity that took place after the midnight backup about 22 hours ago and around 9 hours later when I started the upgrade process were lost, sorry, no way around that.

This.

Yeah, I don't have access to my recent posts either - but they are still out there. I'm hoping there's a way to import that from the old server (is there?) but if not....ah well.

[Silas Thorne]

Great work! I can see it's going to be better. There are lots of options now I didn't have before. Sure we've had it for a while the old way, people get used to it, but things need to move onwards and upwards. In a few weeks people some people will be wondering why they were grumbling. :)

[Bar22do]

I agree, great work (though it'll take me a while to find my way through), but ---
where has my latest poem "First" disappeared??? It got some first comments and - is suddenly gone!!! I don't find it anymore on the Personal Poetry Forum page....
Hope it's not final/fatal!!!!!! (that would make me sad...)

Congratulations for this upgrading anyhow!

[Silas Thorne]

- Oh no, Bar22do, that was a good one. I commented on it. Did you see? I hope you have another copy on your computer, yes? I can comment on it again. :)

[Logos]

great work :) Haven't noticed anything missing yet.

[Bar22do]

- Oh no, Bar22do, that was a good one. I commented on it. Did you see? I hope you have another copy on your computer, yes? I can comment on it again. :)

You're so kind SIlas and thanks so much for your comment...! but I really hope that before I repost (actually re-write, for I've given my poem's actual form in my thread...) the administrator/page creator or whoever is in charge will find it back... I don't even want to think it could disappear just like that... Bar (now really worried...)

[Hawkman]

Well I guess that this kind of upgrade is bound to be disrupting, and as litnet had been slowing down on my computer to the extent that it was frequently unreachable for the last week - something had to be done. Is it my imagination or are the avatars slightly bigger?

But there do seem to be some issues still. Things which really bug me, like the fact that a lot, if not all posts which were made last night seem to have disappeared, and some rather ghastly colour combinations on the pages, and the fact that there no longer seems to be an option for finding "all threads started by..." on the members profile page. There's also an issue with the new feature which displays recent activity when you navigate to your profile page. When I visited mine, qimissung's avatar was overlaping some text which made it unreadable.

Also the the "go advanced" option produces a window which is very pale and some of the control options are difficult to see, but I guess this is just a colour option which will be fixed in due course. Not keen on the positioning of the log in box either; hugging the top edge of the frame isn't good placement, and the vomit yellow of the surround doesn't do much for me. Still, once the colour is all sorted out, the overall visual appearance of the sight won't be objectionable. I just hope everything works.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I agree, great work (though it'll take me a while to find my way through), but ---
where has my latest poem "First" disappeared??? It got some first comments and - is suddenly gone!!! I don't find it anymore on the Personal Poetry Forum page....
Hope it's not final/fatal!!!!!! (that would make me sad...)

Congratulations for this upgrading anyhow!

Unfortunately, bar:


okay, so the upgrade failed a little bit, and I had to restore the forums from the midnight backup last night, and then redo the upgrade.

So.... posts/activity that took place after the midnight backup about 22 hours ago and around 9 hours later when I started the upgrade process were lost, sorry, no way around that.

[prendrelemick]

Can anybody tell me how to find my old posts?

I often forget where and why and what I posted. I really need this feature to see if there is something I should reply to.


Now I'll forget this one!

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Searching my own posts seems to work now. So, I don't know of anymore glitches from the upgrade. I quite like it. It's definitely much faster.

Pen, just click on your name and hit "View Forum Posts." Or, hit your name at the top of the page to go to your profile and hit the part on the left that says "View latest posts."

[prendrelemick]

Thanks for your help.

I can only get today's single post by doing that (the one above) There used to be a "Statistics" heading that would get weeks of old posts.

[Hawkman]

I've just found that clicking the "latest started threads" link actually pulls up all started threads, so they are still there, thank goodness, but I preferred the clarity of "find all threads started by..." as a guide to the function of the option. I tended not to use the "find all posts" option much anyway, so I probably won't miss it all that much.

[prendrelemick]

That's the one I need in order to function.

[Admin]

Click on your username in any post you make, you'll see your public profile, on the left side are links to see all your posts and threads.

[Charles Darnay]

My "latest" posts seem to jump from yesterday to 2007...good times.

[Bar22do]

Thanks Mutatis and Charles and Admin... I feel completely lost and find nothing (I don't find, for instance, my old thread by clicking as advised...! are ALL my threads GONE??? G-d forbid?), I'm afraid... but will apply myself to this "new science" when I have a little time...

[Admin]

I am able to find all your threads by clicking on your username, then clicking on "all threads" under your profile picture.

[PeterL]

It looks good to me, and I see that you restored the brown colors. The color gave this place a difference from many other sites.

[Admin]

It could be, those who cannot find their recent posts, an issue with the search index, which still needs to be rebuilt more.

[Bar22do]

I am able to find all your threads by clicking on your username, then clicking on "all threads" under your profile picture.

ah, ok, you mean "my latest started threads", isn't it. thanks Chris!!!

[Admin]

Avatar thumbnails seem to be messed up. I just rebuilt them and that seemed to make the problem worse instead of better, some of you may need to reupload your avatar.

[Charles Darnay]

Any excuse to settle on a new one for the next little while is a good one.

[LitNetIsGreat]

That 'what's new' feature is a good idea.

[Admin]

If you have the forumrunner app on your android or apple phone or tablet you can now view this forum with it.

[Hawkman]

Well to be honest I was perfectly able to view the forum from my iPad before :D I haven't got the forum runner app, so when I tried the tablet option for viewing the forum it looked really bad and seemed to have limited function. It's fine with the standard settings on it though.

[qimissung]

I was considering a change to my signature. How do I do that?

I looked under "customize my profile" but didn't find anything that seemed like what I was looking for.

[Hawkman]

Hi qim, just click on the "Settings" option at the top of the page next to "My Profile" and all the options come up.

[Hawkman]

I have discovered another tiresome little quirk. When editing a post I find that part of the previous line appears to be repeated at the beginning of the following one. This is most confusing. If you ignore it, and providing you have edited the right bit of text, when you save the post after making your corrections the post appears normally when you return to the thread. However, if you edit the wrong bit it can cause a problem in the revised post. Any ideas why this should be, and can it be fixed?

However, it appears to depend on whether you go to the full-function advanced window or a quick one. Which one you get seems to be pot luck though. I've just edited this and I got the quick version, but when I just edited a post in my Short Story thread I got the other one with the repeated lines.

[Admin]

Some of the bugs might be browser caching issues, you may have some old copies of some of the files stored in your browser cache.

[Hawkman]

I'm not convinced by the browser cache suggestion, it never happened before with the old forum, although it seemed to depend on how many edits you had made to a post as to which edit window you got. Hmmmm. If it is a cache issue (I'm using IE 9) how do I overcome it?

[qimissung]

Hi qim, just click on the "Settings" option at the top of the page next to "My Profile" and all the options come up.

Ah! Thank you, Hawkman!

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Still curious:




But it is a lot faster. Does this mean we can do away with the silly thumbnail rule? :D

I guess it doesn't matter too much, as the consistency of enforcement of this rule is dubious at best.

[Admin]

Forum response speed that is server related is not the same thing as bandwidth needs which is more thumbnail related.

I do believe the new version has very good picture handling stuff though that should make it much easier to upload pictures. In fact, there is a whole "Albums" thing, every user can have an album. I haven't fully set it up yet but it will be done soon.

[MystyrMystyry]

Had it always an Autosave function? I'd never noticed it before if so (and I lost a fair share of potential posts too). A great addition!

[Maximilianus]

Had it always an Autosave function? I'd never noticed it before if so (and I lost a fair share of potential posts too). A great addition!
I dare say it's among the new features. I remember having lost some material in the past, like when there's a power outage at home and everything's rebooted, then lost, and autosave there was none.

[Admin]

Autosave is new.

[qimissung]

It used to show how many people had read a thread or a post. Is that feature gone now? Not that it was all that important, I guess.

[billl]

So far, the new system seems pretty good (e.g. how could we complain about auto-save!). But besides all of the great things known and unknown to me so far, here's something else that I might very well get used to, but is currently bumming me out a little:

When I look at the list of posts displayed after I click "New Posts" in the top left corner (Or, I guess any listing of posts in a sub-forum as well) the format of the listing kind of distracts me. Again, this is certain to happen no matter what the change might be, it can take time to adjust, but still, I have to wonder:

1) Do those large envelope-like icons at the left of each listing need to be quite so large--frankly I don't think I'll ever bother with figuring out what they represent, and so maybe I'm not the best judge. I realize that the different colors (blue/red) mean something, and the maybe the graphic tells if I've ever opened it, and the green thing means I've participated there--but it just seems a size or two bigger than I'm used to seeing. Maybe it's just a side-effect of the next thing I'll mention...

(see image--unfortunately uploads still don't embed, but I guess I can understand why, e.g. bandwidth probably?)

8402

2) It might just be me, but the look of the leftmost textual info in the listings has also been hard to adapt to, so far. For example, even for a thread with maybe a hundred pages of replies, the OP's name ("thread started by") gets very nearly the same billing as the thread's title--just a size smaller and plain black color. Actually, if the title isn't bolded, I think the title might very well be the same size as the OP's name, and in the slightly dimmer Brown... Maybe making the "thread started by So-and-So" info a size or two smaller wold leave it readable, but less obtrusive? And maybe that'd make room to increase the title's size one step higher? Something along those lines?


Basically, the way I keep up with things is by hitting the "New Posts" link, and then scanning for two things: 1) the titles of the threads and 2) (less closely) the names of the people who've done the most recent replies in these threads (on the right side). It's the scanning of the left side that doesn't go as smoothly as before for me, and has me noticing things that I don't generally care about.

Again, more than anything, I'm happy to see things popping up a bit faster, and also realize the auto-save will probably save me somewhere down the line. Thanks, Admin, good stuff so far!

And, really, I can deal with how it is, and it'll just get easier for me I'm sure. It's probably a pretty standard format, and maybe messing around with it would never satisfy everyone, I'm just throwing this out there.

[prendrelemick]

Thanks Mutatis and Charles and Admin... I feel completely lost and find nothing (I don't find, for instance, my old thread by clicking as advised...! are ALL my threads GONE??? G-d forbid?), I'm afraid... but will apply myself to this "new science" when I have a little time...


I am able to find all your threads by clicking on your username, then clicking on "all threads" under your profile picture.

Mine is working this morning and all is well with the World.

[Bar22do]

Hey Chris, now I'm managing, thanks. Could you only erase the brackets' ugly message next to my poem's title "First" which was meant to justify re-posting, now superfluous? Thanks in advance.

[Hawkman]

I have discovered another tiresome little quirk. When editing a post I find that part of the previous line appears to be repeated at the beginning of the following one. This is most confusing. If you ignore it, and providing you have edited the right bit of text, when you save the post after making your corrections the post appears normally when you return to the thread. However, if you edit the wrong bit it can cause a problem in the revised post. Any ideas why this should be, and can it be fixed?

However, it appears to depend on whether you go to the full-function advanced window or a quick one. Which one you get seems to be pot luck though. I've just edited this and I got the quick version, but when I just edited a post in my Short Story thread I got the other one with the repeated lines.


Some of the bugs might be browser caching issues, you may have some old copies of some of the files stored in your browser cache.


I'm not convinced by the browser cache suggestion, it never happened before with the old forum, although it seemed to depend on how many edits you had made to a post as to which edit window you got. Hmmmm. If it is a cache issue (I'm using IE 9) how do I overcome it?

I'm still getting the problem of repeated portions of lines at the beginning of a subsequent line in the full function edit window, after having deleted all my temporary internet files and adjusted the settings on my browser to look for new vesions every time I visit a webpage.

I would be immensely grateful if you could investigate this issue and determine definitively if it is a bug in the system or a problem confined to my computer. Has anyone else experienced this glitch?

Oh, by the way, I've just edited this post for a typo and got the quick window without the full features and the repeted lines are showing up. This really is a pain! But Lo! I have just discovered that resizing the Browser window makes it all go away! So I'm sorry for bothering everyone with with my UNPROBLEM. If I hadn't been trying to photograph the phenomenon I'd probably never have found out how to get rid of it - lol. It is still a pain though because in order to be able to edit a post and see the text without glitches in it I first have to switch between Browser window sizes....

[Admin]

You are the only person to report it here.

However on another forum I personally experienced that same bug after an upgrade. It went away on its own. I think it is just a browser quirk. It has been awhile... but I think it went away after I had to reboot my pc.

[Hawkman]

Sorry Admin, I've been so busy editing my post about editing that I missed your response - lol. Well My PC isn't on all the time, and I reported it yesterday, shut down my PC and went away. When I came back and turned on my computer again I was still getting the glitch. At least now I know how to get around it, but it is a pain. Thanks for listening anyway.

[billl]

You are the only person to report it here.

However on another forum I personally experienced that same bug after an upgrade. It went away on its own. I think it is just a browser quirk. It has been awhile... but I think it went away after I had to reboot my pc.

I've only made one post under the new system, and I had the same problem.

Unfortunately I can't remember exactly what I did, but I was aware that it had happened to someone already, so I wasn't surprised. I think it was when I selected and removed a bunch of text (more than one line)--and then a few words appeared in more than one place or something (maybe on consecutive lines). Anyhow, I just deleted the duplicate portion of text and then did a SELECT ALL and then did a COPY of the remaining text and then deleted everything and pasted in what I had just copied, figuring that would be the best way to make sure what I saw was what I would get. Maybe it wasn't necessary, but there was definitely something going wrong and I wasn't sure how the actual post would look after I deleted some of it...

I'm now messing around in this edit box and can't get it to do it again, though. Perhaps just a browser problem, as suggested...

[PeterL]

After using this a little, I have found that the differences are insignificant, but I was accustomed to the layout. I hope that there were improvements on the management end, because otherwise the program change would have been a waste of time.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

After using this a little, I have found that the differences are insignificant, but I was accustomed to the layout. I hope that there were improvements on the management end, because otherwise the program change would have been a waste of time.

Well, you can hardly download an update of humans. Don't know why I'm writing this, since Mr. L has me on his ignore list.

[Captain Pike]

Just glad to know there was a change and it wasn't a cognitive misalignment of the planets which occasionally disrupts my normally effervescent ebb & flow. I'm sure it will be for the best – good work Chris.

[cacian]

Is there anyway of being able to edit titles to the threads?

[SilentMute]

A little confusing to come back to changes, but it does seem much nicer.

My problem...I can't submit a quiz suddenly. I usually do this by going to the author, clicking the quiz tab, and using the link there. When I did that today, I got this error message:

Warning: fetch_template() calls should be replaced by the vB_Template class. Template name: quiz_add_optionbit in [path]/includes/functions.php on line 4734

What should I do? Should I wait until you fix it--or do you have another place to submit quizzes? Or should I open a thread in the Writer's Lounge?

[loe]

I like the new look so far. Good work!
Only the way to the advanced reply possibility seems to be a bit more inconvenient now.
(I don't like the short reply, because I always preview my posts.)

[Calidore]

Two small(?) things I'd like:

1) One bug that seems to have been carried over from the old system is that my time of last activity isn't considered when I last did something, but when the forum last happened to notice that I was still logged in. As a result, I could check new messages in the morning an hour after turning my computer on, and I would only get new messages from that hour, rather than the 11:00 p.m. or whenever it shows as my last activity. As a result, I got in the habit of using the "Today's Posts" quick link, which still shows the earlier threads as old rather than new, but at least shows them. Is this fixable?

2) Related: Now I no longer see the time I was last active on the main screen. Can that be put back?

[Admin]

A little confusing to come back to changes, but it does seem much nicer.

My problem...I can't submit a quiz suddenly. I usually do this by going to the author, clicking the quiz tab, and using the link there. When I did that today, I got this error message:

Warning: fetch_template() calls should be replaced by the vB_Template class. Template name: quiz_add_optionbit in [path]/includes/functions.php on line 4734

What should I do? Should I wait until you fix it--or do you have another place to submit quizzes? Or should I open a thread in the Writer's Lounge?

The quiz system is solidly broken, that was one thing I knew would break, it may be a little while before it can be fixed. I'd just put the quiz info into the writers lounge for safe keeping until it is fixed.

[AuntShecky]

What's the "Writer's Lounge?"

[SFG75]

I log in from time to time and have lately noticed some changes. Things look good! Way to go on the updates and new features.

[Delta40]

Now when I want to post a quick reply, IE asks if I want to stay on the page or leave the page. I have to keep cutting and pasting till the damn thing works!

[Hawkman]

Yes, I get that sometimes. I just say yes I do want to leave the page and then my post goes up.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

You're using IE? There's your problem.

[Delta40]

You're using IE? There's your problem.

Do you have a solution Brian? (I'm really stupid btw)

[SilentMute]

You can download another web browser. I never understood why people needed more than one web browser until recently. I have both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 9. I need Google Chrome for YouTube because it didn't like my Internet Explorer, even though it is supposed to be compatible with 9. Google Chrome works well for most sites, including this one. However, I still need my Internet Explorer 9 for Netflix and my language learning site. They don't like Google Chrome.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Download either Mozilla's Firefox or Google Chrome (I prefer Chrome). I've never had a problem with either, and streaming Netflix with Chrome works fine for me.

[SilentMute]

Actually, it was the language site that hated Google Chrome. Netflix does well enough with Chrome, but I think Internet Explorer does just a little better. I think the loading times are shorter. Of course, there may be other variables at play.