Forum changes & updates

[hoi.polloi]

SeptemberClues.info often gets its alloted bandwidth exceeded around this time of year, and this September is no exception.

Due to the limits of our hosting provider, we've decided to forgo a temporary or prorated upgrade and just let SeptemberClues.info "sit out" the rest of the month.

Remember, you can still watch September Clues at the usual link:


full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gORu-68SHpE

Sorry for the inconvenience. Our bandwidth will reset to normal (and the site will come back up) in October. Thanks.

[hoi.polloi]

I am noticing something funny about the forum's moderation behavior lately, for me. This, in addition to another strange problem, makes me wonder. I am not assuming there has been a hack, but it is a possibility. Until I can sort it out, please download the back up copy of the forum, and feel free to post as usual. However, I want to leave most of the moderating to Simon, nonhocapito, Critical Mass and the other mods for now, until I can be sure it's not my fault or figure out what's going on.

nonhocapito, if you can figure out what might be going on, your knowledge of code would be appreciated. Basically, my quickmod tools do not seem to respond, but I can do the cumbersome long way of modding using the moderator control panel. If a module is damaged, do you know of a way to repair it?

[nonhocapito]

You mean the drop-down menu at the bottom of the page? It works on my end... To be honest this sounds more like a possible borwser-related problem... you can try one of the following things: 1) delete browser cache and cookies and log in again 2) log in with another admin account and see if the problem persist? But maybe you've already tried this.
If the problem doesn't go away somehow I could take a look at the files or to the database, though if I'm not mistaken you have migrated the website at least once since when I last put my hands on it, so I don't have the passwords or the addresses. If I had the time I'd love to make that silly "jump" menu a little narrower.

[simonshack]

Hoi, I also seem to have no problems moving posts from one thread to another with the quickmod tool. If anything else isn't working for you let me know and I'll test it on my side.

[hoi.polloi]

Okay, so hopefully it's just me; but then, I don't know what it would be, because I am using Firefox (and have been) for ages, and all of a sudden it "broke".

The other issue I have had is that hitting "strike out" [st][st][/st] button makes [YouTube] tags instead!

[brianv]

hoi, if you're reading and regarding your problem in the Changes and Updates, I experienced the exact same problem with the strikeout tags, and I'm also using Firefox. I have mentioned it at least twice before.

[hoi.polloi]

hoi, if you're reading and regarding your problem in the Changes and Updates, I experienced the exact same problem with the strikeout tags, and I'm also using Firefox. I have mentioned it at least twice before.

I think in the near future, we should consider updating the phpBB to v3.2 or subsequent releases. Although apparently this may cause some issues because the format of storage moves from HTML to XML, we will be happier with a stable new version of the forum. I will begin to look into possibilities about this and what conflicts may occur, and with what methods we should be able to transfer the database to a new installation.

For leaving a note to any future efforts in this direction, this topic should be useful: https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2377631

[nonhocapito]

Hoi, do you still have problems with the quickmod tools? Have you tried messing with the browser, emptying the cache, trying a different browser, disabling extensions, etc? BTW, I also have that issue with st and youtube. If you send me the FTP password via PM or email I can look into it. And there are a couple more tweaks and improvements I might implement if I find the time.

[hoi.polloi]

Lulz.

I apologize.

Uhhhh, okay. So there are two "GO" buttons, correct? I've discovered the problem after emptying the cache, dumping temp files, re-installing browser, etc. — when the browser window is resized, various sizes cause one of the "GO" buttons to overlap the other one or make it disappear due to the style auto-formatting! So when I was thinking I was choosing Quick-mod options, I was in fact choosing to load a forum from the Jump to drop-down.

A totally dumb mistake, but a misleading problem in the first place. So sorry for the distraction and for dumbly assuming we were being messed with by anything besides our own browser differences.

Will send you PM about other issue.

[nonhocapito]

YES! It does overlap! That's because the Jump menu is too wide, due to one of the forum titles being so long. That's one of the things I'd like to fix, actually. Thanks for the pass, will work on it this week.

[nonhocapito]

OK, I've fixed the strikethrough button, and I fixed the jump quickmenu forcing it to be a bit shorter despite the long forum titles it contains. Let me know if things have improved on your end.

(BTW, the strikethrough button ceased to work when "truetube" was added to the list of the embed video tags. There is a file that needs to be changed, "posting_buttons.html", every time a new embed video tag is added in the admin area).

[hoi.polloi]

Thank you so much for doing that; it may seem small to you but when we combine our precious little volunteer time it adds up to more accomplishments done. Special thanks for the addition of that technicality about the file, which will help us navigate future insanity modifications.

[nonhocapito]

As some of you might have noticed, I usually add to my posts the images I edit or cannot link by making an "attachment". In our post editor, the function looks like this:

As an additonal example, here's one rhetorical image from Repubblica.it, with stripes and roses:

This "attachment" function is reserved to administrators, but, if it worked well, could be extended to everybody or at least selected users who normally contribute material. (The great thing about attachments is that they stay with the forum, no matter what.)

Now, unfortunately the one problem with this function is that attachments cannot normally be quoted.

In quotes the attached images will appear only with their name. Like this:

text
[attachment 1]
text
[attachment 2]

to

text
"attachment1.jpg"
text
"attachment2.jpg"

I looked for a workaround to this issue, and found it in a thread on the phpbb community that I myself had started years ago!, when I was trying to make this forum work at its best for everyone. At the time I had given up waiting for an answer or looking for a solution, but someone later on posted a workaround in that thread, so now I decided to implement it.

You can now quote posts with attachments.

It doesn't work perfectly, because when you quote a post with attachments it will go from this:

text
[attachment 1]
text
[attachment 2]

to

text
"attachment1.jpg"
text
"attachment2.jpg"
[attachment 1]
[attachment 2]

Not great, but not bad either. Feel free to test it out. (As a general rule, it would probably be best to quote one attachment at a time, with its chunk of text).

On top of this, you will find that each quoted post has now a link to let the user jump back to the original post. This is useful when we quote things across one or more pages.

And as far as opening the attachment function to some of our users, I am in favour, but I invite the other admins to think it over, since it probably requires creating and maintaining a list of safe users or superusers. Unless we give this function to everybody, which also probably would be ok to do, perhaps with a size limit.

Please notice: for future reference, I modified some of the phpbb files as suggested in the thread linked above. If in future the forum should be reinstalled or updated, this function will be lost, so refer to that thread to re-implement the modifications.

[hoi.polloi]

Great work, nonhocapito. Now I don't have to copy and paste the URL of the image in order to quote it!

[nonhocapito]

So, I managed to make the embedding of CNN videos within the pages of the forum possible.

Instructions are here.

"Propaganda, use with caution".