Sorry mate, I'm the opposite of techno minded, but I'm pleased to say all is fine again!
It is now hitting all new posts, even those with "extra bits above" in the page.
Like my technical terms there.
-
ℹ️ Heads up...
This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.
New Forum Bug Reports
- Thread starter Craig
- Start date
- Status
It is now hitting all new posts, even those with "extra bits above" in the page.
Like my technical terms there.
Joel
TS Technical Admin
- Favourite Ride
- Closed season on TST
Ok, that's good to hear - I've cleared out a bunch of cached files that I suspected might be causing some problems after the number of changes we made yesterday, so I suspect it might have just been that causing problems for some people and not others!
Sorry that was my fault for fixing some server side stuff that allowed the forum to activate and start using push notifications - I've disabled it again for now as it needs reviewing and tweaking to be less annoying as it would start bombarding you with Chrome notifications on your devices whenever someone replies to posts etc.
Skyscraper
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis
Shouldn't there be a way to make a push notifications option in the account settings? That way people can choose if they want them or not.
Joel
TS Technical Admin
- Favourite Ride
- Closed season on TST
No, sadly XenForo forces it upon every device that can support it with annoying popup onscreen to opt-in to receiving notifications when it is enabled globally within XenForo, hence why I said it is disabled and needs review and tweaking to make it less annoying, especially for those people who don't know what it is, what it does, or don't want it.
Joel
TS Technical Admin
- Favourite Ride
- Closed season on TST
No problem, these things are incredibly hard to replicate and pin-point sometimes, so as much information helps when things are seemingly selectively going wrong for a few people.
Alas, it seems the equivalent of a 'turn it off and turn it on again' (or clearing out the caches in this instance) seems to have fixed it, so keep an eye out and see if it happens again, and let us know with that detail if it does again so we can try and figure out why it suddenly starts misbehaving.
Clearing out the caches seems to be able to fix quite a lot of things.
Ian
TS Team
- Favourite Ride
- Dizz, Bobby’s Yarn Land
Just to clarify, for those who are wondering, with this new version of the forum we are trying wherever we can to avoid modifying “core” functionality of XenForo (the base code for the platform that isn’t readily intended to be modified), while also keep the number of plug-ins we use lower and being far more selective about which we use.
Of course, we still have a huge level of control over the forum, particularly when it comes to look and feel, but we are trying to avoid manipulating core elements such as profile settings and configurations beyond what XenForo advises and encourages.
We fell into this trap a little with the old forum, which is why we then had to take a more major step to get ready for this upgrade and release it. A lot of work has had to happen behind the scenes to reconstruct parts of the forum that couldn’t be easily ported over automatically as part of the normal software update process. The more you drift away from the core software, the less “update-proof” your site becomes and you run the risk of updates undoing/overwriting your custom changes. With plug-ins you are also often at the mercy of third party developers (sometimes even just one person in a room with a laptop!) and are reliant on them continuing to be developed and supported. We saw a lot of our old plug-ins had been deprecated and were incompatible with the new version, which meant we had to source alternatives or accept that some functionality may be altered/removed. We’re keen to avoid that again!
Naturally, if there is incredibly strong demand for a feature, or we are seeing things which massively hamper the forum experience we will of course evaluate these on a case-by-case basis and decide on the best approach. But we want to make sure everyone understands that if we say something “is the way it is” or can’t easily be changed, it’s because we are trying to consider the long term sustainability of the forum, not that we can’t/don’t want to.
There are always going to be more major releases and updates that we will have to spend more time and resource on releasing, but we’re hopeful that now we’ve got the worst of it over and done with it should make future updates a little smoother for all involved!
Of course, we still have a huge level of control over the forum, particularly when it comes to look and feel, but we are trying to avoid manipulating core elements such as profile settings and configurations beyond what XenForo advises and encourages.
We fell into this trap a little with the old forum, which is why we then had to take a more major step to get ready for this upgrade and release it. A lot of work has had to happen behind the scenes to reconstruct parts of the forum that couldn’t be easily ported over automatically as part of the normal software update process. The more you drift away from the core software, the less “update-proof” your site becomes and you run the risk of updates undoing/overwriting your custom changes. With plug-ins you are also often at the mercy of third party developers (sometimes even just one person in a room with a laptop!) and are reliant on them continuing to be developed and supported. We saw a lot of our old plug-ins had been deprecated and were incompatible with the new version, which meant we had to source alternatives or accept that some functionality may be altered/removed. We’re keen to avoid that again!
Naturally, if there is incredibly strong demand for a feature, or we are seeing things which massively hamper the forum experience we will of course evaluate these on a case-by-case basis and decide on the best approach. But we want to make sure everyone understands that if we say something “is the way it is” or can’t easily be changed, it’s because we are trying to consider the long term sustainability of the forum, not that we can’t/don’t want to.
There are always going to be more major releases and updates that we will have to spend more time and resource on releasing, but we’re hopeful that now we’ve got the worst of it over and done with it should make future updates a little smoother for all involved!
Rick
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Crux
Not sure if this is a caching issue at my end, or not - but I keep getting the 'under maintenance' page when trying to access, but only intermittently.
I think it's caused by me using the auto-complete in the browser to go to https://towersstreet.com/talk rather than https://towersstreet.com/talk/
Behaviour seems to be consistent on Safari/MacOS and Android/Chrome.
Also, not a bug per-se but my animated Gif icon moves in some places, but not others. It doesn't seem to move (Safari/MacOS) next to my name when I post, but it does on the top bar next to my name and the message/notification icons.
I think it's caused by me using the auto-complete in the browser to go to https://towersstreet.com/talk rather than https://towersstreet.com/talk/
Behaviour seems to be consistent on Safari/MacOS and Android/Chrome.
Also, not a bug per-se but my animated Gif icon moves in some places, but not others. It doesn't seem to move (Safari/MacOS) next to my name when I post, but it does on the top bar next to my name and the message/notification icons.
I have auto couple on and it’s made no difference for me both on safari on IOS and on chrome on windows.
Rick
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Crux
I am suggesting it is based on what I have typed previously being dished up by auto-complete, rather than anything to do with auto-complete itself. Do you get the maintenance page if you hit https://towersstreet.com/talk
Joel
TS Technical Admin
- Favourite Ride
- Closed season on TST
Ian
TS Team
- Favourite Ride
- Dizz, Bobby’s Yarn Land
Yes, unfortunately GIFs are very hit and miss. In some cases the browser may be able to figure out that despite the file being served in .jpg format the code in the file is actually that of a GIF and display it correctly, but it’s patchy and less than desirable as it can cause other problems.
As per Craig’s post below it’s the result of the image resizing and optimisation process the new forum uses to try and keep things faster and less data-intensive (particularly on mobile).
Joel
TS Technical Admin
- Favourite Ride
- Closed season on TST
This one should be fixed now - unfortunately due to the weird way we're running the one site over two different servers at the moment, but should be straightened out now!
Might be a solution, as if it's working on one browser but not eh other then it may well be a problem with the cache that being stored on the one that isn't displaying it. No idea how to do that on safari though
Craig
TS Administrator
I'm afraid gif avatars are simply going to have to be an "it either works or it doesn't" thing. The support for them within Xenforo just isn't great, and when the forum software decides to resize the gif it'll take the first frame and convert it to a jpg. It's not something we're going to be able to resolve without substantial changes to the forum setup, which we want to avoid especially considering the very low number of people using animated avatars.
Ian
TS Team
- Favourite Ride
- Dizz, Bobby’s Yarn Land
Yeah this is quite possibly down to MIME sniffing or similar, as described before, where the browser is looking at the contents of the image file to determine it’s a GIF and overriding the JPG extension.
Different browsers and operating system handle it differently as it can have serious security implications (e.g. a file being passed as a .jpg but containing executable code). It could well be that macOS or Safari are blocking it but Windows is letting it through or similar.
Like Craig says, it’ll be pure chance if it does or doesn’t work.
- Status