Bug Updates....
Posted: October 25, 2013, 3:38 pm
OK - I did some work on the site today. I ran a whole bunch of updates and optimizations and whatnot, so if you were on the site earlier today and experienced difficulties or were unable to get on, that was just me. Hopefully nothing is worse then when I started, and I think that most of the issues that I was aware of have been resolved. In addition to updates and general maintenance items, I was able to work on the following:
Chat: It seems that the chat app that we were running died. It was a third party plugin that I had installed years ago. The author of the plugin appears to have fallen off the face of the earth, and no support was available, so I went out looking for a replacement. A replacement has been installed, and I was able to test it with a couple of guys who wandered onto the site earlier in the day. It appears to work just fine. I realize that it is different then what you were used to, and I also realize that most end users are not crazy about changing once they have become comfortable with a particular program that they have been using for years, but the fact is that the old one is dead, no longer supported, and is no longer an option.
There are a number of configuration options. I did some very minor tweaking, but for the most part it is running under it's default configuration. Please give it a try and let me know if it will suit your needs. This was the only free chat application that I was able to find. There are a number of other options available, but they all cost $$$. If this one is not acceptable, we may have to pass the hat and see about purchasing one of the paid alternatives. Let me know what you think. Especially after Sunday night when there are more then two or three people on at a time. It seems to be pretty responsive under light load, but I was unable to test it under load.
Private Messaging: There was a problem that was occurring when sending a private message. When you sent the PM, it did nothing - it just hung. The PM was going thru, but you had no way of knowing that it went through - is just sat there doing nothing.
It turned out to actually be an email problem. When you sent someone a private message, it actually did two things - it sent the PM, then emailed the recipient to inform them that they had received a PM. Well - it was delivering the PM, but it was NOT able to send the email. It just kept trying and trying to send the email, but never could. That is why it just seemed to hang there. I resolved the email issue, and now when you send a PM, it should send the PM, notify the recipient via email that they have received a PM, and confirm that the PM was sent.
This may have also been affecting posting, if there were people on a thread that had asked to be informed when a post was made to a particular thread. I think that you can also email users through the web site - that was probably broken, too. Hopefully any of the site functions that involved email have now been fixed.
Spam: We were once again being inundated with spammers. Most of you probably were not even aware of this, but Kid and Casey were, as they had to wade through dozens and dozens of spam membership requests each day. Hopefully that has now been resolved.
Please let me know if any of these items appear to have NOT been fixed, or if there are other problems that I am not aware of.
Chat: It seems that the chat app that we were running died. It was a third party plugin that I had installed years ago. The author of the plugin appears to have fallen off the face of the earth, and no support was available, so I went out looking for a replacement. A replacement has been installed, and I was able to test it with a couple of guys who wandered onto the site earlier in the day. It appears to work just fine. I realize that it is different then what you were used to, and I also realize that most end users are not crazy about changing once they have become comfortable with a particular program that they have been using for years, but the fact is that the old one is dead, no longer supported, and is no longer an option.
There are a number of configuration options. I did some very minor tweaking, but for the most part it is running under it's default configuration. Please give it a try and let me know if it will suit your needs. This was the only free chat application that I was able to find. There are a number of other options available, but they all cost $$$. If this one is not acceptable, we may have to pass the hat and see about purchasing one of the paid alternatives. Let me know what you think. Especially after Sunday night when there are more then two or three people on at a time. It seems to be pretty responsive under light load, but I was unable to test it under load.
Private Messaging: There was a problem that was occurring when sending a private message. When you sent the PM, it did nothing - it just hung. The PM was going thru, but you had no way of knowing that it went through - is just sat there doing nothing.
It turned out to actually be an email problem. When you sent someone a private message, it actually did two things - it sent the PM, then emailed the recipient to inform them that they had received a PM. Well - it was delivering the PM, but it was NOT able to send the email. It just kept trying and trying to send the email, but never could. That is why it just seemed to hang there. I resolved the email issue, and now when you send a PM, it should send the PM, notify the recipient via email that they have received a PM, and confirm that the PM was sent.
This may have also been affecting posting, if there were people on a thread that had asked to be informed when a post was made to a particular thread. I think that you can also email users through the web site - that was probably broken, too. Hopefully any of the site functions that involved email have now been fixed.
Spam: We were once again being inundated with spammers. Most of you probably were not even aware of this, but Kid and Casey were, as they had to wade through dozens and dozens of spam membership requests each day. Hopefully that has now been resolved.
Please let me know if any of these items appear to have NOT been fixed, or if there are other problems that I am not aware of.
Was in FYI ads, listed my posts, does not show up......Pretty sure Jim is working on site, could not get on at all last night, shows sql error