Shiney New Forum

[PhoBucket]

Who do we have to thank for this shiny new forum?

[traktor]

Hi, Phobucket,

As you can see, there are upgrades in progress.

These will repair some broken stuff, and will give us better performance.

The signup-for-the-forum process was largely broken, because it could not tell the difference between spam robots and humans, and many thousands of phony signups had to be checked individually, so we didn't have to listen to commentary about our body parts and the joys of gambling. The necessity for this process caused a secondary problem, because in many cases it made new-member-joining into a several-days process.

The send-out-an-email process was at least sometimes broken, and I think that lots of outgoing emails didn't.

And of course, there can be security issues that come up with running anything other than the latest and greatest.

THREE PRIMARY EXPECTED CHANGES

** New members will be enabled to join easier and faster, and robots will be stopped because they cannot read very well.

** Upgrading to 'newer and better' has destroyed the old theme, and the new theme method is completely different from the old theme method. It was necessary to accept this in order to upgrade. So our forum is not going to look like the rest of the site for the time being, and maybe forever.

** For the technical among us, this new version uses 'Ajax' technology, which means that many actions can be done without the need for refreshing/reloading the page, which makes it quicker for you to use.


In short ... the forum may look different, but it should work better now.


-- Traktor Topaz, site engineer for Tappistry.Org


PS: ONE REQUEST PLEASE -- Please be so kind as to check your email address, and update if necessary. We have *lots* of email addresses that are out of date, and sending emails to bad addresses wastes resources, and you get no benefit from it. You'll find your profile and settings in the 'User CP' link at page top in the blue bar.

PPS: To answer your question, phobucket, Mobius Megatar (our site sponsor who provides the server hosting for this forum) paid for the upgrade (about $200), a nice tech named Colin from the vbulletin company upgraded the software and data, and your humble site engineer is the tappistry human who did the work on our side.

[James]

Hi Traktor. Long time no hear!

I like the new forums and the new Wordpress front-end. I came back here today because us mods received an email alert about several identical spam messages (Thanks to TheEclectic reporting them). I found I was still able to deal with these. Perhaps the CAPTCHA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA) verification isn't 100% effective against spambots but at least it's there.

[traktor]

One of the reasons for the upgrade was to slow the robots, because their clutter in the new-signups was burdensome and slowed the actual signups. However, yesterday I was watching, and saw the robots coming through the captchas like immigrants crossing the rio grande ... very quickly.

I'm guessing that the spammers are now simply hiring third-world humans to do the captchas, or maybe they've got Scotty from Star Trek writing their captcha-reading code.

I've changed it to two questions that the robots probably won't know how to answer. We'll see if that works any better. So far this morning, it looks better, but it's too soon to tell.

Thanks for watching. All assistance is greatly appreciated.

[traktor]

On another note, it *seems* to me that the forum is running faster on my computer.

Though of course there is no reason that the *server* would have changed its speed.

Anybody else notice any difference in speed?

[arsacane]

I don't see a significant difference in speed, but maybe this theme is slimmer than the old one (so pages end up loading faster)?

[traktor]

Maybe that's it. Perhaps the code is a bit more agile, or easier to get around. I know I like being able to access search from the front page.

It doesn't seem to keep my log-in as long. Maybe that's settable somewhere, and can be fixed to be longer.

Anybody else? Comments?

[traktor]

So far the new forum software seems stable and improved. Me (site engineer) and moderators are still learning our way around, and we would welcome your input.

Perhaps a good way to do this is to request your input as to what you think may be good or not so good about the new system ...

This may provide some clues of where to look at configuration (because the thing is configurable as can be, pages and pages and pages of stuff) ...

I'll start off with the things I've noticed so far ...

(A) Since changing to the 'question and answer' human-validation method instead of the captchas, the number of robots has stopped. We now have a three stage process -- 1. The new guy signs up and must answer a question that most robots cannot figure out; 2. He's sent an email and must click on confirm so this rules out the phony emails; 3. He's now a member, but a moderator must activate his account before he can post.

This is slower than I'd like, but so far it's producing nearly all humans, and those humans are getting faster attention from us humans, because there are only a few to examine each day (instead of hundreds).

(B) As a user, I like that the log-in box is at screen top instead of having to scroll all the way to the bottom.

(C) At first, it seemed like I had to log-in too frequently, but then I noticed the 'remember me' box on the upper right login box, and once you check that box, you don't have to log in all the time.

(D) Although sometimes our server is a little slow, the page itself loads up real fast. I like that.

(E) I like that the 'search' is now a dropdown box in top menu and you don't have to go to another page just to begin to search.

(F) I like that when you click on 'new posts' in top menu, it shows them quick, but if there are no 'new posts' there's an alternate link to review all the posts in the last 24 hours. This makes it easier to find a post you were reading earlier. That's pretty cool.

(G) The color scheme is a little blah. I peeked briefly at alternate 'themes' in the vbulletin site, but most of them that I saw were either blah or stupid or hard to read. I didn't have lots of time. Maybe a better one will emerge.

(H) On a slightly different note, the remainder of the site is now running on a different engine, and it's faster loading and easier to work with. However, it's not as 'pretty' as our old site, seems to me. (Although a couple of people thought our old design was 'old-fashioned'.)

Folks, those are the plusses and minuses that I've experienced. My view is mostly positive. But ... I'd very much like to hear your opinion about what you now prefer or don't prefer about the new software, to provide some guidance about what might provide further evolution and improvement ...

Please post your "I like" and "I don't like" here ...

-- Traktor, site engineer for Tappistry.Org

[PhoBucket]

The Calendar only seems to show 2006 dates for me.

[traktor]

We got a bug!

I'll ask the forum-software folks about it. Thanks. I hadn't noticed.

[Ammatt]

Please post your "I like" and "I don't like" here ...


The new forum works well for me, but I'd love to have a RSS feed for quick reading when in a hurry (which means most of the time ;))

From the FAQ:
"If the administrator has enabled RSS syndication, this lets you view newly created threads in guest-viewable forums without visiting the board."

It seems that the administrator has not enabled RSS syndication. Any reason for that?

Best regards,

Matthieu

[traktor]

Turns out that the calendar date-range is a settable parameter. The parameter has been set. Calendar works now, I think.

[traktor]

I've looked at settings, clicked help buttons, found some rss info that seemed to have nothing to do with the subject, and searched doc. So far ... nothing that makes sense.

I have found the setting that enables the RSS, and you can see the feed at http://www.tappistry.org/forum/external.php?type=rss or at http://www.tappistry.org/forum/external.php?type=rss2.

However, there's got to be a way to make it appear at the intuitive location http://www.tappistry.org/forum/rss/ or to provide a button or link on the main page. How to accomplish this, so far, remains elusive.

Have asked the nice forum software people. We'll see what they say.

[K Rex]

Hi Traktor,

I like the old way better. Please put it back.

Thanks,

Kev

[traktor]

Hi, K. Rex,

Sure, no problem.

But remember, "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." -- H.P. Lovecraft

[K Rex]

Thanks!

Beer helps me to not correlate. Oh, the horrible correlation...

IA! IA! Cthulhu Fthagn!

K