Odd forum software?

topdog91 · June 2023

Hi all, well I'm wading in after being a member here for a few days, so please take this in the positive spirit it's intended. I'm back in the UK after 13 years away and a long time TGP user, so it's good to find somewhere like here with high-quality discussions in the UK (not saying TGP is always high-quality

).

The forum software seems a little flaky, as if someone had had a pretty good go at coding it up but not had time to maintain it. So far, I've struggled to upload photos either via imgur or copy / paste into the WYSIWYG editor, talking of which said editor highlights the whole line not the previous (next) word when I hit ctrl+shift+left (right) arrow, emails aren't working, some links don't work e.g. can't see which posts I got "wisdom" on and generally things aren't in the expected places compared to other forums that I've used (as much as one does in these days of social media).

Edit: and even when posting a new message, I see a parser error to do with JSON.

As I said, the discussions seem great which will keep me coming back, but the UX is frustrating.

I'm opening myself up to flames here but I'm a tech guy and I don't think all the problems are PBKAC; do other people feel this or am I the weird one? Can I help out at all? I don't even know if this is a for-profit enterprise or pure community.

Tannin · June 2023

Hi Topdog, and welcome.

It's old, yes. And different - which is, on the whole, a good thing. Most of the "problems" are actually merely differences. For the most part, I like it.

The one thing that really, really needs fixing is the server's failure to send a referer with an image request. This is a major issue as it makes it impossible to host images for display on TFB is a safe and sensible way. You have to host them such that they are available to all and sundry.

The issue here is that the day that some random Internet tool hot-links one of your pictures in a high-traffic site, your entire hosting account gets shut down for over-use, and you lose access not only to your site(s) but also your email. Disaster! And all because the Fretboard server isn't observing one of the basic conventions. It should be a tick-this-box fix but there doesn't seem to be any desire to do it.

Further, it also prevents you linking to images on normal, properly configured websites (which routinely check the referer before serving an image) which in turn requires the waste and tedium of uploading a second copy of the image just for The Fretboard.

* Note for pedants: "referer" is correct in this context. The original RFC misspelled "referrer" in 1996 and we have been stuck with it ever since.

digitalscream · June 2023

Tannin said:

Hi Topdog, and welcome.

It's old, yes. And different - which is, on the whole, a good thing. Most of the "problems" are actually merely differences. For the most part, I like it.

The one thing that really, really needs fixing is the server's failure to send a referer with an image request. This is a major issue as it makes it impossible to host images for display on TFB is a safe and sensible way. You have to host them such that they are available to all and sundry.

The issue here is that the day that some random Internet tool hot-links one of your pictures in a high-traffic site, your entire hosting account gets shut down for over-use, and you lose access not only to your site(s) but also your email. Disaster! And all because the Fretboard server isn't observing one of the basic conventions. It should be a tick-this-box fix but there doesn't seem to be any desire to do it.

Further, it also prevents you linking to images on normal, properly configured websites (which routinely check the referer before serving an image) which in turn requires the waste and tedium of uploading a second copy of the image just for The Fretboard.

* Note for pedants: "referer" is correct in this context. The original RFC misspelled "referrer" in 1996 and we have been stuck with it ever since.

For what it's worth, the referer field isn't sent by any server when you view a web page, it's part of the image request sent and managed by your browser. In the case of this site, the instruction to the browser is to accept the browser's default referer policy - which is to say, it only sends a referer when the image is linked with HTTPS.

topdog91 said:

The forum software seems a little flaky, as if someone had had a pretty good go at coding it up but not had time to maintain it. So far, I've struggled to upload photos either via imgur or copy / paste into the WYSIWYG editor, talking of which said editor highlights the whole line not the previous (next) word when I hit ctrl+shift+left (right) arrow, emails aren't working, some links don't work e.g. can't see which posts I got "wisdom" on and generally things aren't in the expected places compared to other forums that I've used (as much as one does in these days of social media).

Edit: and even when posting a new message, I see a parser error to do with JSON.

As I said, the discussions seem great which will keep me coming back, but the UX is frustrating.

I'm opening myself up to flames here but I'm a tech guy and I don't think all the problems are PBKAC; do other people feel this or am I the weird one? Can I help out at all? I don't even know if this is a for-profit enterprise or pure community.

OK, in order...

- Direct image uploads are restricted to subscribers only, because hosting costs money and I ain't rich enough to pay for all the images to be uploaded here forever. There are, however, free alternatives and instructions here.

- Ctrl+shift+left/right - works for me on all my browsers. What browser/OS are you using?

- Things in different places...yeah, can't avoid that

- Emails: you must've had at least one email from the site to verify your email? Have you got your notification preferences set to send you emails? I'd at least see something in the logs for that (even if it failed to send), but I can't find your address anywhere in there.

- Not seeing which posts you've had reactions on...that's a deliberate design decision. There were many discussions with the community, and the conclusion was that while the reactions are useful, giving people the ability to monitor their reactions closely is a gamification step too far - there was a lot of trouble with this in the old days (with members manipulating posts to game the system, and otherwise using it in a manner contrary to the spirit of both the intent and the site), so if you're hoping for this to appear...I'm afraid you're a victim of the history of the community itself.

- Parser error: it's a bug I've been trying to sort for a while, to do with the search functionality, but to no avail...priorities, unfortunately.

Funkfingers · June 2023

digitalscream said:
giving people the ability to monitor their reactions closely is a gamification step too far - there was a lot of trouble with this in the old days (with members manipulating posts to game the system, and otherwise using it in a manner contrary to the spirit of both the intent and the site)

The Seymour Duncan User Group forum suffered from that. A clique of in-since-the-beginning forumites seemed to be more concerned with amassing Points than contributing anything helpful to other people.

Eventually, the gaming involved one boastful character and the Modmins. They abused their access privileges to change the guy's thumbnail pic, reduce his Points tally and reset his status to Noob. All in fun, they said, after they had teased the guy for two or three weeks.

@topdog91 One thing you will not find on this forum is unsightly, obese White American men, boasting about guns.

Emp_Fab · June 2023

@topdog91 ;; Yeah, it's flaky. Yeah, it's annoying sometimes, but, you learn to live with it's quirks. Nothing is dealbreaking (though getting caught in a quote box when on your mobile gets close to it !). But, it's free, run by volunteers, it's full of wonderful people that have enriched my life, taught me things, made me laugh like a lunatic and also cry with our tragedies. This place has kept me insane and I'm eternally grateful for that.

So, accept it is how it is. It's highly unlikely to change. Some things are just how they are !

Funkfingers · June 2023

Emp_Fab said:

So, you've narrowed it down to ten, this time.

Tannin · June 2023

Weird! The longstanding referer problem isn't causing any issues for me on a quick test. I was hopeful that (as per @digitalscream's post) forcing HTTPS would fix it, but the ordinary old HTTP is working too, for reasons I do not understand. (Is my server misconfigured now and allowing open slater hot linking? Sigh. I'll track it down later.)

monquixote · June 2023

In these situations I like to pop up and mention that it was my choice to use Vanilla and lumber @digitalscream ;
with a horrible PHP site to look after and then I promptly buggered off and left him to administer it which given how much traffic this site deals with is a significant achievement.

The base code this site is built with can only be described as having some "interesting" design choices which make it quite hard to fix things and unless the site starts pulling enough revenue to make it viable to hire a full time dev to rewrite it then that's probably how it will be for a while.

digitalscream · June 2023

monquixote said:

In these situations I like to pop up and mention that it was my choice to use Vanilla and lumber @digitalscream ;
with a horrible PHP site to look after and then I promptly buggered off and left him to administer it which given how much traffic this site deals with is a significant achievement.

The base code this site is built with can only be described as having some "interesting" design choices which make it quite hard to fix things and unless the site starts pulling enough revenue to make it viable to hire a full time dev to rewrite it then that's probably how it will be for a while.

To be absolutely fair to you, the only options really available were Vanilla or phpBB, neither of which were especially enticing. There was a Java-based forum that I forget the name of, but I would automatically have vetoed that on the basis that I'm even more allergic to Java for web projects than I am PHP.

Discourse was an option, particularly since it's written in my native language (Ruby), but back then the hosting requirements for it were obscene. Unfortunately, as things are now, it's impossible for us to move to Discourse because the import/conversion crashes at every stage - our data is just too big for it to handle (I've tried many times, I've even tried to fix it for them, and that's just another rabbit hole with spikes at the bottom).

monquixote · June 2023

digitalscream said:

monquixote said:

In these situations I like to pop up and mention that it was my choice to use Vanilla and lumber @digitalscream ;
with a horrible PHP site to look after and then I promptly buggered off and left him to administer it which given how much traffic this site deals with is a significant achievement.

The base code this site is built with can only be described as having some "interesting" design choices which make it quite hard to fix things and unless the site starts pulling enough revenue to make it viable to hire a full time dev to rewrite it then that's probably how it will be for a while.

To be absolutely fair to you, the only options really available were Vanilla or phpBB, neither of which were especially enticing. There was a Java-based forum that I forget the name of, but I would automatically have vetoed that on the basis that I'm even more allergic to Java for web projects than I am PHP.

Discourse was an option, particularly since it's written in my native language (Ruby), but back then the hosting requirements for it were obscene. Unfortunately, as things are now, it's impossible for us to move to Discourse because the import/conversion crashes at every stage - our data is just too big for it to handle (I've tried many times, I've even tried to fix it for them, and that's just another rabbit hole with spikes at the bottom).

Yeah, it's a shame it wasn't mature enough at the time.

I use Elektronauts quite a lot and I think Discourse is a really lovely bit of forum software. Kudos to Jeff Atwood.

Tannin · June 2023

I don't think I've met Discourse and although phpBB is very common and well supported, it lacks the simple elegance of Vanilla. (I'm talking from the point of view of a user here, obviously, not an admin.) Long and the short of it is that I like Vanila.

hollywoodrox · June 2023

I sometimes see a bit at the bottom that says something was designed by Chris Ireland and I always wonder if it’s the same guy who Built V8 and Rover 3500 trikes

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