New Forum Platform: Issues and Questions

[Slarti]

Since everybody knows there's a "secret" game planner forum there's no need to ask this privately, and the game planners have asked me to pester you about it so I'll do it here.

Is there a way that those of us who use that forum can be permanently logged in? I tried to look at the forum permissions options on the ACP and couldn't figure anything out. (and didn't want to break anything)

Here's why it's a problem, using me as the example: Yesterday I logged on to the game planners forum at work and see nothing new there. I think "okay, nobody has answered me, I'll check later" and close the window. A couple hours later, I go back and click on "new posts" and don't see any new posts in that forum. But then after thinking about it for a moment, I go straight to that forum and see it's logged me out. It's not like there are days between log-ins... it just seems to log us out the second we leave that forum, and it's causing planners to miss things.

And on a purely personal note... though people have asked me to pester you about this too... is there any way we can get "today's posts" back as an option?

[HoodedMan]

To the former, I'll look into it. I think that's just the way a forum with a password works in phpBB, and the easiest thing to do might be to just remove the password and let permissions handle who has access as they do already; I see no need for both barriers to entry.

To the latter, maybe? phpBB just has different paradigms regarding posts. Personally I think it's more convenient to see unread posts as if you're checking for the second time in a day you don't really need to see the posts you've already read as you're not going to re-read them, and if you're checking after having been away for a couple days, you'll want to see all the posts you missed, instead of going into every forum to see what may have been posted more than 24 hours ago.

[Slarti]

I love you, HM. I know, I know, it's probably us that like the Today's Posts that are the weird ones, but thanks for bringing it back.

Personally, especially at work or on my phone I just pop on to see what's going on. I might read a post, but I generally need to come back to it to respond. Often I can't take the time that very moment or I need time to think of my best response, so I come back to it. Except now it's gone from the new topics thingie and I have to go hunting for it. So, yes, I love Today's Posts.

And yes, that makes the most sense for the game planner forum.

[HoodedMan]

No, that's fine, and I would have done it earlier, except I had to update a Today's Posts mod that was written for phpBB ten versions ago. :p

Getting used to the mod system to make all changes is a bit of work but totally worth it. Once I have even Nightscrawlers' custom additions as mods, I can go ahead and create a new theme confident in the knowledge that it will literally take a few clicks to apply all the changes to it.

[Slarti]

Yeah, and i'm trying to learn it too... I *think* I fixed the game planner forum issue.

[HoodedMan]

Yeah, and i'm trying to learn it too... I *think* I fixed the game planner forum issue.

It looks to me like you did; the logs show you modified it and it has no password now. :p

[Elwing]

And widget is announcing posts on the forum in the chat again! Thank you for that, that is such a great feature.

[Slarti]

Yeah, and i'm trying to learn it too... I *think* I fixed the game planner forum issue.

It looks to me like you did; the logs show you modified it and it has no password now. :p

And I fiddled with the permissions to add us and the game planners, then logged out and checked and the forum disappeared. When I logged back in it was back. So woot!

[HoodedMan]

I've instituted a number of rewrite rules that should translate old forum URLs to new ones and update bookmarks. Please let me know if you can find any links to the old forum that are not translated properly; I'm reviewing web server logs every day and hoping to see a considerable drop in the number of 404 Not Founds we're serving.

[Jeremus]

I just had something weird happen. I was typing a (long) post and I punched "preview" and it came up that the web page had expired and I lost the post completely. This has happened twice since the changeover. The first time was the day after the change and I thought maybe I'd punched something wrong and it never happened again....until today. Is there a time limit on typing a post and editing/previewing it?

[steyn]

I just had something weird happen. I was typing a (long) post and I punched "preview" and it came up that the web page had expired and I lost the post completely. This has happened twice since the changeover. The first time was the day after the change and I thought maybe I'd punched something wrong and it never happened again....until today. Is there a time limit on typing a post and editing/previewing it?

funny enough, that happens to me from time to time, be it the old forum or this new one. I make it a habit to copy the large amount of texts before previewing.

[Jeremus]

It never happened to me in the old forum, but I'll definitely start copying long posts now. Thanks!

[Ult_Sm86]

I just had something weird happen. I was typing a (long) post and I punched "preview" and it came up that the web page had expired and I lost the post completely. This has happened twice since the changeover. The first time was the day after the change and I thought maybe I'd punched something wrong and it never happened again....until today. Is there a time limit on typing a post and editing/previewing it?

funny enough, that happens to me from time to time, be it the old forum or this new one. I make it a habit to copy the large amount of texts before previewing.

This has happened to me twice. And I know Slarti had it happen to her on the Walking Dead thread too, but I think it was on her phone.

[steyn]

I just had something weird happen. I was typing a (long) post and I punched "preview" and it came up that the web page had expired and I lost the post completely. This has happened twice since the changeover. The first time was the day after the change and I thought maybe I'd punched something wrong and it never happened again....until today. Is there a time limit on typing a post and editing/previewing it?

funny enough, that happens to me from time to time, be it the old forum or this new one. I make it a habit to copy the large amount of texts before previewing.

This has happened to me twice. And I know Slarti had it happen to her on the Walking Dead thread too, but I think it was on her phone.

So I was busy typing things on another forum, here and I noticed that the thin actually saved every 30 seconds or so, a little 'saved' block appeared in the top right of the text box. Now I'm wondering, would something like that work here? I'm guessing the page saves the content of the text box if the page times out when you submit it, so if you press back the text would be in the box again.

[HoodedMan]

If you click Preview, your Web browser should never show that the page has expired, because you are requesting a new page. It should only show that the page has expired if you are requesting the page again. Therefore, I'm not sure to what I can attribute this behavior (browser configuration, browser plugins), but it's not the forum. I'll look into any modifications that may allow auto-saving of posts, but I think the overhead on the database might be quite high unless it uses local storage in some fashion (an HTML5 feature which older browsers will not support), and Web browsers are supposed to keep text in input boxes when Back is clicked unless the text is explicitly cleared by the forum (which it is not) or the page is refreshed.

-HM

[Indigo_Lady]

I meant to say this before, but I haven't had much time for this forum in a couple months. I am very grateful that you restored the creator forum. There is fanfiction in that archive that is found nowhere else on the Internet. It would have been a pity to lose it since some of the other Nightcrawler and X-men FF archives have been closed. As long as NS remains open and active, it would be great to keep that available. There are some real gems in there.

[Ult_Sm86]

So this comes up once in awhile after I post, I notice it more times when I edit a post, but not every time.



What does it mean? I get afraid that my post didn't load/go through, but after enough times of this happening I discovered it in fact does.

[HoodedMan]

That looks bad. I'll check with the host. Thanks for the report!

Note: This issue was resolved on October 12th.