Fox T-Bird/Cougar Forums

General => Lounge => Topic started by: EricCoolCats on February 22, 2019, 03:51:52 PM

Title: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on February 22, 2019, 03:51:52 PM
So we did this thing and it mostly converted fine. For the most part, the new board works just like the old one. The big difference is that this platform is actively being developed and secured, while vBulletin withers away.

If you didn’t see it in the News box on the homepage, your user info did transfer but you will need to reupload your sig image and avatar. Avatars can be 100x100 pixels now. Sig files can be 400 x 150 pixels. We'll go with these dimensions for now and see how they work out.

We’re also working on getting the old attached images to convert, which may take awhile. We ask for patientce on that, as it’s really tedious stuff.

That being said...we know you’re gonna find small issues here and there, and that is expected, so please let us know in this thread so we can identify and fix them (and perhaps help someone else with the same problem).

By the way...this entire post was originally made from my phone. So things are modern now. Yay us!  8)

But the arcade didn't make it... *sniff*...

Last but not least, a huge THANK YOU to everyone that donated to upgrade this board to keep it going for many more years. Couldn't have done it without you! Y'all are the best.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: baxo on February 25, 2019, 11:27:34 AM
Looking great!  :o  ;D
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Chuck W on February 26, 2019, 10:57:56 AM
Looks great!

Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Beau on February 26, 2019, 11:34:07 AM
 ;D
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: QUICKSHIFT on February 26, 2019, 12:09:44 PM
So far, so good. 8)
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: CoogarXR on February 26, 2019, 02:05:01 PM
Looks like we might have a restriction to attach images inline? I made a dummy post under the computer section just to upload my old sig pic so I could link to it. It uploads, but it won't display inline with the img tags. I can display an inline pic that is hosted somewhere else, just not my own attachments.

I read this might be some post-count limitation on certain BB software packages.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on February 26, 2019, 02:54:08 PM
Looks like we might have a restriction to attach images inline? I made a dummy post under the computer section just to upload my old sig pic so I could link to it. It uploads, but it won't display inline with the img tags. I can display an inline pic that is hosted somewhere else, just not my own attachments.

I read this might be some post-count limitation on certain BB software packages.

Ok, tweaked some settings, please try again now.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: CoogarXR on February 26, 2019, 03:04:06 PM
Looks like we might have a restriction to attach images inline? I made a dummy post under the computer section just to upload my old sig pic so I could link to it. It uploads, but it won't display inline with the img tags. I can display an inline pic that is hosted somewhere else, just not my own attachments.

I read this might be some post-count limitation on certain BB software packages.

Ok, tweaked some settings, please try again now.

I see now a little green icon next to the attachment. When I click it, it has options like "attach inline", etc. This would probably normally be what we need. But when I attach it that way, it adds "attach" tags around an attachment number, but when I do "preview" it's just an "X" where the pic should be.

So long story short, it still doesn't work ;)
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on February 26, 2019, 03:53:39 PM
Better now?
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: CoogarXR on February 26, 2019, 04:15:46 PM
Still no workie.

Here's a link to the post:
http://www.foxtbirdcougarforums.com/index.php?topic=41044.0

I posted the pic both ways, using the ATTACH tag and IMG tags, maybe you could tweak things and refresh the post and see if it works? Hopefully that will help.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: V8Demon on February 26, 2019, 05:01:02 PM
I'm having severe issues through a mobile device.  Timeouts occur in blindingly short periods of time and I am unable to edit my profile or post from a mobile device. 

All appears well from my laptop.....
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: V8Demon on February 26, 2019, 05:53:13 PM
If you can see this that means I'm now able to post from a mobile device.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: thunderjet302 on February 26, 2019, 06:21:51 PM
How in the hell do I attach a signature picture? There is no where for me to put it, unless I'm missing it and being an idiot......
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: V8Demon on February 26, 2019, 06:39:57 PM
You gotta host it from another location.  Type the image web address into the signature and put the IMG tags around that.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on February 26, 2019, 11:07:38 PM
Alright, I figured out what was happening with the attachment images. They appeared in the hosting space via FTP, but they weren't displaying correctly here. It was a plugin conflict. As soon as it was disabled, the images started appearing. So apologies for that, we should be good to go with all attachments and sig files now.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: CoogarXR on February 27, 2019, 08:21:20 AM
Good work! Looks like attaching an image works both ways now (ATTACH and IMG tags).
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Muttwood on February 27, 2019, 11:39:55 AM
Thank for the update,
http://www.foxtbirdcougarforums.com/index.php?action=dlattach;sa=tmpattach;attach=post_tmp_6239_4fa949dd35df966475bbbb2845dd714d;topic=41043
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Vintage on February 27, 2019, 11:52:57 AM
Nice work everyone, esp Eric with keeping on top of bugs.  I was used to the old vBulletin setup but I think this new one is growing on me fast.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: thunderjet302 on February 27, 2019, 03:34:44 PM
You gotta host it from another location.  Type the image web address into the signature and put the IMG tags around that.

Fixed. Thanks. I miss the old upload the signature picture function. Because lazy.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: CougarSE on February 27, 2019, 06:49:29 PM
Alright...   Gumby gave me the heads up it was updated.   Already I can say the yellow banner at top is causing a funky scrolling issue on phone because it wants to scroll by itself within the page itself.  Ditch that or make the field larger.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: CougarSE on February 27, 2019, 06:59:29 PM


While trying to make a comment on baxo showing his face after nearly 9 years I found a two minute post limitation that adds two minutes each time you try and post.  No thank you, go ahead and disable or reduce that....
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on February 27, 2019, 07:22:09 PM
You forgot to mention what kind of cheese you want with your whine, Claude. ::)
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: CougarSE on February 27, 2019, 07:26:44 PM
Are we not accepting constructive criticism of a forum some of us financially contributed too?
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: thunderjet302 on February 27, 2019, 08:01:14 PM
Hey the street racing forum is back  ;D
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on February 27, 2019, 11:24:44 PM
Are we not accepting constructive criticism of a forum some of us financially contributed too?

Ah. The game is now admonishing with your wallet. Always the lowest common denominator but if that's the card you're playing, so be it. I'll make sure you're refunded, seeing that no matter what anyone does here, it won't be up to your standard. Don't want to be accused to "ripping you off".
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Tbird232ci on February 28, 2019, 06:08:53 AM
I will say, this place has become totally rad!

(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7921/33361021838_3b7b4c7053_c.jpg)
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: CougarSE on February 28, 2019, 06:48:03 AM
 Reducing my responses to whining and waving my wallet around is a low blow for an administrator and especially you.  I’m not asking for a refund, no one is.  We are here because your rude response was returned with mine. I’m surprised you know my standards for this forum because I sure don’t. 

So back to what I ask, the yellow news field on the top of the page is causing a scrolling usability issue and the repost time is probably a default item that may not have came up on anyone’s radar.  I know why that is usually in place thwarting spammers and all.

Looking back I could have ask nicely, could have said please or started with saying I’m happy to see the new forum has a mobile friendly upgrade.  I’m as pleased as everyone else about this new system, already I prefer the second theme and would be interested in seeing additional themes.  I would also like to see a usability thread with all the shortcuts and features people discover, like making this text field larger with touching and dragging the bottom of the box up or down.



Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on February 28, 2019, 09:37:53 AM
Reducing my responses to whining and waving my wallet around is a low blow for an administrator and especially you.  I’m not asking for a refund, no one is.  We are here because your rude response was returned with mine. I’m surprised you know my standards for this forum because I sure don’t.

I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate me barging into your house after not visiting for a decade, and telling you that I didn't like that interior wall so knock it down, and while you're at it, that color on the wall needs changed, oh and go ahead put an addition on too. I didn't see any respect whatsoever in your tone so none was reciprocated. Works both ways man.

We busted our asses off to get this site ported over. There are a lot of problems along the way that nobody here knew about. We're still trying to clean up a few of them. It takes time to sort through it all, even with two admins, because we have jobs and lives too. So you can see why, after all this, an offhand flippant remark is probably gonna set somebody off.

As for the issues you noted...we'll be working on some things today and we'll try to improve them as best we can. The News box doesn't have an overall setting in the admin panel, it's actually more of a generic feature but the look and feel is controlled by CSS. I had actually started to tweak that earlier in the week. It's tricky due to different devices handling the box in various ways.

In the future...yeah, we're gonna do at least a grey theme and a dark theme. Again, this is all controlled by CSS and we're doing it by hand due to some pre-made themes wrecking a lot of stuff. We're better off spending time tweaking what we know works, rather than trying to fix someone else's theme.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: baxo on February 28, 2019, 09:45:22 AM
While trying to make a comment on baxo showing his face after nearly 9 years ....

9 years... has it been that long? ! Well, at least I'm here when it matters, you know helping Eric get the board swapped and all. We're trying our best.

As Eric says we've been having to squeeze this whole thing in between our busy jobs and lives. Another reason why I haven't been around in so long.

It is what it is man, we'll have it all sorted out, but it takes time. We just didn't want the board to be down any longer, so we decided to make it live knowing there would be tweaks along the way.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: gumby on February 28, 2019, 11:07:11 AM
Are we missing one? I see he was active yesterday.

Do you still have a 'vert???

Here is my vote to go ahead and kill that again.

Also, do we have the option to bring back a multi-quote button?
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on February 28, 2019, 11:23:23 AM
Here is my vote to go ahead and kill that again.[/quote]

Yeah, that should probably not be viewed again. Hidden now.

Quote from: gumby
Also, do we have the option to bring back a multi-quote button?

That's a good question. I'll look into that.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: baxo on February 28, 2019, 11:31:59 AM

Sure do.. It's buried in the back of my garage. But it still exists!
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on February 28, 2019, 12:10:44 PM
Looks like there's no option for a multi-quote button, sorry. I can put in for a feature request though.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: gumby on February 28, 2019, 12:53:28 PM
Thanks for checking!
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: thunderjet302 on February 28, 2019, 01:59:22 PM

Yeah, that should probably not be viewed again. Hidden now.

[/quote]

Bueno. We don't need stupid driving stories  :)
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on February 28, 2019, 02:16:09 PM
Are we missing one? I see he was active yesterday.

Carm's still an admin. He told us he's got not-so-great Internet connections so he's leaving the admin stuff to us (Alex and I).
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on March 01, 2019, 03:16:02 PM
Quick update...the old emojis are back in place and cleaned up a bit. We know you missed the two bananas banging. :toothless: :nannerbang:

Also there's a new all-grey theme available. To select it, in the upper righthand corner of any page, go to

My Account > Look and Layout

and next to Current Theme, click the 'Change Theme' button.

Then under Select Variant, choose Grey, then click the 'Use this theme' button.

In the future I'm hoping to clean up the theme naming system a bit, and also make it a bit easier to swap out themes on the user end. Also in the works is a true all dark theme that's going to take considerable time to create and troubleshoot. But at least now, if you don't like our happy 80's default theme, you can go a bit more emo. ;)
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: thunderjet302 on March 01, 2019, 05:28:12 PM
But I like the crazy pastel late 80's/early 90's vibe of the default theme. Fits the cars.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: gumby on March 01, 2019, 07:31:27 PM
On the 'Be Social' theme, I think the look and action of the forum is more fluid and intuitive. I also like that the navigation buttons are pinned at the top of the window vs. fixed to the scrolling page.

If you have not spent much time on this theme, check it out. It might be a good base for other alternative themes. Even if not, just don't kill it, please! I like it better  :twocents:
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Thunder Chicken on March 02, 2019, 05:34:17 PM
So my first post on the new platform after several days of not having the forum load correctly (it was loading in HTML mode, like it was missing a bunch of data, something that used to happen a lot when I lived in the country and was using dialup). Just got back from the cottage and noticed an exclamation point in the address bar of Chrome saying "This page is trying to load unsafe scripts". Being the trusting individual that I am, especially where Eric and Baxo are concerned, I clicked "Load anyway" and, lo-and-behold, here I am!

Looks great, guys. Wish I could have done something to help but, contrary to what Eric said about my internet connection, it's not internet speed that is the problem (though when this all started going down it was, because it was hunting season and I was spending most of my time at the cottage, where internet is even more of a luxury than indoor plumbing  :mullet: ). It's mainly my lack of knowledge about anything internet related that came after 1998 or so (and even back then I could only do basic HTML).

Anyway, thank you Eric and Baxo and everyone else who made this happen. I had been growing concerned about what might happen with this forum due to my lack of knowing how to run it anymore, and you guys really stepped up. We're in good hands now.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Thunder Chicken on March 03, 2019, 06:43:44 AM
A little bit of an update: In order to stop that "This page is trying to load unsafe scripts" error from happening every time I visited the site I had to go in and edit my bookmark. I changed HTTPS to HTTP and all is good now
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: jcassity on March 03, 2019, 04:51:02 PM

i dont see it yet, sorry but.........
when attaching images,, i typically upload from my phone or pc.
that all works fine ,, i figured it out but.........  the images are thumbnails... that you have to click on to make bigger.

is this the normal way now?

over in electrical tech i just posted a thread to illustrate a before and after manual heater mod we all worked on back in 12'.

it is much easier to scroll down the page with fully expanded photo's

???

btw,, i didnt have th change my password.  first time on the new board.  i guess we are up to the 4th one now?
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: jcassity on March 03, 2019, 04:57:14 PM
Are we not accepting constructive criticism of a forum some of us financially contributed too?


actually i laughed at that,, i think eric was just playing around,, least thats the way i took it.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: jcassity on March 03, 2019, 05:00:20 PM
well ,,
i got this big ole list of stuff in my sig called a DIY stuff,, it produces error 404, do i edit the url?  with what?

Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: jcassity on March 03, 2019, 05:23:11 PM
also,
i have an ongoing resto project in engine swapping.. 5 years of the pictures are not showing up.

,,i am going to look back over post 1 again to double check but do i assume all of these pics are now gone?

update,,, so  i assume you all are still working on older images to translate over to this platform??
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: jcassity on March 03, 2019, 05:55:42 PM
interesting,,,,

there's a place to make sure i tell everyone im transgendered for not,,,,

but there is not a question to answer about "what car do i have?:"

seems reasonable that a site about cars should show that info or a misc box to list this.. instead of  putting it in the sig.

the sig area limits you to 300 characters.

right now i cant change my "GENDER"  till i reduce my character count in my sig,, which means on the page in my profile to edit my GENDER,, it wont make the changes till i reduce my signature count.

complicated.....................
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on March 03, 2019, 06:04:41 PM
also,
i have an ongoing resto project in engine swapping.. 5 years of the pictures are not showing up.

,,i am going to look back over post 1 again to double check but do i assume all of these pics are now gone?

update,,, so  i assume you all are still working on older images to translate over to this platform??

Alex is working on a way to translate the old attachments to the new format. There are no scripts to automatically do that so it may take some time. We are absolutely committed to returning all of the old images.

As for the attached images...there is some back-end control of how they display. Just tweaked some things, let me know if that’s better. There have been very few attachments since the new layout debuted so we haven’t had much of a metric to evaluate them.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on March 03, 2019, 06:14:00 PM
Sig sizes, character count, etc. have just been tweaked a bit which should help. There is still a cap on height because otherwise the page will get crazy cluttered and scroll down a lot more than necessary. We’re doing what we can to accommodate ya.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Aerocoupe on March 06, 2019, 07:39:49 PM
So there used to be a User CP where I could go back and see a list of all the threads I started.  Can someone walk me through how to do that in this new layout?
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on March 07, 2019, 01:43:47 PM
So there used to be a User CP where I could go back and see a list of all the threads I started.  Can someone walk me through how to do that in this new layout?

Yep...go to your profile (upper right, "My Account"). Then go to Forum Profile. On that page you will see, toward the upper left, a button called Profile Info...click that. Under it is a tab titled "Recent Activity". I don't know why it's so buried. It is doubtful we can place that somewhere else. But it does look like what was on the old board, at least.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Aerocoupe on March 08, 2019, 09:36:29 AM
Ah ha!  Found it, thanks a million!!!

Back to the search function, thanks for moving that out as I think that will help folks especially new members.  One thing, any chance it will be more robust so that you can search for topics started by a member or narrow the search to specific forums?  Again, this search function is very limited compared to the old one.  I know you guys are swamped but if you can put it on the list to get to at some point that is good enough.

Site is shaping up and looking better every time I log in.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on March 08, 2019, 10:03:13 AM
From what I'm reading about the search function for this system, the lack of granular details is universal, so it's not just us. The devs are supposed to be refining it for a future release. There is no plug-in right now to help, and there are no buttons to click to make the search function more extensible (wish it was that easy).

Our indexing of the site is finally done now, so hopefully that helps a bit. Searches should be more precise and a lot quicker since everything is catalogued now. At the very least, the majority of the issues that plagued the old vBulletin search function are gone now. It's just the fine details that need tweaked. We'll get there eventually.

Oh, almost forgot...the colored squares under your avatar denote which group you belong to. Admins are red, mods are blue, everyone else is yellow. There seems to be a threshold for the number of squares (1 for a n00b, three for x number of posts, then 5 for over x many posts). I have not found a way to convert those to actual post count numbers. Even custom themes don't have that option. You can browse someone's profile to see their actual post number, though. They carried over from the old board and picked right back up here.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on March 08, 2019, 10:21:16 AM
Hang on a tick...I just noticed something that should really help with searching.

If you click on the 'Search' button at the top, you go to the full search page. Down at the bottom is a bar with text inside..."Choose a board to search in, or search all". By default that bar is collapsed. Click on the arrow on the far right side of the bar (or click on that text, because it is hot-linked), and you get ALL kinds of options for where to search. You can narrow it down to just one particular forum, or search a few of them, or tick a box and search all of them.

That should greatly help! I'm gonna see if we can make that section uncollapsed at the bottom so people can see it every time.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Thunder Chicken on March 08, 2019, 05:05:13 PM
I did notice that if you click on "my profile" the summary page has your number of posts


Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Aerocoupe on March 09, 2019, 11:51:02 AM
Eric,

Holy , I completely missed the collapsed section so that helps a ton.  Hopefully they make the rest of the search function a little more robust on the next release.  Cannot thank you guys enough for taking all of this on and continuing to march through all the little things.   This is one of my favorite sites so I am glad it got a face lift.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on April 15, 2019, 06:57:32 PM
A small update...we got the site URL fully secure now, with the non-secure (http) URL automatically kicking over to secure (https). It doesn't seem to affect anything in our testing, even images, so that's a good thing. Early on in our initial testing, we had some issues getting everything secure but now they seem to have resolved themselves, perhaps from DNS propagation. So your browser won't be screaming that the site is 'not secure' anymore.   :toothless:  :locked:
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Kristwitch on April 17, 2019, 12:20:36 AM
I didn't even know vbulletin was going away! Shows how up to date I am. I like this board a lot better like this though!
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: jcassity on May 07, 2019, 09:30:13 AM
team,,
see "Reply 46"
do we have an idea if getting the pictures to reappear or not when these threads were carried over from the old  board?

thanks

Scott 304 772 3411
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Tbird232ci on May 26, 2019, 06:16:31 PM
Pure curiosity here, but is there a feature to tag members in posts? I've seen some other forums where you can tag a member to draw their attention to a specific thread.

@EricCoolCats
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Tbird232ci on May 26, 2019, 06:17:16 PM
Maybe that worked. We will see if that summoned Eric or not.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: EricCoolCats on May 26, 2019, 07:55:26 PM
Yep, that worked.
Title: Re: Welcome To The New Board!
Post by: Tbird232ci on May 26, 2019, 08:59:43 PM
Sweet. That will be useful.