Latest changes to the forum & its features

[Mervi]

Okay, it is once again time to do a major upgrade of the forum software It's way past time that I upgraded the forum software. First, I wanted to wait that all the necessary plug-ins had been updated as well, seeing as this was a major release of the software and the old versions wouldn't work, and then other things demanded my time and attention. Like previous times, this major update has the potential to turn into a bit of a hassle, what with previous themes not being compatible with it etc. But it simply has to be done, if not for any other reason than security - the old version isn't being supported anymore.
I've decided to give it a go tomorrow, April the 19th, probably beginning around 10 am EEST (convert to your time) and hopefully only lasting a few hours at most. I will be posting any necessary updates over on twitter. During the upgrade, only the forums will be down, the rest of the site will be unaffected. After the upgrade, things might look weird at first - clearing your browser's cache/refreshing the page is the first thing you can try, after that it would be really helpful to report any problems, missing features etc.

[Mervi]

Right. I've been working on this for pretty much 12 hours now and I think it's time to see how the creature copes in the wild. 
I had to re-install the whole thing several times due to all sorts of errors, but once I got the latest version running properly, it was only a matter of finding a suitable theme, tweaking it to have more or less the same functionality as the previous, weed out all the dead plugins and install new ones. They've included a lot of stuff that used to be third-party to the core code (which is great) but at the same time have made some pretty weird changes (getting rid of the avatar gallery for example - luckily someone has written a plugin for that). So far it's difficult to say whether it was worth it (other than from the safety angle).

Some notes, and please feel free to ask questions and tell me something doesn't work, I haven't yet had a chance to test on different browsers etc! 

- there's currently no mobile theme, I need to look into the options properly first
- speaking of themes, the old ones had to go, and I only had time today to tweak one to fit the overall layout, so I've forced than on everyone. There will hopefully be other options in the future and I will mostly likely be tweaking this one as well.
- spoiler and wiki codes should work as before. Any issues -> do let me know please!
- also if you're missing any features, please leave a comment. I probably haven't even noticed they're gone yet because I've been staring at the code all day long!
- The footers are a bit of a mess at the moment, the theme includes a lot of those social media buttons etc that I simply haven't had the time to go through yet. Also I'll need to see how to include the old affiliate links.

eta: it looks like Firefox is getting creative with the main header/navigation. I'll look into it later - the links seem to work and that's the most important thing anyway.
Ahh no, it's just simply a matter of refresh, refresh, refresh!

[Mervi]

After quite a few years, the country flags are back! If you want to display yours (it will show up in your profile page, the members list and along your messages like mine on the left under my avatar etc) you just need to edit your profile a bit. Click on your username at the top right corner next to the logout button, choose "edit profile" and you should see the option "Country: Please select the country you live in." right at the top left of all the profile fields, it's listed under "required fields". Choose yours and remember to save the changes!

(Although it says "required", no flag will be displayed if you don't touch that setting at all.)

[Mervi]

The forum software has been updated to the current series. I've taken a quick look both here at the forums and behind the scenes, and everything seems to be working smoothly. It was a jump over several smaller updates, so if I've missed anything that doesn't work like before, please leave a shout!

[Mervi]

If you have bookmarks or links to 

http://forums.theplenty.net please update them to  

https://theplenty.net/forums 

Right now, if you type in the old address (or click on a link somewhere) it redirects you to the new one. That redirect is in place for now, but will NOT work forever, so please don't rely on it but instead change your links. 

Thank you!    

That's the tl;dr version, look below for more details. 

In order to make the site more modern+safe+efficient, we're now 

• saying goodbye to subdomains (they were sooo much fun back in the day, eh?)
  
• using secure connections (kinda nice when you have login forms even when you're not submitting high-risk information). 
  

While you're browsing theplenty.net, you should now see a lock/green text/that stuff your browser shows you in the address bar when you visit your bank's website. I'm still fixing some things, so I'm not saying "all the time". But 99% of the time. 


If your browser displays the secure symbol alongside with some warnings it's because there might still be "mixed content" around - typically an image that has been linked from an outside source using the traditional "http" instead of "https" here at the forums. If you come across these, it would be SUPER helpful if you can report it to me (just leave a comment here or drop me a line thru social media/email). The "movie snapshot game" topic is an example of where you'll see these warnings at the moment.

Related to above: if your user image/avatar doesn't work, check if you're linking it from an outside source in your profile settings. This is no longer allowed, but you can either re-link to it using a secure connection or use the upload function. If you're using a gravatar, don't worry - there's a fix already in place and you don't have to do anything. 

In other news, I've been testing the forums on 3 different browsers over the last few days and while things mostly look more or less the way they did before, there's at least one functional problem that I know of. When you're logged in and you try to access pages through the "quick access" dropdown menu under your username, you end up with "file doesn't exist" errors. Those pages are still there, as is your profile info, and you can access and modify it normally through your user control panel. This is an issue with a new feature that shortens the addresses on this forum to make them more user-friendly and accessible for search engines that conflicts with the current style. I've added it to my well-fed "to do" list, but it's not the highest priority at the moment (finalising the secure stuff is). This has been fixed as of 31st of Oct, if you still come across it, please try clearing your browser's cache/refreshing the page!

//ETA: If you get an error about nonsecure content/script that could not be loaded on the forum, please try clearing your browser's cache and/or reloading the page. It's a font thing in the theme's template and I've fixed it days ago, but some browsers are more clingy than others *cough crough megh cough*

As always, if you come across any errors or other issues, please do let me know!

Happy (and safer) browsing!  

[Mervi]

Re: the avatar issue mentioned above - I took the liberty of trying to save some remote avatars that were causing errors. @antebar and @Nuytsia if you happen to walk by here again some day - your avatars have been saved to our server. @wolfang and @Manephelien I'm sorry but I couldn't get through photobucket's current mess of ads and "protection" to get to yours, you'll have to re-link or upload them. Anyone else with avatar issues (that I haven't come across yet), please message me if you need any help!

Additionally, there seems to be some issues with some of the avatars linked through the avatar gallery - so far I've reuploaded the ones used by @Buckkeepblue and @Relpda.