eLF Still Kind Of Broken

Still in the middle of upgrading and having a myriad of problems. New messages may not show up correctly and the "Show New Messages" page is still completely broken. I'll get everything sorted out eventually.

I want to address some questions brought up on the "USCHO" thread. Here's the deal. If anyone has input, I'd love to hear it:

Slow page loads: I don't know what the hell the deal is with this, but it seems to be limited to eLF and not regular, static HTML pages on eLynah, but only off-campus. Never, ever see that problem on-campus. Even I would be surprised if the idiots at CIT are packet-shaping HTTP requests, but it does clearly seem to be a problem exclusive to the commodity internet service, and not the server. That having been said, it's a problem only seen with eLF AFAIK, so I'm a bit stumped.

New tags: I had to upgrade to Phorum 3.4.1 to fix a bunch of security issues and some other bugs, while adding some features. Took me about 10 hours to get all the mods on (and obviously some still don't work), but the new tag problem doesn't seem to be my fault. They changed the way it handles them to improve speed, but on the threaded view, sometimes they just disappear, but reappear if you reload the page. The Phorum people seem to be in denial about the problem (I'm not the only one reporting it), and they have little desire to do anything further with Phorum 3, as they're developing Phorum 5 (see below). I can continue to mess with it, and possibly get the "See New Posts" thing working to some degree, but I'm pretty busy and still a little sick of wrestling with the Phorum code after last week.

The future of eLF: As I mentioned, the Phorum people are working on Phorum 5, which will have some very nice features, and incorporates most of my modifications, including database storage of new tag information for registered users, which is usually the biggest hassle. And it works. There's still a lot of missing stuff, and it's very much still in alpha stage, but whenever it gets usable, I'll switch to it. It uses templates for all layout, so theoretically, I should never need to touch the core pages, making updates easy. They'll have update scripts to convert the database for use with 5 eventually, but for the moment, there aren't any. I did, however, get a head start on making a template to closely resemble this one. If you want to see it/go play with it, I set up a test forum with the Phorum 5 alpha at [www.hockey.cornell.edu]

So, I'll keep trying to make this usable as time permits, but we may need to hobble along until 5 is done. And unfortunately speed problems are a bit out of my hands. Go yell at CIT about that...



Post Edited (03-10-03 11:05)

Age,

I just want to say that I greatly appreciate all the time you put into running this forum and the whole site. It shows an amazing dedication. I've done enough similar but much smaller things to be totally in wonder at how smoothly things run here on a regular basis. THANK YOU!

Dave

Do what you can now, but for heaven's sake, and for our own) , don't get burned out. The thing works and, I for one can live with the minor problems, especially since it's nothing I can correct .

Thanks for everything.

ps Don't ask me where the symbols after the smiley came from, they aren't on the typed version .

Woohoo! In a moment of rare lucidity I found the problem with the new tags. Shuold theoretically be able to fix the "See New Posts" page now.

Woohooo!!! I can login and post with Safari now! Whatever you did, Age, fixed the problem.

THANKS!!

(to make my ignorance explicit: I just upgrade to Java 1.4.1, so while I doubt it, the upgrade MIGHT have fixed the login problem. If that's the case, then I take back the thanks )



Post Edited (03-11-03 11:06)

Safari's problems were a cookie domain issue. Shouldn't have anything to do with Java 1.4.1. Apparently the new version of Phorum corrects whatever cookie issue it has. Still say you should use Camino

Now if Zend would just get ZendStudio 2.6 for OS X out...

Very strange issues with that page, but I believe "See New Posts" now works correctly. Let me know if it doesn't work right.

Should send you to your post after posting again, too.

It is working for me.
Edit: and it sends me to my post after posting. Well done, Age. Thanks.



Post Edited (03-11-03 13:40)

I like the fact that I can log on to a computer, go to a different computer, log on there, go back to the first one, and I don't have to log on again. I'm logged on to both. Is it supposed to be that way?

I believe technically you're not logged on to both, but if you click the "remember"' checkbox when you log in, it stores a cookie and automatically re-logs you in when you switch computers. At any rate, yes it's intentional.

I like the new tag that says when a member editted his post and also the collection of emoticons! Great work, Age! I can now moon you!

I guess this is better, but I am just going to stick with the three current incarnations of my name at the three locations I use. I registered multiple ways so that I would never have to log in again. (big red apple at the office, BigRed Apple at home and bigredapple when visiting my folks, for those scoring at home.)

The only problem I'm still having is that when I hit Mark All Read, the red "New" tags go away, but when I come back to the site later in the day, the tags have returned.

Other than that though, great job with the site. Little minor problems aren't really significant at all when we have such a well-run forum anyhow. Much appreciated.

Anything posted after you hit the link will show up as new the next time you check.



Post Edited (03-12-03 09:31)

I also had that "mark all read" problem up until yesterday. I had a lot of threads at the bottom of the forum thread list as being marked "new" since I read them at another computer. The "Mark All Read" link reloaded the page so it appeared it worked, but the next time I clicked a "Show Topics" button, the new tags were back on the unread, old threads. Basically, it looked like the cookie wasn't properly updated. It got fixed yesterday for me.

The only other minor bug I've noticed is that about every other time I hit "Show Topics" from a thread, it throws me back to the topic list without reloading. It acts like a "back" button...the thread list appears with the same status it had before I visited the thread.

Well, the first issue is "Mark All Read" wasn't working correctly until yesterday, but it should work fine now. The second is something I've only seen with IE in Windows and is a known issue of Microsoft feeling they don't need to always comply with no-cache tags. Can't do anything about it.