Technical State of the Forums

[rpframe]

Greetings wonderful peoples of the forums!

I'm posting here in an attempt to keep you all updated on what is actually going on, and what we are doing to make things better.

Server OS, PHP, and Forum updates completed 1/9/2017

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Techy stuff for people that care:

Database:

Database upgrade has helped significantly. Things in the back-end are running much more smoothly.

 

Version Update:

Just updated the forums to 4.1.17.1 from 4.1.14.3

Highlights:

• Performance improvements on activity streams
• Remember me cookie is now 90 days rather than 7 days
• The editor will now show a message if a link that can be embedded (image, video, etc.) failed to embed for some reason.
• There is now logic to prevent double-posting when the initial post encounters an error on submit
• You can now press ctrl/cmd+enter in any editor window to submit the reply
• There is now a setting to change the number of topics per page in the forum view
• If you are using multiple devices to login to a site you will be less likely to be logged out
• Tags can now be quickly edited when viewing an item
• Added quite a few new embed providers:
  • codepen.io
  • coub.com
  • deviantart.com
  • docs.com
  • funnyordie.com
  • gettyimages.com
  • iFixit.com
  • kickstarter.com
  • meetup.com
  • mixcloud.com
  • mix.office.com
  • on.aol.com
  • reddit.com
  • reverbnation.com
  • screencast.com
  • screenr.com
  • slideshare.net
  • smugmug.com
  • ustream.tv

Full list of changes found here

[pam]

Thanks for the update Paul.

[tesuji]

I would love it if you could someday add a feature to hide content in certain threads and forums. I very much dislike seeing the political discussions here.

[rpframe]

On 4/20/2016 at 9:08 PM, tesuji said:

I would love it if you could someday add a feature to hide content in certain threads and forums. I very much dislike seeing the political discussions here.

I didn't develop the forum software, I'm just here to tweak settings. I don't believe that is a current feature of the software, but they may decide to include that in future software updates.

[tesuji]

4 hours ago, rpframe said:

I didn't develop the forum software, I'm just here to tweak settings. I don't believe that is a current feature of the software, but they may decide to include that in future software updates.

OK, thanks.

Personally, I would love to see a Politics forum, and then all political discussions be limited to there. Do you really want this site to be mostly about politics? It seems that's how it is.

Then I would personally hide the Politics forum. Whenever that feature became available. Maybe you would want to make it hidden by default. I've seen sites do that. And the moderator then moves threads to there when/if any thread ever gets too political.

Just my ideas.

[NeedleinA]

9 hours ago, tesuji said:

Personally, I would love to see a Politics forum, and then all political discussions be limited to there. Do you really want this site to be mostly about politics? It seems that's how it is.

Agreed

[Guest]

I'd like to say thanks to whomever (or whomevers) did the fixing.  My "remember me" function finally works again.  Yey!!!

[pam]

2 hours ago, Carborendum said:

I'd like to say thanks to whomever (or whomevers) did the fixing.  My "remember me" function finally works again.  Yey!!!

The remember me kind of already worked.  Just that the system would keep timing us out. That's why when you hit sign in it signed you right back in instead of having to put in your password and username over and over.  

It's the timing out issue that got fixed.   Thank goodness.

[rpframe]

On 6/6/2016 at 0:32 PM, Carborendum said:

I'd like to say thanks to whomever (or whomevers) did the fixing.  My "remember me" function finally works again.  Yey!!!

I'm so very glad the changes are working  

[rpframe]

Update:

 

Just updated the forums to 4.1.17.1 from 4.1.14.3

Highlights:

• Performance improvements on activity streams
• Remember me cookie is now 90 days rather than 7 days
• The editor will now show a message if a link that can be embedded (image, video, etc.) failed to embed for some reason.
• There is now logic to prevent double-posting when the initial post encounters an error on submit
• You can now press ctrl/cmd+enter in any editor window to submit the reply
• There is now a setting to change the number of topics per page in the forum view
• If you are using multiple devices to login to a site you will be less likely to be logged out
• Tags can now be quickly edited when viewing an item
• Added quite a few new embed providers:
  • codepen.io
  • coub.com
  • deviantart.com
  • docs.com
  • funnyordie.com
  • gettyimages.com
  • iFixit.com
  • kickstarter.com
  • meetup.com
  • mixcloud.com
  • mix.office.com
  • on.aol.com
  • reddit.com
  • reverbnation.com
  • screencast.com
  • screenr.com
  • slideshare.net
  • smugmug.com
  • ustream.tv

Full list of changes found here

[Jane_Doe]

Thanks for keeping us updated!

[NeuroTypical]

1 hour ago, rpframe said:

Highlights:

• Added quite a few new embed providers:
  • deviantart.com

Yay!  I've always been vaguely concerned that my pre-teen daughter had an account at a place named Deviant Art.  But MormonHub supports it, so I'm going to take that as basically the same thing as approved by the first presidency, right?

(joking)

[Ironhold]

1 hour ago, NeuroTypical said:

Yay!  I've always been vaguely concerned that my pre-teen daughter had an account at a place named Deviant Art.  But MormonHub supports it, so I'm going to take that as basically the same thing as approved by the first presidency, right?

(joking)

There is, in fact, a thriving community of members over on Deviant Art - http://lds.deviantart.com/ . 

However, DA is pretty loose when it comes to overall content because it's an "art" site. For example, a search for "My Little Pony" could turn up everything from photos of someone's toy collection to "adult" parody comics. Minors are supposed to have content filters automatically in place, while adults can have the filters if they have their account set up just so. 

It's also loaded with all sorts of banner ads and pop-up ads, meaning that if you don't have a strong ad-blocker in place it's only a matter of time before your computer gets infected by something or other. 

...And the message forums aren't moderated, so they're not for the faint of heart. 

[Carborendum]

Is anyone else noticing that the search function no longer works?  Every search I've done for a few weeks gives me nothing.  I thought it was just at work due to some internet filters.  I thought it was strange that I could access the site, but not the search engine.  Now I just tried it at home.  And I get nothing.

[zil2]

Yes, I mentioned that in another thread.  Not only is it broken, but it's so broken that even a site-specific google search can't find posts.  I had to resort to going to the content of my old account, viewing "activity", filtering by posts, and then finding the page with the time-frame in question (I remembered the post in detail and wanted to link to it).

A few times, there were messages at the top of the page about indexing, but they're not there now.

[Carborendum]

13 minutes ago, zil2 said:

Yes, I mentioned that in another thread. 

Well, I searched for it.  And wouldn't ya know it?  Your thread didn't come up. 

[mikbone]

Yup, I kinda use this forum as my personal journal of doctrine musings.

I just go to google, enter mikbone and the topic and get a results (after I tell google every single time that, yes I meant mikbone not milkbone…)

Anyway for about the last year the results have been less than satisfactory.

[NeuroTypical]

3 hours ago, Carborendum said:

search function

Hi folks, I first saw the search issue about a month ago.  @pam is working with our technical folks, but it's taking a lot of time.  They'll implement a fix, then Pam tries to recreate the search index, which takes like 2 days.  When that doesn't fix things, it's back to the technical team. 

Hang in there peeps.

[pam]

Our tech person thought that doing a complete reindexing of the site would fix the problem. It didn't. He's still working on trying to figure out what is going on as well as continuing to do some updates.

[Carborendum]

13 hours ago, pam said:

He's still working on trying to figure out what is going on

Malware?

[zil2]

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

Malware?

Highly unlikely.  More likely to be database corruption or a software upgrade gone wrong.

[Carborendum]

1 minute ago, zil2 said:

Highly unlikely.  More likely to be database corruption or a software upgrade gone wrong.

Well, there you go again, Zil.  Flexing your computer knowledge all over the place while exposing my ignorance on the topic...  

...But if you need an industrial complex design, I'm your guy.

[zil2]

19 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Well, there you go again, Zil.  Flexing your computer knowledge all over the place while exposing my ignorance on the topic... 

  20 years in IT will do that to you...

19 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

...But if you need an industrial complex design, I'm your guy.

Duly noted!  Right now, I need a sprinkler repair guy, or so it seems.   (Replacing the diaphragm on one problem valve didn't solve its problems - it seems to have lessened the severity, but that could be my imagination. Sigh. I have one more thing to try, but no hope that it'll do any good.  Seems likely the city water pressure has increased and I need a pressure reduction valve on the line to the sprinklers... Grr.)

[Carborendum]

.

Edited 20 hours ago by Carborendum