By Aaron Blumer on
Forum category
Community

We’ll list known problems here in the top post of this thread… feel free to post comments about anything technical.

Known Issues

  • April 14, 2010: after some securities updates to the site, the Front Page and Filings posts are not showing up in Forum lists. We have techs digging into why this is and hope to have it back to normal shortly.
  • Site Data before June 1: all the old articles and forum activity (fixed) are intact and waiting to be made available in some way. We’re discussing w/several folks who have ideas and should have a solution to announce soon. Update: forum archive online. Just working on article databse now.
  • Private Messaging: no folder system yet and tag filtering is pretty iffy I’m told. The PM system is definitely beta so expect improvements over the next few months as the brains at drupal.org refine it.
  • Browseable site member list: knew I forgot something! We’ll get one up soon. Workaround: use the search box (though accounts less than an hour old may not show up yet in searches… indexing, you know). It’s nothing fancy yet, but a browseable member list is available to other members at http://sharperiron.org/memberlist
  • Profile picture: before you can change your profile pic, you have to delete your current one. Would be nice to be able upload a new one and delete the current in one step… or keep several in profile. Also, if you change your profile pic and want to see it in your browser, you’ll probaby have to refresh a few times or even close and reopen your browser (this is not a bug. Caching the pix helps keep things from getting slow)
  • Latest posts/todays posts view: this is missing from Foundry. Plan to return it soon. fixed
  • Latest posts/counts on Forums page: these are not updating as quickly as we’d like. Looking into what needs adjusting…. likewise for “new” indicators.
  • Ladies Only Forum: the subforums there have not been built yet. Soon. fixed
  • Post links in Foundry: if post is on the second page (not on the first page) it takes you to the top of the first page instead of to the post. Status: not fixable short-term. The Foundry does not “know” what page posts are on.
  • Foundry: OP’s (original posts)/ thread-starter posts, don’t show. Should have this fixed soon. fixed
  • Foundry: Most active ever - something is currently wrong w/how posts are counted there. (Schwenke has not posted 153 times!). Tabled for now.
  • FAQ links not showing in Internet Explorer 8 - this is some kind of IE problem. We recommend Firefox. Will be looking for fix for IE eventually. fixed
  • Multiple subscriptions/notifications. Update: this appears to occur when a comment is edited… one notification goes out per edit. One workaround is to set your notifications to go out in bunches ever x period of time rather than “immediate.” What that does is reduce your number of emails, though you’ll still have a line & link for each edit in the emial that goes out. 9/10/09: we now also have a “Save without sending email notification” option as well so you can edit your post without emailing a notif. for each edit you save.
  • Scripture reference popups (Reftagger). Selected translation in Bible Options box not saving. fixed
  • Articles & Filings not showing up in forums - known issue. Do not yet know cause of this, but getting closer.
  • Clicking the Quote link takes you to an uneeded “Reply” page… Since we don’t use threading (where replies to posts are indented and placed directly below the post you’re replying to), there is really no reason for the Quote link to take you to a reply page.

Feature Requests

  • Combined RSS feed for both Filings and front page articles. [done:
  • Ability to disable missiles fired from North Korea… [rejected: (Considering feature that will alow re-aiming, though)
  • Text formatting bar (for bold, italics, etc.)… [maybe: … in the mean time, Greg L. recommends a Firefox plug in: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/128
  • Shinier stars in the forums w/new posts icon. [done:

  • Full Text Feed Content For RSS Feeds - [approved: (Pending ability to get ads into the feeds)

Discussion

Tue, 06/02/09
Just a quick question - the scripture reference pop ups are defaulting to NKJV [see my sig for an example]. Is it possible we can change this?

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells

Tue, 06/02/09


I am wondering…I am showing up in the side bar as online, but I could not post here until I did the login thing again. My name has shown up duplicated in the “Who’s online”…perhaps I am schizophrenic after all… :bigsmile: I am back to a singular identity now. Will we have the italic/bold etc buttons eventually? I am having a connection prob w/our satellite, so some of this may very well be a result of that.

Thanks!

Diane

"I pray to God this day to make me an extraordinary Christian." --Whitefield http://strengthfortoday.wordpress.com

Tue, 06/02/09
I don’t know about the buttons, but you can use the old BB code [B] and [/I] to mark up text as you want. We’ve also added < b >style coding as well [there’s usually no spaces between the < and > marks, but I have to do it that way to keep the coding from firing]. There’s some more information available at: http://www.sharperiron.org/filter/tips/1#filter-bbcode-0

As for the duplication of your name in the sidebar - I noticed it too, but don’t know what’s going on there. I’ll let the bigger guns deal w/ that.

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells

Tue, 06/02/09
Is there a recent posts page somewhere? Similar to what was in the foundry. Am I just missing it?

Father of three, husband of one, servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I blog at mattolmstead.com.

Tue, 06/02/09
[Jay C] Just a quick question - the scripture reference pop ups are defaulting to NKJV [see my sig for an example]. Is it possible we can change this?
I was kind of thinking NKJV was a nice compromise… close to KJV but not quite :)

You mean, can it be a user selectable option? Excellent idea. I didn’t build the module though. But I can post a feature request and see if the developer is interested. (It may require some changes by the folks at Logos, though. Not sure how it works under the hood)

Tue, 06/02/09
[Matthew Olmstead] Is there a recent posts page somewhere? Similar to what was in the foundry. Am I just missing it?
Yep. There’s a Foundry. The link is probably not quite high visibility enough. If you go to the Forums main page, it shows up in a menu to the right. Holler if you don’t see it. Might be config’d wrong or something.

Edit: oops. I see that Foundry doesn’t have a plain recent comments list at the moment. There was one… must have disabled at some pt for development purposes. It’ll be back.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Tue, 06/02/09
[Diane Heeney] I am wondering…I am showing up in the side bar as online, but I could not post here until I did the login thing again. My name has shown up duplicated in the “Who’s online”…perhaps I am schizophrenic after all… :bigsmile: I am back to a singular identity now. Will we have the italic/bold etc buttons eventually? I am having a connection prob w/our satellite, so some of this may very well be a result of that.

Thanks!

Diane
If you use the “remember me” checkbox when you sign in, you shouldn’t have to worry about signing in or out. The double display thing does happen pretty often (sometimes I’m in there three or four times). I think this has to do w/cookie lifespans and/or memory caching process. It just sees you again before it knows you were gone from before… and clear up eventually.

Ability to post… we’re getting reports of various oddities there and I think this has more to do w/the permissions set up. These should be clearing up over the next day or so after the forums are all built. During the build process, alot of them won’t work right… they become visible before they become usable. But this is a temporary headache.

Bold and italic and stuff … well, for now you can use http://sharperiron.org/filter/tips/5#filter-bbcode-0] bbcode

Which I think is quicker anyway when you get used to it. But putting in a little formatting toolbar isn’t out of the question. [red] Note to self: explore this

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Tue, 06/02/09
[Aaron Blumer]

Yep. There’s a Foundry. The link is probably not quite high visibility enough. If you go to the Forums main page, it shows up in a menu to the right. Holler if you don’t see it. Might be config’d wrong or something.

Edit: oops. I see that Foundry doesn’t have a plain recent comments list at the moment. There was one… must have disabled at some pt for development purposes. It’ll be back.
Thanks, Aaron. Yeah, I found the foundry, but I didn’t see a “Recent Posts.” I’m glad to see that it will return.

Father of three, husband of one, servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I blog at mattolmstead.com.

Tue, 06/02/09
[Aaron Blumer]
[Diane Heeney] I am wondering…I am showing up in the side bar as online, but I could not post here until I did the login thing again. My name has shown up duplicated in the “Who’s online”…perhaps I am schizophrenic after all… :bigsmile: I am back to a singular identity now. Will we have the italic/bold etc buttons eventually? I am having a connection prob w/our satellite, so some of this may very well be a result of that.

Thanks!

Diane
If you use the “remember me” checkbox when you sign in, you shouldn’t have to worry about signing in or out. The double display thing does happen pretty often (sometimes I’m in there three or four times). I think this has to do w/cookie lifespans and/or memory caching process. It just sees you again before it knows you were gone from before… and clear up eventually.

Ability to post… we’re getting reports of various oddities there and I think this has more to do w/the permissions set up. These should be clearing up over the next day or so after the forums are all built. During the build process, alot of them won’t work right… they become visible before they become usable. But this is a temporary headache.

Bold and italic and stuff … well, for now you can use http://sharperiron.org/filter/tips/5#filter-bbcode-0] bbcode

Which I think is quicker anyway when you get used to it. But putting in a little formatting toolbar isn’t out of the question. [red] Note to self: explore this
Thanks for the reply. I am not real up on using html (really the only place I use it at all is here), but perhaps [this bolding only took me three tries lol] I’m not too old to learn. ;) We’ll see if this posts when I hit the button….got a note from Bro Jim asking.

"I pray to God this day to make me an extraordinary Christian." --Whitefield http://strengthfortoday.wordpress.com

Wed, 06/03/09
[JohnBrian] I have a link in my toolbar that brings up today’s posts. Currently I get “page not found.”:

http://www.sharperiron.org/search.php?do=getdaily

Will that link work when the dust settles?
Interesting. Didn’t know about that one. Did it go to the Foundry before? It was probably just a standard vBulletin report.

I’ll add it to the known issues list. What will probably happen is that there will be a box in the Foundry for it and you can link to the Foundry. In fact, since we need the “latest posts” box back in there anyway, we’re probably talking about the same box. “Latest” being filtered to today.

Sound good?

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Wed, 06/03/09
[AndyA] There used to be feed (http://www.sharperiron.org/feed/atom) that included both the front page articles and the filings posts. Is such a feed still available?
That’s a good question. Short answer is, I doubt it (in a built-in way). I’m pretty sure there’s a way to create one though. Will ask the brains at drupal.org

Edit: yes, there is a way and it’s a good idea. Will add to do list.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Wed, 06/03/09
I would like to request a way to carry our # of posts onto the new site. I was just about to reach another milestone (I think), and was so looking forward to my next virtual prize from Jim Peet. :(

Kiddin. :bigsmile:

I like the new smilies…I feel new horizons are open to me now. Btw, now that we have a homeschool forum (o me of little faith)…could someone scoot my post in “Home and Family” to the appropriate cubby? Thanks!

"I pray to God this day to make me an extraordinary Christian." --Whitefield http://strengthfortoday.wordpress.com

Wed, 06/03/09
[Diane Heeney] I would like to request a way to carry our # of posts onto the new site. I was just about to reach another milestone (I think), and was so looking forward to my next virtual prize from Jim Peet. :(
I agree!

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells

Wed, 06/03/09
[ DH] I would like to request a way to carry our # of posts onto the new site. I was just about to reach another milestone (I think), and was so looking forward to my next virtual prize from Jim Peet.
[JC] I agree!
And the fueling of the stereotype of Fundamentalist obsession with numbers continues… :D

Greg Linscott
Marshall, MN

Wed, 06/03/09
Question - the subject field was optional on the old board. Now if you don’t type anything in there, it just grabs the first X number of characters from your main post. I’ve never personally seen the point of the subject field for individual posts - personally, I think it’s a holdover from the obsolete “threaded” bulletin board format of the past. Is there any way to at least turn off the auto-character-grab aspect of it, so that if you don’t feel the need for a post subject, you don’t end up looking like you’re stuttering? ;)

Wed, 06/03/09
[Greg Linscott]
[ DH] I would like to request a way to carry our # of posts onto the new site. I was just about to reach another milestone (I think), and was so looking forward to my next virtual prize from Jim Peet.
[JC] I agree!
And the fueling of the stereotype of Fundamentalist obsession with numbers continues… :D
Only when there’s something in it for me.

Bro Greg…is that the all-seeing “S-Eye” in your avatar? :|

"I pray to God this day to make me an extraordinary Christian." --Whitefield http://strengthfortoday.wordpress.com

Wed, 06/03/09
[Diane Heeney] I would like to request a way to carry our # of posts onto the new site. I was just about to reach another milestone (I think), and was so looking forward to my next virtual prize from Jim Peet. !
That might actually not be too hard if you kept the same username.

I was thinking about that yesterday and looking around at the tables and it looks like a query could be written to match up post count by username and replace the count value w/the old total plus your new ones.

I do think it wd be nice. I’m having alot of conversations now w/experts and I think in a day or two we’ll be able to announce a plan.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Wed, 06/03/09
Perhaps it’s only me, but, whenever I go to the forums page, the latest post listed isn’t the latest post. For instance on the Sovereign Grace/Getty thread it still shows my post as being the most recent one even though someone has posted more recently.

Wed, 06/03/09
[Angela Stewart] Question - the subject field was optional on the old board. Now if you don’t type anything in there, it just grabs the first X number of characters from your main post. I’ve never personally seen the point of the subject field for individual posts - personally, I think it’s a holdover from the obsolete “threaded” bulletin board format of the past. Is there any way to at least turn off the auto-character-grab aspect of it, so that if you don’t feel the need for a post subject, you don’t end up looking like you’re stuttering? ;)
This can probably be done eventually…. sort of. The reason it’s that way is that anywhere posts display in lists or tables, we need a title for the post. If we did away w/titles, all we’d really be doing is hiding the field. It would still be necessary to grab something from the post to use as a title in lists and tables unless we just list as “8:00 AM John Doe posted in Known Issues.” That’s not out of the question I suppose. Food for thought.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Wed, 06/03/09
[Audrey] Perhaps it’s only me, but, whenever I go to the forums page, the latest post listed isn’t the latest post. For instance on the Sovereign Grace/Getty thread it still shows my post as being the most recent one even though someone has posted more recently.
Not just you. A few others have observed this. We probably have some memory caching settings to adjust. Basically, the data there isn’t refreshing quite as quickly as would be ideal. It may be that it’s only refreshing when we do hourly update run. If that’s the case, that’s definitely too infrequent, so we’ll have to cusomize things a bit to update that more often.

We’ll be watching it.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Wed, 06/03/09
[JohnBrian] I have a link in my toolbar that brings up today’s posts. Currently I get “page not found.”:

http://www.sharperiron.org/search.php?do=getdaily

Will that link work when the dust settles?
I’m not sure how it compares to what you were seeing before, but there is now a last-24hrs view of post activity here: http://sharperiron.org/poststoday

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Wed, 06/03/09
I suspect it’s just me, and probably my age, but I think on the old forum any new posts within a forum were highlighted by a different color folder. I know there is a star now, is it possible at all to make that star “shine?” Perhaps by making it a different color? That way it would be easier to see which topics have new posts with a quick glance. The way it is now - all gray - it’s hard to really distinguish the old from the new.

Wed, 06/03/09
[Teri Ploski] I suspect it’s just me, and probably my age, but I think on the old forum any new posts within a forum were highlighted by a different color folder. I know there is a star now, is it possible at all to make that star “shine?” Perhaps by making it a different color? That way it would be easier to see which topics have new posts with a quick glance. The way it is now - all gray - it’s hard to really distinguish the old from the new.
Not a bad idea. It’s just a matter of a little image editing. Will be a while before we get to it though I think. If somebody wants to volunteer and has those skills, just post here or email me and I’ll send you the file. Maybe a yellow star wd look more shiny.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Wed, 06/03/09
[Aaron Blumer]
[Angela Stewart] Question - the subject field was optional on the old board. Now if you don’t type anything in there, it just grabs the first X number of characters from your main post. I’ve never personally seen the point of the subject field for individual posts - personally, I think it’s a holdover from the obsolete “threaded” bulletin board format of the past. Is there any way to at least turn off the auto-character-grab aspect of it, so that if you don’t feel the need for a post subject, you don’t end up looking like you’re stuttering? ;)
This can probably be done eventually…. sort of. The reason it’s that way is that anywhere posts display in lists or tables, we need a title for the post. If we did away w/titles, all we’d really be doing is hiding the field. It would still be necessary to grab something from the post to use as a title in lists and tables unless we just list as “8:00 AM John Doe posted in Known Issues.” That’s not out of the question I suppose. Food for thought.
Maybe the system could grab the thread title and post number? Or, I wonder if maybe there’s a way to just switch off the display of an empty subject field, so the auto-generated subject would appear in the database, but not above the post - particularly when the default ends up looking nonsensical. ;)

Another little thing - thanks for the recent posts in the Foundry! But could we have the thread titles displayed in there too? It’s hard to know where the post came from just from the post title. :) ETA: ACK!! I see it now. Was that there before? Don’t answer that…)

You guys have done a fabulous job with the new site, by the way. I know now it feels like there are a million little things that need to be fixed, but the eventual improvement will be well worth it, I think. 8)

Wed, 06/03/09
Feature Requests

* Combined RSS feed for both Filings and front page articles. [approved]

* Ability to disable missiles fired from North Korea [rejected]

* Text formatting bar (for bold, italics, etc.)… [maybe]… in the mean time, Greg L. recommends a Firefox plug in: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/128

* Shinier stars in the forums w/new posts icon. [approved]
but…what about all of our wonderful friends in California and Hawaii? We can’t protect them from genocidal megalomaniacs? :(

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells

Thu, 06/04/09
Apparently subscriptions are not working for some people. If you’re using them successfully or unsuccessfully please post your experience here. Need to do some troubleshooting.

Thx.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Thu, 06/04/09
[Aaron Blumer] Apparently subscriptions are not working for some people. If you’re using them successfully or unsuccessfully please post your experience here. Need to do some troubleshooting.

Thx.
They’re working for me. I’m not a fan of the format, but I had it set to auto-subscribe to threads on which I commented. I received an email listing recent comment titles.

I haven’t tried manually subscribing.

Father of three, husband of one, servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I blog at mattolmstead.com.

Thu, 06/04/09
They are working for me.

I was wondering until this morning how long the posts were going to scroll down until we went to page 2. It seems long, or is it just me?

"I pray to God this day to make me an extraordinary Christian." --Whitefield http://strengthfortoday.wordpress.com

Thu, 06/04/09
In the foundry under recent posts I click the post title (not the thread title). If the post is on the first page, it takes me to the post. If, however, the post is on the second page (not on the first page) it takes me to the top of the first page.

Father of three, husband of one, servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I blog at mattolmstead.com.

Thu, 06/04/09
i’m really glad i exported all of my messages last week. there were some helpful links and other information that i’m happy i still have.

in the old messaging system, there was a limit of 100 total messages that could be stored. does the new system have a limit? i don’t see anything about it. i always thought 100 was too few, so if there is a limit i hope it’s higher. i had something between 90 and 100 messages when i exported, and the exported files are only about 200kb.

Thu, 06/04/09
are there read receipts on private messages in the new system? the old system could notify you when the recipient had read the message.

do http://sharperiron.org/messages/tags] message tags do anything now? i can’t figure out how they work. is it just a placeholder for some planned feature?

Thu, 06/04/09
[Greg Linscott] If you use Firefox, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/128] BBCode helps you format in both BB Code and HTML. It’s invaluable for sites like SI.
Bro Greg, I have to say this plug-in is the next best thing to Magic Erasers, OxyClean and vanilla caramel coffee creamer rolled into one. I am absolutely the happiest camper in cyberspace. :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

"I pray to God this day to make me an extraordinary Christian." --Whitefield http://strengthfortoday.wordpress.com

Thu, 06/04/09
[ChrisC] are there read receipts on private messages in the new system? the old system could notify you when the recipient had read the message.

do http://sharperiron.org/messages/tags] message tags do anything now? i can’t figure out how they work. is it just a placeholder for some planned feature?
Chris, the message tags do not work right now - I’m not sure why. I think it may be on the list of things to do, but that’s probably going to be way down there for a bit while Aaron works out the rest of it.

Diane - This is why we pay Greg the Megabucks - so that he can tell us what we need to know and when we need to know it. He’s kind of like the IFB Pope, except he doesn’t have to wear white robes or travel with a protective detail. ;) By the way, Oxyclean and Magic Erasers are great, aren’t they? I thank my Lord on every remembrance of them [except when I realize that it’s my turn to clean the house, which just happens to be tonight].

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells