Site issues: Dec 27 Update

by Simon 36 Replies latest forum announcements

• 

  Simon

  Here's the current status:

  • Performance improvements have been made to make things slicker.
  • The "remember me" issue should now be fixed.
  • Sign-in captcha can be affected by ad-blockers so consider disabling those.
  • Sign-in email is case-sensitive - until I update this consider using your forum username instead.
  • IE stalls on "queued for processing" when posting a topic or reply but the post has been made (just navigate to active or refresh the topic if replying).

  I will be working through issues today and contacting anyone who had sign-in issues to check if they still have problems.

  Many thanks again for your patience while we work through these teething problems.
• 

  Finkelstein

  Yes, remember username is now functioning on IE 11 and Firefox    ........ Nice

  You don't have to sign in every time now if you don't want to.

  Thanks Simon  :)

   Another thing I noticed and is a plus is that there seems to be a spellchecker built right into the posting window,

  this in itself should be a great asset to the new forum format  .

  The capability to use a picture on your own computer to use as an avatar is also going to make people happy. 
• 

  Finkelstein

  I just wanted to point out for those people who queried why they have a number of Messages beside their username,  all you have to do is open the number of which is there and the number will eventually revert back down to 0 .   ....... easy 

   
• 

  Simon

  for those people who queried why they have a number of Messages beside their username ...

  I forgot about that. The solution won't work for everyone - the count of unread messages doesn't match the actual number (an issue with the timing of the data import process / messages being read on the old server).

  I will be running a job to fix that later today and the numbers should then be correct.
• 

  Simon

  IE stalls on "queued for processing" when posting a topic or reply but the post has been made (just navigate to active or refresh the topic if replying).

  So it turns out that this is a problem with a Google-supplied script. It works fine on the local dev server and on production with Chrome, Safari and FireFox but fails with IE. Superb.

  I'm researching alternatives, in the meantime if you are on IE you should just refresh the page if posting a reply to a topic or go to active topics if starting a new one once the status get's to "queued for processing" (at that point the server has it and it will normally appear soon after).
• 

  Odrade

  The same problem has cropped up for me once in Chrome (latest version, Win7 os). Refresh page shows reply posted though it stuck in "queued." 
• 

  Open mind

  Hi Simon. 

  
  First off, thank you so much for maintaining this site over the years.  It was an absolute mental lifeline for me when my JW blinders were first coming off. 

  
  

  I have a few questions about the new site format. If you've already done an FAQ thread for it, please point me in that direction.

  
  If not, here goes:

  1.   Are the Public vs. Private sections of the site a thing of the past?

  
  2.  I've noticed in poking around at various threads that a lot of the images seem to be gone.  Was that intentional? Example: moshe started a thread about a caption contest for some picture that had something to do with OUTLAW.  From the replies, the picture must have included a bear, but the picture isn't visible anymore.

  
  3. Is there any simple way to see more Threads per page?

  
  

  4.  Is there any way to see the exact date a thread was started?  Eg: I posted a thread the first day my wife openly started looking at anti-JW sites on the internet.  It's been a bit of a personal diary for me, but now all I can see is "Posted 5 years ago".

  Thanks again Simon for all your hard work here. 

  
  All the best to you and Angharad in 2015!

  om
  
• 

  Simon

  1.   Are the Public vs. Private sections of the site a thing of the past?

  No, they are still as they were with the same permissions although permissions are no longer strictly tied to the subject area (but it will work that way for now). The intention is eventually for a subject to be "the place for things todo with that subject" regardless of whether any specific topic within it is set to be public or private (maybe becoming an option when posting). Hope that makes sense.

  2.  I've noticed in poking around at various threads that a lot of the images seem to be gone.  Was that intentional? Example: moshe started a thread about a caption contest for some picture that had something to do with OUTLAW.  From the replies, the picture must have included a bear, but the picture isn't visible anymore.

  No, the conversion actually pulled in some images that don't exist in their original places thanks to Google's URL fetch service / cache. There is some more processing to do on some of the older posts so they may re-appear at some point. Some simply don't exist anymore though. Images get lost over time as sites are shutdown or URL design changes. One thing the new site does is keep a snapshot of the images to prevent that happening in future.

  3. Is there any simple way to see more Threads per page?

  Right now the options are 5, 10 and 20 (same as the old forum). I may add more options in future and am also looking at continuous-scroll where they load on demand as you scroll through a topic.

  4.  Is there any way to see the exact date a thread was started?  Eg: I posted a thread the first day my wife openly started looking at anti-JW sites on the internet.  It's been a bit of a personal diary for me, but now all I can see is "Posted 5 years ago".

  I can probably make the timeago include a mouseover with the specific date/time.
• 

  Apognophos

  I can probably make the timeago include a mouseover with the specific date/time.

  Yes, I'd like to see this too.  I've already tried mousing over that text to see if the date pops up :-) That being said, I'm not convinced that "five years ago" is more helpful than just saying "2009/11/29", especially because I find the date-rounding code on this site to be counter-intuitive (seems that it will say "four years ago" up to 4 years, 364 days in the past, before it flips over to "five" the next day, and minutes seem to get rounded to "an hour" at the 45 minute mark).
  
• 

  Simon

  The timeago thing is only meant to give a rough idea - is what I'm reading something new or old?

  I did have an idea to have posts "fade" with age, maybe get a ye-olde parchment background and typeface ...