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Non-official post for any problems with the new forum

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Posted by BaltACD on Monday, September 27, 2010 9:13 AM

When using the 'Quick Reply' button and making a post....you are taken to the last page of the thread after the post is completed.

When using the 'regular' Reply button, after making the post you are taken to and left at a screen that says you made a successful post.  Redundant and illogical.

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Monday, September 27, 2010 8:57 AM

Bucyrus

How can a thread go on for five pages, generate 64 replies, and get locked because so many bystanders are offended; and yet still only have 63 views?  How can a thread have more replies than it has views?

hee hee hee,,, the way some folk reply you just know they didn't read the thread to begin with!

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Monday, September 27, 2010 8:24 AM

    The forum gurus are aware of the views counter being out of whack right now. Some of the thread have a half dozen replies and zero views.  It's on the list of things to fix, but I'd guess that list is pretty long at the moment.

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Posted by Anonymous on Monday, September 27, 2010 7:53 AM

How can a thread go on for five pages, generate 64 replies, and get locked because so many bystanders are offended; and yet still only have 63 views?  How can a thread have more replies than it has views?

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Posted by kolechovski on Friday, September 24, 2010 2:04 PM

I'm still having the issue with the cursor appearing outside the forum box.  I can type okay, but if I try to post it, it just says...

The following errors were found in your form:
â– Post message is required

I got a screenshot of the issue.  If a forum admin wants to send me an email adress, I can send them the screenshot of the issue in progress if they need it.  Copy-pasting the text before the failed attempt (if noticed before hitting "post") and retrying it when the cursor appears where it should allows the message to be quickly replaced (it's gone otherwise), but it's annoying having to catch it first.

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Posted by The Butler on Friday, September 24, 2010 12:09 PM

Semper Vaporo

I don't see a way to select an avitar from anyplace other than the ones they supply or from your own computer.

Best thing I can think of is for you to copy the file from PhotoBucket back to your PC and upload from there.  You can then delete it from your PC when it is done uploading it.

I tried uploading from my computer.  I couldn't get that to work, either.  I've notice a few of the regulars here have changed their avatars, so it must be my lack of skill/knowledge.  I will settle for the witness protection program for now. Sigh

James


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Posted by kolechovski on Friday, September 24, 2010 10:56 AM

Certainly copy-paste your stuff to an external notepad doc if you fear losing it.  I've learned this from much experience myself.

Anyhow, about this forum, 2 more issues.  First, I'd be really nice if the posts each had clear dividers, as they did on the old forum, and the names should be easy to find and read.  Both of tehse are now an issue.  Anyone who looks at any saved old-style pages will easily see what I am talking about.

It'd also be nice if after making a post, the page would automatically redirect to the thread, down to the post just made, as it used to, rather than just say that it succeeded, and just hang there.  While I'm at it, the post-successful box should read "Victoly!" or "Conglatulations!".  Okay, just joking on that last one...

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 7:27 PM

This is one of the things that really stumps the experts. I have had it happen to me a couple of times on other forums that use different software, so it is not unique to this site. I have also seen people complain about it using different browsers so I don't think it i unique to just one brand (no matter how much people bad-mouth certain ones and practically demand that everyone switch to the one they like the bestest).

I have only had it happen here once, and I am fairly certain it was something "I DID", but I am not sure what it was.  The same is true for some instances where it has happened to me on other sites.

It just seems like maybe I moved the mouse while I was clicking the Post/Submit button... it is all kind of hazy as to what happened, like I was mentally running on 'Auto-Pilot' and there is this sudden feeling of, "What did I just do?" followed immediately by, "And where'd all my typing go?  ARRRRGGGHH!"

It happened often enough on another forum that I got in the habit of highlighting the entire post (Ctrl-A) and then copying it to the clipboard (Ctrl-C) before I clicked the send button.  That way if it got lost in the shuffle I could just paste the clipboard (Ctrl-V) into a new edit window and send it again.  Not something that I think we should all just accept as general practice, but it did save my beautiful prose more than once!

The other forum seems to have cured the problem for the most part and I have gotten lax about that habit but I still get bit once in a while... But I still don't know what I do that causes it... Not that it is definitely the user's fault, but it sure seems like it occurs when I get to working too fast.

 

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by WMNB4THRTL on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 10:02 AM

Does anyone know why when we try to post a reply in a thread, after typing all of it in Bang Head and hitting 'post,' we get an error message and all content is lost??!! It's now happened more than once. Thanks.

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 11:06 PM

I don't see a way to select an avitar from anyplace other than the ones they supply or from your own computer.

Best thing I can think of is for you to copy the file from PhotoBucket back to your PC and upload from there.  You can then delete it from your PC when it is done uploading it.

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by The Butler on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 9:27 PM

What am I doing wrong, I am trying to change my avatar. After going through "Change Avatar" or "(Edit)," a sub-screen pops up and I try to put in my avatar's photobucket address and both Firefox and IE8 go searching in my C Drive to "upload" an image.  Any ideas?

Edit: My operating system is Vista.

James


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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Friday, September 17, 2010 2:30 PM

You CAN edit your posts!  They just HID the ability by burying the command in a drop down menu in the "More" button.  Click the "More" button in the upper right corner of your post and you will find the Edit link.

I have not had a post dissappear using this system (yet) but it did also happen using the old system, so there is not much change in that regard. I also had problems with the old system screwing up my formatting just like this system does.

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by kolechovski on Friday, September 17, 2010 1:15 PM

I see I also can't edit my posts anymore.  Also, often, upon loading the posting page, the cursor does screwy stuff, or doesn't end up in the box correctly.  I can still type the message okay, but then it will fail to post, with a warning saying that I must type a message (so, where did all that text go I just typed?).

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Posted by kolechovski on Friday, September 17, 2010 1:10 PM

Ugh.  So slow, all the extra white makes it harder to read and to differentiate posts or topics from each other... I don't like the change.  I can't imagine why somebody thought this was a good idea.

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Posted by schlimm on Thursday, September 16, 2010 11:10 PM

Thanks.  I discovered that the new forum system doesn't work with my usual browser, Firefox.  Works fine with IE, but I try not to use Microsoft products when I have an option, especially if others are better.

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Thursday, September 16, 2010 6:06 PM

Another possibility is what color "Theme" you are using.  What computer operating system are you using?  Windows ??  Have you changed the default colors of the system?

I had one customer whose daughter had found the "color setting" Application in Control Panel and had altered all the "standard" colors to match the Oriental rug on the floor!  The screen was really color coordinated with the decor of the room but Buttons were unreadable, and dropdown menus looked like ALL the entries were "selected", until the mouse passed over them and then the text dissappeared completely! 

The owner was incensed at the foolishness of Microsoft for creating a computer that was so hard to understand and use!  And I had to agree when I first started trying to see what the problem was. 

It took about an hour to just figure out what had happened and then a good 15 minutes of my running back and forth between a working machine and this one to figure out what unreadable areas to click on to get to the Color app to reset the colors (this was before "Themes" were invented by Microsoft to reset the colors all at once... I had to reset them one at a time... foreground text, background text, button text, button background, button highlight, menu text, menu selected text, menu background, menu selected background... ad nauseum.  AAAACCCKKK!

Oh well... Again, just guessing as to why your system might be causing this problem.

 

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Thursday, September 16, 2010 5:34 PM

schlimm

It is not set to 256 but rather to "Highest" (4 Bil.)

 

Well, it was only a possibility and since I have seen so many PCs that are not setup "properly" I thought I mention it.

I am wondering how many icons you detect as invisible (I almost wrote "see as invisible" hee hee hee).  I note only 4 that might be too dim for you to see.  I see the icons as two rows; the 2nd row begins with the letter "B" icon (Bold).  The 2nd row is the only line where there are icons that are dimmed.  They are: the 6th (Outdent), the 10th (Insert/edit link), 11th (Unlink) and 13th (Edit image).  The last icon on the line is the 14th (Smilies).

Do you see detect any other areas that might be an invisible icon?

 

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by schlimm on Thursday, September 16, 2010 4:33 PM

When posting a reply.

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Thursday, September 16, 2010 2:47 PM

schlimm

No, of course not.  I discovered that by sliding the mouse cursor along, the little I.D. messages popped up showing me what was there.  I don't know if that is on your display, but if so, maybe you can see for yourself.

    At the risk of sounding dumb (too late- I'm already there!), are you talking about these invisable boxes being on the screen I read messages on, or the one where I post a reply message.?


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Posted by schlimm on Thursday, September 16, 2010 2:28 PM

It is not set to 256 but rather to "Highest" (4 Bil.)

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Thursday, September 16, 2010 1:46 PM

It is also possible that your display screen is set to only 256 colors and the colors chosen (by the website page designer) for the background and grayed (inactive) items get mapped to the exact same color and are thus "invisible" to you. (Yeah, just like listening to music you can't hear! Doesn't everybody do that?)

Do you know if your display is set to the old CGA 256-color scheme?  (Do photos on your screen, especially photos of faces) look all blotchy?)  I have run into way too many folk that never get the information on how to enable the wizbang hardware they paid ever so much for.  It is only recently that the computer manufacturer's have started to enable that stuff by default and many people never get to see how much their computer is capable of!  I just purchased a new Laptop PC from Wal*Mart and it was advertised as having 640Gbytes of disk space. But it came as two 320Gbyte drives and only the first one was enabled, thus I am betting many purchasers of that model never get to use that second drive and may never even KNOW it!

 

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by schlimm on Thursday, September 16, 2010 1:09 PM

Semper Vaporo

Those links are "grayed" until you have the insertion cursor within something that can use them, then they will brighten showing that they are available and active.

The "Link" link does not convert text to a link since anything that looks like a link will automatically be converted to a link anyway, but it is used to modify the displayed link to be different text so as to be more descriptive (or deceptive if the idiot doing the posting desires to be dishonest).

On my screen the grayed color of inactive links and the background are almost the same and I have to tip my LCD screen slightly in order to see them.

 

They darken and then you can see the text message.  The only buttons that are "there" are Smilies and "Insert Media"  It was not that way at first after the switchover so iI wonder if something is defective?  In general, I see no improvements in the New Forum and several negatives.

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Thursday, September 16, 2010 1:04 PM

Those links are "grayed" until you have the insertion cursor within something that can use them, then they will brighten showing that they are available and active.

The "Link" link does not convert text to a link since anything that looks like a link will automatically be converted to a link anyway, but it is used to modify the displayed link to be different text so as to be more descriptive (or deceptive if the idiot doing the posting desires to be dishonest).

On my screen the grayed color of inactive links and the background are almost the same and I have to tip my LCD screen slightly in order to see them.

 

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by schlimm on Thursday, September 16, 2010 1:04 PM

No, of course not.  I discovered that by sliding the mouse cursor along, the little I.D. messages popped up showing me what was there.  I don't know if that is on your display, but if so, maybe you can see for yourself.

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Thursday, September 16, 2010 12:54 PM

schlimm

I've noticed that many of the buttons (link, unlink, etc.) are there but invisible.

    Huh?  How can you tell?  Is that like listening to music that you can't hear?

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Posted by schlimm on Thursday, September 16, 2010 11:51 AM

I've noticed that many of the buttons (link, unlink, etc.) are there but invisible.

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Posted by tree68 on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 9:26 AM

Followers are probably those who have checked the "Email me replies to this post" box.  Viewers are likely anyone who has clicked on the thread.

Since you can reply to any post and your reply will end up at the end as the most recent post, the number of replies to a given post may be as low as 0.  I usually reply to the most recent post, unless I want to quote someone from an earlier post.

Some forums show replies to a specific post as sort of a "sub-thread."

I would hazard that "views" are probably cumulative for the entire thread.

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Posted by AgentKid on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 9:13 AM

What gets me is that if you go back to page 1 on this thread, at least as a couple of minutes ago, you see a line near the top that says this post has 125 replies and 8 followers, yet on the forums "front page" it says there are over a thousand views of this thread. What the heck is the difference between a viewer and a follower?

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Posted by travelingengineer on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 8:21 AM

A couple of thoughts, that I have expressed before:

1)  The best (and perhaps only way right now) to get answers to your questions re: the forum and your perceived problems, complaints, and needed explanations is, rather than fulminating here on the forum itself, to put the very same text into a query to Kalmbach "Customer Service" (icon in upper right corner of the screens).  This is very effective, and I have found the folks there, usually "Megan,"  to be quite forthcoming with cogent explanations.

2)  You will note that an "Andy Cummings," apparently representing Kalmbach, posted on September 9th in this very same thread, with the acknowledgment that forum complaints were being read and "listened to," and begged our patience as their over-worked IT staff worked to resolve.

"This too shall pass."

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