Forum migration

[nrc]

As noted in the announcement, on Friday night I'll be moving the forum and updating it to the latest update of vBulletin 4. There shouldn't be much in the way of obvious changes around that but it gets us all the current bug/security fixes and onto a supportable release.

I was able to run through the migration on a test server and it went smoothly so I'm hoping that the down time should be minimal. There are a few things like email notifications that I can't test so those may take some time to get cleaned up.

I am going to drop Tapatalk support from the forum in this process. Apologies to anyone who is still using it but it's way out of date and I really dislike the direction that Tapatalk has taken. They are trying to co-opt and monetize forum traffic that they had nothing to do with creating.

I realize that the site is limited on mobile devices so once I get the things on a manageable platform I can look at options for further upgrades and improvements to the mobile experience.

[TravelGal]

As noted in the announcement, on Friday night I'll be moving the forum and updating it to the latest update of vBulletin 4. There shouldn't be much in the way of obvious changes around that but it gets us all the current bug/security fixes and onto a supportable release.

I was able to run through the migration on a test server and it went smoothly so I'm hoping that the down time should be minimal. There are a few things like email notifications that I can't test so those may take some time to get cleaned up.

I am going to drop Tapatalk support from the forum in this process. Apologies to anyone who is still using it but it's way out of date and I really dislike the direction that Tapatalk has taken. They are trying to co-opt and monetize forum traffic that they had nothing to do with creating.

I realize that the site is limited on mobile devices so once I get the things on a manageable platform I can look at options for further upgrades and improvements to the mobile experience.

:thumbup::thumbup: All good. :)

[WickerBill]

Awesome, boss.

[nrc]

Welcome to the cloud. Off Camber is now hovering around somewhere in the Ohio AWS region along with your last Amazon order for underpants and shoe laces. Jeff Bezos ensures me that our data is private but for all I know he's cross-referencing your forum posts with your Ring security camera video right now.

As mentioned, we're on the latest supported version of vBulletin 4. That means no significant changes from your side but everything on the back end is now on supported versions and has upgrade paths when it comes to that.

The only problem I've seen is that some posts that contain special characters are not rendering correctly. They appear correct in the database so it's a matter of figuring out what I need to tweak in the app.

If you see problems, please let me know.

[SteveH]

Thank you Richard

[TravelGal]

Just put it through its paces and all seems good from this side of the screen.

[nrc]

Thanks all.

I do have one report that the email for recovering a password is not getting through. I'm looking into it. I did test that but my email domain is friendly with offcamber.net so maybe it's a problem getting to other domains.

I've update our 'SPF' record which announces permitted senders for offcamber.net to the world. Still testing.

If you're stuck outside looking in please let me know through the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of the page.

Thanks,
Richard

[nrc]

This should be resolved now. I'm moving multiple things around and I broke the email after I tested it. I was able to reset a password on a test account with a Gmail address with no problem.

Again, if anyone is locked out please use the contact us link at the bottom to let us know.

BTW, all existing passwords came over in the move so accounts should work as-is. Some password managers may not recognize the site because I switched it to secure HTTP in the process.

[WickerBill]

I'm having an issue.

When I used to visit the main forum page, that counted as a visit, and all forums would be marked "read" the next time I logged on. Now, it *seems* - although I haven't done the appropriate research - that if I don't visit a specific forum, it's light will stay on even if there hasn't been a new post in there in days... until I actually click on the forum (for example, open wheel).

Known, expected behavior?

[TravelGal]

I wouldn't know because I tend to click on everything anyway to see what people are saying. Hmmm, I'll note for the future. Someone post in Microsoft vs Apple or whatever that thread it. I almost never look there. LOL.

[nrc]

Hrm. My impression was that it kept each forum marked as unread until you actually visit the forum. Forum settings should have carried over but I'll have a look to see if there are related settings.

[TravelGal]

Thank you SteveH for posting in the Apple and Microsoft thread to kick off the experiment. Next, thanks to nrc for replying about the electric car fires. That made two threads in one forum. I can report that Community is still marked as "unread" since I only clicked on the thread about the car fires and not the Apple and Microsoft one. That means you have to click on every thread with a new post within a forum to make the applicable forum name grey out.

What was the question? :laugh:

[WickerBill]

Thank you SteveH for posting in the Apple and Microsoft thread to kick off the experiment. Next, thanks to nrc for replying about the electric car fires. That made two threads in one forum. I can report that Community is still marked as "unread" since I only clicked on the thread about the car fires and not the Apple and Microsoft one. That means you have to click on every thread with a new post within a forum to make the applicable forum name grey out.

What was the question? :laugh:


Yeah, I'm 399% sure it wasn't that way before. If I even grazed the main forum landing page, it counted as a visit, and 30 minutes later, everything was marked as read.


I'm not even saying this way is worse... it's just not the same as it was, and I'm old, so it's difficult for me. ;)

[nrc]

Yeah, I'm 399% sure it wasn't that way before. If I even grazed the main forum landing page, it counted as a visit, and 30 minutes later, everything was marked as read.


I'm not even saying this way is worse... it's just not the same as it was, and I'm old, so it's difficult for me. ;)

You have to understand that technology is always changing. Learning to anticipate and manage these disruptive technology changes is something you're going to have to get used to. :gomer:

I think I figured out what changed. In one of the later updates to vBulletin they eliminated the option of tracking read forums with cookies and switched to tracking it in the database. I'm pretty sure it was set to cookies before. The only option now is how many days to track read threads in the database. That's set to the default of 10.

I'm not sure why they didn't offer an option to keep the old behavior but from reading some forum responses they seem to consider the current behavior 'correct'.

Strangely, when I look at their documentation for vBulletin 5, it still has the cookie option. :confused: Maybe cutting complexity for maintaining the older versions?

[WickerBill]

Okay - that's cool - I can adjust. If I can adjust to Microsoft Word getting feature updates every month...

There's a Forum Action at the top to mark the forums read, and I'll just start using it.

[TravelGal]

The only option now is how many days to track read threads in the database. That's set to the default of 10.

10 days? I barely start unpacking my suitcase in 10 days when I'm away. So, um, does this mean, after 10 days everything will show as read, even if it's not? As WB says, I can adjust. Just wondering.

[nrc]

10 days? I barely start unpacking my suitcase in 10 days when I'm away. So, um, does this mean, after 10 days everything will show as read, even if it's not? As WB says, I can adjust. Just wondering.

Yes, that's how I understand it. We'll go with this setting for a now since they seemed to think it was roughly equivalent to how long it took cookies to "forget". If it causes you problems please let me know and we can adjust it.

[TravelGal]

Yes, that's how I understand it. We'll go with this setting for a now since they seemed to think it was roughly equivalent to how long it took cookies to "forget". If it causes you problems please let me know and we can adjust it.

Cookies forget in 10 days? They've got me beat by 9 days, 23 hours, and 50 minutes.