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NEW FORUM SOFTWARE IS UP!


The Evil Cashew

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- Friends/Enemies/Comments. Enemies is permanently disabled. Adding friends and comments can be disabled by the individual user. By Sunday, I will have a guide up on how to do that.

If you need help with that, to save you some time, I'd be more than willing to write something for it - and to help out with anything else, in case someone needs anything done, or wants help with a particular feature. I literally have nothing else I need to do, and probably won't have for months, so it honestly wouldn't be a problem for me.

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Nalle Neversure

Thankies for all! Great job!!:D :D

I can wait for purple and other little minor things, take care of your uni and business, Cole. :D

Sent PMs/Outbox. There are some things that may not have transferred correctly, due to the softwares being so different. Sent PMs might be one of them. I will ask about it and get back to everyone on the issue. Additionally, I don't think we have an Outbox feature, because if a user signs online and has a new PM, it gets displayed on log in.

If anyone has any other concerns, please post here or send me a PM and I'll try and help you out, as time allows.

I'd like to add Saved PMs folder to the 'not transferred correctly' list. It ate all the important PMs I had saved. :(

But again, that can wait, you have done a lot already. :D

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If you need help with that, to save you some time, I'd be more than willing to write something for it - and to help out with anything else, in case someone needs anything done, or wants help with a particular feature. I literally have nothing else I need to do, and probably won't have for months, so it honestly wouldn't be a problem for me.

If you know how, that would be great. Just send me a PM so I can give it a look over before you post it.

I'd like to add Saved PMs folder to the 'not transferred correctly' list. It ate all the important PMs I had saved. :(

I'll look into that as well. Thanks for the heads up.

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I've noticed on several occasions in the 'users browsing' field at the bottom of the main index page, there's occasionally an entry for google.com with no link to a profile. Would this be the Google search engine spider at work I wonder? If so, could it be discouraged/disabled, along with some of the other privacy issues already raised, as not everyone likes their posts/profiles etc indexed by search engines.

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Well done to everyone who worked on the switchover!

I don't understand what people find so complicated about the new board. Even I can work it!

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I've noticed on several occasions in the 'users browsing' field at the bottom of the main index page, there's occasionally an entry for google.com with no link to a profile. Would this be the Google search engine spider at work I wonder? If so, could it be discouraged/disabled, along with some of the other privacy issues already raised, as not everyone likes their posts/profiles etc indexed by search engines.

Google is indexing the front page. Whoever comes here off the Google search engine makes this so. I don't believe personal profiles will get indexed, and I will continue to talk with IPB about privacy measures.

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Google is indexing the front page. Whoever comes here off the Google search engine makes this so. I don't believe personal profiles will get indexed, and I will continue to talk with IPB about privacy measures.

Well posts got indexed anyway, well mine did anyhow, and I'm almost certain that profile pages aren't indexed by any search engine crawlers.

Thank you :cake:

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If you know how, that would be great. Just send me a PM so I can give it a look over before you post it.

I haven't yet found a way to disable them completely, admittedly, though I know how to partially hide them (they still appear if you click the 'friends' or 'comments' tab on someone's profile), and how to enable moderation of them (which, I guess, is them partially-disabled). I'll work it out though - these things don't escape me for long, once I set my mind on finding them.

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BleedingThrough
I loved aven because it was different from any other forum. now it is the same as other forums that I don't frequent. and I agree about feeling like somebody has painted your room while you were away. I miss purple. and the old layout. :( but everyone else likes this one.

Me too. It'll just take some time to get used to it though. Then it will be fine. :)

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I don't understand what people find so complicated about the new board. Even I can work it!

<grins> me too, aside from a few tweaks here and there, which I'm sure will be sorted in due course.

Any new board/forum software requires some adjustment - and Aven is no different in that respect. We've all got used to a particular layout/format and it'll take time for both users to become accustomed to the differences and the admin tweakers to fine tune the system.

In the meantime, I for one look forward to reading/writing to Aven in much the same way as I've always done, irrespective of how it looks or works.

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Google is indexing the front page. Whoever comes here off the Google search engine makes this so. I don't believe personal profiles will get indexed, and I will continue to talk with IPB about privacy measures.

Thanks Coleslaw.

Personally I don't have a problem with this aspect, but it's possible other might.

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I'm liking this so far. Sure, it'll take some getting used to, but this looks like a good board to me. I'm also really into the calendar feature.

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Huge warm hugs to Cole and Cash and AVENGuy for all of the incredible work to get this upgrade done.

*hugs*

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The Evil Cashew

Cole thanks for the announcement at the top of the page. i so should have thought of doing that. i forgot we could now!

i think you have a list of all the problems poeple have sent my way so far already. if i think of anything else i will let you know.

~Cashew

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A few early observations (mostly critical, I'm afraid, and mostly IPB related)

Firstly, for what it's worth I use Firefox on PC and haven't had any login issues, even though I block cookies on my machine (with explicit "Allow" exceptions for asexuality.org and other sites I want cookie functionality from).

(and I have to say I rather like being able to change the font)

Every other (good) board I've been on has disabled font selection after misuse got out of hand - hope that doesn't happen here :rolleyes: although people were mostly good about font size and the like in the old phpbb board, which is a good sign.

And I'll put in another vote for removing as much of the "A is looking at B's profile" and "X is reading post Y right now" stuff. Only useful for stalkers, as far as I can see. :angry: I really don't like that feature.

And two IPB implementation issues - not much you can do about these I'm guessing other than pass them on to IPB:

  • the error messages are AWFUL. I got an error telling me I'd made too many quotes in a post. Firstly, why the hell should there be a limit? I've got over twenty years of software/web design and implementation under my belt, and I can't think of a reason - but just supposing there IS a reason: why on earth shouldn't the error message tell you what the limit IS? This sort of usability issue should have been dead and buried a decade ago - why do designers still make these basic mistakes??? I've taught software design, and making sure error messages tell you explicitly how to fix/avoid the error is something you usually cover in week one. Stupid, stupid IPB dudes. Seriously. In design terms that's like not being able to tie your shoelaces.
  • the search functionality won't let you search for words of three letters or less. WTF? Why on earth not? What are you supposed to do if the word you want to search for is less than four letters?

Arbitrary limitations like the two above just make my blood boil. Some programmer actually put their time and effort into limiting the usefulness and usability of their program. Why? *tears hair*

And a question: is there a way of searching for all posts in the Asexuality category, for example? One that would return the most recent posts from all the subforums under Asexuality? That would be really cool, but I can't see a way of doing it. Search allows you to look for keywords across those subforums, but not to find all posts, and the "View new posts" search isn't filterable as far as I can tell.

Sorry to be grumpy, but what's the use of a million and one features if the basic stuff, like Search that actually works, isn't there?

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The Evil Cashew
A few early observations (mostly critical, I'm afraid, and mostly IPB related)

Firstly, for what it's worth I use Firefox on PC and haven't had any login issues, even though I block cookies on my machine (with explicit "Allow" exceptions for asexuality.org and other sites I want cookie functionality from).

Every other (good) board I've been on has disabled font selection after misuse got out of hand - hope that doesn't happen here :rolleyes: although people were mostly good about font size and the like in the old phpbb board, which is a good sign.

And I'll put in another vote for removing as much of the "A is looking at B's profile" and "X is reading post Y right now" stuff. Only useful for stalkers, as far as I can see. :angry: I really don't like that feature.

And two IPB implementation issues - not much you can do about these I'm guessing other than pass them on to IPB:

  • the error messages are AWFUL. I got an error telling me I'd made too many quotes in a post. Firstly, why the hell should there be a limit? I've got over twenty years of software/web design and implementation under my belt, and I can't think of a reason - but just supposing there IS a reason: why on earth shouldn't the error message tell you what the limit IS? This sort of usability issue should have been dead and buried a decade ago - why do designers still make these basic mistakes??? I've taught software design, and making sure error messages tell you explicitly how to fix/avoid the error is something you usually cover in week one. Stupid, stupid IPB dudes. Seriously. In design terms that's like not being able to tie your shoelaces.
  • the search functionality won't let you search for words of three letters or less. WTF? Why on earth not? What are you supposed to do if the word you want to search for is less than four letters?

Arbitrary limitations like the two above just make my blood boil. Some programmer actually put their time and effort into limiting the usefulness and usability of their program. Why? *tears hair*

And a question: is there a way of searching for all posts in the Asexuality category, for example? One that would return the most recent posts from all the subforums under Asexuality? That would be really cool, but I can't see a way of doing it. Search allows you to look for keywords across those subforums, but not to find all posts, and the "View new posts" search isn't filterable as far as I can tell.

Sorry to be grumpy, but what's the use of a million and one features if the basic stuff, like Search that actually works, isn't there?

UHm... i'll let Cole answer most of that regarding the search.... i ahvent played in it as much as she has.

As for fonts... we will see how it goes.....

As for quotes: WE are allowed to set that. It is currently set at 10 because with the old board it had been abused and the way phpbb worked... after about 10 quotes.. the quotes (the way they were being done) were illegible.

Also, for error messages.. i think we can change those too... i will have to look into it.... not sure tho...

there is ALOT on here that is customizable

((i dislike the stalker stuff in profiles too.. we ARE going to be editing the profiles))

~Cashew

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Guest edward gorey's daughter

so... we are saying that if our PM box is "Full!" it might not be full after a bit more tweaking? And that maybe I don't need to keep deleting? : )

oh and id and gatto, I wouldn't mind a "Frenemies" box...

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UHm... i'll let Cole answer most of that regarding the search.... i ahvent played in it as much as she has.

As for fonts... we will see how it goes.....

As for quotes: WE are allowed to set that. It is currently set at 10 because with the old board it had been abused and the way phpbb worked... after about 10 quotes.. the quotes (the way they were being done) were illegible.

Also, for error messages.. i think we can change those too... i will have to look into it.... not sure tho...

there is ALOT on here that is customizable

((i dislike the stalker stuff in profiles too.. we ARE going to be editing the profiles))

~Cashew

Thanks Cash. Nice to know I'm not alone in disliking the stalker features :)

Sorry I was grumpy before, I'd just been bashing my head against something that should have been simple.

Limiting the levels of nesting of quotes I can understand - perhaps there's no way of differentiating nested quotes from quotes that just follow one another.

Limiting search to words of four or more letters, though, still stumps me. Why would anyone do that? Sure it might make the search infinitesimally faster, but what use is fast if you can't actually search for what you want?

Anyway, other than that it's all looking shiny. Mmmmm new tech toys :)

Glad it's not me doing the upgrade. You deserve more :cake: :cake: :cake:

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Guest edward gorey's daughter

yay pm box is good!

um, I just log in as the second one when I log in, and then I don't feel like a stalker. but I do feel "stealthy" now. :blink:

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Every other (good) board I've been on has disabled font selection after misuse got out of hand - hope that doesn't happen here :rolleyes: although people were mostly good about font size and the like in the old phpbb board, which is a good sign.

I suppose you have proof evidence to back up these wild accusations of font abuse?

Sorry, I couldn't resist. At least it's out of my system, and the joke is now dead, right?

So as not to make this a complete waste of space...

Quoting posts doesn't quote the quotes already in the post (i.e., I didn't get the quote from Anticulus when I quoted Olivier). Maybe I'm just doing something wrong? I click the quote button below the post, then hit the "reply" button at the bottom of the page. The original quote comes up fine, but nested quotes don't.

Nested quoting itself seems to work fine, though, as shown by my other horribly abusive tests. It just doesn't seem to work when using the "Quote" button.

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More phpBB2 -> IPB URL equivalents (the part that you have to copy is in bold):

Link to a specific post:

http://www.asexuality.org/discussion/viewt...p=821993

becomes

http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?act...d=823103

Subforum:

http://www.asexuality.org/discussion/viewf...php?f=17

becomes

http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?showforum=17

User profile:

http://www.asexuality.org/discussion/profi...;u=15320

becomes

http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?showuser=15320

It's actually even easier to redirect the old phpBB URLs to IPB URLs than I thought, as long as mod_rewrite is installed on the server. No actual scripts are required. Here is code that you could place into an .htaccess file (I think it would go in the .htaccess file in the document root). I'm not sure if this actually works or not (I'm not totally familiar with .htaccess or mod_rewrite); I based it on some code that I found in another forum where someone else had converted a forum from phpBB2 to IPB and was asking about how to redirect phpBB2 URLs to IPB ones.

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^f=(.+)$
RewriteRule ^discussion/viewforum\.php$ http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?showforum=%1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^p=(.+)$
RewriteRule ^discussion/viewtopic\.php$ http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?act=findpost&pid=%1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^t=(.+)$
RewriteRule ^discussion/viewtopic\.php$ http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?showtopic=%1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^u=(.+)$
RewriteRule ^discussion/profile\.php$ http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?showuser=%1 [R=301,L]

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I like the new look, too. Just waiting on the paint job.

The main problem I had was that the system wouldn't recognize my password (I don't remember how many times I tried it). I had to enter it everyday with the old board, so I thought it was typed correctly, then I actually verified it in my pw notebook. I was wondering if my memory was so bad that in two days of not visiting I had truly forgotten it. :( (My AOL had crashed on Sunday and when I finally got it fixed on Monday, AVEN was down!)

I finally went through the "forgot my password" rigamarole and then the system wouldn't let me log in with the new password, either. After about 10-12 times, it finally accepted the new pw and I was able to log on.

Lots of cake for Cole, Cash, and AVENGuy :cake::cake::cake::cake:

Don't burn yourself out, Cole. It will get done, eventually.

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Hokay everyone!

The PM problem should be fixed. On the old board, we allowed 1000 PMs to be saved. On this board, I capped the limit at 500. Why? Because there is an archive feature. I am very guilty of keeping all mail sent to me, but, I just did an archive of my PMs and now I have all the old ones saved away on my computer and not in my inbox. I suggest others do the same, or just start deleting old, pointless PMs.

Oliver, I've fixed the search. Words must be 2 letters or more now. As for the max on quotes, it's because they will stretch the page on 800x600 browsers if we allow for a great deal of quote embedding. The max is at 10.

Also, for both Ithilorn and Oliver, quote embedding was turned off. It's turned on now, so you shouldn't get error messages and should be able to quote multiple quotes. Sorry about that.

Andrew, thanks for the code. I'll get AVENguy to throw that up some time this week.

2tabbymom, that password problem is coming up for a few people now, and it's making me a bit nervous. I'm gonna mention it to IPB and see if we can't sort that out... And, there are things I will burn myself out for. AVEN is one of them.

Any other questions?

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Nico-Nico Friendo

I still can't find the chat anywhere. Where is it? If it's not up . . . when will it be?

I'm not trying to sound impatient . . . just wondering.

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Ahcrap.

Yes, working on getting a permanent link to the chat up right now. I will not quit till it is up!

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Also, for both Ithilorn and Oliver, quote embedding was turned off. It's turned on now, so you shouldn't get error messages and should be able to quote multiple quotes. Sorry about that.

Excellent. Thank you!

I will not quit till it is up!

Please try to remember to eat and sleep at some point, OK? I don't think anyone here wants you to collapse from exhaustion. It also seems counter-productive to just pass out like that.

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I will not quit till it is up!

Please try to remember to eat and sleep at some point, OK? I don't think anyone here wants you to collapse from exhaustion. It also seems counter-productive to just pass out like that.

Eat? Sleep? What are these natural bodily functions that you speak of?

I'll try and finish it soon, then go spend some time with my kid cousins. No worries. :P

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Oliver, I've fixed the search. Words must be 2 letters or more now. As for the max on quotes, it's because they will stretch the page on 800x600 browsers if we allow for a great deal of quote embedding. The max is at 10.

Also, for both Ithilorn and Oliver, quote embedding was turned off. It's turned on now, so you shouldn't get error messages and should be able to quote multiple quotes. Sorry about that.

Thanks Cole! You sounds like you need :cake: to keep you going!

That's brilliant that you could fix the Search so quickly. *impressed*

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