Well, that was a real bitch. In a nutshell, our host stopped supporting the version of PHP the forum was using. They insist I received an email 30 days prior, but I am quite certain I did not. They then insist that said email must have gone to my spam folder; I am quite certain it did not. (Also, they never could explain why that one email went to spam, but everything else from them - including notifications about replies to my support tickets - worked just fine.)
Bottom line, overall, is that our host basically said "fuck you" when I asked them to re-enable the older PHP version in order to give me time to do the upgrade to the forum software. They were magnanimous enough to give us 30 days free.
We are currently running on a "vanilla" instance of phpbb v3.2.11. I'm going to attempt to upgrade to 3.3.x later this year, probably sometime in the summer, because the version of php behind this board version is considered obsolete; it still has active bug support, particularly for security glitches, but otherwise has no new code. So it's a matter of time until it's shit-canned as well. But first, we need to get stable here. I'll use this post to document changes, as well as to keep track of bugs and other issues. Please do NOT create a new thread - post here.
*** IF YOU HAVE ISSUES LOGGING IN ***
Let's put this one right at the top. You should clear cookies and cache in your browser for the site. As part of the upgrade, details about the site's cookies have changed, and it's possible your login issue is caused by that.
If that doesn't resolve your issue, please reset your password through the "Forgot my Password" link. This will, obviously, send an email to the one associated with your account. Doing so will generate a new password for you, and will also include a link to activate it. Once you've successfully logged in this way, you can go to your User Control Panel and change your password to whatever you like.
Next, please try a different browser. When I was doing the upgrade I couldn't login on Chrome (for example) but could on Firefox.
If that continues to fail, please try logging in via "Incognito" mode in your browser.
- In Chrome, click the "three dots menu" at the top right, then select "New Incognito Window"
- In Firefox, go to Menu at the top right, then choose "New Private Window"
- Other browsers should have similar options. If you can't find it, Google is your friend.
If you can't login with either a normal window or incognito window, please hang tight for now. I'm tracking down a lot of odds and ends, and this is among them.
Whisper Tag is No More
At least for now. The Whisper tag was a customization on the previous forum, which existing more or less because it was a feature on BB Boy and we wanted to keep continuity. It doesn't seem to be a thing that exists, and I'm not a good enough PHP developer* to tackle it.
* And by "not good enough PHP developer" I really mean I know jack shit about the language. I can read it, because most computer languages work the same basic way. But I'm not about to try and tackle writing something like that... maybe later.
For the time being, I've hidden all the posts that contained whispers. If I'm ever able to restore it, I'll also restore the posts.
The Size Tags
I honestly can't recall how the size tag worked previously. I know way back on BB Boy, we had a range from -2 through 7. I think when we moved to phpbb, we adopted their style, which left the older BB Boy posts "broken" unless somebody went in and manually edited them. Regardless, we are now definitely using the phpbb format. The "default" size (what you get when you don't use a tag) is "100" - as in 100% of the normal font size. Parameters you give to the size tag are intended to be a percentage of the "normal" size. So if you use "size=50" you'll get a font size that's 50% as large as the normal size for the reader's browser. Using "size=150" gives you 50% larger than normal. There are several "built-in" values in the drop-down list:
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Size Pct
Tiny 50
Small 85
Normal 100
Large 150
Huge 200
As a little "bonus" here, maybe, I was able to clean up many of the older posts so they should display correctly going forward. (*figners crossed*) (Related to this, if you've ever looked at a thread that was migrated from BB Boy to phpbb, you likely saw a whole bunch of "BR" tags. Those are, I believe, also fixed.)
Custom Tags
We have a few custome tags, and something breaking wouldn't surprise me. I'm not asking anyone to try to break them! But if you see anything funny with these, just post it here.
Center
The center tag aligns text centered on the page.
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[center]This text will be centered![/center]
This text will be centered!
Strikethrough
The strikethrough tag ("S") will put a strikethrough line through the entered text.
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[s]This text will have a line through it.[/s]
This text will have a line through it.
Spoiler
There are, as before, two versions of the spoiler tag - with and without a "label" on the box.
Version 1: Without a label
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[spoiler]Zoinks! Did you know Vader is really Luke's father![/spoiler]
Version 2: With a label
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[spoiler=Don't click me, man!]Zoinks! Did you know Vader is really Luke's father![/spoiler]
Don't click me, man!
Other Features
One reason we have no "mods" installed is because just about everything we had to customize in the past is built-in to the software now. Reporting posts was a mod previously; it's built in. The ignore list was a mod previously; it's built in. One thing I still have to figure out is the "Announcement" banner at the top that we had previously. I think that's also built in, but if not I'm sure I can find something.
There are also new features that we didn't have previously. The most prominent of those that stood out to me was the "Save Draft" button when writing a post. It does pretty much what you would think from the name - while writing a post, you can now opt to save a copy of that post and come back to it. You can find your saved drafts by going to your User Control Panel (click the down-arrow next to your name at the top-right), and "Manage Drafts" is the 4th item in the menu on the left. the UCP is also where you handle avatars, signatures, and so forth.
Notifications are also, I believe, a new feature. Previously, you could receive an email for things such as receiving a PM, somebody posting in a topic or forum you follow, and so on. Those options still exist; but now you can also receive a notification on the site directly. Notifications appear up at the top right of the screen, just a little bit to the left of your username. After clicking "Notifications" a box will pop up that shows you any you have. On the top-right of that box is a "Settings" link, which will - you guessed it! - take you to your settings for how to receive notifications.
And last, but certainly not least... search is now built into the forum again, rather than being a bizarre amalgamation of on-site for some and Google for others. So far, search seems to have really good response based on my limited testing. It's possible that over time I'll need to do some tweaking to the settings. But, knock on wood, so far this seems to be rally smooth, quick, and accurate.
- There is currently a 15 second "flood interval" on searches. I can adjust that, up or down, as needed to strike a balance between server load and usefulness.
- There is a minimum of 3 characters when searching for posts by a username with a wildcard. For example, if you search for "Zhe" as the post author, you won't get anything. But if you search for "Zhe*" you'll see all my posts.
- The maximum number of "keywords" is currently set to 10
- The minimum characters indexed is 3. Any word shorter than that is not indexed, and therefore cannot be searched. So, for example, terms such as "AC" and "DC" won't find any results.
- The maximum characters indexed is 84. Any word long than that (WTaF?!?) will not be indexed. (Yeah, I don't think that'll ever be an issue )
The "search" box at the top right defaults to searching for posts. If you click the gear symbol on the far right of it, you'll go to the "Advanced Search" page with more options. I think everything in there is self-explanatory, but if something isn't clear just ask.
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So there you have it. Welcome back, and I apologize for it taking so long. I'll keep an ongoing "bug tracker" in the next post. I'll also keep a "feature tracker" list, for requests that you think we need. Just understand that those are going to be incredibly low priority for me going forward.
Cheers!
Z