Comments (constructive) on the New Forum Software

[Stuart Smith 5Participant @stuartsmith5]

I now need to log in to see ‘Latest Activity’. I could view without logging in before yesterday. When I then log in, and try again it logs me out. When I log in again it works!

Very strange.

Stuart

[Speedy Builder5]

On Speedy Builder5 Said:

Just logged in under Google Chrome and the response is much faster -but great confusion as it says I am logged in as Speedy Builder 5, but that I must log in to see Forum items – perhaps my cache needs clearing ??

I’ve not proved any one Browser works reliably faster than another.   (Tried Edge, Firefox, Chrome, & Opera.)

Though an ad-blocker helps, the poor performance is due to something adrift at the server end such as a poorly written or misconfigured plug-in.  Perhaps several – there are lots of them.   An example might be a plug-in that finds a members profile by reading all the accounts from A to Z until the right one is found.  Simple scanning is easy to code and plenty fast enough for up to a few hundred accounts, but degrades exponentially as the list grows.   A plug-in doing serial scans would hammer a server supporting a forum with nearly 44000 users! There are much more efficient ways of searching huge lists, but writing the code is more work for the programmer, who may not realise his pride and joy will be used by a big site.  Another possibility is a plug-in that lackadaisically locks a resource to apply an update and thus forces several others to queue,  or they’re told to try again later.

An advantage of plug-ins is that developers don’t need to know how they work – mostly!  The disadvantage of black boxes is they are hard to diagnose when they go wrong, especially when they cause performance problems.

The misbehaving login issue has been formally reported on Backlog: might be browser cache, or a server refresh quirk; I don’t know.  Usually put right by pressing F5 (Refresh).

One of the things making bug reporting hard work is I spent half-an hour finding and explaining login example that the developer can replicate. (I hope!!!)  Repeatable bugs are much easier for developers to find and fix reliably, and because hardly any detective work is needed.     Intermittent bugs are nasty because quite simple mistakes can take forever to find, needing forensic tools, imagination and flashes of insight.   The login bug might be intermittent.  Fingers crossed, it will be quietly fixed soon: I find it quite annoying!

Dave

 

[Stuart Smith 5Participant @stuartsmith5]

Following my last post, when I went back to look again at Latest Activity, I had been logged out. But when I clicked on Log In, I was back logged in without having to put my login details in.

Now I can’t get the Latest Activity button to work. It just keeps sending me round a ‘you need to login ‘ circle.

I am viewing on my iPad using Safari.

Stuart

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Given that there are so many Registered Users of this forum, it is interesting to see how few are active at the moment.

Unless it is commercially confidential, it might be informative  to also have the number of  ‘logged-in’ members displayed here:

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I have no evidence; but I do wonder how much [potentially futile] effort has gone into processing the details of long-departed members … and whether their very presence in the database is slowing things down.

MichaelG.

[Stuart Smith 5Participant @stuartsmith5]

Michael

I wondered that.

48000 seems a very high number – as you say it could well be everyone who has registered since the beginning of the original forum.

If this figure is accurate, perhaps it could be filtered so that anyone who hasn’t logged in for say 12 months is removed and asked to re register if they still want to use the site.

I suppose this might not be possible as all their old posts would probably disappear as well.

just a thought.

Stuart

[SillyOldDuffer]

On SillyOldDuffer Said:

I’ve not proved any one Browser works reliably faster than another.   (Tried Edge, Firefox, Chrome, & Opera.)

Though an ad-blocker helps, the poor performance is due to something adrift at the server end such as a poorly written or misconfigured plug-in.  Perhaps several – there are lots of them.   An example might be a plug-in that finds a members profile by reading all the accounts from A to Z until the right one is found.  Simple scanning is easy to code and plenty fast enough for up to a few hundred accounts, but degrades exponentially as the list grows.   —————————

Dave

 

Dave, this is something I was alluding to a day or so, when I mentioned looking at other members’ profiles, and specifically, Topics Started, Replies Created, and Engagements.

I’ve just tried that with a new member, who obviously has had little input to the forum thus far.
Topics Started, & Replies Created, gave an almost immediate result, a screen refresh in a second or two.
Engagements took 11 seconds for the same single reply result.

When I tried Jason’s profile activities a couple of days ago, I thought that it wasn’t working at all, as each of those three tabs on his profile took several minutes to resolve a result, though it did appear eventually; clearly he’s a long standing member with a very active account, so much more data to compile.
I’ve just tried again now, and it only took about 12 seconds for each list to appear, so maybe after first instigation, the forum keeps an updateable/running result for each member.

Also re. the TEMPORARY “Latest Activities” button; when pressing that, it takes up to 20-30 seconds to refresh the screen with the results; presumably as each time you press it, it has to scan the forum for recent activity, rather than keeping a running fixed length log, like first-in-first-out.
Similarly, after pressing it, and then using the browser’s back button, keyboard or mouse shortcut, the delay is similar, as it’s like just pressing the button again.

This might be one thing which is causing members’ frustration with a slow response time.

However, if you ignore the blue button completely, and access the forum(s) directly, clicking on a post or topic returns a result in 1-4 seconds at the time I tested it (about 11.15 26/10/23)

Moving from page 1 to 2, or switching between pages in a single topic, generally takes a little longer than accessing the first page (not necessarily Page 1), as far as I can tell using a stopwatch, but it’s only marginal, so may depend on server activity elsewhere.

Michael raises a relevant point regarding scanning dormant accounts; Tug’s new account is AT ramonwilson3, but I accidentally found there is another AT ramonwilson1 account.
I’ve had to spell out @ as AT, since adding the symbol might have rsolved to a hyperlink to his account, generating a probably unwanted notification and email.

p.s. I’ve also tried different browsers, and they all seem to work at the same speed.
The only difference seems to be how hard each browser is working, memory wise, as each one had a different number of open active tabs.

Out of interest, in a different open tab in Opera, I’ve used my keyboard back button several times to get back to the “Introduce Yourself ” forum, so I could try and duplicate the results for someone else with a know low post count.
Where the back button took me to a page which was related to a Recent Activity Blue Button page, a screen refresh took up to 30 seconds+
As soon as I got before that, return results were in the order of a second or two, including accessing his Topics Started, & Replies Created tabs; one and zero results.
Engaements still took 10+ seconds ro resolve the same single result.

Bill

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I think they did screen the number of members that were brought over as the old system was showing over 100,000.

[SillyOldDuffer]

On SillyOldDuffer Said:

An example might be a plug-in that finds a members profile by reading all the accounts from A to Z until the right one is found.  Simple scanning is easy to code and plenty fast enough for up to a few hundred accounts, but degrades exponentially as the list grows.   A plug-in doing serial scans would hammer a server supporting a forum with nearly 44000 users! There are much more efficient ways of searching huge lists, but writing the code is more work for the programmer, who may not realise his pride and joy will be used by a big site.  Another possibility is a plug-in that lackadaisically locks a resource to apply an update and thus forces several others to queue,  or they’re told to try again later.

 

Umm, such scanning is trivial in a correctly configured relational database, connections to which are standard in all dedicated forum software and there should be no need to code anything. The database performance levels required for this site would be not much above the latest Raspberry Pi level!

[alan ord 2Participant @alanord2]

I have to say I do NOT like this new format. Much prefer the old format. Can’t find my albums from the old format and will have to reintroduce my avatar.

Previously I would jump on the forum every night for a few hours, now I don,t bother.

Alan.

[Mark Rand]

On Mark Rand Said:

On SillyOldDuffer Said:

An example might be a plug-in that finds a members profile by reading all the accounts from A to Z until the right one is found.  Simple scanning is easy to code and plenty fast enough for up to a few hundred accounts, but degrades exponentially as the list grows.   A plug-in doing serial scans would hammer a server supporting a forum with nearly 44000 users! There are much more efficient ways of searching huge lists, but writing the code is more work for the programmer, who may not realise his pride and joy will be used by a big site.  Another possibility is a plug-in that lackadaisically locks a resource to apply an update and thus forces several others to queue,  or they’re told to try again later.

 

Umm, such scanning is trivial in a correctly configured relational database, connections to which are standard in all dedicated forum software and there should be no need to code anything. The database performance levels required for this site would be not much above the latest Raspberry Pi level!

Mark, that is a sobering thought for whoever in the Morton’s management chose to upgrade the website/forum software by creating bespoke solution.

Ian P

[alan ord 2]

On alan ord 2 Said:

I have to say I do NOT like this new format. Much prefer the old format. Can’t find my albums from the old format and will have to reintroduce my avatar.

Previously I would jump on the forum every night for a few hours, now I don,t bother.

Alan.

Ditto (to not bothering and losing interest)

Ian P

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

you can tell by the number of postings how successful and how easy the new forum is just look back and see a weeks activity 6 months ago compared to now. difficult to negotiate and desperately SLOOOOW

[mgnbukParticipant @mgnbuk]

As with most posters I am not having a great experience here at the moment, though I can see that changes have been made since the initial launch.

I had to request a password reset to get back in, but have not had problems logging in after that. The Captcha thing is another hurdle, though at least the awful Cloudfare (sp ?) thing is now gone. Everything is very slow, though, (I have 350 Meg cable broadband, so don’t think it is that) with typical response times of 5 – 20 seconds from clicking on a heading or hitting the “back” key to getting something to happen.

I found the site almost unusable without an ad blocker and, although the message panes appear to have been toned down compared to launch day, the overall bright white background is still harsh on the eyes & tiring.

I am also another who used the “Latest posts” feature almost exclusively to navigate the old site & find it very difficult to find threads in the indvidual sections here. I have managed to track one down from a pre-site-update thread to post a reply (which was easy enough to do once I had found the thread) but it was a pain to find it.

I appreciate that the “activity” button is a temporary fudge, but in it’s current form it isn’t much use as it doesn’t have enough entries and is really sluggish (that is reliably 20 seconds after clicking to get a a page change). And why now do I need to be logged in to use it ? Is the “activity” list some sort of secret not available to “outsiders” ?

Hopefully things will continue to improve and quickly – it would be a shame for the new site to alienate users to the point that they stopped posting.

Nigel B.

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

my constructive comment is to follow the PM and ditch what is gradually turning into a waste of effort – there’s little point i see in swimming in treacle on this web site whilst getting to see if anything of interest has turned up, with extremely annoying adverts flashing at one (till I killed all images) – if it is intended merely as an advertising site why bother with the rest.

Any way maybe you could take it off line until current crop of ‘bugs’/’features’ are sorted out – I’m guessing that a planB fall back to old site was never in the management plan

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Here’s a nightmare-inducing thought for you, Frances …

Just imagine this elegant understated building, with all its windows replaced by LED  advertising panels:

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MichaelG.

[TomfileryParticipant @tomfilery]

I’m getting more and more frustrated with this forum.  I’m told I must log in to see latest activity, then when I do so, I am not taken to latest activity, but am given a list of the topic sections (note; NOT the actual threads) where those postings occurred – oh, and  am then told to login again!

Frankly, I can’t be bothered with this.  I don’t know which “wizz kid” developed the site, but (particularly given our demographics) they didn’t do a good job!

Regards Tom

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

Here’s a nightmare-inducing thought for you, Frances …

Just imagine this elegant understated building, with all its windows replaced by LED  advertising panels:

.

.

MichaelG.

On Frances IoM Said:

my constructive comment is to follow the PM and ditch what is gradually turning into a waste of effort – there’s little point i see in swimming in treacle on this web site whilst getting to see if anything of interest has turned up, with extremely annoying adverts flashing at one (till I killed all images) – if it is intended merely as an advertising site why bother with the rest.

Any way maybe you could take it off line until current crop of ‘bugs’/’features’ are sorted out – I’m guessing that a planB fall back to old site was never in the management plan

On Frances IoM Said:

my constructive comment is to follow the PM and ditch what is gradually turning into a waste of effort – there’s little point i see in swimming in treacle on this web site whilst getting to see if anything of interest has turned up, with extremely annoying adverts flashing at one (till I killed all images) – if it is intended merely as an advertising site why bother with the rest.

Any way maybe you could take it off line until current crop of ‘bugs’/’features’ are sorted out – I’m guessing that a planB fall back to old site was never in the management plan

Rather that take it offline it might be best if there was a very visible statement from Morton’s on home page, it needs to be at least as a prominent as the adverts. The statement could explain and/or apologise for the problems users are experiencing and ask nicely for their patience.

I see lots of posts from moderators, have I missed ones from the developers?

Ian P

 

[Ian PParticipant @ianp]

I liked Michael’s post with the picture of Morton’s building but how did it turn up in my post when I ‘quoted’ the post from Frances?

I tried to edit my post but cannot find the edit button, maybe its one of the unfixed problems but I dont fancy trawling through to see if its already been mentioned.

Ian P

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Ian P see my comment here, still nothing

[Ian P]

On Ian P Said:

I liked Michael’s post with the picture of Morton’s building but how did it turn up in my post when I ‘quoted’ the post from Frances?

I tried to edit my post but cannot find the edit button, maybe its one of the unfixed problems but I dont fancy trawling through to see if its already been mentioned.

Ian P

It’s possible to Multi-Quote, two different post in your reply.
I only found out accidentally; it you press quote from the top line of more than one post, each of them will be included in your reply

I’m about to come back and edit this post in a moment for the next screenshot
Edit-
I can now edit my post using the extra option which only appeared after my reply, and which can only be seen by the person replying; me in this case, which is why you won’t see it on any other forum posts

Note, that you can only edit your post for about ½ hour after posting, though I’m not sure if that’s after the initial reply or the previous edit.

A log of edits shows below the post, so folk can see you’ve changed something, but can be toggled on and off.
Personally I’m in favour of leaving it on for major edits, but unticking for correction of minor spelling mistakes etc.

I’m not sure there has ever been a “Like” button, either on the old forum or this one.
As I recall it was discussed, but objections were raised as it was felt that this forum isn’t the sort of social media where people post for “likes”

The 30 minute limit is explained HERE, and the “EDIT” option will no longer be visible above your post either.

Bill

[Ian P]

On Ian P Said:

I liked Michael’s post with the picture of Morton’s building but how did it turn up in my post when I ‘quoted’ the post from Frances?

I tried to edit my post but cannot find the edit button, maybe its one of the unfixed problems but I dont fancy trawling through to see if its already been mentioned.

Ian P

Hi Ian, there are currently 50 issues logged, although a significant proportion of these have been addressed. I have seen many changes over the last week or so.

Edit is only available for 30 minutes after posting.

Neil

[Peter GreeneParticipant @petergreene36336]

The <Active Topics> listing that I see covers the latest 10 posts. Couldn’t that be extended (preferably with the addition of a <More> button)?

If you’re not in the Greenwich Zone, you can miss an awful lot of posts/topics that way and are then forced to dig for them in the <Forums> listings.

(On the old site, I could scroll down to the last day/time I was on and work upwards from there. Oh please bring back the one-line per Active Topic format!)

[John PurdyParticipant @johnpurdy78347]

Whenever I click on “Forums” or on any entry when in Forums I get this screen come up for a couple of seconds before the screen I want comes up. It only happens on “Forums”, if I click on anything anywhere else on the site It goes directly to that screen. It happens on both my computers so is not just this one.   Any Ideas???

[Neil Wyatt]

On Neil Wyatt Said:

On Ian P Said:

I liked Michael’s post with the picture of Morton’s building but how did it turn up in my post when I ‘quoted’ the post from Frances?

I tried to edit my post but cannot find the edit button, maybe its one of the unfixed problems but I dont fancy trawling through to see if its already been mentioned.

Ian P

Hi Ian, there are currently 50 issues logged, although a significant proportion of these have been addressed. I have seen many changes over the last week or so.

Edit is only available for 30 minutes after posting.

Neil

Well 52 on the current reporting system, 100+ unresolved on the old system, 100s of emails and what is on the forum (600 replies +). There will obviously be duplicates but a lot more than 50 problems.

Of the ones marked Resolved there is debate a sto who should say if an item is resolved, would be nice if those doing the majority of bug reporting were included in the final signing off a sit is possibly only half of the 52.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Now that threads are called topics … I was having great difficulty trying to see how to create a new one.

[ probably blinded by the pale blue on white ‘theme’ … but it should be easy ]

So let’s just put this here instead:

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/

…. hopefully that’s just a direct link to the RS site, stripped of all the tracking details that were in the ‘button’ on their eMail

MichaelG.

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