Site Upgrade Questions/Comments

I'm starting this thread to provide a place to ask questions and/or make comments regarding the May 26th upgrade. As a starter, here's what was done...

1. vBulletin (the software package which runs the forum) was upgraded from version 3.0.8 to 3.5.4. The reason for upgrade was primarily to take advantage of the security and bug fixes released over the past year by the vendor. Several new features are present, but they mostly deal with how the forum accomplishes tasks and are not particularly visible, per se.
2. The styles (aka skins, templates, etc.) were upgraded to be compatible where possible. Classic and SteelBlue are pretty much the same as they were, although they've changed a little in their look/feel. The WOW and EvilDave styles were not (easily) upgradable and have been dropped. Red2Black was also dropped due to the low number of members using it. I added SteelGreen as a replacement for EvilDave and SmartBrown as an alternative to WOW. I also added Arcade and Matrix to provide a little variety.
3. vbChat was not only problematic, but the provider stopped supporting it. There are hundreds of affordable chat programs available... they seem to come and go like the wind, literally. We've chosen FlashChat as the alternative. It's very popular, has good support, and works fairly well. However, it is not as simple to use as vbChat... there are hundreds of options you can fiddle with to change the look and feel! I suggest you NOT do that, at least until not until you use it for a while. And, private chat messages work much differently in FlashChat... they open a mini chat window which is viewable only by you and the person you want to talking to privately -- a "mini-room" if you will. You would do well to arrange to meet someone in the chat room to "play" and get the hang of it before a real Sunday Night Chat occurs.

I WANT MORE SMILIES!!! :D

Joe, thanx to you and David for keeping this site in top shape.

I like new skins, though I still use the Classic. I like the Arcade and Matrix, but their font size is too small for my screen res.

And I love the new chat room!! I didn't liked the vbChat anyways, I think it was too buggy and it was constantly loosing posts (at least on my PC).

All in all, great job overall.

Thanx,
Nenad

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by urleebird

I WANT MORE SMILIES!!! :D

---

I found just da ting for ya... :eek::eek::eek:

:p :p :p

....:D

I'm at work today and can't take advantage of all of the new features, but so far, I like it! A big thanx to everyone involved in the changes and also to everyone who keeps the site just one click away. I really like how it keeps unread posts available for later viewing. I can't get the skins to work here, but I'll check them out when and if I ever get home!

RT

I've noticed that the Forum Tools and the Search This Forum function when you're on a Forum page (e.g. General) don't work. When I click on Forum Tools or Search This Forum, there should be pull down menus, but with me, nothing happens.

Make sure you have Javascript enabled. If that doesn't work, let us know what OS, and what browser you have. Also if you are viewing from the main site, or from http://straightrazorpalace.com.

dw

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EdinLA44

I've noticed that the Forum Tools and the Search This Forum function when you're on a Forum page (e.g. General) don't work. When I click on Forum Tools or Search This Forum, there should be pull down menus, but with me, nothing happens.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dwessell

Make sure you have Javascript enabled. If that doesn't work, let us know what OS, and what browser you have. Also if you are viewing from the main site, or from http://straightrazorpalace.com.

---

Yes... what he said... plus whether it occurs on all the skins or just one (eg, classic, blue steel, etc.)... :shrug: there's always the chance I screwed up something when I edited some changes into them. ...joe

I notice that on the main forum page, there's still a box for "Users inside vbChat". Presumably that neither exists nor reflects the presence of users inside FlashChat--what's the story?

Otherwise, very nice work!

Thanks for the work guys! So far the changing of skins has only worked once.

I just turned on my javascript console and went to straightrazorplace.com

Here are the error messages. The last one is interesting.

Error: Unknown property 'scrollbar-arrow-color'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://straightrazorpalace.com/templ...mplate_css.css
Line: 1

Error: Unknown property 'scrollbar-track-color'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://straightrazorpalace.com/templ...mplate_css.css
Line: 1

Error: Unknown property 'scrollbar-3dlight-color'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://straightrazorpalace.com/templ...mplate_css.css
Line: 1

Error: Unknown property 'scrollbar-base-color'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://straightrazorpalace.com/templ...mplate_css.css
Line: 1

Error: Unknown property 'scrollbar-darkshadow-color'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://straightrazorpalace.com/templ...mplate_css.css
Line: 1

Error: Unknown property 'scrollbar-face-color'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://straightrazorpalace.com/templ...mplate_css.css
Line: 1

Error: Unknown property 'scrollbar-highlight-color'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://straightrazorpalace.com/templ...mplate_css.css
Line: 1

Error: Unknown property 'scrollbar-shadow-color'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://straightrazorpalace.com/templ...mplate_css.css
Line: 1

Warning: function __utmVisitorCode does not always return a value
Source File: http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js
Line: 508, Column: 69
Source Code:
if ((i2=a.indexOf(".",i+1))>0) r=a.substring(i+1,i2); else return "";

Thread Tools and Thread Search do not work. My Javascript is enabled and both work on other websites. I am using Firefox.

Hmmm... I just saw an item in the vbulletin support forum that said the classic style is not supported and should not be used with this version of vBulletin. (Of course, the upgrade didn't bother to flag that, so who would know?) So, if you're having problems and that's the style you're using then you better pick another one until I can get that resolved. Until then, I'll be taking that style off-line.

I have had some problems changing styles too... I seem to be able to clear the problem by logging out and back in.

Please post what style you're using when you report problems... it will help us immensely. Thanks.

Ok... after some more research I decided the style can be used. (The "Classic" style they were talking about was actually a different style.)

However, it's clear ours had problems, so...
I regenerated the style and gave it a slightly different name -- "Classic vBulletin". It seems to work better, didn't hang or create errors logging out, etc. So give it a whirl, guys.

Piper... the vbChat is gone now in this style.

Randy... see if you get any js errors with this style and let me know... thx!

...joe

All styles now work and the Thread Tools and Search menu boxes drop down as they should.

Thanks!:)

Whatever you did that fixed it. It works fine for me now. The Forum Tools and Search This Forum drop downs are there and functional.

I'm using the Classic vBulletin skin and I'm running a Mac G4 with OS 10.4.6 and Firefox browser version 1.5.0.3

This may have been posted somewhere else, but I thought I'd throw it up here, too. I was having trouble getting in to chat...I kept getting the error message that it was "temporarily unavailable". Azjoe recommended going in and looking around to see how the new chat worked. Anyway, click on FlashChat at the top of the screen, rather than the chat icon on the left side of the home page. It works, you just don't access it the same way. Most everbody probably already figured this out, but I'm tech-slow, so I thought maybe I wasn't the only one. :D

Joe,

I'm embarrassed on this one:o... I simply forgot to change the link on the main page to get to the new chat. I've fixed it.

NOTE: -- If you get a sign-in screen for the new chat use the same login information you use for the forum. I'm not exactly sure why that appears sometimes when going to chat via the main site link... I'll look into that sometime and fix it if I can.

PS - I'm moving this thread to the "Site Comments and Suggestions" forum to keep all these tidbits together.

Thanks, Joe :D

I have always had to use the direct link to the forums, the "forums2" link: if I come in from the main page and use frames, nothing will scroll properly (this was true both for the old and new forums).

Is there a new direct link, one like the old "forums2" link?

Deepweeds

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by deepweeds

Is there a new direct link, one like the old "forums2" link?

---

Yes... see http://straightrazorpalace.com/showp...95&postcount=1
-- its in one fo the later paragraphs.

Great, found it. Thanks, Joe.

So the new direct link to the forums is:
http://straightrazorpalace.com/index.php

And the new direct link to New Posts is:
http://straightrazorpalace.com/search.php?do=getnew

And the new direct link to New Posts is:
http://straightrazorpalace.com/search.php?do=getnew

Joe, I have noticed the "Recent Posts" info window on the home page has not updated its content. You might wanna check that...

Nenad

:o hopefully, it's working now :o

(ed: the feeds are working, that is... fixes to the formatting on the main screen will have to wait for the main site upgrade.)

thx, nenad!

____
edit 2 -- it appears the recent posts feature is still not working correctly. I'm disabling it until I can resolve why.

edit 3 -- I've spent way too much time on this... it's now working as well as it's ever going to. Due to some limitations in the feature, it will never accurately show the latest 3 posts from the forums... but it will show 3 recent posts selected from some of the forums.