| Archive for myfreeforum.org Before posting please check the "stickies" in the support forums. Please ask questions in real English and not "txt". You will get a better response. Please do not ask support questions via PMs. |
| admin (no pm's please) |
New features rolloutWe have a load of new stuff either completed, near completion or planned for the next few weeks. Getting it all rolled out with minimum risk is quite a problem though
Current plans are: 12th - New caching advanced template system and tweaks to board configuration caching. This will cause some cosmetic issues in portals with many ' characters appearing as \'. This can't be helped but can be fixed by us fixing components and members tweaking instances where they have used \'. It is best to resolve this a little piecemeal, as if we solved it prior to deployment and we have to rollback the template change, then there would be a massive amount to rollback in order to keep things working. Better the odd cosmetic issue for a day or three in my view. As a user you will not see any changes at all from this rollout, aside from a little speed increase in forums. As a template editor a load of new and useful features will be there, and I will document these in due course. They won't effect the template editing interface but will allow you to do fun things in ".tpl" files 
15th - webpage parameter passing Another quite invisible change, but one that will open the door to more sophisticated uses of the web page system, such as feedback email forms. 19th - GUI driven advanced XPROFILE custom profile fields Control your extra profile fields via a GUI form that allows you to create new field types like check boxes, dropdowns and radio buttons, and allows for some field validation. All from the forums admin panel, rather than the control panel. 26th - Watch this space Another very useful change, that will make the system easier to use. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
The new template code is live, I can see an \ in the sticky articles list as per expected cosmetic issues here. But things seem okay otherwise.... | ||||
| Danny M |
Is This Something To Do With This Apearing On My Forum Admin: <?php echo "here"; ?> |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
That is a stray line in overall_header.tpl and should be removed by you. | ||||
| Danny M |
Ok, But I Was Just Wodnering, How Has It Come 
As I Haven't Edited Or Added Anything Lately And I Noticed It On Some Other Forums Aswell |
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| Wills |
Admin
Some of my exprofiles are not working on the post body  here's the image
errrrrr....the image upload links don't seem to working...not here or on my forum So heres a link http://my-local-poker.com/about1091.html And only my 1st template mfs1 is working properely, mfs2,3,4 & subsilver are acting wierd & dont seem to have .css
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Okay I have rolled the changes back. | ||||
| Wills |
Ok All is working fine now  Thanks Admin........ here's some Karma 
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| admin (no pm's please) |
I think this was due in part to a couple of files not being rolled out.
I will try again later. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Here we go again!
This is a big change with lots of twisty bits, so please be patient with the odd issue. |
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| Tank0 |
i hope this is related to this step forward but my entire forums is messed up .
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /home/httpd/vhosts/zaphod.myfineforum.org/httpdocs/freeforums/cache/mffz_forums455/tflclan.myfreeforum.org/overall_footer.tpl.php on line 35 in every forumstyle . even with an footer i havent added hacks to. since it is in the footer i cant reach the template editing part of the forums so i cant remove the code . even plain subsilver shows up all messed up with components from my standard forumstyle. edit : thank you , i ll try to remove the error code and keep this thread watched |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Your forum is showing for me, but I do see:
[INDEXPAGE] component=my front page component on pages. Maybe you have got some bad syntax in the control panel OPTIONS? |
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| Tank0 |
i had this before , but it all worked fine last night . i was still trying to figure that out myself before i asked yall help | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
Well it is probably symptomatic of the new system which is very different.
As such errors in what people have done, may have more severe consequences than before. |
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| Tank0 |
np i ll solve it . removed the code in my footer and well on my way to fix the portals on the right | ||||
| archers-rest |
This is causing my welcome portal to play up, users are getting other users name's and avatars showing up, I am running Nicks modified welcome portal. | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
Is it still happening now? | ||||
| archers-rest |
doesnt appear to be, all seems ok 
What was it? And has the cache been changed for latest posts, it seems slower |
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| archers-rest |
Just noticed the total posts count is taking a while to change and the clock is slow in the welcome portal | ||||
| archers-rest |
Cancel that its still happening |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
I know and I'm working on it. | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
It does seem that there are so many caveats to the caching system it will be better to remove it for now.
So now we have the new template system but uncached. |
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| archers-rest |
Feel slightly guilty now, hope I havnt highlighted too many problems | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
How can highlighting bugs be anything other than helpful? | ||||
| archers-rest |
I know, I know, glad to be of service then sir
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| Danny M |
I'm Not Sure If I Should Post Here, But How Come My Forum's Portals Have Gone Weird Today
If You Look On http://manunitedfansforum.myfanforum.org - It Shows The Portals As Wider And A Bit Longer And I've Not Edited Anything Today Or Yesterday And I've Tried Changing The Width Etc In The Overall_Header But It Doesn't Make A Difference
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Nothing to do with anything being rolled out, just look at what is forcing width! what about manchester_united_fan on the online list. | ||||
| Danny M |
Oh Yea
Thanks Admin
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Re: New features rollout
Well things are not going exactly to plan so far, the good news is that the changes planned for the 26th are virtually complete, so that almost all effort now will be with the rollout, the bad news is that rolling out was put on the backburner as I programmed the new stuff. I have just made a quick list of 15 things and groups of things that need to be installed for all the new features to work, and I suspect when I review the changelogs I will expand that list, so this is going to be quite a process. However starting tomorrow the emphasis is on getting the features installed in safely incremental batches. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Looking at deployment sequences we are looking at it being simpler to deploy both remaining changes at once, the only question being do we do it tomorrow or next Saturday?
Next Saturday would have the benefit of a weeks more testing, including the possibility of adding code to verify that peoples portal options are valid with the new system, and it would also be a nicely time 2nd anniversary rollout
It would also allow more fun features like the feedback email portal to be written. It does make sense for there to be a first "cgi-script" bit in the system as a statement of things to come. |
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| Symon |
I,d say wait a week
1, More testing 2, Been open nearly 2 years so 1 week wait wont be too hard for anyone 3, May encourage a few forum admin to concentrate on the backbone of their forum which is good honest posts. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Especially as most of this is only about making the existing features GUIFIED, okay profile fields will gain a few fancy features such as validation, radio boxes, option boxes and check boxes, oh and they will be able to be displayed in topics without templates being edited, and in profiles.... okay so there are actually a few new bits here
All the same I'd still rather wait the week and have some code that will check peoples OPTIONS when the new admin form is entered and be able to flag up a big WARNING if anything incompatible is found, and you know what I think I will make it a FATAL warning so they can't press SUBMIT and fry their work
Though actually I guess, most warning would be occurring as people have put something garbled in the file
e.g. [MENU] blah=hello would flag up a warning as the GUI system would not recognise "blah" as valid, but the fact is it isn't valid and so does need wiping. May be what I can do is make the forms show up a section for unrecognised bit, and make the system save them 
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| admin (no pm's please) |
That is rather better, it fails safe keeping all iffy options. Will leave me with a support task, but it might actually be educational to see what people have done wrong
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| admin (no pm's please) |
This morning changes to caching went in, no practical effect for anyone, but at least another bit of the jigsaw in place.
Work has started on the "EMAILER" portal, this will be very flexible in what it does, but will have a simple feature to prevent abuse by spammers. The emailer portal is not there for mass emailing people, but for users to initiate actions like providing feedback, or recommending friends to your site. Most forums or websites would be happy if this happened once or twice a day, spammers want to use facilities to send 1000's of emails. As such a simple counter can be kept of emails per day, setting a limit of 50 a day would be more than adequate for even the biggest site, whilst useless to a spammer. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
The Zaphod server is now live with all new and modified portal components. If this proves okay all servers will be updated with this tomorrow, and hence will get the EMAILER component.
The other modifications here are all about making the portal code compatible with the new GUI portal admin system that will go in Saturday. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Planning some last minute testing tomorrow morning, and then it is crunch time across all servers at once  has to be that way as there are server client changes and "domain level" changes and there is no point creating confusion.
One good thing is that at the minute of change over everyones XPROFILE and OPTIONS settings will be inherently backed up, as they are currently both in a database and on file. With the new system that link will be severed and the system will be file based only. But the old database copy will not be deleted. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
For better or worse the features are now deployed
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| Symon |
Will get HOWTODOIT changed as soon as i can then as all xranks and xprofile posts now have to be re written. 
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| admin (no pm's please) |
That's a lot of work but then again hopefully as it stands it is now more "self documenting".
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| archers-rest |
Mainmenu's goneWent to edit my mainmenu the new way added an option and a url and got this
And now my main menu has dissapeared Whats wrong, as I'm pretty sure I did nothing wrong |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Looks like a bug that may be fixed now
I can restore your old options if you want? |
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| archers-rest |
If you would please
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Looks like component type is ending up set to BLANK
I have set the menu component type to MENU rather than restoring your old settings. |
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| Wills |
Mine broke almost immediately
I did a small Search Type change on Latest & got this 
Click to see full size image I then went to Announcements, I then didn't change anything in announcements, but hit the update button & got the same result My portals on the forum look like this 
Click to see full size image |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
I have taken saving offline for a bit, till we get this solved. | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
I need the myff link to do a restore. I have taken archersrest file and have not managed to repeat the issue yet
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| Wills |
Do you mean this http://rulesofpoker.myfastforum.org/index.php
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| admin (no pm's please) |
restored the old settings. If you think you can simply repeat the issue let me know and I will enable saving for your forum.
I need to find exactly what causes this. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Saving reenabled for all, it may be sorted now. | ||||
| Wills |
OK, I did the same thing again
I deleted the comma separated list of Portal Forums from Options. Options now looks like this: 
Click to see full size image I then went to fader to test. I clicked on update portal parameters & I got this (below), when I go back in to fader it is as it originaly was. 
Click to see full size image I then went to Popular to test I clicked on update portal parameters & I got a similar message as above. When I go back into Popular it looks like this: 
Click to see full size image |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Okay i have reset you again and disabled saving for now.
Something is evidently causing issues, and best to look at this with a clear head in the morning. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Saving is back live.
Some missing options have been added. A bug fix has gone in. Some more error checking has been added which should encourage the system not to update if certain things look wrong. I apologize for the issues, but we are able to restore to where you were, and I hope people can appreciate that this is a much better way of doing things. It will just take a little time to ensure it all works like clockwork. |
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| Wills |
Totally agree with you admin & understand, & I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say No need to apologize m8, just keep up the good work 
I will go do some more testing & let you know of any probs my end |
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| Wills |
Mine is not saving any changes. I am not getting any error messages, its just when I go back into a portal after doing a change its back to the original settings | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
Thanks for that
In the last year, we have added: 1. Portals 2. xprofiles 3. portals that store information like the KARMA and COMMENT hacks and now the GUI frontend to the system. One this is working properly, then additional components will be able to plugin without effecting core code. e.g. new components may have bugs, but they will be isolated from the rest of your forums. This addresses a fundermental issue that exists in phpbb2 and phpbb3, add ons to these systems are hacks and not components
So whilst this is a bit painful in this final transition, we will I hope be sitting smugly in the next few weeks as we will be in a powerful position to expand what we offer in much safer ways than any other phpbb system can manage. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Can you be more specific, saving is enabled, and I just logged in as editor and added and then removed an option from your FADER and it did save. |
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| Wills |
I tried going in to ANNOUNCE & changed the search type, Filter or Portal Forums, none of it saved |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
I have just been doing that, and it seems to save the changes each time
I am in as editor on this link: http://my-local-poker.com/admin/index.php |
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| Wills |
Maybe it only works for editor? I have tried as Admin & as my Own login, whats the password for Editor I have never used it
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| Wills |
Its normal for me to be in on this url, same as the one you are on, but with lots of numbers after it http://my-local-poker.com/admin/i...a7e83f7a2ab......................
Just checking
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| admin (no pm's please) |
It won't be "editor" I am pretty sure of that.
Lets get back to basics. My sequence is: Admin/Portal settings click on announce enter 1 to "Portal Forums". click update portal parameters. At this point I can still see "1" in portal parameters. I then click on portal settings and announce again, and I can still see "1" in portal parameters. I also have the added advantage of being able to look at the generated file, and I can see it has been saved. |
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| Wills |
Im on URL http://my-local-poker.com/admin/i...=89d4e1afcd9a7e83f7a2ab0170c53ef2
I did the same: Admin/- 3. Styles/Portal settings Went in to ANNOUNCE Deleted '1' from 'Portal Forums' Clicked on Update Portal Parameters & was sent to the main Portal Settings screen with all the avatars on. Went back into ANNOUNCE & the 'Portal Forums' says '1'
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| archers-rest |
Just tried to make changes to my mainmenu and menu and they didnt save. I wish to use both menu and mainmenu | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
This is very odd, I have just been on archers-rest and a forum of mine and logged in as Liam/admin and made changes successfully. What browsers are you using? not that that should make a difference. |
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| Wills |
I'm on IE7 |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
That's the issue, when I try on IE7 it flips straight back to the icon screen. It should stay on the ANNOUNCE page.
No idea why as yet, but at least we have things repeating. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Not solved yet, but I am seeing now all the other issues that created problems. | ||||
| archers-rest |
Just to confirm im on ie7 also | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
solved
My blooper, a typo in a forms input field for the component type, was dealt with by firefox which is clever enough to guess what was meant, but not by ie7. The result of this would render just about all the portal stuff inoperable in ie7. |
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| archers-rest |
And its working for me now
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| archers-rest |
Its happening again |
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| Wills |
Well done Admin
Seems to be working well now
The only snag I see is that I cant delete the list of forums in OPTIONS, when updating I get Error: component name missing Then I'm shunted back to the main portal menu. When I go back in my changes are not saved. I'm thinking that for some reason this is meant to be, are we not supposed to delete the 'Portal Forums' in OPTIONS? |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
couple more fixes in.
caching and OPTIONS should be better now. |
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| Wills |
Yup...works ok now BTW This is a hundred times more user friendly. Changing what you show members at the click of a button is very useful. I can see that this is going to be a great tool for keeping your forum fresh
Plus having all of the portal options available in Admin makes evrything clear & saves a lot of time. Things here just keep getting better 
I'm now off to have a look at this emailer thingy, see if I can make a 'Contact' page
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Glad you like it
I hope now some people who have been having "hack" rejected for the last year, can now see more clearly why main forum hacks have not been being put in. We have been building towards this system which will have so much more potential than the messy "hacks" system. There will be a further pause of a few weeks for this system to get bedded in and stable, and then work will start on converting a lot of the desired hacks to the portal system. |
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| archers-rest |
Not sure if you missed my post admin, but the welcome panel is playing up as before |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
In my post after that I stated that cache had been altered which should have helped. Have you checked lately? | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
Actually you would not have seen the fix as cache settings were in your file and would have always stayed there. I have deleted them.
I think I need to make the code nobble cache settings when writing the file. Going to hold off on this just a little more though. |
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| archers-rest |
Whatever you did thanks
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Good
I do believe we are getting there. |
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| archers-rest |
You couldnt have another look at the welcome portal could you, it seems to be having 'cacheing issues'
Its not refreshing/updating anywhere near as much as it should, infact it lost half of its info, in an attempt to correct this I replaced all the code with Nicks original + a tweak or 2, I did this a good 15 mins ago and the changes still havnt taken effect |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Can you respecify the link we can see it on and where we are looking and what exactly for. | ||||
| archers-rest |
No probs, Ive confused myself the last day or two never mind anyone else
Welcome portal top of forum index page, seems to be taking about half an hour to refresh i.e time + post count changes. I know this is not one of your 'official' portals but you worked your magic on it last time
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| Nick(NR) |
just logged in and it's showing your details liam, I'm wondering if the macros for the welcome are cached? as I can't see any other reason why I'm seeing your info, unless it's already been stored? |
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| archers-rest |
Its playing its old tricks again, admin sorted it last time, and I dont know what he did so am unable to sort it myself
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Seems cache info was still getting written somehow, have done a bit more to stop this. | ||||
| archers-rest |
As ever Thank you
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