Webmaster's Blog

[soljan]

Hi Jock, nah he threw a tantrum over what he considered was bad management, I would say theres an opening for someone to pick up and actually make something of it, youve got my support and commitment if you want to take it on

[EssDub]

I'm posting here so I can say i have the last post on all the forums before i go hit the sack

[flying_wedge]

I've found the "persistent Logins" issue an utter P.I.T.A. but I THINK I have finally sorted it.

Not sure if it's been something you've been looking into, but this seems to be working for me now! Not sure if it was an issue or not, or just my PC.

Cheers and thanks!

[mickeyduck]

I've found the "persistent Logins" issue an utter P.I.T.A. but I THINK I have finally sorted it.

Not sure if it's been something you've been looking into, but this seems to be working for me now! Not sure if it was an issue or not, or just my PC.

Cheers and thanks!

Yeah Mark, at long last I figured it out. There was a setting in php's config file (php.ini) that governs whether php pays attention to cookies with a request. Anyway, once I added a "C" in to things, presto phpBB manages to actually keep track of your logged in session.

Once again it's taken a gazillion tons of Googling to find the actual problem (whereas most results merely point to phpBB configuration stuff which actually turned out to be insufficient to effect the fix).

So finally, if you click a link on the forum it keeps you logged in and happily goes to that linked item, instead of taking you to a log in prompt.

YAY...!

And thanks for your "thanks".

[JasonFriday13]

I didn't click on links much but I did notice that I had to login again on a new tab/window. Wasn't a big issue for me, thanks for fixing it .

[mickeyduck]

I have today figured out an easy way to embed Google Maps into the forum. Next I hope to sort us with an easy to use image gallery as posting pics is landing in the too hard basket for too many folk and there's a horrible tendency for images to end up in Facebook instead, which has really been hurting the forum and detracting from its richness. Understandable but sad so I hope to correct it.

I need to take a day out to write up a bit of a "How To" for this forum too yet...

[mickeyduck]

Finally figued out how to get the group member list working so we can see the members of groups. Funny how things can get broken doing an update or something and it can take yonks to figure out how to fix...

[JasonFriday13]

*thumbs up* I remember telling you about this yonks ago, awesome you found the problem.

[mickeyduck]

I have today started work on integrating Coppermine photo gallery into the forum. When I get it happening it may turn out to be one of the best things that's happened here in aeons...

[mickeyduck]

OK, I've just deployed the Gallery. This should be interesting...

Button to get to it is top right next to FAQ button.

Login is integrated.

[Benckj]

Nice. Not quite sure what to do with it just yet but good to see some forum improvements.

[mickeyduck]

Just to say that as time has passed since the upgrade to phpBB3, we're now finding the number of spam bot registrations has crept right up there again which is wasting an increasing amount of time where processing new forum registrations is concerned. So I'm getting increasingly close to upgrading the system to the latest version of phpBB3 which has better anti-bot stuff built in to it. PLUS it has a much more user-friendly CAPTCHA...

Anyway I guess the trick will be to try to do the upgrade without breaking various mods, the Gallery integration etc (cos those kinda things usually do get broken).

First though I want to take a fresh look at the SEO friendly URL angle cos I want to be able to say things like "Go to mr2.org.nz/events"

Anyhooooo......

[mickeyduck]

OK, I've just upgraded the forum to phpBB3.10 which seems (and I do stress that word) to have gone ok...

Let me know if you spot a breakage (PM me please!)

Hopefully that manages to knock back on the bogus bot registrations a bit. Plus (and this is the best bit) if you forget your password it'll be much easier to get thru the anti-bot measures because you'll no longer be faced with an impossibly hard to read CAPTCHA. Instead you'll be asked a simple question.

I've also added in a different question on the initial registration form and it not only serves as an anti-bot measure but also as a bit of an IQ test...

Anyway - SEO and human friendly URL's is next on the list.

[mickeyduck]

OK just been informed "View active topics" may be broken. Bah...

It does seem to list stuff but only "announcements" perhaps?

Maybe best to use "View recent posts" instead, for the moment?

[mickeyduck]

Just had Telecom in here at work, doubled the speed of the fibre Internet connection so we had a wee outage, but in theory this forum might be twice as fast now too, at least where page load times are concerned... Although if you are uploading to it (photos etc) it'll still be the cruddy upload speed of your home ADSL connection that'll be the limiting factor. Nothing I can do to change that, sadly...