Well, I think I've got the main upgrade taken care of now and hopefully there won't be any serious problems. Sorry for the downtime this weekend... had some issues with the database but that should be sorted out now.
Please take notice on the front page there is a new section that shows who is online and it includes bots. These are NOT bad bots like we have had issues with before. Please do NOT delete them as they are the search engine bots that index the site. Without them, people won't find us when they search on Google or Yahoo for entheo plants or yopo seeds or super-funky-jungle-juice. :mrgreen:
Yes, the style completely sucks however, I'll try to come up with something we can live with... or maybe even something half-decent... who knows. Give me a couple weeks to work on it.
Another issue is that searching will not work just yet. I have to run the script that will create the search tables and... I'm not really looking forward to doing that. It takes a long time to run and that is where I ran into issues last weekend so, I'm putting it off for the moment.
RSS feeds (for those who use them) will hopefully be up soon.
Taking a break~
kemp
Oh, by the way... I think we lost a few posts (hopefully not many) when stuff crashed this week. I didn't notice it till just yesterday mainly because everything was running fine for 2 days after I messed with things last weekend. I had a backup from last Saturday and restored the database with that. Sorry if you were one of the people who posted between Saturday and Wednesday and lost a post or 2. :(
Until I am certain the forum is running well I will make semi frequent backups to avoid any major losses.
Yeah, I'm glad to see it back up. I wrote Andy on thursday and he tried to get ahold of you but seemed to be unable to do so. He said friday he would email you. I sent you an email saturday.
When people tried to find this place from google, there was a message from "admin". You knew nothing about all that? It happened right after your last upgrade attempt. I know it's hard to do this stuff. Do we have greater functionality now?
QuoteWhen people tried to find this place from google, there was a message from "admin". You knew nothing about all that?
If it's the message that I am thinking of, then yes I knew about it... it was an old index.html file that was created for when the forums were down. I just left it as things were getting kinda messy with the database and also the .htaccess file that previously forwarded from http://www.spiritplants.org (http://www.spiritplants.org) to http://www.spiritplants.org/phpbb/ (http://www.spiritplants.org/phpbb/) was lost somehow.
Yeah, Friday is when I noticed the forum was down. I did get Andy's email then and yours this morning. Thanks for the heads up.
We do have greater functionality and more options to work with. The previous forum was phpBB 2.4 and we are now at 3.02. Check out the new admin & moderator control panels and you see some of the new options. Some of them come from a pre-modded version of phpBB3 to optimize for search engines. I went with this because it clearly helps with getting traffic to the site. In the admin CP you will see a tab that says "phpBB SEO Class settings", that is were most of those functions are (please don't change anything there).
There are too many changes for me to list so, I'll see if I can find a link to the documentation somewhere. In the mean time please do look around... lemme know if there is any other features you need as I might be able to find a way to add them.
kemp
what a clear felt joy to see the place up and shining.i like the new clarity.
missing the spf logo, but the newness of it all is cool.
Thanks so much kemp for bringing the place back to where it belongs.
Thanks kemp, job well done. Take your break you deserve it! I for one like the style. It's not what we are used to but its not really that bad at all. In time I am sure we will get something we all like. Now I'll have to do some thinking about what I wanted to post about this weekend! I did miss the board, tho, it was definitely worth the wait.
I am starting to like the new look.
One thing I would like to change: when I click a link it used to open in a new window, now it doesn't. Is that a personal setting or for everyone?
Hold down shift when you click a link and it will open in a new window. I'd like to see the old color scheme back. Black is depressing. Other than that, I like the new functionality. I see a number of changes have been made including certain absentee mods being gone and an absentee admin being now a mod.
Do we now have the ability to make the recycle bin visible to mods only? Or are you way ahead of me and did it already? I noticed the test post.
Anyone else having trouble staying logged on?
Are you working on getting the chat and radio links up? Soon, I hope. Good job, Kemp! :)
logo looks good.
jrl, i had to click onto 'login' twice, but as soon as i did, i was logged in, without re-typing anything.
i find black a bit frightening. like i never know what's gonna jump out at me when the page first loads.
but the drama of it wakes me up - a good thing!
I am not 'puter savvy whatsoever, but I've noted that with the new board, each page is taking 10-15 seconds to load.. Anybody else??? Could be my server (library, public access) I suppose...
I prefer the new look - I use firefox to adjust most of the sites I visit to have a dark scheme anyway so this is all very convenient ;p If others wish to change colors do a search for accessibility add ons in firefox, add ons meant for blind peeps will be the best bet or greasemonkey if a bit of code doesn't scare you.
I have had to re subscribe via RSS too - I dont know if thats expected or something to have a look at.
Edit: OK I cannot find a RSS button now and teh googles says the site has no feed. If you are starting the feed from scratch it would be nice if it listed the posters name and the text of the post too. Another lil job to add to your list :)
JRL - You might need to delete all the spiritplants.org cookies from your browser. I think there might even be a link to do that somewhere on the forum. I will get back to you on that. The link thing I noticed too.... I have not seen an option to change that so, I guess we may have to do what Stoney recommended for now.
Stoney - Yes, I set x. torris & nitroburn back to mods since neither has been around in a long time. I think it's best to keep the permissions for the people who are active, for the most part. As for the style, that is one of the harder aspects as I don't have much experience with creating them. I basically downloaded this style and modded it so that we might have something other than the default (yucky). I will however keep at it and try to get something similar to what we had before so that people could choose the old style or the new one. Currently there is no way to use the old style... the code it just too different.
The post in the Recyle Bin is just that, I didn't do anything with that forum yet. I though I might leave it up to you guys to decide what you wanted to do with that. It's no problem though, if you want I can change it in no time to be viewable only by mods or something.
Cenacle - Yep, the chat and radio links are on the top of my list; they are not as difficult but still part of the overall design. I will try to have those up this weekend.
Glandmaster - The RSS feeds are also on the top of the list... also shooting to have those fixed by Sunday.
Senior - I had the same problem last weekend with the board taking a long time to load. It could be a few things causing it... maybe if you could clear out the temporary files and cache on the browser (if you can access it). If it's Firefox click on tools and then options, look under privacy- clearing private data. Probably something similar for IE to, not sure. It may also be the server here; now that I think we are fairly stable here I think I will delete some old database tables after I do a backup to see if that helps at all.
I was also thinking of adding a few new smilies... just for a little extra variety, I do not intend to get crazy and add hundreds of really odd-ball ones. I think many sites overdo it that way.
-kemp
We have a bunch of new features now including the ignore function. I've tested it and it works great, I'm using it now. Other sites have had that for years but we finally got it. Other sites let you select the board skin you want. Maybe some day here.
X Torris was mod of the world but no more. Nitro showed up briefly a couple months ago. There are a few others who haven't been around in ages like Troutmask and some others. We may need to do some cleaning up one of these days. At least establish some standards.
The recycle bin should be easily converted over. I tried to do it under the old system but due to some sort of glitch, it never worked right. It would be visible only to admins and the mods couldn't see it. Or, make it visible only to registered users which is how we left it. I assume the new software does not have that glitch and we can do as we wish. That's the only thing that should be easy.
QuoteThe RSS feeds are also on the top of the list... also shooting to have those fixed by Sunday.
Cheers ears!
Ok I am getting there... I did get a decent amount accomplished though I am far from finished.
JRL- I did find and installed a mod to make all external links open in a new window. Seems to be working as it should now.
Cenacle - I did get some links at the top for the radio and chat. Yes, I know the radio isn't as large as you'd like it however, I don't have any icon or picture to use like I did for the chat link so, for now it is just a text link. Again, I can work on this more later.
Glandmaster - I have installed an RSS package that has a LOT of options. I've only just got it installed and don't have the time right now to go thru it yet but you will see links on the bottom of the pages to it. I am not certain it is fully working yet but, I'll find out this week.
Can't recall what else.... gotta get to work in the real world :?
Enjoy!
Not a huge issue but, I'd like to see the order of the forum sections to be 'People' 'Plants' 'Site'.
Yeah I think that would be a better choice than what we have now... Cenny changed it I think because for a couple days we didn't have a link up top for the radio. I'll change it to your suggestion or back to how it was if there is no objection...
/me samples the new RSS fruit
Not bad! :)
It would be nice if there was some if not all of the text in the feed too - all RSS readers give you the option to limit the amount you see but I havnt worked out how to get it to show me text that isnt there so a good way for you to cater for all tastes without having to provide tons of options.
I am working on the RSS thing... there are lots of options and I am fairly certain I have the correct ones chosen to display at least something of the posts.
For now, it's a work in progress. I will have more time Friday to kick teh tires and change the fuel filter. Wait... maybe it was that leaky valve...
When we click on a thread from the main index, it would be nice if we went to the end of the thread unless we hadn't read it already. Lots of place have that feature. As it is now, if you click on a thread from the index you get the first page always.
Stone, there are small page icons in front of each thread, clicking it will take you to the first unread post.
Syd, you may be talking about the view from inside the forum itself. That is not the problem, it's going from the main index to the thread. I have no such icons on my screen at the main index.
I see the icon at the far right of my screen next to threads on the main page.
OK, I do see it now, Syd. It's kind of faint but it takes you to the latest post.
White print on black background has been shown to be hard on the eyes. This has been tested in many studies and black on white has always won. Perhaps the goth crowd likes black but I don't. I have the option of getting a FF addon to change the colors. Visitors may not want to do that and it'll turn them off. It would be far better if we had options for the site skin and if the default was something easier to read.
Quote from: "kemp"Cenacle - I did get some links at the top for the radio and chat. Yes, I know the radio isn't as large as you'd like it however, I don't have any icon or picture to use like I did for the chat link so, for now it is just a text link. Again, I can work on this more later.
I have the radio's logo. Would you like it? Thanks for getting that done.
Regarding the chat image, I think it should say "Chat" or something similar near it. Right now, the image doesn't really stick out for its purpose.
Well done on all this, bro! :)
Yeah, I can try to do something with the radio logo if you can post it somewhere.
Everything about the style... logos... icons... colors will be a work in progress since I know very little about design.
Basically learning as I go...
I will get another template that is much lighter in color for you and others, Stoney. Again, that will be a work in progress.
Thanks!
Ok, I have a style (not fully ready - still working on it) that you all can try out that is mostly white with back text.
It is functional but definitely not finished. You can set it manually in the user control panel, click on Board preferences and then "My board style:".
Click the drop-down arrow and choose "Black Crystals sub" and click submit. This will only set your own board style while the default style remains the current one for everyone else.
Hope that helps the eyes a little Stoney :e_wink:
The new site look is freaking kick ass man!!! i feel like i am diving in deep deep ocean where fluorescent funky creatures float around.
Very cool! good job kemp. Glad to see you all keeping up with the good work.
peace and shantiness:)
I tried the new style and it's better, there is very little green but, as a bare bones style, it works. I believe the text is easier to read now. The little icon that takes you to the last post in the thread is now easily visible.
Thanks for taking my suggestion on the forum order! On a side note, I wish the boards could figure out automatically if I'm in summer or winter time, having to do with DST. Sure it takes a few clicks to do it myself but in these days, everything is about automation.
I've noticed that since I went to the new skin, I have to log in all the time. I click "keep me logged on" but I've had to log in twice today. It started right after I switched over.
It's not because of the style. I went back to the old extra dark gothic style and I still have to log in every hour or so. Did you do something yesterday or the day before? I think JRL complained about that a while back but I'm just now having a problem with it.
Syd - Not exactly sure what you mean... are you saying it doesn't know which way to flip the clock... forward or back? I would think it would know but then, our clocks don't change till this weekend so, maybe I will see then.
Stoney - Haven't touched a thing in a couple of weeks now.
I've been having the same problem of not staying logged in. Don't know what the problem is off hand so, I will try to dig into it this weekend.
Fuzz - Thanks for the thumbs up! Glad to see your still doing well :smoke2:
Go to your board settings under your user control panel. You will see a box that you will have to tick if you are in DST. I was wondering there was an option for it to be set manually. Hold up a minute lemme see what Google has to say about this...Well I've got my answer. It is a user setting that has to be changed manually under phpbb. Other forum software may change it automatically for the servers home timezone. Just, not something I want to do all the time. At least it is only twice a year. DST is bullshit anyway, We should just adapt to waking up at different times in the winter compared to the summer.
Made a change that might help with having to login every day or whatever it is.
Hope this will help... if not I will dig a little deeper.
It might be best to also delete your cookies for this forum; you can do that on the main page or here - //http://www.spiritplants.org/phpbb/ucp.php?mode=delete_cookies
:mrgreen:
edit: test
Some days it's better, some days worse. Today it's been pretty bad. I've had to log in twice already.