Technical Issues and Bugs

Okay, last call for keeping the paper icons. If nobody has asked for them to be kept by midnight EST, I'll turn them off. As usual, all decisions are reversible if it turns out someone was using them for heaven-knows-what useful purpose. ;-)

Okay, now getting rid of the icons. Temporary weird forum behavior will ensue, until I get things sorted. (I wish I had a way to try things out without modifying the board, but I don't.)

ETA: Done.

Edited nothing to see here!

Okay, really all done now. I was trying to get rid of the legend and I managed to hide the whole forum by mistake. Oops. Anyway hopefully I haven't done anything else inadvertently. Seriously, I'm glad our nuclear weapons aren't controlled with CSS.

The paper icons for New Posts and No New Posts are hidden, but I left the ones for locked thread and the paperclip for stickies.

Random question is there anyway to block the "similar topics" at the bottom of individual threads? They aren't ads but they seem to fall into two main categorizes right wing political (it could be left wing in the threads I don't visit) or grisly crime/murder forumotion sites. Last time I checked The Good Wife thread had five links to true stories of women being being murdered. I mean I understand the ads that operate on keywords and the reason for them but this just seems to be for helping other sites on Forumotion get traffic. Just curious if possible to turn it off, completely understand if it's not.

ETA: Nevermind! I realize you aparently only see this "similiar topics" when you aren't logged in! I didn't realize I was only seeing it on my phone and not the computer.

particle_person wrote:Okay, really all done now. I was trying to get rid of the legend and I managed to hide the whole forum by mistake. Oops. Anyway hopefully I haven't done anything else inadvertently. Seriously, I'm glad our nuclear weapons aren't controlled with CSS.

The paper icons for New Posts and No New Posts are hidden, but I left the ones for locked thread and the paperclip for stickies.

Woo! Thanks. Those pieces of paper did nothing but confuse me.

And I so agree about CSS. Nothing like a heart attack brought on by forgetting to put a semicolon somewhere, which suddenly makes your site look totally batshit.

It doesn't seem to be a widespread issue, but Grainne Mhaol reports not being able to see links at all. She uses Opera, if that's relevant.

Hm, let me see if I can reproduce the problem. CSS implementations vary quite a bit between browsers, but it's odd that LINKS would be the issue if that's it, because there's nothing fancy involved in coloring them. If she'd said the View New Post buttons were acting oddly, that would surprise me less because I'm doing some CSS3 things there. I'll PM with her.

Sounds good, thanks.

Making some tweaks to make the site view properly in the Opera (version 11) browser. If you use Safari, Mozilla, Firefox, IE, or Chrome then HOPEFULLY you will see no changes.

Edit: Done for now. If you use Opera, please tell me whether everything looks the way it ought to now.

Is there any way when I click on a subject title on the main page (say, "Friends" is the last subject replied to in the Television topics) it can take me to the last post I read in the Friends thread? Right now when I click on it I get taken to the very beginning of the thread.

That's what the button on the right with the picture of a little piece of paper is for. (If I'm understanding what you want correctly, that is.) I'm starting to think I should swap out the piece of paper for a text link that makes it clearer what the button does.

To answer the broader question, no, I can't change link behavior.

Added the Meetup area back. Moved the previous Boston meetup thread into it.

I've found myself logged out twice today. Don't know why that it, I never log out.

Red Wolf wrote:I've found myself logged out twice today. Don't know why that it, I never log out.

It's the start of a new month again. We last discussed this issue on December 1st, and the way things are going, I expect someone will bring it up on January 31st. (If someone does, I fully intend to link this post. ;)

ETA: ...actually, I just noticed you made the original complaint, Red Wolf! You should put a post-it on your monitor or something. "I will be logged out randomly from SF at the start of each month."

Ah yes, you're right. I really should post that note. Will I? Check back in Feb.

So I just found myself logged out again. I'm not complaining, I'm just curious as to why this happens. And it's not even the first any more!

Same. I was logged out yesterday and today.

Hm. There is definitely a logout problem but I'm not sure it's the same one as the end-of-month one. Both are cookie-related because that's how the site remembers whether we are logged in or not. Anyway, Blixie has started to look into it.

Perhaps separate from this, I have noticed that whenever I open Snarkfest from a different IP address (for example work versus home) it makes me log in anew.

Also, I seem to have more trouble on iPhone and iPad than on my laptop, perhaps because of the way those device store/don't store their cookies.

As a workaround, maybe try to use your browser's auto fill to put the password in automatically?

I, too, had to log in again this morning. I usually don't have a problem, other than the documented end of month issue, but on both my iPad and my work computer I was logged out this morning when I tried to access the board. I tend to read the board from four devices (my home laptop, my iPad, my iPhone, and my work computer) and generally stay logged in on all four devices, but today I was logged out on three of the four devices (haven't used my laptop today, but did just check my phone and it's logged out as well). I logged back in and have stayed logged in through the day.

Not a big deal, it only takes ten seconds to type my password (and it's definitely a first world problem!), but I thought I'd add my experience in case it helps with the troubleshooting. (I use IE on both my home and work computer, and Safari on the iProducts.)

Yeah, these reports are useful. Regarding the end-of-month logouts, you can set a cookie to expire after a certain length of time, and I assumed that Forumotion has set the "logged in" cookie to expire at the end of the month as a security measure. I still have to check this assumption. Whatever happened today was probably not that because (obviously...) it ain't the end of the month anymore. Anyway, when I'm back on my laptop later I will do some more sleuthing. I'm on the iPad right now.

particle_person wrote:Perhaps separate from this, I have noticed that whenever I open Snarkfest from a different IP address (for example work versus home) it makes me log in anew.

I don't always have to log in again, but it doesn't remember my reading history from location to location, only computer-specifically. Also, if I don't visit the site for a few days and hit read all new thread, it only gives those from about the last day, and also doesn't remember my in-thread location correctly (starts me past where I last read up to, almost as if every day, it assumes I've read everything that was posted up until that midnight, even if I didn't read at all that day).

It's not a huge issue, but it does lead me to overlook parts of threads as a result.

Okay, I'm poking around in the Snarkfest cookies. Here's what I see so far, in more technical detail than most people will care about:

- 3 cookies, two of which expire at the end of a "session" (when you close the browser) and one of which expires on a set date.
- The last cookie has the following gibberish stored in it:

a%3A2%3A%7Bs%3A11%3A%22autologinid
%22%3Bs%3A64%3A%2208b731b807390950b5ecc2ee48e2f879addb197w08b731bdfdb4b5b291477753%22%3Bs%3A6%3A%22
userid%22%3Bs%3A2%3A%2211%22%3B%7D

which we can decode with the handy URL Decoder/Encoder tool. It spits out:

a:2:{
s:11:"autologinid";
s:64:"08b731b807390950b5ecc2ee48e2f879addb197w08b731bdfdb4b5b291477753";
s:6:"userid";
s:2:"11";
}

This is obviously the important cookie that stores the login information. I happen to be user 11 (you can tell by looking in the URL when you visit your profile: mine says, https://thesnarkening.forumotion.com/u11, so I'm user 11). The autologinid must be a secure key of some kind that probably changes if you log out and log back in again (to be confirmed...).

Most importantly, this cookie says it will expire on Sat, 05 Jan 2013 01:34:16 GMT, which is exactly a YEAR from when I logged in. So it seems it should NOT be dying at the end of each month (unless there's something I'm missing here).

I don't know if this thread or the chat thread is most appropriate for this, but our chat at Forumer has run out. It's been at least a week now. I know in this thread (and the chat one) that there have been discussions about other possible options for chat, as the one that comes with Forumotion isn't quite up to the level of prior chats.

So, while there may be no instant solution, I at least wanted to post here to let you guys know that right now, there's no chat.

Hm. Well the easiest solution is to put some money in the Piggy Bank on Forumer to get that chat back. I funded us last time...
---

Regarding the logouts, blixie found someone else on Forumotion having the same issue today, so it's not just us.