Forum upgraded

[Sim]

I've upgraded the forum to the latest version of the software. If you find anything that doesn't seem to be working, please let me know.

Some important new features:

Thread/Forum Read Marking

The way the forum currently works for marking threads and forums as "read" is what's called "Inactivity/Cookie Based" - once a user has been inactive for a certain amount of time (currently 15 minutes) all threads and forums are considered read. Individual threads are marked as read within a session via cookies.

With the new version, I am going to trial a new feature which uses the database to store thread and forum read times. This allows accurate read markers to be kept indefinitely. Forums are automatically marked as read when the last new thread in that forum is read.

The forum will keep this information for no more than 10 days - all threads or forums without posts in the last 10 days will be considered "read" and won't show up as unread for you. I can set this higher, but this requires a lot of processing power and database space, so the higher I set it, the more slowly the forum will run - hence I am not likely to increase it, and may actually decide to decrease the value if performance suffers.

If this new feature is found to be overly taxing on the server and affects performance, I might be forced to disable it and revert back to the old way of doing things - we'll see how it goes.

How to mark thread/forums read

• Reading all pages of a thread will mark it read automatically
• When viewing an individual forum, you can use the "Mark this forum read" option in the "Forum Tools" menu (top right hand side of thread list) to mark all threads in that forum as read
• When viewing the forum home page, you can use the "Mark all forums read" option at the bottom of the forums list (above the stats section) to mark all posts in all forums as read
• Any thread with no posts in the last 10 days will automatically be marked as read

Note that the quickest way to get rid of any other unread threads is to use the "Mark all forums read" option at the bottom of the forum home page.

 

[duncan_m]

Great work Sim.. certainly not a trivial upgrade to 3.5.. love the new post editor

Everyone.. The WYSIWYG editor isnt on by default, going to User Control Panel -> Editor Options -> scroll to bottom.... you can turn on the WYSIWYG editor..

 

[thefirstbruce]

Great work Sim.. certainly not a trivial upgrade to 3.5.. love the new post editor

Everyone.. The WYSIWYG editor isnt on by default, going to User Control Panel -> Editor Options -> scroll to bottom.... you can turn on the WYSIWYG editor..

I turned on wysi and it still throws html back at me in a white box?????

 

[duncan_m]

I turned on wysi and it still throws html back at me in a white box?????

You might need to refresh the editor page after its loaded.. CTRL-F5 or whatever it is for your browser.. highlight some text and press the Bold button and see if it changes..

 

[Merovingian]

Thumbs down

What happened to my editor?

It's completely useless! It doesn't do anything! Nothing!

Two thumbs down from me.

 

[Sim]

Huh ? The same old options are still there.

 

[duncan_m]

What happened to my editor?

It's completely useless! It doesn't do anything! Nothing!

Two thumbs down from me.

Refresh the editor page...

 

[Merovingian]

Huh ? The same old options are still there.

Which no longer do anything. They're JavaScript controlled options, unlike the HTML style form elements that were present before — which don't seem to work in my browser.

No matter, the simple text box will do. It is basically how I type my posts anyhow.

 

[thefirstbruce]

Sim and Dunc, on initial tests this afternoon (before the access issues with the forum around 4-5pm dst), I realized the advanced editing options are not available in firefox, but IE was ok. I have Javascript enabled in firefox, if that stands for anything.

Sim, any suggestions re firefox usage?

 

[Todd]

Problems with IPChat ??

When on the main forum webpage, i no longer am able to see a list of who is online in the Chat Room. Is this a problem for everyone or just me? Is it suposed to be like this?

Cheers.

 

[Sim]

Todd - that's just a little bug I haven't fixed yet - don't worry - not you.

TFB - I use Firefox almost exclusively - works fine for me on Firefox v1.5. Which version are you using ?

Mero - can you tell me exactly what you are doing when you get the editor ? There are several editing options that don't show any options at all, while others do - depends on how you get to the editor.

 

[thefirstbruce]

Sim am using 1.0.7 with all the updates, but am currently downloading 1.5 for a clean install.

Have also been having more database access dropouts in the last 2 hours. Seems to have picked up in the last 10 minutes though.

 

[Sim]

Yeah, database problems all day. I thought it was the new software, but our hosting provider thinks it might be someone else. I'm keeping an eye on it.

 

[thefirstbruce]

ff 1.5 has fixed the problem. wyswig all the way.......

access is fine now. earlier I was only having trouble with the forum. the somersoft website seemed to be loading normally as was the rest of the www.

 

[Sim]

Cool - that's good to know TFB - thanks for the update.

I went looking for a machine that still had FF 1.0.6 or 1.0.7 on it - but I think I upgraded them all. I suspect my wife still has v1.0.6, so I might try it on hers later to see whether it works or not.

 

[Merovingian]

Sim,

Well I'll be damned, it seems to works now!

Probably a local caching issue or something...

So, to update my satisfaction status:

(Now I feel like a right idiot).

Edit: It looks like there's a bit of Ajax going on with the post editing, too... Nice.

 

[geoffw]

With the new version, I am going to trial a new feature which uses the database to store thread and forum read times. This allows accurate read markers to be kept indefinitely. Forums are automatically marked as read when the last new thread in that forum is read.

What I do like is that, if I lose my browser session, when I open it again, the forums I have read no longer appear.

And I do like getting the option to view today's posts when there are no new posts. That alone is worth the upgrade.

What I don't like is for my read threads to disappear from the "new"- they used to appear in the list, just marked as read. I can get that on "today's" posts, but it's a change in the way I do things. I may start using "today's" posts by default rather than new.

And I don't like refreshing a thread I'm viewing- or opening a new browser session- and having unread posts now marked as read.

 

[Sim]

Yeah - lots of Ajax, which can be confusing at first, but should also speed things up - no full page redraw required.

There's lots of other small new features too - worth spending some time looking carefully at every page to see whether there's anything new.

Don't forget the threaded thread display mode too (that's been there for a while now). Although the hybrid threaded/linear might be less confusing. Personally I just stick to the linear mode - works for me.

Thanks for the update Merovingian

 

[geoffw]

I've noticed a few new features.

But was there a promise of an improved search in the next version of vBulleting? Has the search changed? I can't see any differences.

 

[Sim]

It will be interesting to see how well people cope with the new thread display system. Ironically, it was one of the features that the old forum had (pre 2001), and which a large number of people complained bitterly about when we moved to vBulletin and lost that feature. It was that feature specifically that forced us to move - since it rendered the site basically unusable because of the loads it generated.

The performance of the site today is apparently unrelated to the upgrade. We're keeping an eye on it - but it's looking like another site on this shared server that's causing the problem - not us *phew* !