DT Update Log and TODO

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matt3o
-[°_°]-

20 Jan 2019, 08:29

mcmaxmcmc wrote:
20 Jan 2019, 05:15
Do we have a way to find out the source of the pictures in the background still?
not from a Jedi.

User avatar
mcmaxmcmc

20 Jan 2019, 10:53

matt3o wrote:
20 Jan 2019, 08:29
mcmaxmcmc wrote:
20 Jan 2019, 05:15
Do we have a way to find out the source of the pictures in the background still?
not from a Jedi.
*cough* Somebody should make that a thing. *cough*

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

20 Jan 2019, 12:03

lots of updates today

- more headers
- got rid of the post title/author on each message
- got rid of the post title in the quick reply
- minor CSS fixes
- category photo/video is gone, welcome your new "gallery" overlord (all videos were moved into the main keyboard discussion)
- categories slightly reorganized

@mcmaxmcmc yeah... I know, I'll add it to the to-do

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Muirium
µ

20 Jan 2019, 16:35

The “title”-free posts are much more DT. Thanks!

How many headers do you feel we should have in rotation? I’ve mixed feelings about some of them (I’m a lighting pedant and I won’t deny!) but I like a deep catalogue now that every page load brings a new one.

Oh, one downside of the removed subject lines that I’ve just found: search results are a bit harder to visually parse now.

search.php?keywords=Box+switches+ruin

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

20 Jan 2019, 17:43

Muirium wrote:
20 Jan 2019, 16:35
How many headers do you feel we should have in rotation? I’ve mixed feelings about some of them (I’m a lighting pedant and I won’t deny!) but I like a deep catalogue now that every page load brings a new one.
there's no actual limit honestly. I wouldn't use more than 50-ish to give everyone a chance. I don't share your "make every header perfect", while I agree they should maintain a certain degree of watcheability, I'd like to give everyone a chance to be on the header. Possibly the best ones will stay longer.
Muirium wrote:
20 Jan 2019, 16:35
Oh, one downside of the removed subject lines that I’ve just found: search results are a bit harder to visually parse now.

search.php?keywords=Box+switches+ruin
thanks! I'll check that out!

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Muirium
µ

20 Jan 2019, 17:47

Ha! Some of those pictures would never have made it back in the good old days of my reign of DT header terror! But I do get where you’re coming from, though. It’s always rewarding when your own photo makes the cut.

andrewjoy

22 Jan 2019, 10:52

Is there anything odd about the way the header images are shown ?

For some reason the Dark Reader extension i use for firefox disables the image. This does not happen on any other site as the extension does not even touch normal images usually.
Screenshot_1.png
Screenshot_1.png (121.9 KiB) Viewed 12937 times
matt3o wrote:
20 Jan 2019, 12:03

- got rid of the post title/author on each message
Thanks!

If its possible / easy to do and we move the avatar / poster info back to the left?

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matt3o
-[°_°]-

22 Jan 2019, 10:55

the headers location is relative, your extension probably changes the base path

andrewjoy

22 Jan 2019, 16:42

matt3o wrote:
22 Jan 2019, 10:55
the headers location is relative, your extension probably changes the base path
How rude of it!!!

I will have play around then :)

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matt3o
-[°_°]-

22 Jan 2019, 16:43

andrewjoy wrote:
22 Jan 2019, 16:42
matt3o wrote:
22 Jan 2019, 10:55
the headers location is relative, your extension probably changes the base path
How rude of it!!!

I will have play around then :)
I fixed it, the new version will be available at the next update cycle

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

23 Jan 2019, 08:49

this night at 2:25:00 the server gave a "general protection fault" which is rather upsetting considering it's a brand new server. I can't think of anything but an hardware issue... likely RAM.

I'll monitor the situation, it would be incredibly annoying to have to switch server again.

andrewjoy

23 Jan 2019, 11:23

Did you try turning it off and on again ?

I am guessing its a dedicated box rather than a vhost on some hosting providers server ? Is there not some sort of guarantee / SLA that says they have to fix it ?

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matt3o
-[°_°]-

23 Jan 2019, 11:32

andrewjoy wrote:
23 Jan 2019, 11:23
I am guessing its a dedicated box rather than a vhost on some hosting providers server ? Is there not some sort of guarantee / SLA that says they have to fix it ?
yes, it's dedicated server. They have to fix anything wrong with it (if it's just the RAM wouldn't be an issue). I'll wait to see if it happens again, if it does I'll bring the server down and do a ram and HDD test. If nothing comes out I'll ask them to fix it. Last time it happened few years ago they offered a new server, but it was a smaller box.

User avatar
Muirium
µ

25 Jan 2019, 01:24

Here's a Deskthority relevant feature request: keyboard navigation for the Forum Spy. Nothing too fancy, just the usuals many of us are already used to from search engines and certain mail interfaces: j / k to step through the threads in sequence, and Return to open one. We can use browser history for the rest.

That'd be pretty boss, especially when you happen to have hooked up a board with a long cable and can't be bothered stretching to your pointing device…

Not exactly essential, but a nice to have for a keyboard community!

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

25 Jan 2019, 08:32

Muirium wrote:
25 Jan 2019, 01:24
Here's a Deskthority relevant feature request: keyboard navigation for the Forum Spy.
I like that!

andrewjoy

25 Jan 2019, 11:56

Muirium wrote:
25 Jan 2019, 01:24
Here's a Deskthority relevant feature request: keyboard navigation for the Forum Spy. Nothing too fancy, just the usuals many of us are already used to from search engines and certain mail interfaces: j / k to step through the threads in sequence, and Return to open one. We can use browser history for the rest.

That'd be pretty boss, especially when you happen to have hooked up a board with a long cable and can't be bothered stretching to your pointing device…

Not exactly essential, but a nice to have for a keyboard community!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... vimium-ff/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... pepiihcmeb

Your welcome.

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

25 Jan 2019, 12:43

it took me quite a bit but I was able to add the VisualEditor to the wiki. By default it only works via http but I was able to tunnel it to https, so we should be fine. I'm opening a new thread in the wiki category.

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

27 Jan 2019, 10:59

Quick update on the server fault we had few days ago. (nobody will give a shit, but it might be important info for the next kingpin).

After about a week I noticed a very slow increment in memory usage. Few 100kb per day but it doesn't seem to stop. Since we have a very simple configuration and only phpbb and the wiki are running I have a feeling that phpbb is leaking memory.

The old forum wasn't leaking because either php3.0 didn't have this issue or the new website "performance mode" is more susceptible to this issue (more likely).

I'm now playing with php-fpm Process Manager to see if we can solve this issue. "dynamic" allocation seems buggy, I'm now trying with "static" (that grants even higher performance) but googling around they say "ondemand" is the best for memory leaks (but the worst performance-wise).

PS: holymoly, the server is so fast that when I clicked "submit" from the quick reply I didn't even realize the post was already been sent.

andrewjoy

29 Jan 2019, 11:29

matt3o wrote:
27 Jan 2019, 10:59
Quick update on the server fault we had few days ago. (nobody will give a shit, but it might be important info for the next kingpin).
I care , its always fun to hear stories form others in the trenches so to speak :)

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

29 Jan 2019, 18:58

So I reached the point where I have to decide if I want to invest more time on the current software or switch to a new one. @Cookie is testing nodebb while I'm testing other platforms but the decision is not an easy one.

phpbb is a stable horse. it won't go away any time soon but new features are not going to happen and the extensions landscape is very sad with most plugins left for dead.

I guess the question is do we need to update?

Honestly I believe we do but there are other factors at play, like... time that I can actually spend on it. I'll think about it another few days, if you have anything to say that's your cue.

As always the first post is rich of things to do, maybe there's something you can help with.

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Muirium
µ

29 Jan 2019, 20:41

You know my position: what new features do we need? The cost of switching could be catastrophic (broken post archives, you going insane…) while the upside is not clear to me. So long as we’re secure on phpBB I see no problem with staying on it.

I appreciate there’s this overarching sense that forums in general are going the way of Alps. But what does a general wish to pivot to something else get us? I get the desire but I doubt the direction.

You mentioned phpBB plugins as a problem. How much do we rely on those?

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

29 Jan 2019, 23:14

Muirium wrote:
29 Jan 2019, 20:41
You mentioned phpBB plugins as a problem. How much do we rely on those?
currently we don't. we are on vanilla phpbb

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Scarpia

30 Jan 2019, 07:36

I’m with Mu - phpBB is reliable and holds all of the historic threads, and while a newer forum software may have better features and a more active dev community, we don’t really need those features and the risks are substantial.

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

30 Jan 2019, 08:06

it goes without saying that the migration happens only if we can recover everything

mind_prepared

30 Jan 2019, 12:29

matt3o wrote:
30 Jan 2019, 08:06
it goes without saying that the migration happens only if we can recover everything
talking about recovery - how are the chances the older Marketplace threads can be recovered anytime soon? Honestly, I don't quite understand why this happened the way it did. There are some really old threads, s.a. the New Model F thread, that didn't get deleted, but others did (such as my controller thread, *sniff*). Only reason I'm asking (again) is you told me 'a couple of days', but it will take much longer than that, eh? Oh well, patience is a virtue.

Also, if I may dip my little fly in your ointment, I must say I'm rather displeased with the recent changes on here. I don't understand why everything got changed around overnight without giving users a chance to adapt gradually. But maybe that's because I'm a crusty old man who generally isn't appreciative of change anyway... I really don't like the new layout and I definitely miss the thread thumbnails which made finding older threads I had visited before so much easier. Now I have to read the actual thread title to identify a thread, which gets really annoying really fast. It's what I've always disliked about forums in general, there is no intuitive way to find items of interest. A search function, on the other hand, only helps if you've actually remembered the thread title which is cognitively much more demanding than remembering an image as significantly less information is necessary to recognize an image as opposed to a thread title (which you have to memorize entirely or at least the significant elements, which unfortunately usually escape me).

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

30 Jan 2019, 13:30

I said "a few days" not a "couple of days".

Let's not forget that I'm volunteering here. I do my best also considering my requests for help all fell unanswered.

Regarding the update I already explained why it was necessary, I'm not going over that again. It was not an option, we had to do it.

andrewjoy

30 Jan 2019, 16:19

I don't see a huge reason to move away from phpbb as much of a nightmare as it is ( or was last time i installed it ).

If we need some custom work we can always pay for a programmer to develop an extension, i would be happy to chip into somthing like a gofundme etc to get them made.

I mean i for sure would like the old theme back but almost everything else is back to how it was and working well.

matt3o has done an amazing job and i think we should not try to reinvent the wheel.

I mean i have a soft spot for UBB.threads but thats because i am old and grumpy and like my websites to look like they are from the mid 90s.

EDIT.

If you want me to have a play around you can send me the files for the old modded theme and i can spin up an instance of the current phpbb and see if i can get it working.

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

31 Jan 2019, 18:15

I was able to recover mind_prepared's thread. It's more complicated than I would have liked, some attachments are missing but that's because for some reason they were already wrongly stored in the old database.

we would need to automate the process with some scripts, but I don't have time right now.

Anyway if there are valuable information in that thread I suggest mind_prepared to create a wiki page or a post in "keyboards".
andrewjoy wrote:
30 Jan 2019, 16:19
If you want me to have a play around you can send me the files for the old modded theme and i can spin up an instance of the current phpbb and see if i can get it working.
I'll put the theme on github or somewhere. theme updates are the least of the problem honestly, but it's nice to have someone fixing up issues.

mind_prepared

31 Jan 2019, 21:12

@matt3o

thanks man, good job! I'm glad to hear there is a way to recover the lost threads.

User avatar
Muirium
µ

31 Jan 2019, 22:13

We’ve no idea where people are located any more. Super annoying for sales threads. Could we have mandatory location metadata back again? (As suggested by Kbdfr.)

I liked the Unicode national flags and think they’re an elegant way to do this. Not interested in witty false locations, just real ones. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

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