Don't quote me on this but ...

[The_Ghan]

Hey Admin,

 

I can't use the Quote button to reply to a particular message.  I tried in Prototypes and in Suppliers.  All I get is a green banner across the top of the screen with the word "Loading ... "

 

Any ideas?

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

 

Edit: The Modify button works ... but I couldn't quote this message either.

[Ken Ford]

Hey Admin,

 

I can't use the Quote button to reply to a particular message.  I tried in Prototypes and in Suppliers.  All I get is a green banner across the top of the screen with the word "Loading ... "

 

Any ideas?

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

 

Edit: The Modify button works ... but I couldn't quote this message either.

 

Works for me.  Maybe try clearing your cache?

[The_Ghan]

Working for me at the office too.

 

I'll try it again at home tonight.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[CaptOblivious]

Working for me at the office too.

 

I'll try it again at home tonight.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

 

Weird, works for me too.

[The_Ghan]

OK Cap'n,

 

Need a bit of help on this one.  What type of script does the Quote button use? Java?  There must be some setting in my browser that is screwing things up.

 

Basicall, if I use right-click on the Quote button it works, but opens up in a separate tab.  There is something preventing it from opening in the current tab. 

 

Any ideas?

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[Martijn Meerts]

Quote hasn't worked for me for ages even though it used to work just fine .. It's javascript, and it is giving an error.. But the weird thing is that it works for most people (and used to work for all others).. I've tried a ton of browsers and a variety of hardware, but it just doesn't work for me. Makes me believe it's somehow related to my account settings, but I really haven't a clue what's going on :)

 

 

Edit: I actually do understand the error, I just wonder why it's causing problems for some, but not for others, and why it used to work :)

[The_Ghan]

Hmm ... I tried to fix the time offset.  Should be +9 hours.  Clicking AUTO sets it to -15 hours and I don't know why.

 

The problem started after that.

 

If you think it's an account setting, why not start a new account to test?  I think it's more likely a browser setting.  IE 9 on Windows 7 at work is fine, but IE 9 on Windows Vista at home has the problem.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[Martijn Meerts]

Well.. I tried it on Firefox, IE8/9 on windows (on multiple machines) as well as Firefox, Safari, Camino and Chrome on Mac (on multiple machines), and even on iPhone and iPad .. Quote won't work on any of them =)

 

(I've said it before but .... We really need to put some effort into a new forum software, it's just that moving all the current content to a new system is a nightmare. I've been tempted to write my own so I know exactly what's going on, but that would take ... .. "a while"  :))

[Densha]

Quote hasn't worked for me for ages even though it used to work just fine ..

It hasn't worked for me since I joined the forum. When I click "Quote" next to the "Like" button it works, but while in the "Post reply" screen and clicking on "Insert Quote" it doesn't work at all, only my screen gets changed to the top of the page, but that's not really a surprise considering that the link says #top at the end.

[The_Ghan]

OK ... this is getting worse.  I normally "hybernate" my machines rather than doing a "shut down" because it's quicker to restart.  I did a full shut down of the notebook on Saturday night and the problem started after that.  Last night I did a full shut down of the office PC.  Now I have the problem at work too.

 

One of the problems with maintaining a buggy forum is that it will be hard to keep users interested.  If I don't get it sorted soon I simply come here less frequently.

 

I'm reminded of a problem I had on this forum towards the end of 2010 - where my messages and replies wouldn't scroll properly inside the text box, so that if a message was longer than the 6-7 lines that fit in the text box I couldn't see what I was typing.  I can't remember HOW I fixed that one, but for weeks I was drafting messages in Word and pasting them into the text box.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[The_Ghan]

Problem solved ...

 

I asked the guys at SMF.

 

Change User CP > Look and Layout Options > Use quick reply on topic display to "don't show at all"

 

Reason: Usually because scripting hasn't been set up for quick reply.

 

Now working fine.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[The_Ghan]

Problem solved ...

 

I asked the guys at SMF.

 

Change User CP > Look and Layout Options > Use quick reply on topic display to "don't show at all"

 

Reason: Usually because scripting hasn't been set up for quick reply.

 

Now working fine.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

 

See?

[Martijn Meerts]

Ghan, the scrolling problem you mention was a bug in IE which combined with some feature in SMF caused problems. The thing is, SMF (at least, the version we're using) isn't coded very well, and fixing problems often involves editing core files. Once we start doing that, there's no upgrade path anymore for future versions of the forum software.

 

As for scripting not being set up, that seems strange because the theme we're using is based on a default SMF theme, so that'd mean scripting wasn't set up in their own theme either. Even more strange is that I'm 100% certain it used to work just fine for me, and I never changed my account settings, nor did I change much in the theme itself that would cause the scripting to break.

 

 

Anyway, I'll check out the quick reply scripting issue one of these days.

[The_Ghan]

Martijn,

 

Yuh, the message I got was that the scripting isn't set up at all for the quick reply option until version 2. something (I can't remember because I'm at home now).  We are using 1.1.11, right?  So you haven't upgraded for a few years now .. 

 

Anyway, I presume the SMF default theme that we have available under options is their virgin code, right?  It was the first thing they asked me to try.  As soon as I told them it didn't work they pointed me to a thread in their forum and told me to turn off quick reply.

 

Thing is, I remain somewhat suspicious (like you), because I'm pretty sure I didn't change that setting recently.  In fact, I think I've been using quick reply with the quote option for about a year, maybe more!

 

Also, as I mentioned when I started this thread, it was OK at work until I did a full reboot of the PC.  Something has changed with either the OS, IE, Java, SMF or the script.

 

I'm glad this isn't an Apollo mission .... 

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[Martijn Meerts]

We haven't updated for quite a while.. I guess it's mainly because we've been talking about new software for several years now :) Something keeps coming up, be it lack of spare time, problems converting current content, or just plain figuring out what we need in a new system.

 

And I'm 100% certain it used to work just fine, because I pretty much always use quick reply. I only use the reply button when I want to post pictures :)

 

 

Anyway, optimally I would like to have the time to sit down for a couple of weeks and just build a completely custom system. At the moment though, I only really have time to work on something in the train to and from work. That's always why building the train database is taking forever :)

[The_Ghan]

Martijn,

 

The trouble with custom systems is they rely on you to maintain them.  I remember we had some PM conversations about this around 6 months ago.  I was thinking it might be good to move to PHP.  Remember?

 

Anyway, something to talk about if we meet up in Japan.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[Martijn Meerts]

Yeah, the maintenance would be a bit of a concern, you'd really need to get multiple people with knowledge of PHP, SQL, frameworks etc, and even if you do, most people have their own programming styles which don't always go well together.

 

That's one of the problems I personally have with SMF at the moment, I can't really get into the code (for templates and bug fixes etc.) because I get annoyed by the terrible code after a few minutes.

 

 

By now there are a lot of forum systems out, both free and paid, and it's really difficult to pick one. Of course, the main criteria is the ability to import the current content to a new system, which so far has proved problematic. Rather than write a custom system, I could spend the time writing some scripts for export/import of course.

[cteno4]

yes ive always found it most useful to focus the custom programming on the import/export aspects as it gets you the biggest bang for the buck on your time and let the big new system do the heavy lifting. even if you have the skills to do the whole system, building and maintaining things gets hard very fast with a live system. better to let the big systems do that for you. and if you get in and muck with their system then when updates come along that can wipe out your additions or worse screw up the updates. this happens all the time with developers i know that start with a wordpress template and mess with the code internally then the template is updated or new widgets released and they want the features but moving to it now does not happen prettily... always a tradeoff between your resources and needs and finding balance to get the best bang for the buck.

 

really tough with a growing forum like this as thing just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger! i dont want to think about the daily headaches facebook has keeping up.

 

i had an encyclopedia project i did years ago on the mac. i did all the data as simple external text files and kept a simple system for all the tens of thousands of media bits in a very simple naming convention. all the data was kept in a custom 4D db so i could get it dumped into a decent raw form from there and then just wrote some import programs to massage things into a good final form. when the pc guys built their system about 3 months on my tail i was able to write simple export programs to format the data move/rename files how they needed as they insisted on using VB with access. man it was such a mess as it would only take things certain ways and never totally as stated. luckily i could dance pretty well with my little export programs and was able to keep feeding them exports that evolved into what they could finally get to work. later i was able to export the whole pile of content and even filter out some of the things (right issues) to two different online system. at first they spent like a week trying to get it out of access and i did it in less than a day with a couple of little export programs!

 

i must say you guys have done a great job keeping things moving along very smoothly on the front end here. also dealing with the moving (and sometimes mysterious) browser targets is always a constant pain! kudos to you.

 

jeff

[The_Ghan]

I know I'm a big PhP fan, but have you considered some of the other products that are out there? 

 

The other one that I like is Invision Power Board.  It also has a good chat module and a converter that will "allegedly" convert SMF to IP.Board.  The cost of the software is around $200. 

 

If you want to see how it handles a large busy board, with over 5000 users per hour, check out ThaiVisa, an ex-pat forum for foreigners living in Thailand.  This is a seriously well managed board and if IP.Board works for them then it is going to work for our little community.

 

There are heaps of great skins too, these are just a few by IP.Board forum member SolutionDev.

 

I used to Mod on boards based on IP.Board and I'm still a Mod on a PhP based board.  Both products appear to be excellent.

 

Just a thought.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[Martijn Meerts]

Jeff, a custom system is definitely more work initially, but it does have it's advantages as well. I don't think we really have the time to build something from scratch, and with so many pre-built ones available, it would probably just be a waste of time either way .. Better to spend that time on import/export, themes and add-ons :)

 

 

Ghan, I played a little with phpBB the last 2 days, and came across an issue that makes me VERY hesitant to every use it for anything. It's actually something Cap mentioned in the thread we have among the admins about new forum software. Whenever you install an add-on, many (most?) add-ons tell you to adjust core system files. phpBB does offer an update path where you just patch in changes, but in the end having to edit core system files to install an add-on is just really bad design.

 

We haven't really looked at commercial forum software yet. Not because of the cost, but more because they usually don't have a trial/test version available for download. I know there are demo's so you can see the admin controls and everything, but I really want to be able to see the code itself before buying, or at least have some good examples of writing add-ons.

 

As for cost though, IPB is 175 USD for a self-hosted solution, but that's only the base system. The gallery option (which we'd definitely need) is an additional 65 USD. Many of the community plugins also add costs, so it gets expensive fast. It's not like we (or, I at least) aren't willing to make an investment for the forum, and we do also have some funds left from donations etc.

 

 

I'm willing to check out all the systems people suggest though :)

[The_Ghan]

IP.Board does have a 5 day demo version.  I don't know how much access you get to source code.  It never hurts to send them an email and ask the things that are of concern to Admin.

 

Did you check out the ThaiVisa site?

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[Martijn Meerts]

Already have access to a 5 day demo. The only source code access is the template files :)

 

I did have a quick look at the ThaiVisa site, but hard to find the forum in between all the animated gifs. Fairly certain all forum software can handle huge loads, it's really more down the the server hardware setup how it performs.

 

I do like the default look of IPB, nothing too fancy, but all very clean and well laid out.

 

 

One of the things I really want in a potential new software, is decent SEO and especially SEO friendly URLs. Most don't have it built in, and while there are modules/add-ons for it, they often require altering core files. IPB has all that stuff already built in ..

 

I guess it does come down to cost though. What we definitely want to prevent is having to place ads on the forum, and we also don't want to continually keep asking for donations (it's not really a donation anymore when you're asking I guess ;)) IPB with gallery (which is really the minimum we need) is $228 initial investment, plus $35 every 6 months for access to updates and services like spam filtering etc.

 

I do believe it's a worthwhile investment, but on the other hand, we are a fairly small forum (although, we've grown much bigger than we ever thought :)) and we might not need such a powerful system.

 

In the end though, a community is all about the users, and if the users are feeling like contributing less because the forum software is working against them, that needs to be fixed.

[Densha]

I do like the default look of IPB, nothing too fancy, but all very clean and well laid out.

I think it's a bit more fancy than the forum software/forum theme we are using now. It definitely needs some kind of "JNS style" before I would say I like the looks of it, it distracts me what the current doesn't.

[Martijn Meerts]

It'll get a custom look of course. The current theme will be modernized and converted to IPB (based on an existing theme), and we'll work on some other themes as well for people who don't like gray all that much (think an E5 based theme, a Dr. Yellow based theme etc.)

[cteno4]

Martijn,

 

please make sure there is a good bland default theme like the current one. i know it does not look pretty to folks, but its very easy to read.

 

I did a gob of actual research on interface art design/colors and reading comprehension, retention and speed with UC Irvine on a National Science Foundation project years back for early educational products on computers where kids were reading on screens. we used adults as controls but were able to glean some interesting info from the adult data as well. Not surprising keeping things like text background to white with black text is the optimum. lt gray or beige bg work as well with only small reductions. going to most anything else or reversing the contrast drops all three dramatically in kids and adults. also putting any bright contrasting colors around your text areas also reduces all three. It meant if you wanted to get someones best attention, retention, and keep them there you needed to be very gentle with the interface. It was funny the interfaces that folks thought looked the coolest were the worst and the more drab ones the best for reading and attention span.

 

Didnt mean you have to have ugly interfaces, just meant you had to be careful with text and bg color and how you surrounded the text area with art. keeping some visual buffer zones helped with more neutral colors or slowly bleeding into the frame graphics/art did the trick just fine and ended up with higher scores on later products when we asked folks about coolness look as well.

 

It was very funny as no really good research had been done on this stuff even by the early 90s so thats why it became part of the grant for the project. Even UC Irvine started the testing as more of a focus group style testing, not scientific testing. after the first round I was able to get that stopped and got them to do it in a more rigorous fashion and it was amazing how good the data came out. Since then I keep looking at other folks that keep looking at this stuff, but a lot of the HI stuff is still done with more focus group style testing which is sooo prone to manipulation and just group dynamics to throw the results a lot. Its sad as lately educational clients are actually more concerned with the look compared to their peers (ie i want to look cooler than the other guy) than the results of the use of the product.

 

when the project was going to go to a print version apple told the print publisher of all the research (even though we did it!) the publisher laughed and said they could have told them that, their biz has known it for 400 years! it was funny how all the tech folks just assumed there would be different rules with the computer as they were so focused on that part they overlooked the common thing here, the human.

 

cheers

 

jeff