Comments (constructive) on the New Forum Software

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

REmembering is another problem, not just associated with all the problems, (Which we hope will soon be solved)

Deliberately omittred a space between the closing bracket, to see if the infernal emoji problem has been eliminated!

I live in the hope that before too long, the “new and improved” Forum will be as good as the old one (with all i’s shortcomings which were bearable)

Howard

 

[S K]

On S K Said:

Can we please remove the requirement to log in merely to see the “latest activity”? (Even then, having just given in and logged on, I was amazed at how nearly-unreadable the result looked, especially on a smaller screen.)

I appreciate the good intentions of the switch, but it can’t be sugar coated: the site’s readability and usability is now so awful that it’s just not worth the effort to visit.

 

 

I agree.  Latest Activity should be available to visitors and so this has been reported as a bug.   (The Latest Activity button is a work around, because the Latest Posts list was withdrawn for due to a performance bug.  Hopefully the real McCoy will be switched back on soon.)

Ditto the readability, also reported. The layout isn’t balanced.   I discovered the other day it works reasonably well on my small laptop’s screen, whilst it’s not good on a tablet, or on my workstation’s big screen.  Possibly designed on a small screen laptop and not fully tested on other form-factors.

Now I moderate with a big screen, except the browser window is sized roughly to small laptop size, and the content zoomed with ctrl+ and ctrl- for best effect.  Helps, but shouldn’t be necessary.

Dave

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Quick update on the point raised a page or two back about Google not finding the site. It was intentionally switched off when the problems with the server caused it to throw a wobbly with too much traffic but will hopefully be able to be turned back on when the server/speed situation has been sorted out.

“Latest Replies” is being worked on as I type.

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

Well, I just browsed the latest posts (activity) and responded to a post with a link and a picture knicked from Lathes.co.uk and edited it.   All very easy to do, can’t complain 🙂

Rod

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Just checking if I can reply yet

H

[Gareth Jones 9Participant @garethjones9]

I’ve just tried the latest activity button, after logging in as instructed.

 

It just tells me to login, even though I am.

 

So not fixed yet.

 

Thankyou to all the mods who are working to fix this site.

Gareth

[Gareth Jones 9]

On Gareth Jones 9 Said:

I’ve just tried the latest activity button, after logging in as instructed.

 

It just tells me to login, even though I am.

 

So not fixed yet.

 

Thankyou to all the mods who are working to fix this site.

Gareth

How annoying – still working for me two minutes ago!  Try pressing F5, a page refresh might restore order.  You’re not really logged out.

It’s an intermittent fault that I reported formally again yesterday.

Dave

 

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

Talking of logging in/out. I notice that the site logged me out overnight, haven’t noticed it doing that before.

John

[SillyOldDuffer]

On SillyOldDuffer Said:

On Gareth Jones 9 Said:

I’ve just tried the latest activity button, after logging in as instructed.

 

It just tells me to login, even though I am.

 

So not fixed yet.

 

Thankyou to all the mods who are working to fix this site.

Gareth

How annoying – still working for me two minutes ago!  Try pressing F5, a page refresh might restore order.  You’re not really logged out.

It’s an intermittent fault that I reported formally again yesterday.

Dave

 

See This Post, I found that I was actually logged out F5 didn’t help. Clearing cache & cookies did cure it.

Bill

[peak4]

On peak4 Said:

On SillyOldDuffer Said:

On Gareth Jones 9 Said:

I’ve just tried the latest activity button, after logging in as instructed.

 

It just tells me to login, even though I am.

 

So not fixed yet.

 

Thankyou to all the mods who are working to fix this site.

Gareth

How annoying – still working for me two minutes ago!  Try pressing F5, a page refresh might restore order.  You’re not really logged out.

It’s an intermittent fault that I reported formally again yesterday.

Dave

 

See This Post, I found that I was actually logged out F5 didn’t help. Clearing cache & cookies did cure it.

Bill

Clearing cookies probably didn’t cure it – just seemed to.

That the bug comes and goes intermittently and a screen refresh often  restores order temporarily, but not always, suggests to me that something behind the scenes is misbehaving.  A server side problem causing instability, not issues with the network or the member’s computer.

I think the intermittent failure of this and some other functions is related to the performance problem.   For example, if the server is busy when users make requests, new requests are put in a queue to be serviced later.  When a queue one becomes completely full, the oldest items are unceremoniously dumped.   At minimum, dumped requests annoy users.  Worse, a blown queue can leave the system itself in a confused state, causing further malfunction until, with luck, something else triggers a reset.  Such errors needn’t be caused by anything done by the victim: they are the result of other activity on the system; cause and effect aren’t directly related.

Queuing is just one example: similar issues are caused by insufficient memory, excessive network repeats, poor choice of algorithm/bad coding/wrong software, disc full, IO bandwidth exceeded, buffer and cache misconfiguration,  hardware faults such as cooling failure, low voltage, peripheral faults, loose plug/socket, incomplete tuning and others.

Very interesting from a computer techie point of view, except distracting us from Model Engineering and Workshopping is bad.

Dave

 

 

[Peter GreeneParticipant @petergreene36336]

Don’t know if anyone has mentioned this but apparently we can stay logged in on two (or more?) devices now.

A positive!

[Peter Greene]

On Peter Greene Said:

Don’t know if anyone has mentioned this but apparently we can stay logged in on two (or more?) devices now.

A positive!

As an aside, you can also log on with multiple browsers on the same device at the same time.
At the moment, I’m logged on with Opera, Chrome and Pale Moon browsers, all open simultaneously, but logged out with Firefox.
I know there isn’t much point in that most of the time, but I was using it for different sized screenshots over two monitors, as well as exploring the forced log-out when using the Latest Posts button.

Bill

[Mark EasingwoodParticipant @markeasingwood33578]

First, thanks to Jason, Dave and Colin for their efforts to make this, (these forums), usable, and they did warn us of problems when they were beta testing.

Secondly, after logging in for the first time on the new forum I, like others, notice my user name has a 5 digit number added to it. I could not log in with my user name, as I did not know about the added digits, something of a self-inflicted catch 22 situation, can’t log in/can’t find out what new user name is!! (I logged in with my email instead).

Does this mean that members who rely on their user name to log in, will no longer be able to?

Thirdly, when a thread from the old forum is found, any links to other threads, which are embedded within the replies, now just retun an error 404 page. Will these links ever be restored, or are they lost forever only to be found by further searching, if time and patience allow?

Mark.

[SillyOldDuffer]

On SillyOldDuffer Said:

Clearing cookies probably didn’t cure it – just seemed to.

 

Not to mention clearing cookies can give you all kinds of problems on other sites. If you really need to clear cookies from a site, get a cookie editor and do only that site.

[Peter Greene]

On Peter Greene Said:

Not to mention clearing cookies can give you all kinds of problems on other sites. If you really need to clear cookies from a site, get a cookie editor and do only that site.

Fairly easy in Opera, though they do move it around in different software builds

The interesting thing was that I could get other at least one othe rbrowser to work OK with the Latest Posts button, whilst Opera was still forcibly logging  me out; I think I tried Chrome and/or Pale Moon.
I’m not sure why only one of the browsers showed the problem.

[GazParticipant @gaz13336]

I really appreciate all the hard work that has gone into changing the site.

I’ve been really reluctant to use the site because I find it visually unappealing. The main forum page has changed to a clunky wall of adverts, with what seems like a tiny space allocated to the actual forum side, the colour scheme doesn’t work for me and I find the small light blue text on a white background difficult to read. While I appreciate, I could zoom in, but this is the only site that I have this trouble with so I won’t be doing that.

Hopefully it’ll improve but I really don’t see myself using the site in its present form.

[peak4]

On peak4 Said:

The interesting thing was that I could get other at least one othe rbrowser to work OK with the Latest Posts button, whilst Opera was still forcibly logging  me out

Don’t know Opera at all so I may be talking out of the wrong part of me, but that sounds rather like a basic Opera configuration issue.

Some thing like “log-out of sites when closing Opera – yes/no”

 

 

[Peter GreeneParticipant @petergreene36336]

Or come to think of it, when you log in, does Opera provide a “Remember me” check box?

[Peter Greene]

On Peter Greene Said:

On peak4 Said:

The interesting thing was that I could get other at least one othe rbrowser to work OK with the Latest Posts button, whilst Opera was still forcibly logging  me out

Don’t know Opera at all so I may be talking out of the wrong part of me, but that sounds rather like a basic Opera configuration issue.

Some thing like “log-out of sites when closing Opera – yes/no”

 

 

On Peter Greene Said:

Or come to think of it, when you log in, does Opera provide a “Remember me” check box?

Peter, Dave ( @sillyoldduffer ), these comments link back to an earlier post of mine in discussion with Dave, containing the line “Clearing cookies probably didn’t cure it – just seemed to.”

Dave, To a certain extent, I do understand what you mean about the problem being caused by a server side issue, but I don’t think I explained what I meant with enough clarity.
When I had, what looked like, the forced log-out issue, it was continuous once it started but only occurred with one browser.
In this case it happened to be Opera, but I’m not sure if that’s relevant directly.
I had Opera open on one monitor, and a different browser open on the other, on the same PC, at the same time; I can’t remember which, but for sake of this discussion, Pale Moon.

Opera appeared to force log me out whenever I hit Latest posts; it didn’t just say that I needed to be logged in to use the facility. I could log in again and still be forced out. The log-in/out link on the green bar showed me as logged out, I couldn’t use the blue button, see my own profile, or post a reply; F5 didn’t change anything.
Either the forum, or Opera certainly saw me as logged out.

Simultaneously, on the other monitor, I had full functionality on a different browser; I could log in, or out and the button worked OK.

Reverting back to Opera, without opening or closing the browser, still exhibited the same fault, but I could swap back to the Pale Moon window and all was peaceful and light. 🙂

Opera, and my other browsers, are set to retain cookies etc when closing, and I normally have the equivalent of a “Remember Me” box ticked.

Other users have reported this Blue Button/Logout issue over a prolonged period, e.g. Keith and Tony, dissuading them from using the forum for obvious reasons.
Others find the problem goes away, and it seems unpredictable.

I’ve not managed to replicate the problem over a number of days, but when present, it was fully repeatable.

If the members who still have the problem use only one browser, and it’s set to retain cookies etc when closing down, then maybe the problem carries on for them between sessions.
Other folk who have their browser(s) set to clear cookies on shutdown, find the issue self curing.

I wonder if when the forum briefly throws a wobbler, it sends a cookie, or something else, to the browser which causes the repeatable forced log-off.
Server then immediately settles down, which is why I could use a different browser straight away, but the glitch remained in the infected browser (Opera in my case), and was repeatable, even though Pale Moon was still working.

Closing/re-opening Opera would make no difference, as it’s set to remember the last session and retain all the site details.
Re-booting the PC made no difference, again Opera was set to retain cookies, logins etc.
Clearing cache and cookies from Opera for this site only, cured the problem.
The issue didn’t occur with a different browser at the same time on the same PC.
The issue also didn’t occur on my phone, whilst it was still exhibiting in Opera on the PC.

Bill

[Peter GreeneParticipant @petergreene36336]

Bill, I’m not sure that simply retaining cookies on shut-down is enough. That will retain a site’s general navigation cookies, preferences etc.

But retaining log-on cookies is a potential security issue in some situations (e.g. office computer) and I believe the browser treats them differently (and deleting them by default unless you tell it otherwise). Not to mention that some sites themselves may not allow you to retain their log-on cookie no matter what you tell the browser (doesn’t seem to be an issue here though).

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Excuse my naivety,  but can someone please explain what purpose this ‘cloud’ of Tags serves,  and how it should be used.

MichaelG.

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[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

My guess for the tags is for search engines used on the internet to connect to for the person searching any of the topics included in the tags,  bringing them to the ME Forum for some shock treatment.

Emgee

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Whoever brought all the “features” and “Workshop” articles, etc over thought it a good idea to add tags to them all. Waste of time in my opinion.

Does not help that they don’t have a clue about the subjects or are totally inconsistent as clicking something like “CAD” does not bring up the Alibre articles

On the plus side it does reduce the amount of “white space”

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

…

On the plus side it does reduce the amount of “white space”

Thanks, Jason

I suppose in a “least ugly competition” it would be the clear winner, when you look at the options.

MichaelG.

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

The ‘Tag Cloud’ is a WordPress widget. Tags would normally be applied to articles as you write them and if done sparingly and sensibly can make for a useful indexing feature. You can also list the tags rather than have the software generate a ‘cloud’. The cloud makes the text larger the more a ‘Tag’ is used. It is fairly pointless unless a clearly defined subject is consistently tagged. Trying to retro tag the whole forum would I think be impossible.

The tag cloud widget would normally appear in the sidebar of a WordPress blog or website.

John

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