Forum update (1 Viewer)

[mjp]

You may have noticed that the forum has been updated. In addition to a lot of administrative stuff that you don't care about, this update also made some changes to the posting process. They are all explained in this video, or you can just be adventurous and poke around to see what you can break.

 

[bospress.net]

Spoiler: Wow

This is cool....

 

[Purple Stickpin]

I've never understood the concept of a movie plot "spoiler." I've watched plenty of movies where I've read the book or known the twists and turns of the plot in advance and none of that has, in any way, shape, or form, spoiled anything about the movie for me. The movie can spoil itself, of course, but that's another matter. I generally watch movies to see how the story is told, not what the story is, which is why I can really enjoy a well-made movie about a subject that I have no interest in. Anyway...that's not what this thread is about, is it?

 

[bospress.net]

Most of the time that is true but in a movie like The Sixth Sense knowing the end really changes the experience.

 

[mjp]

Anyway...that's not what this thread is about, is it?

It is now.

I don't know about a movie spoiler, but now that we record just about everything we watch on TV I don't necessarily want to read someone's recap of something I haven't seen yet.

Life was a lot easier before Thomas Edison invented the god damn VCR.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

I thought Edison invented the Betamax.

 

[hoochmonkey9]

Umm, that was Copernicus. Remember? The apple falling on his head?

Fuck, I hate stupid people.

 

[roni]

I go with Purple here. People sometimes refuse to tell me the end of a movie, in case I'd want to see it. Maybe a lot of people do enjoy a movie more without knowing, what's going to happen.

I say: when a movie is good and strong, you can watch it more than once. This proofs, that knowing what will happen doesn't have to spoil anything.

Spoiler

but the feature is nice.
(we had it for a long time though, didn't we? I remember that mjp once revealed here that Soilent Green is people, when it started.)

 

[mjp]

Yes, we had a third-party add-on that did the same thing (maybe not as elegantly). Now its built in to the core software, which is always better for future compatibility and updates. Any time I can delete a plug-in, I figure it's a good thing.

A good example of that is the ability to log in to the forum using your Google+, Twitter or Facebook login. We had that for a while via a plug-in, but I removed that plug-in because part of it broke and the author didn't fix it (and I was going through a fuck 'em if they don't want to create a forum user phase). Now that they built it in to the core I added it back.

 

[d gray]

what's the deal with the green corners on (some of) the avatars?

 

[mjp]

If you mouse over it you see...

 

[d gray]

thanks!

 

[mjp]

Just added a new plugin that lets you embed video clips from a lot of places. And by "a lot," I mean:

8tracks, ABC News, Amazon Product, Audiomack, BBC News, Bandcamp, Blip, CBS News Video, CNBC, CNN, CNNMoney, Coub, Dailymotion, Facebook, Flickr, Fox News, Getty Images, Gfycat, GitHub Gist, Global News, Google+, Grooveshark, Hulu, IMDb, Instagram, Internet Archive, LiveLeak, MSNBC, MediaCrush, Metacafe, Mixcloud, National Geographic Channel, Pastebin, Podbean, Prezi, Rdio, Scribd, SlideShare, SoundCloud, Spotify, Straw Poll, TED Talks, The Atlantic Video, The New York Times Video, The Wall Street Journal Online, TinyPic videos, Trailer Addict, Twitter, VEVO, Videomega, Vimeo, Vine, Vocaroo, Vube, WorldStarHipHop, Yahoo! Screen, YouTube, audioBoom, imgur albums and GIFV, vidme.

I don't even know what a lot of those are, but there you go.

This is probably not good news if you're on a slower connection, but time marches on and crushes all of us in its wake.

 

[mjp]

You are not hallucinating, the forum looks a little different (well, you may be hallucinating, I don't know, but your hallucinations aren't the cause of the forum change - though if you're hallucinating you probably think you are the cause of every change in the world, maaan).

It's mainly a typography tweak to get the forum consistent with the rest of the main Bukowski site.

If you don't like it, just be secure in the knowledge that you'll get used to it.

 

[jordan]

i'll be honest... i read these forum update threads mainly out of anticipation to see what roni complains about.

 

[Johannes]

Just added a new plugin that lets you embed video clips from a lot of places. And by "a lot," I mean:

8tracks, ABC News, Amazon Product, Audiomack, BBC News, Bandcamp, Blip, CBS News Video, CNBC, CNN, CNNMoney, Coub, Dailymotion, Facebook, Flickr, Fox News, Getty Images, Gfycat, GitHub Gist, Global News, Google+, Grooveshark, Hulu, IMDb, Instagram, Internet Archive, LiveLeak, MSNBC, MediaCrush, Metacafe, Mixcloud, National Geographic Channel, Pastebin, Podbean, Prezi, Rdio, Scribd, SlideShare, SoundCloud, Spotify, Straw Poll, TED Talks, The Atlantic Video, The New York Times Video, The Wall Street Journal Online, TinyPic videos, Trailer Addict, Twitter, VEVO, Videomega, Vimeo, Vine, Vocaroo, Vube, WorldStarHipHop, Yahoo! Screen, YouTube, audioBoom, imgur albums and GIFV, vidme.

Wait. There are other places in the net that play videos beside YouTube?

Too much, man.

 

[zobraks]

Roni is busy, so I'll do the complaining.

Before the change, the subforum titles (when there were no new posts in them) looked like the rest of the text on the main forum page and they were in bold letters if there was something new. After the change, the subforum titles look like they're in bold letters even when I'm sure I've read everything in those subforums. The letters in posts are HUGE and clunky so I have to press Ctrl + - (minus) all the time.
The rest is OK, or (more likely) I haven't experienced the rest of the "goodies" yet.

P.S. I really thought there was something wrong with me (I mean, beside coming here often) this morning when I first saw the changes.
P.P.S. How come the letter size is fine (like it used to be) in Reply box, and quite wrong (HUGE) for me when the reply is posted?

P.P.P.S. On the bright side: I can read posts from the adjacent room now.
Without glasses.

 

[mjp]

the subforum titles look like they're in bold letters even when I'm sure I've read everything in those subforums.

Yeah, I noticed that. I haven't had time to look into a fix yet.

 

[mjp]

Actually the forums with unread messages are still bold, it's just not as obvious with the new font. You can always look at the little sketches for each forum. They are dark when there are unread messages and kind of faded if all the messages are read.

Or you can just do what I do and click the New Posts link in the top nav.

How come the letter size is fine (like it used to be) in Reply box, and quite wrong (HUGE) for me when the reply is posted?

Fixed. ;)

 

[mjp]

It occurs to me that I'm working on a new monitor with a pretty high resolution, so things might look "smaller" to me than they do if you're using an older monitor. But when I made the text changes I made them on an older monitor and they looked fine to me there.

This font matches the main Bukowski site now in style and size. It's bigger because we live in a mobile world now. 40% of the traffic to the site and forum is from a phone or a tablet. The larger font size is to accommodate those devices (and this looks a lot better on those devices, try it and see...then stop looking at websites on your damn phone). Plus it's just the way everything is going now. Tiny text is dying, as it probably should.

 

[the only good poet]

Tiny text is dying,

Yes, right before our eyes. The larger font as default suit those of us who have the onset of macular degeneration.

 

[number6horse]

HERE HERE ! ...Here Here !... here here ...

this font suits me just fine actually. Nice update.

 

[roni]

.....

I feel flattered.

 

[mjp]

Added ssl certificates so you can access the forum (and the main site) via https. I expect that maybe zero of you care about that, but Google does, so there you go.

It's still accessible the regular http way.

 

[mjp]

Well, scratch that.

I removed the SSL cert, so if you try to come in via https now you'll get a warning that the earth is about to stop revolving and you should flee to your pre-assigned spacecraft immediately.

You can ignore that and just use http.

 

[zobraks]

HTTPS... provides a reasonable guarantee that one is communicating with precisely the website that one intended to communicate with (as opposed to an impostor)

Are you sure you're not an impostor? I have no means to check this joint since there's no HTTPS anymore...

 

[mjp]

Are you sure you're not an impostor?

Is that a rhetorical question?

 

[zobraks]

:DD

 

[Digney in Burnaby]

For some reason I'm back again. (Let the bells ring and the banners...whaddya mean, you didn't notice?!?)

 

[mjp]

Change https to http and you won't get that.

The link from the main site was https, but I fixed that yesterday.

 

[mjp]

Roni, I thought I would give you a glimpse into the future. Because I know how much you love change. :)

I don't know when it's coming (they've been working on version 2.0 for 2.5 years - seriously), but the fact that there's a demo forum now gives me the impression they are getting close.

 

[mjp]

Added ssl certificates so you can access the forum (and the main site) via https.

I removed the SSL cert...

You may not have noticed (and you still may not care), but the SSL certificate has been back for a while.

That's because Google is becoming very pushy about using https, and starting next year (soon) they are going to start showing a visible security warning in Chrome if a site isn't accessed using https.

They're already paving the way for that warning with the "information" icon in the URL, which, if you click on it now, leads you to a security warning on http:

But not on https:

So today I'll start forcing the https connection, and working on fixing the issues that it caused last time (getting logged out, missing images, etc.).

All of which is to say, you may see some wonky behavior here and there. But it has to be done, so being done it is. So to speak. And so forth. FYI. DIY. FTW!

 

[mjp]

It's done. I don't see any problems so far. Let me know.

 

[roni]

I'm sorry to say that, but it's okay.

 

[LickTheStar]

Well I hate change. But I guess this kind is OK.

 

[Johannes]

I guess the question we all have to face is: When and how will Snapchat be integrated? If we want to appeal to the kids we gotta stay fly. I can envision mjp doing a couple of snaps while commuting to work or something, like reading the hottest new threads into his smartphone.

This gotta be awesome.

 

[LickTheStar]

Not "fly" Johannes. On fleek.

 

[Johannes]

That's too hip, even for me. Had to check Urban Dictionary.

 

[mjp]

The forum search is using a new cloud-based search engine. I don't know yet whether I love or hate the new results format. But it's certainly a better search engine, so if you've ever been frustrated trying to find something here (or searching a term the old search engine said was "too short"), you should be happy.

Some advanced search operators:

Query	What it does
user:"Mockingbird"	Searches for posts by user "Mockingbird." Quotes are needed only if the username has more than oneword[/td[/tr
tag:"site update"	Searches for posts with the tag "site update." Quotes needed only if the tag has more than one word
before:2010-12-31	Searches for posts before Dec. 31, 2010
after:2014-01-01	Searches for posts after Jan. 1, 2014
Henry -Chinaski	Searches for posts with "Henry" but not "Chinaski" aka NOT operator
Henry+Chinaski	Searches for posts with "Henry" and "Chinaski" aka AND operator
forum:30	Restricts search results to posts from forum id 30
thread:145277	Restricts search results to posts from thread id 145277
title:"Barfly"	Searches thread titles only for "Barfly"
Run^2 Hunted	Boosts "Run" by a factor of 2 (can be any positive number >0, including <1), ranking it higher
"Post Office" ~5	Searches for posts with "Post" and "Office" within 5 words of each other (any number between 0 and 5)
prefix:"For sale"	Searches for posts withe the thread prefix "For sale"

 

[mjp]

Photobucket pulled the plug on all the free links in forums like this one, so you may have noticed missing images in some threads that were replaced by a lovely generic Photobucket image telling the user to get their great new pay service if they want their images to show up.

I'm running a script at the moment that's supposed to replace all of those by converting the images linked from image hosting services to attachments. It's going to take several hours to do all those conversions though (there were 4936 posts with outside links to images), but hopefully it will get rid of most of the Photobucket ads.

I'd remind everyone to attach images rather than link to them, but I've also installed a plugin that will convert linked images to attachments automatically from now on, so it doesn't really matter. But if you don't want your images to be automatically processed (I have no idea what the auto-processing does to image quality yet - if it does anything) you should continue to attach rather than link.