Software upgrades over the next few days

[mark]

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'll be doing a major upgrade to the software that runs this site over the next couple of days.

Unfortunately there are some other components which may have difficulties with the new version, and I may have to repair or upgrade these as I go along.

So during the upgrade process new features may start popping up, and old ones may not work correctly. If you spot something which isn't working and you think it should, please report it here on this thread. The first time you see a problem just wait 10 minutes to see if I haven't already fixed it. I'll also report here when then the upgrades are finished.

[mark]

The upgrade went much better than planned. The main forum software and the portal system (the first page when you enter the site) were upgraded this evening and with a few minor exceptions most of the add-on software seems to be running without problems.

You'll notice a lot of new features in this version. You can also go to your "My Settings" and perhaps discover a few new options.

Once again - if you notice an error message or something which doesn't work the way you expect it to please report it on this thread.

[AbFab]

...and we're all logged out!

[AbFab]

The EF favicon has been replaced by the VB one...

Is there a readme outlining these fab new features, or must we discover for ourselves the champson-politics filter ?

	Quote:	mark
	You'll notice a lot of new features in this version. You can also go to your "My Settings" and perhaps discover a few new options.

[AbFab]

That's the second time I've had to login today - expired cookie?

[mark]

	Quote:	AbFab
	The EF favicon has been replaced by the VB one...

Fixed. Unfortunately each upgrade requires all files to be copied over the old ones, so I restored it from a backup. If you ever notice that it disappears again in future (for example after an upgrade) please let me know.

	Quote:	DaveA
	Is there a readme outlining these fab new features, or must we discover for ourselves the champson-politics filter ?

There is something from vbulletin, but it is aimed more at admins, so will contain too much detail for a user level document. If anyone is interested in reading this document I can post the link, but it's lengthy. The truth is I'm still trying to figure out the new features myself. You'll notice multiquote is now an option when replying - I've used it myself in this post.

	Quote:	AbFab
	That's the second time I've had to login today - expired cookie?

Possibly. Not sure why that might happen. If it continues tomorrow I'll take a closer look.

[mark]

	Quote:	DaveA
	Is there a readme outlining these fab new features, or must we discover for ourselves the champson-politics filter ?

Actually just a quick update to this point. I found this thread over at vbulletin.com which lists all the changes. It's the sort of document that is also suitable as a user-level guide to the changes and includes plenty of nice screenshots outlining the new features. It's split into multiple parts, so don't just stop at part 1.

[Nickers]

With the recent updates Mark has it affected the reputation? Just noticed I have one green square when I used to have 3, just checked in my settings and all my rep is still there and it tells me I have 5 points?

edit: just noticed everyone only has one green dot so assume its some ongoing maintenance problem

[mark]

	Quote:	Nicky
	With the recent updates Mark has it affected the reputation? Just noticed I have one green square when I used to have 3, just checked in my settings and all my rep is still there and it tells me I have 5 points? edit: just noticed everyone only has one green dot so assume its some ongoing maintenance problem

Hi Nicky,

Firstly I've moved your post to the software upgrades thread because that is where I wanted all upgrade or possibly upgrade related questions posted.

You are correct - the newer version overwrote some custom changes I'd made with the code itself to achieve that effect. I kept some backups, so will go and have a look at what I did and try to redo it later today.

Don't worry - your amount of reputation hasn't changed - only the way those green squares are displayed.

[Nickers]

Hi Mark, thanks for moving the thread, sorry, I specifically went and searched for that missing rep thread as I thought thats where I should post but alas I got it wrong

I'll be glad when my reputation is back in tact

[ChrisW]

I've noticed a few things since the upgrade, some good and some bad. I'll start positive, then point out the things that I'm not so pleased with.

I like the fact that the text of a private message is included in the email notification that I receive for the private message.

However, I do not like the fact that the frequency of email notifications of postings to threads that I'm subscribed to appears to have increased. A max of one email per day per thread would be my preferred limit, the old system seemed to come close to this but the new system is constantly sending me notifications about the same thread. In addition, the content of the email notifications have greatly increased in length, with many responses being included and sometimes the whole thread is included. This seems unnecessary to me, and often makes it difficult to find what the new response is. I have no idea whether anything can be done to change this, but it would be nice if possible - I was pretty happy with the notifications that the old system sent.

I also just noticed that quotes no longer mentioned who the original author is, this seems like very important info. However, maybe I should just wait 10 minutes and this problem will be fixed.

Lastly, thanks Mark for all of the work that you put into keeping this forum working well - great job!

[mark]

	Quote:	ChrisW
	However, I do not like the fact that the frequency of email notifications of postings to threads that I'm subscribed to appears to have increased. A max of one email per day per thread would be my preferred limit, the old system seemed to come close to this but the new system is constantly sending me notifications about the same thread. In addition, the content of the email notifications have greatly increased in length, with many responses being included and sometimes the whole thread is included. This seems unnecessary to me, and often makes it difficult to find what the new response is. I have no idea whether anything can be done to change this, but it would be nice if possible - I was pretty happy with the notifications that the old system sent.

I don't use email notifications myself, so I haven't noticed any difference. Email notifications for threads are based on your subscriptions - configurable by you. You can choose the default setting for your subscribed threads in your settings to be instant, daily, weekly or not at all. You can also adjust your existing subscriptions on a case-by-case basis (so if you want to change everything don't forget your existing subscriptions as well as your future ones).

With regard to the email notifications themselves - are you saying that these contain the entire thread, rather than the post made since your last visit? The behaviour used to be that you weren't notified about new posts on a thread until you visited the forum again (and there was a note to that effect) has this behaviour changed?

	Quote:	ChrisW
	I also just noticed that quotes no longer mentioned who the original author is, this seems like very important info. However, maybe I should just wait 10 minutes and this problem will be fixed.

Yesterday I changed the appearance of quote blocks (they look a bit nicer now!) but part of this was that the person who wrote the quote is now on the right-hand side of the quote block rather than the left. Just take a look the link is now clickable and will lead to their profile as well.

[ChrisW]

	Quote:	mark
	I don't use email notifications myself, so I haven't noticed any difference. Email notifications for threads are based on your subscriptions - configurable by you. You can choose the default setting for your subscribed threads in your settings to be instant, daily, weekly or not at all.

I already have this universally set to daily updates.

	Quote:	mark
	With regard to the email notifications themselves - are you saying that these contain the entire thread, rather than the post made since your last visit? The behaviour used to be that you weren't notified about new posts on a thread until you visited the forum again (and there was a note to that effect) has this behaviour changed?

I've now looked at the messages a bit closer to get to the bottom of this, here are some details: Last night at 00:03 am I received messages about 3 threads. Two of these included the entire thread - original post and all subsequent posts (one of which had 11 posts, all in the email, including my own post and 6 posts that were made prior to mine). The third of these messages just included the 2 most recent posts to the thread. At 6:04 am I received another set of 3 emails about the same 3 threads, this time these only included the new responses that I had not yet viewed, all of which had already been included in the 00:03 am emails. I was asleep bettween 00:03 and 06:04, so I cannot have logged in during that time.

I remember getting other redundant emails like this in the previous couple of days, but didn't pay much attention and just deleted them, so I can't give you the details of those. Anyway, it appears that the 00:03 am emails are the worst offenders here, so if you can get rid of those then I would be very happy.

	Quote:	mark
	Yesterday I changed the appearance of quote blocks (they look a bit nicer now!) but part of this was that the person who wrote the quote is now on the right-hand side of the quote block rather than the left.

Thanks, I had missed it all the way over there on the right - my screen is 1680 pixels wide . The new boxes do look good, but unfortunately not entirely consistent with everything else.

[jamaicanRUM]

I like how the new quote looks visually. Is there any way the quotes can be colour coded? If you quote someone from the forum then the message border could be colour X (blue like it is now) but if you quote text from non-forum source then there could be an option to choose colour Y.
Just a way to differentiate "forum quotes" from "non forum quotes". Anyway just a thought.

Another thing ...

I have 5 reputations. 4 should be green and one should be red.
I see one that is blue and another one that should be green is red (due to error on reputation givers part). Any chance master could fix that?

[mark]

	Quote:	ChrisW
	I've now looked at the messages a bit closer to get to the bottom of this, here are some details: Last night at 00:03 am I received messages about 3 threads. [snip]

Sorry about that - actually this had nothing to do with a forum software change. Every few months when I run the server update it gets a package which seems to reset the timezone to US Eastern, knocking it back 6 hours. It drives me absolutely insane each time it happens, and I only fixed it shortly after midnight. This means the clock ticked past midnight and you got 2 sets of updates. Shouldn't happen again. As for the content of the messages themselves, this seems to be set by the software, and there are no controls to change it.

	Quote:	ChrisW
	Thanks, I had missed it all the way over there on the right - my screen is 1680 pixels wide . The new boxes do look good, but unfortunately not entirely consistent with everything else.

Yes, that's true - i'm still using the default template. Have been focusing on admin tasks and functionality rather than appearance. Beside, I'm not a graphics guy

	Quote:	jamaicanRUM
	I like how the new quote looks visually. Is there any way the quotes can be colour coded? If you quote someone from the forum then the message border could be colour X (blue like it is now) but if you quote text from non-forum source then there could be an option to choose colour Y. Just a way to differentiate "forum quotes" from "non forum quotes". Anyway just a thought.

It's an excellent idea. But if I were to set something like that up then it wouldn't get used properly anyway. People would click the wrong buttons, it would cause confusion and when I tried to say something about I'd get called anal, and I get kind of sick and tired of that. We can do anything with technology, but at the end of the day it's always humans that have to use it...

	Quote:	jamaicanRUM
	I have 5 reputations. 4 should be green and one should be red. I see one that is blue and another one that should be green is red (due to error on reputation givers part). Any chance master could fix that?

Reputation doesn't quite work like that (the green bars are a sliding scale that reflect the numerical value of your current reputation) check the other threads on reputation for the details. However I checked that comment, saw that it was positive and not negative) and have adjusted accordingly. I've now found a way to "force" reputation comments which should cut down on the number of empty reputation comments (and reduce my workload in deleting them)

[BeastOfBodmin]

	Quote:	mark
	Actually just a quick update to this point. I found this thread over at vbulletin.com which lists all the changes. It's the sort of document that is also suitable as a user-level guide to the changes and includes plenty of nice screenshots outlining the new features. It's split into multiple parts, so don't just stop at part 1.

Good link. It has just saved me from bugging you about how to use multi-quote.

[BeastOfBodmin]

	Quote:	ChrisW
	The new boxes do look good, but unfortunately not entirely consistent with everything else.

I second that, but I don't really care.

[BeastOfBodmin]

So what's up with nested quotes then? For example, when I caught Mark posting before before he'd had enough coffee :

"L" vs. "B" work permit

[jamaicanRUM]

Mark thanks and I gathered that the number of green/red cards under "my settings" tab in NOT = to the number of green/red cards that get publicly displayed.

I thought that people would either give "I approve or "I disapprove" rating which would result in a green or red card under "My settings" tab.
I seem to have a BLUE card under "My settings" for a positive/I approve type of comment and I was just curious why it was blue and not green

Sorry if I am not understanding something basic Ok I will read up more.