Help needed with forum tech

I posted this in the other sticky thread, but the issue is spread over so many threads I wanted to make sure my feedback was seen:

Everything is working for me now across all devices. For my laptop, I did literally nothing and the pics started showing again. For my iPads, I had to clear the caches (website data) and everything showed up again.

So, here's the interesting thing, it may not have been Forumotion's fault after all. I received an email reply this morning (Monday) from PB support and here's what they said:

Thanks for reaching out.

I am sorry to hear that you are having issues with your embedded images. We did experience some issues on Friday where some of the embedded images stopped displaying. However, this issue was resolved immediately.
[emphasis mine]
I also checked the thread that you shared and I was able to view all your images/gifs. If some of the forum members are not seeing your images, they may just need to clear their browser's cache and cookies to see the updated page.

Let me know if you still continue to see issues with your images after clearing your browser's cache and cookies.

Thank you,

However, it was odd that my PB pics were showing up on OSW, SSF, and 6thD/SAG, but not Forumotion. So it seems something specific to PB and how it is read by Forumotion was an issue, but PB is acknowledging that they did have a problem on Friday (which is the exact day I noticed it and started posting about it). I take their claim that it was "resolved immediately" with a pound of salt, since it actually only started working for everyone this morning. I guess by "immediately" they meant "by the next business day," which is unfortunate since it was over a weekend and we were all tearing our hair out for almost three days trying to find a solution.

All's well that ends well, I guess. I apologize for wasting people's time and energy trying to chase down a solution, and for causing a bit of drama, but I'm thankful for all the genuine concern and effort by all who pitched in. I suppose the good thing is there is now a knowledge base here about how to best post pics, what works and what doesn't, and some of the specific quirks of each hosting service. Both Forumotion and Photobucket support responded rather quickly to our enquiries, which is good, although in the end it was really nothing that we did that caused it nor fixed it (other than fiddling with our specific devices and clearing caches, etc.).

Thanks again to all, especially for GFan's patience, DFC's relentless pursuit of FM's support, and all the other members who chimed in and tested and posted to get to the bottom of it (Stryker, rogerbee, Kukolka, and everyone else I'm neglecting to mention (this is like an Oscar speech!)).

Technical issue. There doesn’t seem to be a way of removing a poll choice. I ticked a choice in the ‘which should we produce next?’ poll without fully reading the next post and their expectations on the thread.

MarkEl wrote:Technical issue.  There doesn’t seem to be a way of removing a poll choice.  I ticked a choice in the ‘which should we produce next?’ poll without fully reading the next post and their expectations on the thread.  

I think this is just a limitation of the system.

GubernatorFan wrote:

MarkEl wrote:Technical issue.  There doesn’t seem to be a way of removing a poll choice.  I ticked a choice in the ‘which should we produce next?’ poll without fully reading the next post and their expectations on the thread.  

I think this is just a limitation of the system.

--

So I decided to create a poll and . . .



https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t211-test-poll-for-my-own-edification-and-probably-some-of-you

I want to suggest tweaking the styling for mobile. When viewing the forum on a mobile phone in portrait mode, so little of the thread titles are visible that they are basically meaningless. Even if you turn the phone sideways to landscape (which is not necessary for most sites these days), there still isn't a ton of text. My suggestion would be to reduce the size of thread title font or show 2 lines of text for titles.

Hi Zombiekev,
Apparently this is beyond the basic capabilities of this free forum, unless perhaps one messes with the code, which is beyond me and I would not want to mess anything up. And I mean no offense to remind you that these forums are not exactly designed for browsing-by-phone. What we can do is limit the number of words (or rather characters) a thread title would contain, but I suppose that would be quite unpopular.

GubernatorFan wrote:What we can do is limit the number of words (or rather characters) a thread title would contain, but I suppose that would be quite unpopular.

That could even be problematic for New Product threads, as the titles can be long.

GubernatorFan wrote:Hi Zombiekev,
Apparently this is beyond the basic capabilities of this free forum, unless perhaps one messes with the code, which is beyond me and I would not want to mess anything up. And I mean no offense to remind you that these forums are not exactly designed for browsing-by-phone. What we can do is limit the number of words (or rather characters) a thread title would contain, but I suppose that would be quite unpopular.

Hmm, I don't think limiting the number of characters in the title would help mobile users see more of the titles, so probably should avoid that. I do have a web dev background, so I'll see if I can setup a forumotion free account and play with the settings in there. I'll let you know if I see an easy solution.

In any case, thanks for looking into it!

Sounds like a plan, we could do with some experienced hands on the tiller.

CHEERS!

ZombieKev, the titles wrap for me, showing on two or more lines if necessary. It now occurs to me that you may have been talking about what you see on the forum home page rather than what you see on the general talk page. If that is the case, I changed a setting so that more of the title would show there (it was cutting off at 16 characters before). Take a look and see if this has taken care of the issue for you.

GubernatorFan wrote:ZombieKev, the titles wrap for me, showing on two or more lines if necessary. It now occurs to me that you may have been talking about what you see on the forum home page rather than what you see on the general talk page. If that is the case, I changed a setting so that more of the title would show there (it was cutting off at 16 characters before). Take a look and see if this has taken care of the issue for you.

I was talking about the General Talk page unfortunately. The idea being that mobile users could scan the list of threads without clicking into them to find out what they're even about. No worries. Thanks for trying in any case!

ZombieKev wrote:I was talking about the General Talk page unfortunately.  The idea being that mobile users could scan the list of threads without clicking into them to find out what they're even about.  No worries.  Thanks for trying in any case!

Thanks for the clarification. I'm sorry I don't know how to improve that part of your experience. On my interface (but it is a desktop/laptop), the titles do wrap. You could try searching the support forum at http://help.forumotion.com/ , though my searches turned up nothing more helpful.

So I spun up a forumotion account for testing. Here are the options:

- Make forum show desktop view even on mobile devices. This is like OSW before the redesign. So everything is shown but it's tiny.
- Add new CSS/code in the backend
- User can install the eTopic mobile app to view (tho it ends up not showing any more than the website!)

1 and 3 aren't great experiences and 2 means I'd need admin access and have to maintain the code if things ever change. I'd say we should just leave it all alone for now. I can view the site on my PC.
I'll live.

ZombieKev wrote:So I spun up a forumotion account for testing.  Here are the options:

- Make forum show desktop view even on mobile devices.  This is like OSW before the redesign.  So everything is shown but it's tiny.
- Add new CSS/code in the backend
- User can install the eTopic mobile app to view (tho it ends up not showing any more than the website!)

1 and 3 aren't great experiences and 2 means I'd need admin access and have to maintain the code if things ever change.  I'd say we should just leave it all alone for now.  I can view the site on my PC.
I'll live.

Unless you explain what exactly "add new CSS/code in the backend" means. If it means paste some extra text at the very end of the code (and it will not change anything else), it can probably be done.

GubernatorFan wrote:

ZombieKev wrote:So I spun up a forumotion account for testing.  Here are the options:

- Make forum show desktop view even on mobile devices.  This is like OSW before the redesign.  So everything is shown but it's tiny.
- Add new CSS/code in the backend
- User can install the eTopic mobile app to view (tho it ends up not showing any more than the website!)

1 and 3 aren't great experiences and 2 means I'd need admin access and have to maintain the code if things ever change.  I'd say we should just leave it all alone for now.  I can view the site on my PC.
I'll live.

Unless you explain what exactly "add new CSS/code in the backend" means. If it means paste some extra text at the very end of the code (and it will not change anything else), it can probably be done.

I only saw that forumotion offered the option to stick in your CSS, so presumably it can be changed. But the process of determining the exact code change needed, making sure it triggers only on some mobile views and testing to see if it adversely affects any other part of the site is a lot of work. Also, if forumotion updates their own code in the meantime, no guarantee that code doesn't screw up something else. Having users turn the phone sideways doesn't seem that bad in comparison.

I've noticed a lack of line spacing with long thread titles. They just merge into each other. I know there was an issue with them on mobiles. If this was an attempt to fix it, it didn't work.

CHEERS!

Rogerbee wrote:I've noticed a lack of line spacing with long thread titles. They just merge into each other. I know there was an issue with them on mobiles. If this was an attempt to fix it, it didn't work.

No, the issues are unrelated. The overly-small spacing between two lines of a longer topic title has been an issue since the very start. I have looked in the help forum for an easy fix, but didn't find an exact match. Moreover, still uncomfortable messing with the coding. While slightly unsightly, it is still perfectly readable (correct me if I'm wrong, maybe it looks different to others), so I have not tried to do more with it.

Fair enough, you can live with it.

CHEERS!

I tried loading normal iPhone pics into the Servimg hosting site today, and it’s telling me they exceed allowable size. They are the same as in the past, so I’m assuming they’ve changed their limit? For example, I just tried to load the same pic from last week that’s 1.56 MB, and it’s bejng rejected.

The app seems to be working today. Must have been glitching .

MarkEl, there seems to be a 1.5 or 2 MB limit for individual uploadable image size, if memory serves. Also, there are only so many images you can queue up to upload simultaneously, but I forget the number.

GubernatorFan wrote:there are only so many images you can queue up to upload simultaneously, but I forget the number.

I find it varies, probably due to image size (21 - 25 pics at a time).

Has something happened to the post counts?

It's showing I have 49, but I know I have 98 and can find them all using the 'My Posts' link.

Not that post count is important, but it's strange to see them displayed as exactly half of actual.

Asta wrote:Has something happened to the post counts? It's showing I have 49, but I know I have 98 and can find them all using the 'My Posts' link. Not that post count is important, but it's strange to see them displayed as exactly half of actual.

If you can actually find all your posts, I wouldn't worry about it. The post count change is probably a byproduct of us having to use a posts restore from the backup, after a great number of (his own) posts were erased by DFC, thereby putting many of the forum conversations into disarray. We felt it is best to restore them, having determined that nothing would be lost in the process.

GubernatorFan wrote:If you can actually find all your posts, I wouldn't worry about it. The post count change is probably a byproduct of us having to use a posts restore from the backup, after a great number of (his own) posts were erased by DFC, thereby putting many of the forum conversations into disarray. We felt it is best to restore them, having determined that nothing would be lost in the process.

Thanks for the explanation. Post count isn't important to me, it was just an odd thing to see.

Something obviously happened overnight.

Asta wrote:Thanks for the explanation. Post count isn't important to me, it was just an odd thing to see. Something obviously happened overnight.

I suppose it was bound to have side effects. Not a biggie, but annoying nonetheless. I apologize for any confusion or inconvenience, but it was the best/only solution.

GubernatorFan wrote:I suppose it was bound to have side effects. Not a biggie, but annoying nonetheless. I apologize for any confusion or inconvenience, but it was the best/only solution.

No problem at all.

GubernatorFan wrote:If you can actually find all your posts, I wouldn't worry about it. The post count change is probably a byproduct of us having to use a posts restore from the backup, after a great number of (his own) posts were erased by DFC, thereby putting many of the forum conversations into disarray. We felt it is best to restore them, having determined that nothing would be lost in the process.

Thank you for the update, I was really wondering what was going on here last night and I did see DFC melt down post and I was very surprised by it and I have noticed that he was demoted too also what happened to the original Dirty Dozen thread and all the other threads before Apr 07, 2018 that simply disappeared were they a casualty of DFC's or is there a cut off point on the forum?

Hi BAD WOLF -- everything that was erased but had been posted before May 30 has been restored and measures were taken to contain any further damage. Some items posted by him after the backup date of May 30 may have disappeared for good, if he has erased them.