Forum upgrade - coming soon

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up.  We're going to update our forum software - hopefully by the end of the week.  

Other scripts that will be updated are the classifieds, job market, calendar and business directory.

Fortunately this time, you won't need to reset your passwords - old passwords will work.  I highly recommend that you review your email address for your account:

https://myaccount.worldwebs.com/profile/info

You will get email notifications when someone private messages you or if someone uses your username name in a thread like this @username.  You can opt out of these - and there's a couple other options for notifications - like if someone replies to your discussion or if someone quotes you.

Images upload is greatly improved - you can see an upload status for each image uploaded.  You can upload up to 20 images per comment.  And there's an option to rotate an image.

The layout for the message board is basically the same.  We're adding a righthand column that will randomly highlight other parts of the site - like For Sale Ads - Job Market - Featured events - etc.  So on the main discussions page - the middle area where discussions are listed won't be as wide.  When you click on a thread - the lefthand categories list will not be there - righthandside will be there.  The content area will be just as wide as it is now.

You can add up to 8 images on the For Sale ads.  Login will be required to post and respond to ads.  This will help to cut down and easily ban people who are trying to scam people.  I may add the option if a poster wants to make their email address public or not.  Ads are connected to your username - but your username is not connected to the ad.  You can use any name/email when submitting an ad from your user account.

These are just a few things happening with this update.  There's so much more to it that I'll explain at a later date.  I'm sure things will not be perfect at first - but I have a really good team working with me - so hang in there.  I would expect that it'll take a couple weeks to hammer out most of the issues.


Jamie, do you think you will ever support referrals to images hosted elsewhere? All other forum sites I have used allow this and don't seem to suffer from doing so.


Tom_Reingold said:

Jamie, do you think you will ever support referrals to images hosted elsewhere? All other forum sites I have used allow this and don't seem to suffer from doing so.

Not a top priority - but will look into it.  It's tricky when you have no control over file size.  Can you show me a forum that is using it so I can test and see how they handle it?


I went to that account page and my email address is correct.  But I noticed that it has my screen name in both first name and last name fields, so I tried to correct those.  But then I got a 500 error.


soda said:

.mp3's???

-s.

Why would anyone ask someone to host their mp3 files? Just dropbox them.


Support for videos would be nice.


being able to rotate photos?!  snake 


Advanced search is a huuuuuge function that will be returning.  Support videos will be added later.


soda said:

.mp3's???

-s.

Maybe we can convert soundcloud links into an embedded player at some point.

Youtube videos will be more embedded into the posts instead of a pop up player.


jamie said:
soda said:

.mp3's???

-s.
Maybe we can convert soundcloud links into an embedded player at some point.

Only soundcloud?  Any other players, as well?

Oh, and I'm with soda on this  oh oh


jamie said:
Tom_Reingold said:

Jamie, do you think you will ever support referrals to images hosted elsewhere? All other forum sites I have used allow this and don't seem to suffer from doing so.

Not a top priority - but will look into it.  It's tricky when you have no control over file size.  Can you show me a forum that is using it so I can test and see how they handle it?

bikeforums.net


jamie, will the restrictions on size of photo images still exist? I don't have a problem with images shot with my Olympus, but have to edit/resize every single shot taken with my Nikon before I can get it to load. Would be nice not to have to do that, so I figured I'd ask you.


cody said:

jamie, will the restrictions on size of photo images still exist? I don't have a problem with images shot with my Olympus, but have to edit/resize every single shot taken with my Nikon before I can get it to load. Would be nice not to have to do that, so I figured I'd ask you.

I'm sure we'll be able to bump up the file size allowance.  So you know how large those files are - or else you can email me one to test on our dev site: jamie@maplewoodonline.com


Tom_Reingold said:

Jamie, do you think you will ever support referrals to images hosted elsewhere? All other forum sites I have used allow this and don't seem to suffer from doing so.

I'm curious Tom. Why is this desireable? I'm annoyed when I'm required to post photos to another site in order to have them display, rather than just uploading them.


I've had sites hotlink images on a client's site to save bandwidth (and rip-off their images).   I switched the images to photos of pandas wearing hats while keeping the same file names.   So there's always the risk that hotlinked images can be edited later to other types of images and no one will notice until someone does.


dave said:

I've had sites hotlink images on a client's site to save bandwidth (and rip-off their images).   I switched the images to photos of pandas wearing hats while keeping the same file names.   So there's always the risk that hotlinked images can be edited later to other types of images and no one will notice until someone does.

Sometimes it's a little dirtier than that, too. It's a convenience thing, I guess, rather than having to download an image to your own machine, then upload it this one, to just embed the link, but I understand why many boards don't like it.


One issue I have with linking to other sites is that you're held hostage to their server load.  So if a site is having issues it may affect the page load on our site.


jimmurphy said:


I'm curious Tom. Why is this desireable? I'm annoyed when I'm required to post photos to another site in order to have them display, rather than just uploading them.

It's not that I want to upload them "over there" and display them "here." It's that they are already there, either because I put them on Google Photos or because I don't have them at all and just want to refer to them.

jamie said:

One issue I have with linking to other sites is that you're held hostage to their server load.  So if a site is having issues it may affect the page load on our site.

Yeah that's a problem with photobucket and perhaps imgur as well. Maybe block photobucket. It sucks. In general, most web sites work well enough most of the time. The list of exceptions is small.


Tom, why bother belaboring the point? They have a history of thinking hotlinking is bandwidth theft even though it's 2016 and not 2004 anymore. Also, he's right. You can nuke a message board by linking to an innocuous image hosted on your own server and then a day later switching over to a empty 900MB image file with the same filename. There are enough kooks on MOL that someone might try that tact.


I just got 500 internal error for the first time on this computer. Windows 7 Enterprise running IE11. Oh, and I couldn't post this on the forum issues--no post button...  And I couldn't send Jamie a message either...

eta: I did clear my cache but it still was a problem posting this email.


Unpinning this for now - I'm hoping we're a week away.  In the meantime, we may be closer to a solution to the 500 error we're getting.



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