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Forum software upgraded


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I will be upgrading the forum software shortly. There will be various small fixes and security patches. It should go through today, August 4, 2010, so please be patient today if things aren't working fully during the upgrade (if things are strange, just sign out, close your web browser and try again in an hour or so please, to give the upgrade a chance to complete).

 

Thanks,

 

Paul

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It looks like the "View New Content" now only goes back 24 hours. I liked the previous behavior better, which went back an undertermined (or nice long way) back in the past. Now if I happen to miss a few days I can't easily catch up. That button was really nice because you didn't have to delve into each subcategory to see the history of postings.

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It looks like the "View New Content" now only goes back 24 hours. I liked the previous behavior better, which went back an undertermined (or nice long way) back in the past. Now if I happen to miss a few days I can't easily catch up. That button was really nice because you didn't have to delve into each subcategory to see the history of postings.

 

There is an option to set the behaviour. Go into your Settings and in the General settings there is a Search Settings at the bottom that should do the trick.

 

Paul

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It looks like the "View New Content" now only goes back 24 hours. I liked the previous behavior better, which went back an undertermined (or nice long way) back in the past. Now if I happen to miss a few days I can't easily catch up. That button was really nice because you didn't have to delve into each subcategory to see the history of postings.

It looks to me as if the upgrade has in its Big Brotherly fashion changed some of my profile settings. E.g., I suddenly found myself with the RTE (Rich Text Editor), which I have never liked (and often didn't seem to work correctly in my browser).

 

But both I and you can go in and change the settings to something we prefer. I.e., if you click on the little arrow/wedge next to your name at the upper right and then click on "My Settings", you should get a page with a "Search Settings" section. That has a pull-down menu for "View New Content Method", with two options:

  • Show me all new content since my last visit

    and

  • Show me all content that I have not read

Maybe selecting the latter will give you what you want?

I must admit that I've never been able to figure out how the forum software decides the time of my "last visit".

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There is an option to set the behaviour. Go into your Settings and in the General settings there is a Search Settings at the bottom that should do the trick.

Paul

 

I gave that a try but both of those settings gave the same results - about 1 day's worth. Previously it worked like any of the sub forums. That is postings were just listed newest at the top regardles of whether you've read them or not, or whether they may be new since your last visit. Maybe there should be a third choice added to the list: "Show me all content."

 

It's really no big deal, because it's about as easy to click through the individual forums.

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There is an option to set the behaviour. Go into your Settings and in the General settings there is a Search Settings at the bottom that should do the trick.

Paul

 

I gave that a try but both of those settings gave the same results - about 1 day's worth. Previously it worked like any of the sub forums. That is postings were just listed newest at the top regardles of whether you've read them or not, or whether they may be new since your last visit. Maybe there should be a third choice added to the list: "Show me all content."

 

It's really no big deal, because it's about as easy to click through the individual forums.

 

I tried it and it works perfectly for me... I set it to "show me all content that I have not read", clicked "save changes", then I get 402 entries (many pages), with the most recent at the top. Then when I click through and read a topic, then click back on "view new content" that topic is no longer shown. Be sure the click, and not just go forward and back in your browser... clicking forces a refresh, whereas back-and-forth might not.

 

Paul

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It looks like the "View New Content" now only goes back 24 hours. I liked the previous behavior better, which went back an undertermined (or nice long way) back in the past. Now if I happen to miss a few days I can't easily catch up. That button was really nice because you didn't have to delve into each subcategory to see the history of postings.

 

There is an option to set the behaviour. Go into your Settings and in the General settings there is a Search Settings at the bottom that should do the trick.

 

Paul

 

Sorry Paul this seems more like a software downgrade to me. Everything prior to about 24 hours has lost its unread flag.

 

When I click on the members list all I get is a list of members currently on line.

 

When I try to access my account it says I am not logged in and when I enter my e-mail address it says I am not registered.

 

User friendly is the key to having lots of visits from lots of members.

 

Please take this post in the spirit to which it is intended. :)

 

P.S. Where's the spell checker?

Edited by tony
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It looks like the "View New Content" now only goes back 24 hours. I liked the previous behavior better, which went back an undertermined (or nice long way) back in the past. Now if I happen to miss a few days I can't easily catch up. That button was really nice because you didn't have to delve into each subcategory to see the history of postings.

It looks to me as if the upgrade has in its Big Brotherly fashion changed some of my profile settings. E.g., I suddenly found myself with the RTE (Rich Text Editor), which I have never liked (and often didn't seem to work correctly in my browser).

 

But both I and you can go in and change the settings to something we prefer. I.e., if you click on the little arrow/wedge next to your name at the upper right and then click on "My Settings", you should get a page with a "Search Settings" section. That has a pull-down menu for "View New Content Method", with two options:

  • Show me all new content since my last visit

    and

  • Show me all content that I have not read

Maybe selecting the latter will give you what you want?

I must admit that I've never been able to figure out how the forum software decides the time of my "last visit".

 

I have little or no idea what you are talking about. :)

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I must admit that I've never been able to figure out how the forum software decides the time of my "last visit".

 

I suspect this has something to do with cookies Jim.

 

Which raises another question; why was it necessary to upgrade the software? On my first visit of each day to this website my computer slows down to a crawl, could this be due to interrogation? :)

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There is an option to set the behaviour. Go into your Settings and in the General settings there is a Search Settings at the bottom that should do the trick.

Paul

I gave that a try but both of those settings gave the same results - about 1 day's worth. Previously it worked like any of the sub forums. That is postings were just listed newest at the top regardles of whether you've read them or not, or whether they may be new since your last visit. Maybe there should be a third choice added to the list: "Show me all content."

 

It's really no big deal, because it's about as easy to click through the individual forums.

I tried it and it works perfectly for me... I set it to "show me all content that I have not read", clicked "save changes", then I get 402 entries (many pages), with the most recent at the top. Then when I click through and read a topic, then click back on "view new content" that topic is no longer shown. Be sure the click, and not just go forward and back in your browser... clicking forces a refresh, whereas back-and-forth might not.

 

Paul

I'm in the same boat as Jim, here. I set my preference successively as "Show me all new content since my last visit" and "Show me all content that I have not read" and saved the changes both times. Then, after each change, I clicked "View New Content" and was rewarded with a window that started with "There are 11 new entries since Yesterday, 06:25 PM." This after not having visited the forum for at least a week. And what is the logic behind "Show me all new content since my last visit" NOT being the correct choice for what I'm trying to do, since those words describe exactly what I want? I do not want to see stuff I opted not to read during my last visit and remains unread. Also, neither of these settings says "Show me only new content since yesterday afternoon," and yet that is the behavior that is being exhibited.

 

The only difference between my experience and Jim's is that to me, it really IS a big deal. I often go for days between visits, and this feature is the only way I can keep track of what has been posted since my last visit.

 

I greatly prefer the way it worked a few upgrades back, where when you first signed on it told you right at the top when your last visit was (note to Jim L: I do not find this puzzling at all--It was always right, no matter what computer I logged in from). Then when you clicked "View New Content" a list came up of all threads that have new entries since that time. It even forgave brief visit interruptions (if you had to end a visit before reading all the new threads and came back within a few hours, it ignored the earlier visit and took you back to the previous visit).

 

Now, in order to see what has been posted since my last visit, I have to find my most recent post and take that as the starting date (since I do not remember when I last visited) and open every forum and subforum that has new posts since that time.

 

Again, thanks, Paul, for all your hard work on this.

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I must admit that I've never been able to figure out how the forum software decides the time of my "last visit".
I greatly prefer the way it worked a few upgrades back, where when you first signed on it told you right at the top when your last visit was (note to Jim L: I do not find this puzzling at all--It was always right, no matter what computer I logged in from). Then when you clicked "View New Content" a list came up of all threads that have new entries since that time. It even forgave brief visit interruptions (if you had to end a visit before reading all the new threads and came back within a few hours, it ignored the earlier visit and took you back to the previous visit).

David, sorry for the confusion. I never really paid attention to the "time of last visit" posted at the top. What I was referring to was the way the software decided what to show and not to show in the "View New Content" display, especially how far back to go in including things I hadn't read. But there may be significant differences in how we access the forum. I rarely "Sign Out". As a result, I could (at least until this latest upgrade) close my browser and return later to find myself still Signed In, with the same New Content display as before, and the Read and Unread as I had left them. I could then refresh the New Content page and see updates without losing the history that was already displayed.

Usually.

Every once in a while a refresh would drop the earliest unread entries, as well as all that I had read which hadn't received new posts since I had read them. Was that because the (virtual) session had lasted longer than a particular time span? If so, I suspect the time span was more than 24 hours. I'm pretty sure I've kept New Content sessions going for 2-3 days without losing any entries off the bottom, even though their status went from Unread to Read within minutes of the session's beginning.

 

Now back to the currently reported View New Content problem... in a separate post.

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...back to the currently reported View New Content problem....

I've discovered that it's even worse (my opinion) than I thought.

 

First of all... as reported by others, I find that there is no difference in behavior between the two choices under Search Settings. None at all. And in spite of refreshing pages and all, I have not been able to get the extended display that Paul says he got. Wondering whether this could be something browser dependent (though having trouble imagining how that could be), and since the browser I normally use is not MS Internet Explorer, I decided to check the behavior under MSIE.

 

So I opened a Concertina.net/forums session in Internet Explorer, and that's when the real troubles began. The following is mainly for Paul. I'm posting it here in case others who understand it might be able to contribute more, but I don't intend to explain it to anyone who doesn't understand it, since it deals with things they have probably never tried.

  • Though I still had the active session in my other browser, I had to Sign In. Fair enough. I hadn't used MSIE in so long that all the cookies had probably expired.
  • I checked my Profile to verify that the Search Settings was set to "Show me all content that I have not read," which is where I had left it in my other browser. It was. But when I clicked on View New Content, there was only one entry... apparently because David Barnert had posted in this thread between my starting the non-MSIE session and my Signing On in the MSIE session. I.e., it absolutely did not show all my Unread posts; it didn't even show those that were still Unread in my non-MSIE session, which had started only a few minutes earlier.
  • Note: I frequently have more than one Concertina.net/forums session going in separate browser windows -- e.g., using one to do searches while I'm composing a post in another, -- and the forum software has seemed quite good at keeping multiple sessions (even in multiple browsers) synchronized. I.e., posts read in one session will have their status updated when other sessions are refreshed. BUT NOW it appears that a different kind of status is being updated: Having started the new session in Internet Explorer, when I returned to my non-MSIE session and refreshed the New Contents page, it removed all the Unread threads that had not received new posts since I had started the MSIE session. In this respect, I guess it's enforcing some form of "Show me all new content since my last visit." The obvious problem with this is that my setting (I have just double-checked this, without changing anything) is ""Show me all content that I have not read." In addition, it appears that simultaneous sessions under the same user ID now interfere with each other, rather than being synchronized.

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But there may be significant differences in how we access the forum. I rarely "Sign Out". As a result, I could (at least until this latest upgrade) close my browser and return later to find myself still Signed In, with the same New Content display as before, and the Read and Unread as I had left them.

FWIW, I also never sign out. I just close my browser window (or quit the browser, Safari at home or MSIE at work). I have the Forums page bookmarked, so whenever I return, that's the first page I see. Usually I don't have to sign in again, but sometimes I do. None of this seems to have changed since the recent upgrade. But I just visited for the first time since the session yesterday and "View New Content" is only showing me posts back to around 12:30 this afternoon (EDT).

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But I just visited for the first time since the session yesterday and "View New Content" is only showing me posts back to around 12:30 this afternoon (EDT).

...And for the last two days, the starting point hasn't changed. "View New Content" still shows me posts back to Sunday.

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