NEW FORUM: Post your problems/issues here

[Joe Naud]

Has anyone experienced any issues using the forum on an Iphone? I can't get any of the buttons like "Login" or "Today's Active Topics" to work.
Peace, Joe

[Richard Kaufman]

I am at the mercy of my tech folks: certain things tend to make everything grind to a halt for reasons I don't understand. Also, I have no knowledge to assist them, and Brad has a full time job, so we're trying to get it done in fits and starts and we are very happy to have your comments and will try to accomodate the suggestions you make.

[Chris Aguilar]

@ Joe,

Yes, those links also have issues on my android based tablet (Nexus 7). Otherwise the forums look very nice on it.

[David Kaplan]

The old system had an RSS feed which allowed me to see new posts in Google Reader. Is there a similar feature in the new forum system?

Thanks,
David

[Chris Aguilar]

The old system had an RSS feed which allowed me to see new posts in Google Reader. Is there a similar feature in the new forum system?

Thanks,
David

The forums software used (phpBB3)has that feature, but it must be enabled/set up. I don't know if they've done that.

[Chris Aguilar]

Looks like the Search indexing has been completed and search now seems to work very well, much better than the awful search on the old forums.

However, someone's gone a bit overboard on the word censoring feature (or doesn't know how to optimize it).

Say I wanted to mention that great routine Ortiz's "Hitchcock Aces" or refer to the director of "Psycho" Alfred Hitchcock. I suppose I could cheat it and add a spacer "Alfred Hitchc.ock"

Much care needs to be taken with the word censor feature because of this sort of unintended consequence. My suggestion is to use it very sparingly.

[Richard Kaufman]

The old list of censored words has been automatically imported and it's functioning differently.
Please give us some time--it will take a while to address all of these issue, but they WILL be addressed.
We are paying attention to every comment and will definitely act on some of them.

[Chris Aguilar]

The old list of censored words has been automatically imported and it's functioning differently.
Please give us some time--it will take a while to address all of these issue, but they WILL be addressed.
We are paying attention to every comment and will definitely act on some of them.

Not sure if you'd want to allow it, but the new system allows users to turn censoring on or off on an individual basis via their user control panel.

[bradmagic]

Hi Folks,

Wanted everyone to know we're taking notes from here and trying our hardest. We engaged a 3rd party developer who's helped us custom-write migration scripts to move our old forum (ubb.threads) to this style (phpBB). A lot of the errors are relating to the db conversions. We've been working on this for more than a month----so, we're all a little surprised by some of the downtime and bugs.

We're really putting our attention at getting the Forum stable, fast, and working first. On top of that, we want to fix up some database work on the old forum: As part of our migration plan we wrote a redirect script that takes the URL of posts on the old forum and rewrites them into their new position on this forum (a lot of this was needed for links embedded in http://magicpedia.geniimagazine.com).

So, thank you all for your help in giving us feedback. And, also, thank you to all the folks that have emailed us personally with their notes and ideas.

Brad

[J-Mac]

Two things that would make the new forum work better for me:

1. Allow for more styles in the user control panel under Global Settings. Presently the only style available is "graffito". I am presuming that the color scheme is controlled by the style. The yellow/orange text color on the white background turns out to be a bit difficult for me to read. Not impossible but just a little tough. If I could change that it would be great!
   
   (Presently I use a bookmarklet called "Zap Colors" which turns the entire background white and all text black. That works great for me but of course each page change brings the regular yellow text back.)
   
   
2. On the old forum I logged in a long time ago and stayed logged in right up until the new forum was instituted. Now I am automatically logged out every time I close the browser (Firefox). Plus it seems that it times out after a certain period of time though I haven't been able to determine the exact time-out limit. Can we go back to a long-term login? Makes things a lot easier in general. Plus - and I may be missing something - but I don’t see any security issues associated with staying logged in. Of course if one is using a public computer then they would not want to stay logged in, but that was true even with the old software. For old farts like me who are stuck at home for the most part there really are no security issues with staying logged in.

Thank you.

Jim

PS - This is a test of the edit function. Just making sure it works, as requested by RK.

[Richard Kaufman]

Thanks, everyone: please keep the commments coming. WE learn from YOU.

[Jim Maloney]

Two things that would make the new forum work better for me:

2. On the old forum I logged in a long time ago and stayed logged in right up until the new forum was instituted. Now I am automatically logged out every time I close the browser (Firefox). Plus it seems that it times out after a certain period of time though I haven't been able to determine the exact time-out limit. Can we go back to a long-term login? Makes things a lot easier in general. Plus - and I may be missing something - but I don’t see any security issues associated with staying logged in. Of course if one is using a public computer then they would not want to stay logged in, but that was true even with the old software. For old farts like me who are stuck at home for the most part there really are no security issues with staying logged in.

Jim,
Make sure you've checked the "Log me in automatically on each visit" checkbox. That should ensure you stay logged in (at least for the next year, based on the cookies I see being set).

-Jim

[J-Mac]

Thanks Jim.

I am fairly sure that I did check that but I will log out and log in again to make sure.

Thanks again!

Jim

[Richard Kaufman]

Checking that box has kept me logged in.

[J-Mac]

Well, here it is Sunday morning and I was still logged in, so I guess maybe it wasn’t checked originally.

Thanks!

Jim

[Jon Elion]

Sorry if this was mentioned already (I didn't see it)...

There is little difference in appearance between the icon for "Unread Posts" (dark orange circle with a downward facing triangle) and the "No unread posts" icon (same icon in orange). There should be a greater contrast between the two.

For web geeks, there is a very useful concept and program call the Contrast Analyzer. More web sites should use it to see that their choice of text color does not have enough contrast against the background color (for example). In this case, I am mainly concerned about the "Unread Posts" icon popping out a bit more from the page.

[Mark Ratekin]

Thanks, Brad, Richard and team for all the time spent on this transition (and on the Forum in general). I'm not sure if it's been mentioned before, but it would be great if hyperlinks within a message popped a new window vs. immediately navigating away from the Forum. If possible, having this as a user setting would be a nice option (I looked under the "My Account" and did not see anything.

Again - thanks for the hard work.

Mark

[Chris Aguilar]

Thanks, Brad, Richard and team for all the time spent on this transition (and on the Forum in general). I'm not sure if it's been mentioned before, but it would be great if hyperlinks within a message popped a new window vs. immediately navigating away from the Forum. If possible, having this as a user setting would be a nice option (I looked under the "My Account" and did not see anything.

Again - thanks for the hard work.

Mark

It's not available as a setting, but would have to be hardcoded one way or the other. Changing it would be unfortunate for people like myself who strongly prefer it the current way.

Generally I like to make that choice (new window or not) myself through the browser.

Left click the link to open in the same window, right click (or middle click if you have the mouse set up that way) to open a new window or tab.

If the forums get hardcoded to always opening links (even intra-forums links) in new windows, that choice vanishes.

[Bill Mullins]

At least two posts I made today (one in this thread, one in the Erdnase thread) have disappeared, plus follow-on comments.

Is anyone else missing anything? Did a block of this afternoon's material go away?

[Richard Kaufman]

We've trying to fix the problems that people are having logging in. The software has crashed once or twice today at least in the process. So, that might account for the missing post.

Just trying to sort things out and keep a smile on my face.

[Richard Kaufman]

In our ongoing effort to fix the login issues, I need half a dozen or so people to email me (moobooks@verizon.net) with the following information:

- login
- password
- publicly displayed name
- email registered in the forum

[Ted M]

I'm having trouble seeing the button to edit my posts.

In Firefox 19.02 on Windows 7, I see an X icon to delete, and a ! icon to report my post. These are both inside orange boxes. But I see no button to edit?

In Internet Explorer 9.0.13 on Windows 7, I see only two blank orange squares -- no X, no !. (And still no edit.)

In an old Firefox 3.6.17 on Linux, I see both the X and ! buttons. Additionally I see buttons for Edit, Quote and PM which I do not see on the newer browsers under Windows.

[P.T. Murphy]

No doubt somebody posted something about this and I have not seen it yet.

When viewing the forum on my MacBook there is an annoying line that runs down the middle of every page. When I view on my PC I do not see this line. Am I losing my mind? 'Cause that is a very real possibility.

Best,
PTM

[Jim Riser]

Brad,
Log in is fine on my ACER A500 Android tablet in both the default browser and Chrome.

But Login button does not do anything on either browser on my Android Skyrocket phone. Clicking it gets no response.
Jim

[Richard Kaufman]

The Forum is all messed up on iPhone: button's don't work, etc. We're aware of this, and it will get fixed in time. At the moment we are trying to deal with all the issues that affect it on your desktop or laptop (or tablet).

[Pete McCabe]

I also wish we could see the first one or two lines of posts.

Also—and this is a weird one—but when I scroll, my browser (Chrome on OS X) displays a scroll bar thing (technically called a thumb) which shows how far down I am through a page. The new Genii forum somehow turns this feature off. Man is that a pain in the ass. Not sure how that's possible, but it's very annoying to be reading a possibly long thread and having no idea how much more there is to come.

Also it seems that my posts are in red but everyone else's are in black.

[Tom Gilbert]

Maybe mentioned, but inactive/older posts don't move from the top spots of the forum.

[Pete McCabe]

PTM:

I'm on a MacBook Air with no line running down the middle of the page. I'm using Chrome.

[Chris Aguilar]

Maybe mentioned, but inactive/older posts don't move from the top spots of the forum.

New threads push down older threads except for threads that have been created (normally by the moderators) as "sticky" or "announcement" threads.

[Ted M]

Thank you for the improved Today's Active Topics page. It's a very important page for regular users.

Request: If we follow a link from the Active Topics page, could we be automatically taken to the first unread post in that thread?

That was a very nice feature in the old software.

I'll also echo others' requests to display a short preview of the most recent post in each thread on the Active Topics page. That was another very, very useful feature in the old software which promoted participation by making it easier to peek at various discussions.

Thanks for all the work! From this user's perspective, the transition is coming along very well.

[Chris Aguilar]

I'll also echo others' requests to display a short preview of the most recent post in each thread on the Active Topics page. That was another very, very useful feature in the old software which promoted participation by making it easier to peek at various discussions.

This functionality can be hacked into this forum.


However, unless it's mission critical, I would tend to strongly advise against doing so. Adding "mods" like that to the forums can greatly complicate what would otherwise be simple future forums security updates and can (if the complex installation procedures are not followed precisely) lead to more down time for the forums.

[Richard Kaufman]

Thank you for the improved Today's Active Topics page. It's a very important page for regular users.

Request: If we follow a link from the Active Topics page, could we be automatically taken to the first unread post in that thread?

That was a very nice feature in the old software.

Ted, you might be able to make that change yourself in your settings. Take a look. I haven't had time to.

[Chris Aguilar]

Request: If we follow a link from the Active Topics page, could we be automatically taken to the first unread post in that thread?

After you click "Today's active topics" and get the list, you'll notice a tiny grey icon to the right of the user name associated with the most recent post. Click that and it'll take you directly to the most recent post. That way you won't have to scroll through the whole thread.

[Scott M.]

The "Today's Active Topics" button isn't working for me in mobile Safari on my iPhone.

[Richard Kaufman]

Most of the buttons aren't functioning on smartphones yet.

[P.T. Murphy]

Thanks Pete. I am on Safari and it looks like the line issue has been resolved.

[Q. Kumber]

What do you need to do to include a quote in your reply?
The old system had a quote button under each post.

[Chris Aguilar]

What do you need to do to include a quote in your reply?
The old system had a quote button under each post.

This one has a quote button *over* each post.

I'm happy to see the forums seemingly working quite well these days. I use the same forums software (phpBB) myself, so I'm quite partial to it and glad to see it used here.

[Q. Kumber]

It doesn't on my ipad. I will check my computer. Thank you for the swift reply.

[Chris Aguilar]

It doesn't on my ipad. I will check my computer. Thank you for the swift reply.

I think the forums template was having some issues with the iphone (which uses the same wonky safari browser) so maybe that's it.