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View Full Version : WARNING: Site may be down while we make some changes



Clinton
03-31-2010, 05:03 PM
Over the next few days, these forums may be down while we make some changes/improvements to keep this place spam free and fight the heavy bot traffic.

Should you need to get in touch, please use webmaster at this domain.

You may face problems like being able to access the forums but not post and other times when you can't access at all. Sorry in advance for any inconvenience - I'll try to keep the disruption to the minimum - and thanks for understanding.

Clinton
04-01-2010, 08:48 PM
Hope you like the new look, guys. Well, it's just the default vBulletin skin, but it's a lot, lot more secure than the forum used to be before.

I'll be putting a post together explaining some of the advantages with the new setup and how you can gain from it. In the meanwhile please bear with any niggling issues and tweaking I'm still doing. Drop me a note at the address described above if you have any urgent matter to convey.

krishna.murphy
04-02-2010, 04:42 PM
Hope you like the new look, guys. Well, it's just the default vBulletin skin, but it's a lot, lot more secure than the forum used to be before.

I'll be putting a post together explaining some of the advantages with the new setup and how you can gain from it. In the meanwhile please bear with any niggling issues and tweaking I'm still doing. Drop me a note at the address described above if you have any urgent matter to convey.

I'm not allowed to send a private message to you any more:

vBulletin Message
krishna.murphy, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.

FYI, (beta test feedback...) I miss being able to use smileys wherever I like in the posts, and being shown graphically which fora in the forum index have new posts (ones I have not seen.) I also haven't found a "post preview" button in my few posts so far, though this one has it. Hope that's helpful! ;)

Clinton
04-02-2010, 05:21 PM
That's very useful. Thanks, I'll look into those. It looks like everyone's PMs got turned off. I have now enabled your private messages. Please tell me if you still have a problem. There shouldn't be a problem with using smileys - I see one smiley in your above post. Test :) :) :) :)

There's a new nav bar now below the original one and it has a link for What's New. Click on that and you'll see under that another link for New Posts. Both of those will lead to options where you can see new posts since last visit and/or new posts over last 24 hours. If you use the Advanced Search you can find new posts in last 48 hours/one week etc.

There isn't a preview but I'll see if that's something that can be enabled in the settings.

Moderators: Sorry, but you seem to have been all moved to a general group and can't moderate anything. I'll have to manually create mod privileges for each one. Drop me an email if you still don't have mod access in a couple of days.

Also, I noticed that when I log in on http://knoppix.net/forum it shows on that page that I'm logged out but if I navigate off that page to anywhere else it shows me logged in.

There the Site AdminKnoppix CreatorModerator that shows under people's name in their posts which needs to be sorted.

Any more issues?

garaden
04-04-2010, 04:47 AM
The search still uses the old URL form, so all the links the search returns are broken.

Clinton
04-04-2010, 10:29 PM
Good point. Thanks. Will look into that and sort it.

krishna.murphy
04-05-2010, 12:31 AM
That's very useful. Thanks, I'll look into those. It looks like everyone's PMs got turned off. I have now enabled your private messages. Please tell me if you still have a problem. There shouldn't be a problem with using smileys - I see one smiley in your above post. Test :)

Yeah, but if I try to do some other ones (that were preciously available by clicking something), e.g. "; )" (without the quotes or the space) or :roll: then I'm out of luck.


There's a new nav bar now below the original one and it has a link for What's New. Click on that and you'll see under that another link for New Posts. Both of those will lead to options where you can see new posts since last visit and/or new posts over last 24 hours. If you use the Advanced Search you can find new posts in last 48 hours/one week etc.

There isn't a preview but I'll see if that's something that can be enabled in the settings.

Moderators: Sorry, but you seem to have been all moved to a general group and can't moderate anything. I'll have to manually create mod privileges for each one. Drop me an email if you still don't have mod access in a couple of days.

Also, I noticed that when I log in on http://knoppix.net/forum it shows on that page that I'm logged out but if I navigate off that page to anywhere else it shows me logged in.

There the Site AdminKnoppix CreatorModerator that shows under people's name in their posts which needs to be sorted.

Any more issues?

Clinton
04-05-2010, 06:08 PM
I've found an obscure setting somewhere which enables these smileys in the post editor. All those who were members before the change should now be able to post smiley. Please check and get back.

I'm still working on some of the other bits. Please be patient with me, this is very unfamiliar territory and I'm just learning my way around the thousands and thousands of settings in vBulletin.

Testing:
;)
:)
:roll:

OK, roll doesn't work. I'll be back.

Harry Kuhman
04-05-2010, 10:09 PM
Times seem to be much more confusing. The old phpBB system would show me the timestamps of posts based on my selected timezone. But I'm not sure what the Vb system is doing, it seems to know that I use EDT as my timezone, but it is showing me timestamps on other posts based on some other time zone, which is not specified. That is to say it is 4 something PM here but I'm seeing posts that were supposedly made at 9 something PM today. That is pretty useless without either translating the time to my time zone or, at a minimum, running the entire system on GMT time.

Other than that, this is my first post on the new system, really just making this post to see how things work.

krishna.murphy
04-06-2010, 04:46 AM
Times seem to be much more confusing. The old phpBB system would show me the timestamps of posts based on my selected timezone. But I'm not sure what the Vb system is doing, it seems to know that I use EDT as my timezone, but it is showing me timestamps on other posts based on some other time zone, which is not specified. That is to say it is 4 something PM here but I'm seeing posts that were supposedly made at 9 something PM today. That is pretty useless without either translating the time to my time zone or, at a minimum, running the entire system on GMT time.

Other than that, this is my first post on the new system, really just making this post to see how things work.

I saw a post (http://knoppix.net/forum/threads/28313-hwclock-and-local-time-on-Windows...?p=119898#post119898) recently about problems with clock-setting (system vs. hardware), which seems very similar in nature; what exactly is the standard for timekeeping in Linux? And why is there not ONE standard way that's handled, now that we've seen the "Y2K problem" through to another new decade?

Krishna :)

Clinton
04-06-2010, 04:51 PM
Test post to see date / time. Made at 16.51 British Summer Time (GMT +1)

Am speaking with vBulletin tech support shortly :roll:

Clinton
04-06-2010, 05:41 PM
Smilies:

Go to setting at the top right of this page > scroll down to General Settings in the left column > Scroll Down to Miscellaneous Options (Message Editor Interface) and choose "Enhanced Interface" or "Standard Editor" instead of the "Basic Editor".

I asked if I could do it globally for all users but it seems I can't - it's something you control individually.

: roll: was actually : rolleyes : so if one doesn't work the other probably will. They now show :roll: and :rolleyes: respectively. I notice that Krishna's post from earlier with the : roll : text is now showing the smiley instead.

Dates/Time stamp: Tech support says it's not a vBulletin issue and the clock on the server may be wrong. I will talk to the hosting people to see if they can sort it.

I've modified the navigation at the top of every page. Will be making some more changes shortly.

I still have to activate moderators, though Harry's account has been done. And I'll come to the search issue in due course.

Any more?

angie73
04-07-2010, 01:03 AM
Looks good. we had to change from phpBB before because of spam as well but we choose SMF. Still vBulletin is good. I helped run a friends forum who was that and even when it was dead it still kept the spam away nicely. :)

Except that it says it is midnight for me when it is only 8pm .. :(

dragos6
04-08-2010, 06:32 AM
I can't use the "settings" tab of my profile... I.e. when I get there, whatever I try to do, I get a page saying that I don't have the right to do that!!!

g3guy
04-08-2010, 05:11 PM
vBulletin Message

g3guy, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

1. Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
2. If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.

Log Out Home

Clinton
04-08-2010, 09:03 PM
Thanks for that, it was useful feedback. I think I've sorted this now. You should be have the "privileges" to access that page now and change settings.

I still have the login problem on the homepage though i.e. when you first log in, it appears that you're not logged in till you move to another page. Please give me a few days on that, it's a bit trickier than I expected.

Clinton
04-12-2010, 09:05 PM
Login problem now solved.

Anyone still having problems setting their time zone (sorry, you have to set it again, your specific time zone may have been lost when your account moved over to the new software)?

Smileys: When you typing up a post, click on Go Advanced and you'll get a list of smileys if you prefer to drag and drop. ; ) : ) etc should work anyway ;)

I'm still working on the search and one or two others already mentioned in the thread.

Any other problems?

And thanks for all your feedback.

Clinton
04-14-2010, 10:05 AM
Avatars are now enabled and you should be able to set an avatar in your profiles (newer users won't have this yet till they build up some post count and presence on the forums)

GizmoPlushie
04-17-2010, 05:04 PM
I saw a post (http://knoppix.net/forum/threads/28313-hwclock-and-local-time-on-Windows...?p=119898#post119898) recently about problems with clock-setting (system vs. hardware), which seems very similar in nature; what exactly is the standard for timekeeping in Linux? And why is there not ONE standard way that's handled, now that we've seen the "Y2K problem" through to another new decade?

Krishna :)

I saw it too. I thought it could be BIOS clock battery related, but when it comes for Knoppix 6.2 the time is 1980 every time I start my sys, so I think the battery is being low on power .') I don't know about Y2K as I can't run my sys without shutting it down for 20 years. Maybe I'll search for some battery I think :P

Clinton
04-17-2010, 05:11 PM
GizmoPlushie, as a newer account you were in a different usergroup and didn't have access to the settings and profile that the others did so you couldn't change your time zone. I've now enabled it for you.

Clinton
04-19-2010, 10:48 AM
New users don't have access to settings so can't change their time zone, profile or other settings.

I'm going to keep it that way as there are about 20-30 new registrations everyday who seem to be here for no reason except to create a profile with a linkback to their spammy site. If they can't edit their profiles they can't create any links (but can't change clock/time zone either). My apologies to those new users who are here for genuine reasons. If that's you, please drop me a PM or email after you've made a few posts and I can manually approve you for those permissions.

Once a new user completes 10 posts of a reasonable quality and completes 30 days of membership, they'll be automatically upgraded to some limited access of their settings, e.g. they can control the clock/preferred time zone.

To address previous feedback on searching: search function should now be working better. In a few days it should be 100%.

Clinton
05-10-2010, 08:27 PM
Most things seem to be working fine with the update. But I discovered today there's an issue with moderator privileges. Any moderator having problems with this, please drop me a PM or email. Thanks.

ruymbeke
05-25-2010, 07:59 PM
Sent by email at 06:06 PM 5/10/2010:

Hi Clinton,
Thanks for the update.
Do you know that the forum upgrade did break all the references to the forum posts ?
Inlcuding links to other posts within the forum, which reduces significantly the use of the forum.
It also breaks all the references from other forums and indexes from search engines.
Is it possible to freeze (read only access) the old forum and still make it available for reference and start a new one ?
What was the reason to migrate the forum from phpBB to vBulletin ?
Do you still have a snapshoot of the old forum ?
Thanks,
Gilles

PS: sorry for my late feedback, I should have mention this much sooner... (I have been quite busy travelling...)

Clinton
05-27-2010, 08:58 PM
Hi Gilles,

Sorry for the delayed reply. I was hunting for your email which seems to have slipped through. I've recovered it and have a detailed reply in draft which I will send you in due course. Thanks so much for that feedback. We had to move because the old forum software was very, very old and very insecure. Keeping the spam at bay was a huge task. Not to mention hammering from the bots. These forums would normally need just a basic shared hosting but I had to move to a dedicated server to cope with the load. All that stuff is back under control now in a major way. And long-suffering Harry (who never complained, BTW) now finds he has several more free hours every week.

I was very reluctant to make any major change - I'm not the changing type of guy :) and while some of the drawbacks of moving were anticipated, some weren't and I'm working to fix them. Yes, I do have a safe copy of the old database.

More in the email. It's a long weekend here so please bear with me if that spills over to Tuesday or so. There's some other stuff I wanted to chat with you about that's best left to email.

ruymbeke
06-13-2010, 11:46 PM
Hi Clinton,
Any update ? I did not see any email from you...
May I ask for the forum backup ?
Thanks and Best Regards,
Gilles

Clinton
06-16-2010, 06:15 PM
ruymbeke, I'm back at the office tomorrow. Let me check my outbox and get back to you (and resend).

Clinton
06-17-2010, 07:27 PM
ruymbeke, you have mail.