Chile Forum

Charles I tried to log on but was unable. Do I need to register again ?

Thanks inadvance .........

murf, your user name and password should work exactly the same as on this forum.

You do not need to create a new account. If we can nail down that you are really not able to log in to the forum, then this would be a very serious concern. Can you give it a go again, and I will look at the system logs to see what is up.

That would be my worse nightmare I think with the conversion, loosing users profiles in the transfer. So, this one is going under the microscope.

Also, why I ask everyone please, please, please test, test, test. Don't worry about breaking it. In fact, I ask that you do your best to break the new forum.

Yes, there will be a live chat feature. It is already built in to the forum, I just want to get fully settled and make sure I got other bugs and such sorted out before turning on that. Chat features are very server intensive, and big security risks. So, I just want to make sure I got everything else tight before I have to trouble shoot the chat room feature.

Well, time frame. I was going to rush it and turn it on today, but then I decided I better wait a little bit to make sure. I am leaving for a short trip to the United States on Monday. I will be back in about 10 days, and then I will turn the new forum on. I will be on and off the net for long periods on this trip. Not a good time to go live with a new system.

I also have another reason. This phpbb3 system just went to stable release. I know from experience that what happens with open source projects like this is that thousands of forums upgrade, and then millions of errors and problems are found out in the wild and they quickly release a second 3.1 version fixing them all. This is simply the method of open source programing. Release, and release often.

Even though they tested way beyond most software while in development, there is nothing like being in the wild to really shake down software bugs and security holes. I figure by the time I get back, a lot of those issues will be known and fixed.

To the credit of the phpbb team, they spent something like 4-5 years developing the system and did 8 release candidates. It is a very tight, well tested piece of script.

I am also kind of waiting for some of the addon modules to be completed and released. If not, I am going to adapt the modules from the this forum, to the new one. Not a big deal, but still takes some time. I have some customized security modules I kind of like here, and I might adapt those to the new forum. They have really done a killer job of killing spam, so I don't want to leave the little guys behind. Which means I need some time to get up to speed on the entire code base for the new phpbb3 system.

So, bla, bla, bla, when are you turning on the new forum? It will likely be the 1st of the month, unless I get a lot of downtime while I am in the States ().

Charles I'm having no luck logging. I sent you a pm.

Thanks...

Now I get this........

"It was not possible to convert your password when updating this bulletin board’s software. Please request a new password. If you continue to have problems please contact the Board Administrator."

That is an interesting new message. Did you get that in an email, or the board gave that to you when logging in.

This is all really helpful murf.

I want to make sure we are not going to have like 150 members that can not log on once we switch over for real. It might be worthy of a bug report to phpbb project if I can document it a little bit, and find the offending code.

You see, you don't need to be a super computer hacker to participate in open source software projects. Average users, report average problems, leading to above average software.

Summary of what I did and the steps I took when trying to log on to new fourm.

I belive the message in my last post was the first response I received when I first attemped to log on, so I therefore assumed that I had an incorrect password. At this stage I posted a question on the old forum about the necessity to reregister.
I then clicked or the "forgot password" function (as I am automatcially logged on with this computer and have forgotten the original password) I recieved a new password and attempted to log in to the new forum.
At this stage I was informed that as I had attemped too many times to log on incorrectly I would need to add the incripted letters and words (all of which are very hard to read).I completed this request and again got the above message.
Hope this helps.

I have confirmed that murf's problem is a known bug in the converter. There is a patch for it. I also found a couple of other bugs along the way. So, good thing I did not just jump off the cliff and convert or the Chile Forum would be a mess right now.

I am definitely going to wait until I get back from my trip to the States, and can do a lot more testing and tweaking. Again, I expect by that point lots and lots of issues will be known and fixed, so it is good all the way around.

I still encourage everyone that can to test the new forum board, and report any problems in the mean time.

The older I get, and the more software I break, the more conservative I get about just jumping in to upgrades. Don't ever do anything with a computer, until you are sure that you can undo it. That is, always have backups and plans to trace your steps backwards to your last working state.

I am back now, and going to get on with this project. I know it has been slow, but I am just trying to be careful here.

I think we will setup a beta 2 test, that with some fixes, patches, and hopefully some sort of final look. I want to make sure we have all the log in problems fixed, along with the new user registration problems.

First, the test forum that is up at this link http://www.allchile.net/chileforum2/
is the second version. Please test again if you tested a while back. call it beta2.

Again, that is only a test, and anything you post there will be deleted when the forum goes live and replaces the current forum with the live data.

NEW STUFF to test:

Image file upload
File uploads should work now on the test forum for posting photos in posts. Please give it a try.

login fix (I think)
Please test to make sure you can login with your username. You should not need to create a new account. everything will transfer to the new forum. I believe we might have gotten the bug patched, but I need testers to confirm.

New user registration problem fixed

Chile wiki upgrade to be added
The Chile Wiki will be getting an upgrade at the same time, as we go live with the new forum so that we can continue to logon with the same username and password across the site.

Much more on the way.

As for the fonts, is anyone else having this problem? The problem with fonts and the web is that they will look different on different peoples computers because of among other things the browser, browser version, screen resolution, your installed default fonts, and so on. I am using firefox and they look good under linux. They are larger, but they are intended to be easier to read. I will try some different screen resolutions. The template as it stands is a fairly stock out of the box template that is a default for phpbb. I like to stick to the default as much as possible for easy upgrades, so the font should be fairly well tested on more than just our forum. Still, I am going to try it out on some other computers and give it some thought. thanks.

Can you post your screen resolution you are using (e.g. 800x600, 1200x786, etc.)?

I am also considering adding a second template, that users can select if they do not like the default one. It will fundamentally look the same, but if anyone should need it you have some choice in the look of the forum. Again, it does add some overhead for me to maintain the site, so I am giving it some thought also.

purple guy will get either fixed or dropped (I think I would miss him). It is the use of 8-0 anywhere that triggers him. He just got a bad name.