Service outage prompts big changes

I miss the old set up. Is the older version going to come back? BTW, admin, my father went to that road you recommended for him to drive on today with my mother. They called me afterwards raving.
 
rfarren":3f6k03fo said:
I miss the old set up. Is the older version going to come back?

Nope. It can't.

rfarren":3f6k03fo said:
BTW, admin, my father went to that road you recommended for him to drive on today with my mother. They called me afterwards raving.

At my age you're going to have to refresh my memory...
 
Admin said:
As a result, the easiest "fix" was to upgrade phpBB, our forum software, from version 2.0 to the entirely new version 3.0, which was designed from the ground up.

Well, one thing that I'm happy to see is that the display size on linked images has now increased. I noticed it when I submitted my latest report, and was surprised to find that even my images that were 1000 pixels wide were coming through at full size. Unfortunately, the image display seems to top out at around 1035 pixels in width, and instead of resizing images that are wider than that, it is currently cutting them off on the right side. I looked at my report from Robbins Mountain back in January, and noticed several images that were cut off:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6803

Is it possible to increase the width limit for images on the board, or at least make them resize to use as much space as is allowed like in the previous version of the software?

Another thing that popped up as I was writing this reply was that BBCode was set to OFF (as indicated in a small box off to the right of my text). I was going to simply add linked/colored text to the report I described above, but I don't seem to have the option in this reply so I had to just insert the link. My quote didn't appear to work either, although perhaps it is just this thread/forum section as people have commented.

J.Spin
 
J.Spin":135xb5ee said:
Well, one thing that I'm happy to see is that the display size on linked images has now increased. I noticed it when I submitted my latest report, and was surprised to find that even my images that were 1000 pixels wide were coming through at full size. Unfortunately, the image display seems to top out at around 1035 pixels in width, and instead of resizing images that are wider than that, it is currently cutting them off on the right side. I looked at my report from Robbins Mountain back in January, and noticed several images that were cut off:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6803

Is it possible to increase the width limit for images on the board, or at least make them resize to use as much space as is allowed like in the previous version of the software?

I've just altered the code to automatically resize images that are wider than the allowed width. You may now see the effect in the linked posted cited above. So, that's fixed. :D

J.Spin":135xb5ee said:
Another thing that popped up as I was writing this reply was that BBCode was set to OFF (as indicated in a small box off to the right of my text). I was going to simply add linked/colored text to the report I described above, but I don't seem to have the option in this reply so I had to just insert the link. My quote didn't appear to work either, although perhaps it is just this thread/forum section as people have commented.

Make sure that BBCode is turned on in the User Control Panel -> Board Preferences tab -> Edit Posting Defaults sub-tab. I have, however, discovered some anomalies in permissions for registered users in some forums, including this one, and have now fixed them.
 
I didn't have a digital camera until spring 2003, so I wouldn't have many pictures to fix.

But I notice Admin got a fairly quick answer on that phpBB forum. Are you going to be testing that soon?
 
Tony Crocker":30xkw3vx said:
I didn't have a digital camera until spring 2003, so I wouldn't have many pictures to fix.

But I notice Admin got a fairly quick answer on that phpBB forum. Are you going to be testing that soon?

Yeah, but as an alpha-release modification I need to exercise caution. The author himself cautions that as such the mod should not be applied to a live board. For me that means backing up the MySQL database that powers the board in case something goes horribly wrong, and that means executing the script from home when I have a few hours to restore everything if need be.

I may need to take the forums down for a bit tonight to implement this.
 
By "soon" I meant days, next weekend, etc. I'm impressed that you might give it a shot this evening.
 
Admin":3gcn8kz5 said:
Yeah, but as an alpha-release modification I need to exercise caution. The author himself cautions that as such the mod should not be applied to a live board. For me that means backing up the MySQL database that powers the board in case something goes horribly wrong,...
Rule of thumb with alpha releases: probably ok for the general cases and most of the well known edge cases, but will probably gag on special cases. It will also gag on something completely reasonable, but something the author didn't think of or account for. The classic is an end of file delimiter that innocently and legally occurs somewhere in the middle of a file.

In the exercise here, but one example might be: what will the converter do if it hits technically invalid (according to the W3C) HTML, but HTML that still renders correctly in the browser?

Have fun! Don't assume everything is correct even if the converter says it was successful! Keep a barf bag handy. :p
 
Marc_C":1wm4jlac said:
Have fun! Don't assume everything is correct even if the converter says it was successful! Keep a barf bag handy. :p

Failure. I ran the script, which was supposed to examine each posting and parse where approprate. Clearly this should have taken a long time, and a quick glance at the script code showed that it was to parse 200 messages at a time before refreshing the screen with a "hey, we're working on it...be patient" sort of message. Instead, it went straight to the "OK, everything's done!" message after only a couple of seconds...of course without changing anything.

I've responded to the author in the phpBB development forum. I'll see if he has any other ideas, but in the meantime we have no choice but to live with it and the original authors of the messed up posts are welcome to edit their posts as they see fit. phpBB's site forums are filled with phpBB administrators who are dealing with this issue, some with much more significant impacts than mine. The bottom line is that the authors of phpBB chose to eliminate HTML enabling in the 3.0 release for security reasons, a decision that's completely understandable as enabling HTML opens the forums up to some serious hacking possibilities.
 
phpBB's site forums are filled with phpBB administrators who are dealing with this issue
Does this mean that there is a lot of pressure on them to come up with a good HTML conversion fix for many of their users ASAP? If so, I think we should cool it for awhile and hope an easy fix will be developed before too long.

I'll wait until I come back from China 8/6 before manually correcting any of my stuff, and hope that a global fix has been implemented by then.
 
Tony Crocker":1daednhh said:
Does this mean that there is a lot of pressure on them to come up with a good HTML conversion fix for many of their users ASAP? If so, I think we should cool it for awhile and hope an easy fix will be developed before too long.

You must realize that phpBB is Open Source. It's developed by committee, so things often develop very slowly as its developers are volunteers. However, fixes often come along because the community develops solutions, such as the script that I tried. I have no doubt that others will attempt a fix.
 
Admin":1c8g4nei said:
I've just altered the code to automatically resize images that are wider than the allowed width. You may now see the effect in the linked posted cited above. So, that's fixed. :D
Make sure that BBCode is turned on in the User Control Panel -> Board Preferences tab -> Edit Posting Defaults sub-tab. I have, however, discovered some anomalies in permissions for registered users in some forums, including this one, and have now fixed them.

Thanks for the rapid action on both fixes Marc, the resize looks great and I can now see all the BBCode options as I'm writing this response.

-J
 
Admin":rxsv4zj6 said:
For me that means backing up the MySQL database that powers the board in case something goes horribly wrong, and that means executing the script from home when I have a few hours to restore everything if need be.
FWIW, as a fellow webmaster with far smaller of a web site with fewer pages of content and no forums, admin has already done a stunning job with the transition on such short notice. I dread updating my WordPress CMS due to all the backups and crossing fingers that plugins continue to work and the whole thing doesn't crash completely and force a reinstall of a backup. These little things are pretty time consuming and admin has done an admirable job with a completely unexpected switch. Much as I bitched about the lack of aesthetics, I have a good understanding and a lot of sympathy for all the unscheduled maintanence this switch is causing admin.
 
I agree with River. The last time we had a system upgrade viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3256 I was quite vociferous in bemoaning the loss of the archives.

This time the archives are not lost but are somewhat degraded in utility. Those who particularly value the pics accompanying reports may be feeling more pain. Nonetheless it's slow season, so I think we should be patient. There are other administrators who need this fix, so I have some confidence we will get it eventually. In the meantime let's not make Marc ](*,)
 
Although I might also be bitching, I DO APPRECIATE ALL WHAT ADMIN IS GOING.

Like Tony, I really really value what might have been lost (links, pics) in the pre-2004 post.

Sorry, I've been pretty busy of late, but I also noticed that the Youtube quotes were gone.
 
Patrick":3gencoyv said:
Although I might also be bitching, I DO APPRECIATE ALL WHAT ADMIN IS GOING.

Like Tony, I really really value what might have been lost (links, pics) in the pre-2004 post.

But...nothing is lost. Links to some material are only formatted in ways that phpBB can't display anymore. The material's still there.

Patrick":3gencoyv said:
Sorry, I've been pretty busy of late, but I also noticed that the Youtube quotes were gone.

One objective in the near term is to enable embedding videos from YouTube, Google Video and other video hosting sites. That will still require editing of the original post to change from HTML to the BBCode that will be created by this modification.

You may notice, however, the new "flv" BBcode button atop any posting form. That enables embedding any Flash video where you know the URL of the Flash file.
 
OK, here are some dumb questions of the day:

In the old format the syntax allowed you to embed a URL reference withg a highlighted descriptiuon of what it was. Now the URL button just brackets the URL you wish to refer to.

What do the List, List= and flv buttons do?

Does polling still exist?
 
Tony Crocker":3defyhlz said:
In the old format the syntax allowed you to embed a URL reference withg a highlighted descriptiuon of what it was. Now the URL button just brackets the URL you wish to refer to.

There's no change in the URL BBcode functionality. See: faq.php?mode=bbcode#f40

Tony Crocker":3defyhlz said:
What do the List, List= and flv buttons do?

The List BBcode is unchanged from what was there before, too. See: faq.php?mode=bbcode#f30

The flv BBcode is new. It allows you to embed the URL of a Flash video if you know the URL to the FLV file.

Tony Crocker":3defyhlz said:
Does polling still exist?

Yes.
 
Admin":fars67ny said:
rfarren":fars67ny said:
BTW, admin, my father went to that road you recommended for him to drive on today with my mother. They called me afterwards raving.

At my age you're going to have to refresh my memory...

They drove to the san rafeal swell. They loved it too. Saying Utah is the most beautiful of all the states. My father also commented on how green everything was.
 
Warning! Thread drift!

rfarren":nz2xt3pt said:
They loved it too. Saying Utah is the most beautiful of all the states.
We do have 5 national parks after all! The only states with more are CA and AK, with 8 each. Add in the National Monuments and the number goes up considerably.

rfarren":nz2xt3pt said:
My father also commented on how green everything was.
"Utah is all brown" is a common misconception among those who don't live here or only visit during ski season.
 
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