Big Forum Update

Ben Ruset

Administrator
Site Administrator
Oct 12, 2004
7,616
1,863
Monmouth County
www.benruset.com
Hey everyone,

I've just upgraded the software that runs the discussion forums to the latest version. It was probably about 5 years out of date, so it was critical to do.

There are just a ton of changes and differences in the new software. I'm still learning it myself. Right now I'm working to make it look pretty again. (This is a very boring default that you're looking at right now.)

I just ask for everyone's patience as I Make NJPB Look Great Again and we go through the inevitable teething problems.
 

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
25,602
8,180
I am in. I also checked my photo area and that works. Very nice!
 

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
25,602
8,180
I know it is early but please try and get the IP check in the approval area so I can see where people are from. We get a ton of new sign-ups that I use that on.
 

Ben Ruset

Administrator
Site Administrator
Oct 12, 2004
7,616
1,863
Monmouth County
www.benruset.com
Looks good except: Broken images where pictures are linked rather than attached?
The first 5 pictures display as red-X icons. These seem to be loaded via a redirection (proxy.php) from teegate.njpinebarrens.com? His 3 later photos load fine - I think these are attachments.

Okay, this should be fixed. Thanks for the troubleshooting.

The image proxying thing is to not have people's browsers throw off scary errors when someone links to pictures that are served from a http website.
 
Jul 12, 2006
1,318
307
Gloucester City, NJ
For whatever reason, the top of my forum display gets chopped off, ever since the upgrade.

What is this red dot supposed to represent? It just appeared this morning.

Thanks.
sketch-1563010925300.png
 

Ben Ruset

Administrator
Site Administrator
Oct 12, 2004
7,616
1,863
Monmouth County
www.benruset.com
It pulls out a side menu, like this:

IMG_9454.PNGIMG_9455.PNG

So if you had any alerts (like an unread PM) you'd get a red alert icon on top of it. I don't have an Android device to test and see, but my first question would be if you have your phone's font size set larger than the default.
 

46er

Piney
Mar 24, 2004
8,837
2,143
Coastal NJ
One thing I noticed is that the 'stay logged in' box is always checked. Was not in the previous version. No biggy thouogh.
 
Jul 12, 2006
1,318
307
Gloucester City, NJ
I'm using all the default settings as it relates to fonts and their sizes. I knew the function of that icon, as that's how I get to New Posts to check the new ones each morning.

It was the red dot I was unsure and it only made it more confusing because it was chopped off a bit.

I can work with it as is.
 

Boyd

Administrator
Staff member
Site Administrator
Jul 31, 2004
9,503
2,766
Ben's Branch, Stephen Creek
Ben: what are your thoughts on how the new forum software automatically "unfurls" links that are posted? I understand that his gives the site more of a "social media" look, but this feature can also obscure a lot of questionable stuff embedded in a link and might even be used in a sinister way by a "bad guy". For example, Facebook embeds tracking code in all their links now, which is apparently their way of getting around the privacy features of new browsers that block their cookies. For example:


I first noticed these sneaky facebook links on my own site recently. Here's an example of a "clean" link to a map and a "dirty" facebook link to the same map.

fbLink.png


I have been manually editing my own links to make them "clean", but just ran into one that couldn't be fixed because the forum software automatically converts it to "media" instead of "url".
 
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