Forum update and tweaks

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

Just a quick heads up.

I need to make a couple of changes to the platform that the forum runs on...so this will involve me disabling the forum for a period of time, over this weekend (18-19th May).

So, apologies for the short notice and hopefully all will go well and the forum will be back to normal very soon after the work has been done.

(It's nothing major, but it would be better if the forum was disabled while this goes on in the background ).

regards
Tim

[Woodles]

Didn't the last "tweak" involve the forums being down for about a week?

I'm sure this time it'll be different

(Only joking Tim, I have every confidence in your abilities)

Mark

[UBT - Timbo]

Didn't the last "tweak" involve the forums being down for about a week?

I'm sure this time it'll be different

(Only joking Tim, I have every confidence in your abilities)

Mark

Hi Mark

I have to say that I am going into this with a bit of trepidation...as sometimes, it's a better idea to leave well alone, rather than attempting to fix a problem that doesn't exist (currently).

However, the last time, I was doing something else...and it was by deleting an old Extension, that caused the issue - but it was an easy fix and something I learnt about, in the process.

So, I'll keep my fingers crossed that it goes well...

regards
Tim

[Woodles]

Hi Tim,

No worries, I won't be around for this weekend anyway so I doubt it'll affect me at all.

I expect there'll be a completely working forum on Monday and I'll not even notice the change(s)

Mark

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

Minor tweaking now done - if you spot any issues, please let me know, by reply here, or by PM, or by email.

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

I've tweaked the forum member "RANKINGS" a little bit, as I wanted somehow to recognise members long standing contributions to the Team and the forum.

So, I've added the following:

Active UBT Contributor 10+ yrs
Active UBT Contributor 5+ yrs
Active UBT Contributor 1+ yrs

I can only go by the period of time a member has been registered to the forum, so it is very likely that someone might have been crunching BOINC for longer than they have been a forum member or even crunching BOINC for longer than they have been a Team member - hence the + sign.

So, please do not be disheartened or offended, if I have under-estimated your contribution...it is just a small token to show how long you have involved

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

I've merged a few sub-forums where few posts have been made recently, so, it just means there's less to search through, if one wants to view or make any comments about specific BOINC projects.

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

So, one more tweak which I'd like to carry out.

Currently, each type of project (Maths, Sciences, Earth, BioMeds, etc) is separated into it's own sub-forum (represented by a blue bar, with the name of the category shown).

But I am tempted to move all the different projects into just one "BOINC projects" sub-forum, so we end up with just the following sub-sections:

Guest area
General Forum
Private Section
BOINC projects (new)
non-BOINC projects

Will this help make it easier to navigate around the forum - or are the different sections actually helpful ?

Please let me know your opinions.

regards
Tim

[UBT - Chris Suddick]

I think it would be a good idea to reduce the number of sub-sections. Go ahead.

Chris.

[UBT - PennyQ]

Agreed! There is less going on now, so the distinction of the different sub-projects doesn't really add much.

[UBT - Timbo]

I think it would be a good idea to reduce the number of sub-sections. Go ahead.

Chris.

Thanks Chris - that makes TWO of us who think this might be an improvement

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Agreed! There is less going on now, so the distinction of the different sub-projects doesn't really add much.

And Penny makes THREE

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

So, I've made the tweak as detailed above - but I've retained the old sub-sections, just in case this new layout doesn't please the majority.

If no issues or complaints by say next week, then I'll archive off the old (empty) sub-sections and we can keep the new tweaked look.

PS: Personally I think the new simplified sub-section looks a bit better and slightly less cluttered...so, if that assists members to view and post then it's a good tweak to have made.

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

It looks like the forum database is being affected by too many spider-bots crawling all over it (which is a good thing as it's a sign of it's popularity !) - however the downside is when "real" users want to access it and the error "Too many connections" is displayed.

So, I've disabled all but the Google-bot in the hope that the noted error (that I've seen today ) doesn't become more regular.

regards
Tim

[bigsinky]

i have to say i have never had that error ever

[UBT - Timbo]

i have to say i have never had that error ever

Hi Neil

Thanks for the feedback - which is very welcome.

We've had one or two issues in the past with the forum - mostly the issues have been about access and sometimes there have been some problems when the forum software was upgraded...

But fingers crossed we don't get any big issues in the future. (touch wood and all that !!)

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

You might notice that the number of forum members registered to the forum has reduced - this is because every once in a while I delete any suspected spambot registrations and hence the membership figure gets smaller after they've been deleted.

And I've just deleted lots of spambot usernames.

regards
Tim

[Woodles]

Minor issue:

Every time I send a PM I get an error message at the top of the "sending message" page until it refreshes to show "sent"

[phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [root]/includes/functions_messenger.php on line506: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable

Doesn't seem to have any effect as PMs go as usual.

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi Mark

Yup - I've seen this too - though I've not been quick enough to actually fully "capture" the entire error message.

It does seem to be transitory and not affecting anything else, so I'll add it to the "check list" of things that need looking at.

regards
Tim

[Woodles]

I saw it a few times and couldn't catch it in time so I did a screen grab and typed it

Doesn't seem to be doing any harm, I imagine some counter somewhere isn't.

[chriscambridge]

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2459371

[UBT - Timbo]

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2459371

Thanks Chris

Will see about tweaking the php code when the forum gets a bit quiet (as I'll need to close it down to edit/update the php file).

(I had found a couple of sources about the error but of course the "fixes" shown (elsewhere) did not relate directly to phpBB software !!).

regards
Tim

[chriscambridge]

I would try to avoid editing the code if possible and instead either try to update phpBB to 3.2.3, or if you can't do that because of existing plugins, just revert back to an earlier version of PHP via CPanel or Plesk. Probably either PHP 5.0 or 6.0 as they were pretty major versions.

If your hosting provider has pushed through PHP 7+ then I guess you won't have much choice.

Its not a major deal editing code as its just the initialisation of a single variable the file: /includes/functions_messenger.php. The only reason I would try and avoid that is because the next version of PHP could introduce even more than changes and then you will be back in the same situation!

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi Chris

Thanks for the tips.

There are two issues anyways:

1) There is no subdirectory called "includes" under the php folder and hence I cannot find a "functions_messenger.php" file to actually edit.

2) The latest version of phpBB is v3.3.0 - and this is more "suitable" for use with php v7.x - and indeed my hosting provider wanted to charge me an annual fee for "support" if I wanted to keep php v5 or v6 on this server package...so I went with the v7.0 upgrade.

So, I might just leave it a bit for now and do an upgrade to the latest software and that should fix it...and there might be some other fixes for issues I've not come across yet. (I've seen the "new and improved" functions listing and some new bits will be worth having).

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

I've now archived the SETI@home sub-forum and have also moved out any original posts related to SIMAP, POEM and The Lattice Project, which have all shut down in the last year or so.

I will also spend a bit of time doing some other minor "house-keeping" when I get some time over the next month or two - so you might notice a few little tweaks here and there.

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

A wee "heads up"...

Just a note that I have seen that there might be something "funny" (peculiar) going on, when one tries to reply to an existing post (whether you are quoting the previous post or just replying).

I'm not sure if it's the forum software interacting with something else or if it's my browser, (which is Brave and not Firefox/Edge/Chrome) which was working fine until about 2 days ago and now, since it auto-updated itself, now edit boxes appear "truncated".

If anyone else has this issue then hopefully I can figure it out before too long.

regards
Tim

[chriscambridge]

Test reply (from Chrome)

[chriscambridge]

Yeah when you try to edit the post, the edit box is greyed out/not editable.

[chriscambridge]

https://imgur.com/QBfKWKE

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi Chris

Yup - I get the same as you.

I think it is because I upgraded the hosting server from PHP 7.3 to the newer 7.4.22 (as the 7.3 version is now outdated and not supported). I had a choice to upgrade to v8, but I felt uncomfortable about upgrading to a major version change at this time.

I think I might have to disable the forum for a day or so (sometime soon, warnings will be given !) and upgrade the forum software, as it is lagging behind by quite a bit....it's on v3.2.2 and the newest version is v3.3.5.

I'll take a look at the phpBB support forum and see if anyone else has this issue.

regards and thanks
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

HI Chris (and everyone else)

I've now tried both Brave and Chrome and the same issue (of a weird text box and no ability to write a response, or to even place your mouse cursor ) arises, when trying to create a NEW post or when trying to reply including "quotes" from a previous message.

And yet simply replying to an existing post is fine.

Very strange.

Will try and take a more "in depth" look at it tonight.

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

The forum is back up and running, using the the later version of php and the latest version of phpBB.

I am hoping that now this is live, all will be well.

And I am grateful once again to Janos for stepping in and providing some guidance as well as some database updating skills, after the phpBB "update" software got stuck, initially because it didn't like the version of php that was running and then once that was fixed, not making it easy to update the database so that it was compatible with the forum software.

So, please "tread gently" for a while so that I can keep an eye on whether it gets broken once "under load" from the thousands ( ) of access requests

regards
Tim

[chriscambridge]

Well done Tim for getting the forum back online.

[UBT - Timbo]

Well done Tim for getting the forum back online.

Hi Chris

Yup - there were some moments when I felt that the software was not playing ball and interdependencies were contriving to make things really difficult and very confused - especially when it became apparent that some of the phpBB documentation is actually incorrect...and that caused some of the issues...

There was even a point today when the v3.2.2 phpBB software was actually running under php 7.4...and the docs imply that this shouldn't be the case.

But the newest phpBB is now installed and seems to be OK - it hasn't failed yet, nearly 4 hours after it went "live".

The next few days/weeks will hopefully prove that there are no "bugs" or glitches and then I can have more confidence that it'll continue to be OK.

And of course the single most important factor in all of this: ALWAYS have a copy of the latest backup BEFORE you do ANY upgrading.

regards
Tim

[Rachael2022]

I am glad you got it all up and running again, Thank you Tim!

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi Rachael

I'm glad too...though I did get significant help from our "Honorary" member Janos, who has stepped in before when the forum was hosted and administered by another UBT member, who then quit BOINC and try as I might, I could not get in touch with this original admin, by phone, by email or even in writing...

Janos converted the old version forum to the new format when I was able to get hold of a backup and he then got it running on this website.

He is an "old hand" at fixing this forum...though I have only called on his assistance when I really get stuck.

And credit where credit is due.

Thus far, no major issues seems to have arisen since it went live...so touch wood, it'll stay that way.

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

The eagle eyed amongst the membership, might have noticed that a couple of weeks ago, the "Total" number of registered members on the forum, dropped by about a hundred or so.

These were accounts who had NEVER posted on the forum and they have simply been "deactivated" - so if the account holders want to return, they will need to contact me so that I can re-activate their original account.

Secondly, (until today) there were a large number of accounts that had made at least ONE posting, but who had NOT logged in at all, since as far back as 2006 !

So, as of today, I have used the "Pruning" tool, within the Admin Control panel, to deactivate member accounts who had not logged in since 31st December 2019.

This was an arbitrary date, chosen on the basis that if people had not logged in at any time during the last (nearly) 30 months, (and during a pandemic when people were not going on holidays, or were stuck at home twiddling their thumbs), then they clearly are not interested in UBT or maybe even BOINC anymore.

So, we are now down to a more manageable 59 members (at time of writing).

I would hope that this does not have a negative effect on the forum...and likewise I would point out that, if you had set up a "backup" account here, it might now have been deactivated - so please let me know if you had set up such a "secondary" account and I can re-activate it for you.

regards and keep staying safe
Tim

[UBT - Liamlee]

Sounds good Tim