Fornits

Announcements & Tech Support => Web forum hosting => Topic started by: Antigen on June 19, 2006, 11:24:00 PM

Title: Expected down time
Post by: Antigen on June 19, 2006, 11:24:00 PM
Some time in the not too distant future, we'll be taking down the forum for a much needed software update. A lot depends on the convenience of the folks helping me do this, but what do yunz think about an optimum time to lock the fora for, say, about a day?

Do you support drug prohibition because it finances criminals at home or because it finances terrorists abroad?
--Anonymous

Title: Expected down time
Post by: Deborah on June 20, 2006, 12:25:00 AM
July 4th, while everyone's out partying, err... celebrating our 'independence' and 'freedom'.  ::deal::

Otherwise, Saturdays are usually pretty slow.

Can we expect any exciting new changes?

Thanks for the warning.
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Antigen on June 21, 2006, 07:38:00 PM
Thanks, gookin  ::unhappy::  :nworthy:

Deb, it'll be an upgrade to the latest stable version of PhpBB http://www.phpbb.com/ (http://www.phpbb.com/) w/ spambot swatting capabilities.


It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Title: Expected down time
Post by: Deborah on June 21, 2006, 10:02:00 PM
"spambot swatting capabilities".
sounds good, but what the heck is it?
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Deborah on June 22, 2006, 08:23:00 AM
Yeh, I assume that much.
But, what's a "bot"?
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Deborah on June 22, 2006, 08:45:00 AM
Yeh, I assume that much.
But, what's a "bot"?
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Anonymous on June 22, 2006, 08:57:00 PM
I think it's short for robot, as in automated spam producer.

Good luck with the updates Ginger and get some sleep girl.  :smile: :wave:
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Deborah on June 22, 2006, 11:53:00 PM
Oh. I haven't noticed any Robotic generated spam, plenty of Moronic Generated Spam.
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Deborah on June 24, 2006, 12:36:00 AM
Did the update happen Thurs nite?
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Antigen on June 24, 2006, 01:27:00 AM
Quote
On 2006-06-22 17:57:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I think it's short for robot, as in automated spam producer.



Good luck with the updates Ginger and get some sleep girl.  :smile: :wave: "


Yup

Thanks

And no, didn't happen. There was a snag. Might happen over the weekend or not. Dude is volunteering his time and talent. I ain't about to be demanding. I'm just happy he hasn't gone off in a huff as I've been in and out lately.

And now the liberals want to stop President Reagan from selling chemical warfare agents and military equipment to Saddam Hussein and why? Because Saddam 'allegedly' gassed a few Kurds in his own country. Mark my words. All of this talk of Saddam Hussein being a 'war criminal' or 'committing crimes against humanity' is the same old thing. LIBERAL HATE SPEECH! and speaking of poison gas... I SAY WE ROUND UP ALL THE DRUG ADDICTS AND GAS THEM TOO!
 
--Aaron McGruder spoofing Rush Limbaugh

Title: Expected down time
Post by: teachback on June 24, 2006, 01:36:00 AM
In the meantime, we can live with the spam..NBFD..  :tup:
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Antigen on July 10, 2006, 12:36:00 AM
Ok, folks. Brace yourselves. Sometime Tuesday or so, you will have to find something to do with the time you normally devote to this site. It'll be down for a minimum of 2.5 hours then, the fates willing, up again w/o any major snags.

And he'll have been through the seminars, so after he finds some adjectives for his magical child and does a rockstar dance, he'll become "real" just like the Velveteen Rabbit.

Anonymous

Title: Expected down time
Post by: tommyfromhyde1 on July 11, 2006, 02:37:00 PM
Around 2:00 pm  et or so I tried to get here and was redirected to http://www.fark.com (http://www.fark.com) . did that have anything to do with the fix?

You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot
easier.
--GW Büsh, Governor of Texas. Governing Magazine, 7/98

Title: Expected down time
Post by: Antigen on July 11, 2006, 09:52:17 PM
Yup. How do you like the new get up?
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Anne Bonney on July 11, 2006, 10:41:48 PM
Very cool Ginger.   :smokin:  ::cheers::
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Deborah on July 11, 2006, 11:46:12 PM
Pretty cool.
Search function isn't working correctly, or doesn't work as before.
I typed in a term and the author name and was told no post match the query.
Also when I searched posts by a particular author the returns were not from author only.
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Froderik on July 12, 2006, 12:32:28 AM
Hey, I'm easy. ::cheers::

I'm curious though.. How exactly does this format filter SPAM?
I noticed that anons can still start topics..
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Antigen on July 12, 2006, 10:11:52 AM
The spam filtering software I wanted to use wouldn't run with the old db and other server software. So I had to upgrade everything.

Deb, I'll look into the search function.

Anything else, kids?
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Antigen on July 12, 2006, 10:39:20 AM
Quote from: ""Deborah""
Pretty cool.
Search function isn't working correctly, or doesn't work as before.
I typed in a term and the author name and was told no post match the query.
Also when I searched posts by a particular author the returns were not from author only.


Can you give me an example of that? I do want to get in sometime pretty soon and add phrase searching. Since you use the search function so much, I'll be wanting your help and consult on that.
Title: Expected down time
Post by: TechJockey on July 12, 2006, 01:58:45 PM
Quote from: ""Deborah""
Pretty cool.
Search function isn't working correctly, or doesn't work as before.
I typed in a term and the author name and was told no post match the query.
Also when I searched posts by a particular author the returns were not from author only.


If you select "Display results as: Topics" when making your search, it will return a listing of all matching threads that author has posted to. If you select "Display results as: Posts" it will show only the individual messages.

There also seems to be a little bug in the topic search. For instance, if you search for all topics by Eudora, containing the term "Straight", and you then go to page 53 of the results (using the link at the bottom of the search results page), you get a blank page. It thinks there's 53 pages of matching results, but really there's only 52. If you make your search selecting  "Display results as: Posts" instead, that doesn't appear to happen. This is probably an inconsistency in the database, but may be a bug in phpBB itlself. I'll look into it, and if I can determine it's a software bug, I'll file a report with the phpBB developers.

As far as the inaccurate results, I haven't been able to duplicate that, but if you can provide a specific example, I'll look into that too.
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Deborah on July 12, 2006, 02:02:57 PM
I picked a simple one, just to see how the Search function worked.

Keyword: son
Author: Deborah

That should have returned hundreds of posts. Instead, I got:
No topics or posts met your search criteria

After reading more closely, it appears that one will not be able to search for a keyword by a specific author.
Is that accurate?
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Deborah on July 12, 2006, 02:07:42 PM
Okay, I think I "may" have figured out the problem.
I just conducted the same search son/Deborah and click posts at the bottom.
It returned only the message I just posted in this thread.
It appears that it is not searching the old database.
Is that possible?
Title: Expected down time
Post by: TechJockey on July 12, 2006, 02:43:08 PM
Quote from: ""Deborah""
Okay, I think I "may" have figured out the problem.
I just conducted the same search son/Deborah and click posts at the bottom.
It returned only the message I just posted in this thread.
It appears that it is not searching the old database.
Is that possible?


Yeah. I was just looking at the code that converted the old database to the new format, and here's the deal:

This version contains a full-text indexing feature, to make the searches more efficent. During the upgrade conversion, wordlists were created by the upgrade script. This ultimately resulted in a list containing 174,031 unique words, and 7,707,538 occurances of those words. So, in order to keep the size of those tables down, the script automatically applied a formula to remove the the words that occur as more than a certain percentage of the list. In other words, the more common words from the old database simply arent in the list that the search feature uses to find the matching posts.

Probably more info than you needed, but it's actually working the way it was intended.  :D
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Antigen on July 12, 2006, 03:16:01 PM
TechJockey rocks the Shazzbah!  :nworthy: He'll be attending to tech issues for me from here on out. Please let me know how it goes. These puting gurus can be troublesome servants and terrible masters. Let's not let him get out of hand.
Title: Expected down time
Post by: TechJockey on July 12, 2006, 03:54:05 PM
Quote from: ""Eudora""
TechJockey rocks the Shazzbah!  :nworthy: He'll be attending to tech issues for me from here on out. Please let me know how it goes. These puting gurus can be troublesome servants and terrible masters. Let's not let him get out of hand.


I can easily be pacified with an endless supply of bananas. :wink:
Title: Expected down time
Post by: Deborah on July 12, 2006, 07:36:14 PM
Two new observations.
No post URL. Bummer. Looks like you can only link to the thread, not a specific post.
Also, I keep getting logged off as I move around.
If I am not logged in and just put my user name in the box when I reply to a post, it tells me that name is taken.
Title: Expected down time
Post by: TechJockey on July 12, 2006, 08:22:31 PM
Quote from: ""Deborah""
Two new observations.
No post URL. Bummer. Looks like you can only link to the thread, not a specific post.

Yeah, that is a bummer. Not sure if that was an addon feature or not, but it shouldn't be that hard to implement, since the board does generate links to specific posts. It just doesn't put them on the page for you to copy.

Quote
Also, I keep getting logged off as I move around.
If I am not logged in and just put my user name in the box when I reply to a post, it tells me that name is taken.


I think your getting logged out because the session cookies were set to expire after one hour. I increased it to 2 hours. Not sure what's a good value for that. But, if you check the "Log me in automatically" box when you log in, you'll stay logged in for one day, with the current settings, assuming that's working right.

And the posting/login thing works a little different. You can actually use a username in a post without registering or being logged in, but only if that name isn't already taken. So, if you're a registered user, you have to log in using the link up top, before posting. I guess that could be a pain in the ass if you forget to log in, but that's the way they did it, for whatever reason.