Boards version 7 bug/issues thread

This thread is for reporting issues or bugs with the version 7 boards the site is now running.

I can't see how many new messages there are. Didn't there used to be the number of new messages in brackets.

Are there any alternative colour schemes ? (this one is very difficult to read) Couldn't see anywhere in the preferences to change scheme.

Opening a topic doesn't take you to the first unread message (which when combined with the lack of indication of unread messages is a problem)

I found the bit for changing colour schemes, but this is the only one available, which is of course what you said the other day.

Was the date displayed this this before ? i.e. short US format ?

I never remember struggling with the date before, but maybe it was just in that format all the time and I hadn't noticed.

Date/time format can be changed in your profile (thank goodness!).

That's a show stopper, for sure. It'll completely kill this community if not fixed rapidly.



It's horridly, dog ugly. Hopefully one our resident style-sheet gurus will come up with a new version of the old empegbbs scheme for us to select..

Cheers

Threaded (?) private messages seems interesting, but it's tough to see which of my pre-v7 are Sent messages. Best way I can see is to look at the "participants" list below each message on the index; the name that's first is the sender.

My "watched threads" seem missing. Not a huge deal since I used that for archiving/bookmarking rather than active threads.

"Active Topics" is cool. Was that always there?

Mark's avatar is missing (of course). Was it hosted on site? Mine shows, perhaps because it's hosted off site.

Thanks for the upgrade!

There's something... missing about the forum message index pages (ie: the Off Topic thread list page). If anyone had a screen shot of the previous version, it would be worth comparing. I'm looking at the message lists and just... missing something. Author, being in smaller font? Can't put a finger on it.

Ahhhhhhhhh! Nor Me!!!!!!!!

I can't tell what I have read and what I haven't.

The colour scheme is pretty minging! Can we try something else?

On the plus side the bbs seems much quicker, or is that just me?

Cheers

Cris.

Hey, it's working now!

And.. wow.. horizontal scrollbars on long lines when quoted (see above quotation..).

Now if only I knew how to force the BBS to use a stylesheet of my own choosing..

Meanwhile, if I could figure out how to attach a file, I'd post a modified "large fonts" version of the default gloomy stylesheet.

Did all of our watched topics get lost in the transition?

Default in "Search" is now "weeks" instead of "years".

We had to get that fixed once in the previous version of the BBS, too.


And I still don't see any way to attach a file, though existing postings with attachments are still visible (thank goodness, and Tom!).

Cheers

ZOMGWTFBBQ!!!11!

Change is fun! Thanks for the efforts, Drakino!
I'm sure things will get sorted out.

Had to post just to test some things. Wow!

They are there it's just that they are reset (all posts read) until the cookies get reestablished.

For some (me) the pointer to the avitar was lost. Took longer to find the post in the avitars thread than to reset the preference.

Most avatars should be fixed, all depends on how they were previously uploaded. Looks like I missed one place.

The 6.5 and 7 boards do support uploading avatars from your profile page somewhere,

Working on adding styles now, looks like this version stores them in the database and when I wiped it for the import the two I had in there were lost. Second I touched the styles control panel, it blew them completely away.

If you see a style you like from here: http://www.ubbdev.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/postlist/Board/28
Let me know and I'll add it.

Also, I'll look to bring the old boards back up on a different domain to allow for watched lists to be recovered, or dig into it to figure out why they didn't make the jump. For the upgrade, I used a new database, so the old one is still alive.

Wow, what a change!

Drakino, thanks for the upgrade. All bugs and glitches will be solved soon, I am sure. And, we have a newer version!

As to the stylesheets, while there are many great ones around, I'd vote, possibly, for the old one just because it was quite unique, I think, and after so many years I can't imagine this bbs on a different color

Anyway, my job is killing me. I desperately try to keep reading because I just enjoy this place so muc, but in case I don't succeed in posting anymore before holidays, let me just wish you all a Merry Christmas.

I notice that using my browser's 'back' button no longer gets me an updated page.
That is- I see the view that was loaded previously.
The previous version of this board would update the page.

Not a biggie.

Finally found this. They now set attachment permissions per forum. One quick SQL query later, attachments should work now. Look for a "File Manager" option when making a post.

For reference, I've attached a screenshot of the old site.

Judging by your signature the 'color' tags only accept numeric values now.

Thanks for adding the brighter style sheet and for taking the time to do the upgrade it is much faster.

Is there any chance of having the option of the old colour scheme?

Cheers

Cris.

There are some issues getting the old color scheme in right now, mostly due to my lack of ability with CSS. I'll dig up the thread where I asked for help on it a while back, I believe someone got pretty close with it.

Yes, thanks Tom, you're a star.

Well done Tom, I actually don't mind the current colour scheme.

Thanks, Tom. I really liked the old (purple-ish) colour scheme,
but the new winter theme is bright and cheery enough for the season!

Cheers

Thanks Bitt.

Bitt's image post didn't cause a horizontal scroll bar on my small-ish Firefox 2.0 window. It simply didn't show the right side of the image that was off the screen. Tough call on what to do with this: I've never fully liked one big image making a whole thread wider, thus forcing me to scroll left and right to read all the text. I have seen another forum which only widens the post with the image, leaving all the others ad some narrow default width.

Also, while reading a thread, were the reply buttons at the top of each post? How quickly I forget.

(Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, it's a habit now)

edit: Holy cow, that IS faster. Adding a post didn't show that confirmation screen. Phew!!

edit 2: Editing a post, however, did show the confirmation screen, but for a shorter time.

Oh, and when I posted, it returned me to the post in the thread where I clicked Reply (almost). It didn't take me to my post (the bottom of the thread) as always. The new functionality could be handy.

The favicon.ico for the BBS is now some eight pointed white star. Perhaps the forum software logo? What was it before? Something yellow?

Maybe the artistic among us could create some alternatives (a tiny tiny empeg?).

Is it possible to disable the quick reply box at the bottom of each thread? We had a discussion about it on the last version, I think, and decided against it, since it breaks threading.

It didn't like the quotation marks. Fixed now. Thanks.

Huh. I have a horizontal scrollbar showing for that quote, despite the fact that there's nothing that's wide enough to cause that.

It's there, inside the post, not on the main browser display. Scroll to the bottom of the image.

Ooh. I like the new "Preview Post". It does it on the same page rather than reloading a new page.

Also, [q] and [/q] no longer work. You have to use [quote] and [/quote].

Also also, the old trick for showing UBBCodes (that is, if one wants to show [quote], entering [[i][/i]quote]) no longer seems to work. I entered this by disabling UBBCode on this post. I don't know if that option even exists for non-moderators, but it's easily possible to want to both use and display UBBCodes.

I'm a non-moderator. Here's what I now do for showing that stuff:
I just put the entire [stuff] inside in bold, like [this].

This will show [quote] and [/quote].

I like the look of the bold inside brackets for displaying the UBB code.
Doesn't a code tag work on this board?

Oooo- it does.
I still like the bold.

This one shouldn't break threading if people use the "Quick Quote" or "Quick Reply" buttons. I know I've seen other boards not activate the quick reply unless someone used one, so I may see about getting that into this version.

[q] is on my list. While version 5 to 6 seemed to change a lot, many things were easy to find and change still. Version 7 feel like a full rewrite, for the better though. It looks like I can do everything through the control panel now, instead of finding random PHP files to hack at.

That might have been me. It was close. One item I remember was what I thought of as improper reuse of css elements.

Different regions of the layout referenced the same css. That couldn't be resolved unless the generation of the html was revised.

Nor could I test my CSS against the whole site as it wasn't available.

Here is what they looked like:
http://gkb.servehttp.com/empegubb7/mainpage.htm
http://gkb.servehttp.com/empegubb7/posts.html

I think the quotation frame is fixed width, putting one inside the other causes the scroll bar.

I created a new thread for CSS attempts.

FWIW.

The BBS seems to now be working fairly well after the upgrade.
It's really good to have up to date s/w under the hood here now.

Thanks Tom!

Thanks for the great work, Tom! I'm sure it's not an easy feat to upgrade a message board like this. I'm impressed!

One question: is the amount of space in-between every post (in flat mode with info on the left) bigger now than it was before? I'm certain that those 10px or so didn't used to be there, but was the bar at the top of each post? I'm sure it must have been, because it includes the post title. Still, there seems to be more scrolling than there used to be. Of course, this could all be style sheet stuff, so I'll wait for things to work themselves out.

Keep up the good work!


(ps- this is a teeny-tiny, unimportant, nit-picky, low-priority request that I'm almost embarrassed to mention: when you click on "Quick Reply," is there a way to keep it from putting in the single space it inserts at the beginning of your post? Clearly this is the last thing you should have to worry about )

There is none. Perhaps that's your browser's default icon?

Yes. A lightbulb. Which matched the theme of the BBS.

No. He (and I) are seeing this one

There is: it's in a <link> tag.

No, that little favicon that's showing up now is *not* my browser's default. Verified locally.

Cheers

Answering myself: yes, there is. But it's a lightbulb.

I wonder where the default little 8-pt star with the "u" in the middle is coming from ?

Brilliant: http://empegbbs.com/images/general/default/favicon.ico

Oh, I see. It's in the theme and the theme I'm using doesn't seem to have one. Typical.

Didn't I just provide that exact same information about 4 posts back?

I guess you guys must have me on "ignore this user."

The thing I currently miss most about our old CSS theme is this:

When viewing messages in a flat mode thread, I didn't need to decipher the visual clutter and look for a tiny icon to determine whether a post is "new" or not. Instead, there was a subtle but clear color change in the post header for new posts. Much easier on the eyes.

I hope for a working version of our old style sheet. I wish I had the time to actually help work on it. Sorry.

On the good side, I like how wide posts don't mess up the width of all the other posts in the thread.

I agree. It's hard to find the new posts now.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be something that can be modified via CSS. On the index page, the threads with new posts have a different style than threads that do not. On the thread page, the new posts do not seem to have a different style associated with them.

There is supposed to be support for modifying the HTML template in this version of the software. I think that would have to be utilized to make this happen. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the software to say for sure that even that can help.

The good news is that if anything becomes too painful to change here, we are a paying customer, and 7.3 is in active development. The UBB folks seem pretty receptive to feedback and suggestions, so I will be collecting things to go to them with, like the new indicator.

As a stopgap maybe this icon can be stretched to make it more visible.

Naw, I'm looking for LESS visual clutter, not more.

I think the URL transmogrifier is toast.
Just noticed that in the thread "Re: Help with Soup Playlist"
there was post from last year with this link in it:
http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/168801/an//page/0/vc/1

Links like that appear not to work any more....

I'm missing the 'Skip to New Post' link at the top of the first post (in flat mode). Internet Explorer almost always ignores # anchor refs when you Shift+Click on a link (and I usually do).

No more vanishing posts from submission time out. I just left a post (creating a new thread) half written for an hour and it submitted with no problem. Thanks again!!

One thing I really liked about the old board (and I think it was a relatively recent change) was this:

Say I'm viewing a forum with topics that contain new posts. I could click on a topic, read the new posts, and then hit back or Alt+left to go to the list of topics again, and the list would be updated to indicate that there were no new posts in the topic I'd just visited.

That appears to have been broken...

Your the second person to say this, and I can't understand why it used to work and now is broken. Going back in a browser doesn't normally do much with a server, and I can't ever remember seeing this behavior. Knowing what browser you use might help, but I honestly have to say I don't see this one coming back. I will request it over on the UBB side though before putting the issue to rest.

Most always running the latest FireFox over here.
So far as I can remember, the board started doing the 'update page on browser-back' after one of the earlier board upgrades.
It's the only board I ever saw do a thing like that and I liked not having to click 'reload' to get a fresh view of what I had and hadn't perused.
I appreciate your efforts, Drakino! Thanks gobs and bunches!

Same here. It was a nice feature. I wouldn't say it was one of the "earlier" upgrades, though. It was only doing this pretty recently. When was the last time the board was upgraded?

Now that I think about it, I think I posted about the feature in a previous thread. I'll try to find when that was to give you an idea of when it started. I agree that it is definitely not a standard thing, but that's definitely not a bad thing.


*edit*
Here is the thread I posted in. I guess it was longer ago than I thought...

I'm sorry if this has been requested as well, but I miss having a search box at the bottom of the forum. I used that quite a bit.

No "Who's Online" link any more.
Also, the "Active Topics" link is only visible when you're logged in.

The old board behaved like that for as long as I can remember in various versions of Firefox and IE.

That sort of behaviour is controlled by the HTTP headers and meta tags that the server sends with a page to indicate how proxy servers and browsers should handle caching.

Although given that going back goes to exactly the same URL as the back to index link I am surprised that the browser is handling caching differently for the two cases.

I've already got used to clicking the return to index link rather than going back.

A good thing to report, When I refresh a page it doesn't jump back to the top of the page.

Just found that non of the javascript stuff works when using Opera 9.24. For example "My Stuff" and "Active Topics" doesn't work.

-Peter

PS: Also, "Submit" and "Preview Reply" doesn't work, so I had to switch over to Firefox to send off this post.

One thing I've just noticed is if you read one sub-forum then close your browser, if you reopen the board all posts in all sub-forums will be marked as read.

Lots of times I'll just read Off Topic, and save other sub forums for later. If I do this I'll never know exactly what I have and haven't read.

I Don't think that's any different from before.

That is different than before. Of course, this is my last unread thread today, so I'll have to wait before I can test it.

Just tried this both ways with Safari 3 on OS X, closing my browser while this thread was open, and closing it when the Off Topic area was open. Both times, relaunching and going to http://empegbbs.com/ resulted in the front page showing the other subforums with unread messages.

What browser and OS are you running?

Fixed. Stray backspace looks to have killed a comment in the showthreaded redirector.

Latest Firefox on both XP and Vista (work and home)

Your stray backspace or theirs?

Being that it was right near a change I had to make to get them to work, and that the upgrade was done at 1am, probably mine.

Weird. Works for me with Firefox under XP.

Try going to the "My Cookies" link in the bottom left corner and expiring them. Then log back on and see if the problem persists.

Also, if you don't see a cookie named empeg7ubbt_mysess, something may be blocking them.

Looks like it was the cookies on my system. And I did see empeg7ubbt_myssess. I'll be sure to expire them at home as well.

Thanks!

Thanks for bringing back the old board so we can find our watched threads. However, since the URL structure has changed, I can't simply copy and paste, deleting the "old.", and readding them as a favorite. This also breaks all bookmarks I've saved for various threads.

Is there an efficient method I can use to translate from old BBS URL to new one? Maybe some URL trickery? Isn't there a unique post ID in there somewhere among all the other stuff (which I like to trim from my bookmarks, keeping it as simple as possible)?

Thanks again. Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C.

As long as it was a bookmark to a thread, it should still work on the new boards, as a redirector is in place.

I'll poke at the old site to see if I can have watched threads there point to the boards here. (Basically strip out the "old." part). The redirector would then take you to the proper thread here so you can just readd it.

And done.

Also, "empegbbs" theme added (thanks Bitt) and set as default for those that haven't chosen your own.

Not sure why. Posting this from Opera 9.24 on OS X, even setting Opera to completly mask as IE. Quick reply and Quick quote work, as do the My Stuff dropdowns.

Woo hoo! [/homer]

Thanks Bitt!

HAWSOME. Feels like home again!

Wow, that's much better! Now if only we could get that change in color on new posts. Hopefully that's possible...

Ditto.
Nice work Drakino and Bitt.

Nice work, guys!

I don't understand.

It was discussed earlier in the thread, how with the old software the bar at the top of new posts would be a slightly different color. But it's more than just a CSS issue, I'm sure.

Oh, right. Yeah, it's definitely more than CSS, but it might be possible to change.

Thanks! I missed this theme. Like Tony said, it feels like home again.

1) Not sure this a board problem really, but using IE7, page up and down often (and home / end) stop working and after some mouse clicking in the window they seem to work.

2) I don't seem to be getting any email responses to watched threads. I have it set correctly in my preferences.

Absolutely!! Thanks, guys!!

Thanks for the old theme!!!!!

New feature!

The BBS now accepts HTML character entities, like &Omega; (Ω), &mdash; (—), and &ldquo; (“). This is something I asked for years ago.

My favorite new feature of the board so far:

Using the quick reply box, it's now possible to easily quote multiple responses from the same thread.

Previously, I would open my response in a new window and switch between them, copying and pasting responses in between quote tags. Now you can click on "Quick Quote" as many times as you want, and you get the quotee's name in front of each. Sweet.

I just discovered something I miss from the old version -- the preference to "always preview post", before having it submit. I know, there's a "Preview Post" button right next to the "Submit" button, but, you know, I just never seem to remember to hit it.

The new preview isn't on a new page; it renders it dynamically on the same page. I assume this is why that option has gone away.

Added one.

The "View All" option for LARGE threads appears missing. The Wii thread (in which I just replied, so you could find it easier) page count appears in the thread list as:
( 1 2 3 4 ... 42 43 44
with no "all" at the end. I <URL="http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/289961/Board/14/fpart/all/gonew/1#UNREAD">built the URL</URL> by hand and it clearly works.

Also, is there a "View All" option once you're viewing the thread? That would help when you search, find a post, enter the thread, and want to view the entire thread (maybe to Ctrl-F search it yourself).

The Wii thread is a testament to how fast the new BBS is. The 44 page "all" view loaded in a few seconds. Interestingly, as I dragged the scroll bar through the thread, certain posts appeared empty, until I stopped for a second and the text was rendered. A Firefox limitation? It's irrelevant, but interesting.

Sorry to bring this back up but I'm still seeing strange behavior. I have expired the cookies multiple times.

I can read anything within General Discussion such as For Sale, Off Topic, and other subforums will keep their unread marks, as well as posts.

If I read something within empeg-car, such as inside General, it will remove the unread marks from other sub forums inside empeg-car, and sometimes posts in those sub forums.

During this session I read empeg-car/General and after that both Technical/Troubleshooting and Installation Notes had their unread marks removed. Inside Technical/Troubleshooting my unread posts were not marked, but all appeared read. Inside Installation Notes Sein's thread about his awesome Mazda 3 install was still marked as unread, although Installation Notes itself was not marked as unread. It will also remove unread marks from other main forums, such as Rio Hard Drive Portables.

Any ideas? Using Firefox 2.0.0.11.

I think I had something similar happen, a thread I hadn't yet read got marked as unread.

Is firefox trying to anticipate and pre-cache, thus "reading" forums ahead of us and getting them marked as read?

I've also seen something similar, in my case it was after I opened one of the forums and then left the page for a couple of hours, when I then opened one of threads and went back to the thread list all the threads had been marked read. Also on Firefox 2.0.0.11

Of course now it is working fine. Maybe I'm starting to see things.

Ummmm... yeah. What he said.

This has happened to me several times.

tanstaafl.

There is a difference in rendering the table borders between IE and Firefox. Do we care?

IE 6 or 7?

Not something I really care about personally, being that the way Firefox renders it is also how other browsers do, and I'd rather not add IE only hacks for something minor. Browser usage on the board points to Firefox being the most common browser as well.

I had this happen yesterday, when I took over an hour to eventually post something. (Woo, posts aren't eaten anymore). I logged out, and back in, and the boards returned to showing me what was unread. This was on Safari, so it's not any sort of odd issue with Firefox.

So for those that lose their read and unread trackers, try logging out and back in.

Oh, and by the way? The Firefox add-on "IE Tab" is awesome. Single click on a status bar icon to toggle rendering between IE and Firefox.

7, but I'll bet it's the same on 6.

I only care if you're going to suggest changing things to make Firefox render it the way it looks in IE.

An interesting one: today, when I looked at the baords, it showed 1 unread/active message in Installation Notes - but when I clicked on the forum, there were no unread messages. Clicking on a recent topic (the Mazda3 / Axela one), there were several messages I hadn't seen before, but when I read them and went back, even after doing a browser refresh, the "Forums" display still showed 1 unread message.

Hi all-

When I'm viewing a multiple page thread (flat) I see at the top right links to the other pages. Wasn't there an option at the top right to view 'all'?
I see the 'all' option for multi-page threads in under thread titles inside thread-list views (not sure what to call those 'section' pages).
I also see page number links in the top right when I'm viewing a section or search results, but I can understand why 'all' is not an option there!

Not a big deal at all, so far as usability is concerned... I'm mostly just checking my memory of what I think I remember.
A 'reality check', so to speak.

The board looks and runs fantastic, BTW. Thanks very much!

I guess it's taken a while for the favicon to show up for me, but is that the way we're going to keep it? It's not a great icon. I'd vote to remove it altogether.

Sorry if this has been brought up before...

I recently fixed the favicon last night, as it was coming up as a 404 error a lot for the dark theme. Seems the default install misnamed the file.

I have yet to see it myself, but I think someone around here posted an empeg specific one. I'll dig it up later.

Favicon changed to this one:
http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showthreaded/Number/264203/an/

It's not an empeg or empeg specific icon, but should fit at least a little better.

Would it be naughty to use the emplode icon?

Nipper's cool. I couldn't have figured out what the icon was without reading this thread, though. lol

I was attempting to find my old thread here:

http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=14&Number=282610

I went to the search page and put:

blu-ray

into the search box.

It returns no results at all, despite there being about a billion posts with that text within either the title or the body of the post.

If I've told you once, I've told you a million times -- quit exaggerating!

(sorry... couldn't resist the set-up.)

tanstaafl.

The search engine doesn't like the hyphen.

It will find results for "bluray".

tanstaafl.

I'm guessing the search code is interpreting it as search for posts containing blu, but not ray. I should start a "search sucks" thread on the ubb side to see if maybe one day it will get fixed. As currently, it looks like google also sucks for the boards, as "blu-ray site:empegbbs.com" failed to find that older thread as well.

edit: nope, not that. Searching for blu-ray is failing to find my test post that only contains blu. I'll dig deeper later.

Okay, how about this. I searched for the following term:

war

and got zero results.

Search for the term:

empeg

and get a billion results.

I know we've discussed both topics before....

But searching for Blu* does find Blu-Ray it also finds Blue, Bluetooth and others.

It may be a minimum character limit then, possibly set higher then 3. Would be nice if they would error or say something about it instead of just tossing it out.

Would it be possible for someone here to increase the "edit time" for new postings, back to the 24-hours or so that we used to enjoy?

The current very short timeout is just inadequate for going back and correcting technical postings and the like. Much better than any other BBS I know of, but still..

Thanks

It's now set to 24 hours.

Much better now, thanks!

I notice that the icon that FireFox associates with the empegBBS in my Bookmarks often changes from 'nipper' to a yellow light bulb.
I'm not sure what it is dependent on- perhaps where I browse on the BBS can change it.
hmm

It's something stored by Firefox when the bookmark was created that's doing it.

The bookmark being created before the favicon was changed from bulb to dog.

Hmm...
Deleting and resaving the bookmark doesn't seem to help.
Does anyone else see this happening?

The icon in the address bar is always correct for anyplace I go on the BBS, but the icon for my bookmark changes from Nipper to a bulb and back again.
I haven't worked out just *when* it does it.