Upgrade Issue Thread

[+ Takeo212 1,079]

Ah, thankies. Yea, I had it disabled it seems. Honestly thought I was blind for not being able to find it  thanks both of you~

[RagingHobo 206]

On 7/23/2017 at 8:55 AM, KilloZapit said:

Such deep magic can be mastered by few, I know. I myself could probobly do it, if I had access and time to poke around. I do have a bit of experience with this kinda thing, even if that experience is at least a decade old. Even so I wouldn't trust myself to do it without a fair bit of experimentation on a non-live version of the database and would want a backup.

But honestly? I don't think that sort of drastic hackish manual fiddling shouldn't be necessary except as a desperate last resort, and I just don't know enough about the forum software to offer any other solution. For all I know it could be just that you have some of the MIME types for some of the files wrong. Maybe it's a common problem with an easy fix? I have no idea. At this point I am just throwing out possibilities.

It's not a problem I am gonna lose sleep over. I just can't help being a bit curious about it.

The ROI (in terms of time adjusted for testing in case of a possible failure that causes another issue) to write the script to perform this operation vs having the affected user make the change is heavily in favor of the latter. 

This is most likely a mapping issue in the current charset since part of the update was to convert the db. This was done with an IPB provided tool and may possibly be addressed in a future version of IPB. 

 

[Kayzee 4,032]

4 hours ago, RagingHobo said:

The ROI (in terms of time adjusted for testing in case of a possible failure that causes another issue) to write the script to perform this operation vs having the affected user make the change is heavily in favor of the latter. 

This is most likely a mapping issue in the current charset since part of the update was to convert the db. This was done with an IPB provided tool and may possibly be addressed in a future version of IPB.

Yeah I figured that would be the cause. I doubt it's going to be able to be officially fixed in the future though, because it seems like either user error or that unicode wasn't officially supported before but the old forum software was modded to use it anyway. Unless they add a way to re-convert with the right mappings and replace only for the older parts of the database anyway.

As for the ROI of writing a script? Yeah, you are probobly right. Ironically though, as a possible affected user I much rather write a greasemonkey script to automatically edit the posts for me then bother with going back to find and change every post where I might have used special characters. Heck it might be fun! But I am weird like that. In the end though? I doubt anyone cares that much, and I know I don't. A little Mojibake is fine with me! It means I can keep using that word at least!

Also: Thank you for showing a interest in my ramblings Mr. Hobo! Long may you reign!

Also:

6 hours ago, Rikifive said:

Oh noes, I'm exposed!

Good catch, thanks.

I thought public e-mails for admins would be a good thing... You mean you don't want people contacting your email when they need help?

... Though really e-mail is pretty obsolete and troublesome come to think of it. It's almost a pity how much it's used and abused, but it's a technology almost everyone can use as well so it makes a good last resort.

 

Edited July 24, 2017 by KilloZapit

[Rikifive 3,411]

53 minutes ago, KilloZapit said:

I thought public e-mails for admins would be a good thing... You mean you don't want people contacting your email when they need help?

... Though really e-mail is pretty obsolete and troublesome come to think of it. It's almost a pity how much it's used and abused, but it's a technology almost everyone can use as well so it makes a good last resort.

Yeah- but not private e-mails.  

A site-related special e-mail would be okay though.

[PhoenixSoul 1,404]

As much as I like the animated background, it makes my computer lag and I'm sure it is KILLING my internet speed.
Cloudy background == cool
Animated background == unneeded extra (like Big Head Mode)

[Rikifive 3,411]

18 minutes ago, PhoenixSoul said:

As much as I like the animated background, it makes my computer lag and I'm sure it is KILLING my internet speed.
Cloudy background == cool
Animated background == unneeded extra (like Big Head Mode)

...But Big Head Mode is so much fun!

The animated background with clouds weights 50,6 KB, which is much, much less than a typical forest image would take (a mid size image weights 200+KB), for example. However, the animating itself may be causing lags, due to extra horizontal size it requires, though personally i have no idea.

Somebody suggested this and I liked the idea, but if that's causing troubles (for me it works well), then I'll remove the animation.

 

---

Anybody else experiencing lags?

 

---

In the meanwhile, avatar size shown in posts has been increased by 33%.

[PhoenixSoul 1,404]

28 minutes ago, Rikifive said:

...But Big Head Mode is so much fun!

The animated background with clouds weights 50,6 KB, which is much, much less than a typical forest image would take (a mid size image weights 200+KB), for example. However, the animating itself may be causing lags, due to extra horizontal size it requires, though personally i have no idea.

Somebody suggested this and I liked the idea, but if that's causing troubles (for me it works well), then I'll remove the animation.

 

 

---

 

Anybody else experiencing lags?

 

 

---

 

In the meanwhile, avatar size shown in posts has been increased by 33%.

Just remember that not everyone has high-end computers or an ISP that likes them (in my case neither applies because 1) I am broke and 2) my fixed and VERY limited income doesn't allow me to pay the entirety of the bills every month).

[Sixth 113]

45 minutes ago, Rikifive said:

Anybody else experiencing lags?

It makes the browser freeze for a few frames when switching to this tab. 

I immediately switched to the default forum theme. In my opinion, forums are not made to show unnecessary and useless eye-candy effects, they are here to share and gather information.

On a different topic...

Why the fruit is there so much space between line breaks? Kinda annoying... -.-

This much space destroys the ability to format my text how I want to. Just because I do a line break, it doesn't mean that the new line is not related to the previous line(s). I just like to format my text in a not so text-wall-ish format, hence I use more line breaks, makes it easier to read longer texts. See, I would have made a line break here, for example, but I didn't because that annoying huge space would make it look like the new line is separated from the others for contextual reasons, but in reality, there is no such reason at all.

Did I make any sense?

Kindly remove the huge auto-spacing on line breaks. People can still press ENTER 2 times if they want to make others scroll up/down more that way, and people who don't like it can be happy as well.

[PhoenixSoul 1,404]

@Sixth Shift and Return/Enter. You're welcome (I don't think they'll be fixing this issue).

[Sixth 113]

Rikifive wrote that they can change it if there is a demand. 

Well, I demand it!

I don't see any purpose for this "feature". Forcing anything unnecessary upon the users of any software is a sin against humankind. For real. And this thing is certainly useless and unnecessary.

Btw, why this forum software? I have seen more than 1 forums regretting this choice for multiple reasons. And I mostly agree with those reasons. No idea if the bugs in it are fixed yet or not, but there were tons of them, and they were annoying. One of them is the erratic formatting issue that happens randomly (text in spoilers disappearing completely, images disappearing, text in code box disappearing, basically, many things disappearing for no reason), and the main reason why most forums I have been to ditched this software soon after they changed to it. The editor is just... bad.

[Rikifive 3,411]

1 hour ago, PhoenixSoul said:

Just remember that not everyone has high-end computers or an ISP that likes them (in my case neither applies because 1) I am broke and 2) my fixed and VERY limited income doesn't allow me to pay the entirety of the bills every month).

Yep yep, I was just curious.  

 

1 hour ago, Sixth said:

It makes the browser freeze for a few frames when switching to this tab. 

I immediately switched to the default forum theme. In my opinion, forums are not made to show unnecessary and useless eye-candy effects, they are here to share and gather information.

Okie, the animation has been disabled; and the background size has been reduced. It should work perfectly now- it can't be any better. It's the very minimal setting now.

 

35 minutes ago, PhoenixSoul said:

Shift and Return/Enter. You're welcome

What she said.

 

24 minutes ago, Sixth said:

Rikifive wrote that they can change it if there is a demand. 

Well, I demand it!

That's true.

Personally I got used to this- now I'm automatically holding shift when I don't want to go to the next paragraph.  

 

But I can see why people can complain- at the beginning I was confused as well, but then I even liked that feature.

Nevertheless, it's 'fixed' - as you can see everything got tighter. Well, unless users will demand that fantastic auto double enter feature to come back.  

 

24 minutes ago, Sixth said:

Btw, why this forum software? I have seen more than 1 forums regretting this choice for multiple reasons. And I mostly agree with those reasons. No idea if the bugs in it are fixed yet or not, but there were tons of them, and they were annoying. One of them is the erratic formatting issue that happens randomly (text in spoilers disappearing completely, images disappearing, text in code box disappearing, basically, many things disappearing for no reason), and the main reason why most forums I have been to ditched this software soon after they changed to it. The editor is just... bad.

To be honest only the text editor is BAD. The rest is really nice in my opinion. I got used to that forum software and its layout, so I really prefer it over most of the others.

It simply wouldn't be the same. . .

 

The editor is glitchy indeed, but once you'll figure out how to avoid bugs, it works well. The only thing that bothers me in the whole forum software is that lack of plain-text-mode in the editor known as 'BBCode Mode'. If that would be still available, I'd be more than happy.

 

By the way I recall encountering even worse text editors.  

[Kayzee 4,032]

I am glad you changed it back to single space newlines by default! Though it does make this thread look a bit funny. That vast majority of posts here look better this way though.

 

Also: I agree that an animated background would be a bit too much in the general case. Maybe as an option sure, but I have my own share of horror stories about web pages that over used animation and fancy javascript and other stuff and ended up slow and unresponsive. It may be okay on most people's computers and browsers in most situations, but not all browsers are very efficient or all computers fast and it can cause monster lag to have to constantly update huge chunks of the screen. Wonder how bad it might be on mobile too?
 

Edit: Odd, I swear the other the other day you could edit your comments to status updates but it seems you can't again anymore. Wonder why?

Edited July 25, 2017 by Kayzee

[Rikifive 3,411]

2 hours ago, Kayzee said:

I am glad you changed it back to single space newlines by default! Though it does make this thread look a bit funny. That vast majority of posts here look better this way though.

Yeah, even quotes got tighter. It felt weird for a while.  

 

2 hours ago, Kayzee said:

Also: I agree that an animated background would be a bit too much in the general case. Maybe as an option sure, but I have my own share of horror stories about web pages that over used animation and fancy javascript and other stuff and ended up slow and unresponsive. It may be okay on most people's computers and browsers in most situations, but not all browsers are very efficient or all computers fast and it can cause monster lag to have to constantly update huge chunks of the screen. Wonder how bad it might be on mobile too?

Yeah, I was thinking it may cause troubles. An user suggested that feature and I just gave it a try. No more animated backgrounds, perhaps optional eventually.

 

2 hours ago, Kayzee said:

Edit: Odd, I swear the other the other day you could edit your comments to status updates but it seems you can't again anymore. Wonder why?

Hmm... It was never possible...

[+ Takeo212 1,079]

I agree that shift/enter was a little unconventional but it wasn't too bad. Was weird logging on and not having the auto spacing haha.

 

I didn't even know the new theme animated. I changed back to default immediately since the light blue on ym mobile was weird to look at. I also like the colour theme of the default, so I have no complaints~

 

The site itself has always been trying to improve itself, so changing to a different format makes sense. I personally like it. Yea, it was weird at first but since it's been a few days, I kinda like it.

My only complaint is the gallery being at the very bottom of the site. I enjoyed seeing new submissions when I came on, but now I don't pay much attention since I don't really scroll right down to the bottom each visit. At the top, it felt more central and felt nice showcasing others artwork. Now it feels hidden away.

[Rikifive 3,411]

8 hours ago, Takeo212 said:

I didn't even know the new theme animated. I changed back to default immediately since the light blue on ym mobile was weird to look at. I also like the colour theme of the default, so I have no complaints~

At the beginning, the clouds were slowly moving to the left.

 

Now they don't.

 

9 hours ago, Takeo212 said:

My only complaint is the gallery being at the very bottom of the site. I enjoyed seeing new submissions when I came on, but now I don't pay much attention since I don't really scroll right down to the bottom each visit. At the top, it felt more central and felt nice showcasing others artwork. Now it feels hidden away.

Personally I liked that placement, because there are the same images displayed most of the time, so seeing them over and over again at the top was slightly spammy.  But that was just my tiiiiiiiny preference, so nothing important.

~ I've moved it to the top.

[Kayzee 4,032]

Hmmm... I see the theme selection at the bottom. You could just have different themes for static and animated clouds if you wanted. :3

[PhoenixSoul 1,404]

Theme Idea Submission:

 

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock :3

 

No, Activision won't give a shit.

[Rikifive 3,411]

2 hours ago, Kayzee said:

Hmmm... I see the theme selection at the bottom. You could just have different themes for static and animated clouds if you wanted. :3

I was thinking of this, but I guess the whole animating thing is unnecessary indeed.

 

2 hours ago, PhoenixSoul said:

Theme Idea Submission:

 

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock :3

 

No, Activision won't give a shit.

Now I'll probably sound annoying, but as much as I love customization, personally I prefer keeping a limited amount of themes.

If we'd allow adding themes on requests like this, then there would be tons of these, which would look bad.

For example you want Guitar Hero, I'm more than sure other users would like some themes with different nekos, anime characters, game characters, @Kayzee would probably like one with fairies and I'd throw one with ponies on top of that and that would be a mess. 

It should be something characteristic to the site- something unique- or just pretty basic. Not saying, that the current background is perfect of course (it all is WIP), but I hope you get the point.

[Kayzee 4,032]

Allowing people to make their own personal themes might be interesting if a plugin exists for it, but it's kinda pointless. You could just get the Stylish plugin if you wanted to do that. If there was a safe easy way to make per-post themes or even custom themes for your own blog/profile it might be interesting but there definitely would need to be some oversight, and that would probobly require some serious coding.

[Rikifive 3,411]

I think it is possible to set a theme for a particular member manually, but again, that would create a mess in the database aaaand be kinda pointless indeed. That way the site would be lacking of its design, as everybody would have their own look.

 

It was possible to set your own background for your profile page in the previous version, but now it was replaced by the cover. The custom backgrounds were completely messy most of the time anyway - users were throwing confusing images sometimes..  

[Kayzee 4,032]

Huh? Can't you already choose you own theme from the theme menu at the very bottom of the page right near 'Contact Us'? Or do you mean possible to set a theme override for each bit of content? I think it's not that unreasonable of a thing to expect for blogs, but this isn't really a blogging site and there is no reason to offer personalized blog themes.

Edited July 27, 2017 by Kayzee

[Rikifive 3,411]

Yep, you can choose these at the bottom, but if for example, 100 members would like to have their own theme, then that menu would be a giant mess. A list of themes covering the whole screen and even more.  That would look so bad, that I'm not even considering that possibility.

 

However, I've mentioned setting themes manually.. or rather forcing these for specific members. That way I could hide these themes from the view, but still be able to set them for members, who would ask for a particular theme. But it still would clog up the database and would be simply pointless.  

 

So let's better focus on giving the site a unique look, rather than creating a mess, that all other members would not even see.  Maybe we should allow members to customize the site name as well, because why not.  

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

I would like a theme for genesis game console.

[Kayzee 4,032]

1 hour ago, Rikifive said:

Yep, you can choose these at the bottom, but if for example, 100 members would like to have their own theme, then that menu would be a giant mess. A list of themes covering the whole screen and even more.  That would look so bad, that I'm not even considering that possibility.

 

However, I've mentioned setting themes manually.. or rather forcing these for specific members. That way I could hide these themes from the view, but still be able to set them for members, who would ask for a particular theme. But it still would clog up the database and would be simply pointless.  

 

So let's better focus on giving the site a unique look, rather than creating a mess, that all other members would not even see.  Maybe we should allow members to customize the site name as well, because why not.  

 

I was more thinking a single theme that took values from a per user setting page, not hundreds of themes for each user, but again that's kind of pointless.

[Rikifive 3,411]

Meh, too much effort. Besides, that still would require uploading tons of images into the resources, that would be thrown into a single theme. Either way, personally I'm kinda against the possibility to flip the look upside down like this. Letting members do that will leave the site without any design.