How are we doing?

Explaining how the new forum works

Are you seeing ANY of these issues?

The recent topics list is ON THE SIDE
4
31%
The recent topics list is ON TOP
2
15%
The recent topics list shows ALL NEW TOPICS
1
8%
The recent topics list shows THE NEW UNREAD TOPICS (it shrinks)
2
15%
I had problems loading my avatar (had to resize)
2
15%
I had no problems loading my avatar (lucky me)
2
15%
Other (please write it down)
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 13

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ponchi101 Venezuela
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Re: How are we doing?

#31

Post by ponchi101 »

Deuce wrote: Sat Dec 19, 2020 1:42 am Ok, great - thanks. Much appreciated.

Let me know if I can help - which, based on my technical knowledge, would basically consist of typing "Come on ponchi, you can do it... you're the best... three cheers for ponchi..." :)
Deuce.
Tried the extension on my local site, and it worked fine. No issues or conflicts with the other extensions.
Then uploaded it to the site, and it crashed it again.
I think we will have to wait for those guys to upgrade to 3.3.x or until I learn a bit about PHP and can program that myself. Which will take a while.
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Re: How are we doing?

#32

Post by Deuce »

ponchi101 wrote: Sat Dec 19, 2020 9:59 pm Deuce.
Tried the extension on my local site, and it worked fine. No issues or conflicts with the other extensions.
Then uploaded it to the site, and it crashed it again.
I think we will have to wait for those guys to upgrade to 3.3.x or until I learn a bit about PHP and can program that myself. Which will take a while.
Alright - thanks for trying.
Strange that it worked fine on the test platform, but not here.
Also strange that there are so few updates for this feature to 3.3, as it's a pretty basic feature seen on almost every forum/message board.

Dare you try the other one?
I also saw this... This one successfully works with 3.3, according to the thread (don't be fooled by the title of the thread - read all 8 posts to see success at the end...
https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... pic/213341

Here is that extension...
https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2292621
R.I.P. Amal...

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Re: How are we doing?

#33

Post by ponchi101 »

I tried that one. That one gives me a huge error message, although it does not crash the site. After disabling it, everything simply goes back to normal, as opposed to the other one, that made me delete the files manually before a recovery was possible. The fix for this one involves changing code in SOME file that it is not clearly stated, and for which I don't have the expertise.
We are going to have to wait a bit to see if somebody issues a specific extension for 3.3.x
KYP
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Re: How are we doing?

#34

Post by meganfernandez »

Deuce wrote: Fri Dec 18, 2020 10:16 pm
ponchi101 wrote: Fri Dec 18, 2020 1:57 pm Hey Deuce.
The number of posts per topic/page cannot be adjusted personally, or at least I have not found the way. I did increase it to 15, as an intermediate value. In some topics the posts are usually small, but in others sometimes we do write very long posts. So I felt that 30 posts per page was a bit too much if we run into a long discussion.
I found this (link below), ponchi. Looks like it does exactly what I'm referring to. I trust that you or someone knows how to install it, because I certainly don't.
If you could set the default to 10 or 15, and set the maximum to 50, that would be good, and would allow everyone to set it to their personal preference.

https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... ay options

Oh... and hello, Megan. Nice that you finally found your way over here.
Thank you! Now I have to remember to stop going to the old TAT. Still not over it.
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Re: How are we doing?

#35

Post by Togtdyalttai »

Here's an extension that does what Deuce is mentioning: https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... _switcher/. In a quick search, I didn't see anyone posting about whether it works with phpBB 3.3 or not, but some people said it worked with 3.2.
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Re: How are we doing?

#36

Post by ponchi101 »

Deuce:
I moved your posts to the TECHNICAL QUESTIONS topic. I explain what I found there:
https://talkabouttennis2.com/viewtopic. ... p=403#p403

As you keep digging more into the details of phpBB, put any more questions there. That way we can build sort of a USERS MANUAL for newcomers.

Txs!
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Re: How are we doing?

#37

Post by ponchi101 »

As TAT2.0 has reached 1 month of being on-line, I wanted to update people on a few technical things.
Since the start of the forum, the hosting platform has not been down once. It is a small sample as it has been only one month, but I thought there would be more glitches in such a low-cost host. So far, none have happened, so I guess we can say that the reliability is acceptable. We will need a full year to be able to see how robust the host is, but it is not as if it running on Windows 98/Millennium. So far, there has been no downtime, with the exception of one mistake made by me that supplanted the original phpBB site with an experiment for Blogs. I will try that to not happen again.
Another issue that I had in mind was the problem with size. We rented a 20GB space, which I thought would be limiting. phpBB comes with a handy pruning system to keep forums small, but it seems that with our size, we will not be in need of it. Our current usage stands as this:
mysql.png
The structure of the DB takes about 54MB; the rest is data. Sure, it has been a slow month because we were both setting up the system AND there was very little tennis to talk about, but with just 67MB of space used, I believe the site will be able to handle us. If we grow to 500 people, then we may have some issues. That does not seem to be in our future. We seem to remain exclusive.
Another issue that I thought about was the number of visits to the site. Here are the numbers:
stats.jpg
Again, because of the slow month, we can see that we are way below our maximum of 25,000 visits/month. But due to the events in Wednesday, we sort of torture tested the site, and nothing really broke down. One thing of importance: phpBB's function of telling you that news posts have been posted in a topic if you are composing one yourself, BEFORE you submit yours. It caused me to lose two posts, because somebody else had done that and I clicked SUBMIT and dashed off. I actually think it is a good function, but will be or relevance when SP times come, and people are posting their pick at the last minute.

One thing that the forum is getting is great human support, and I would like to take credit for the managerial skills needed to recruit such fine personnel. But, alas, I cannot. I have inherited some of the best from TAT1.0, so the recruitment was both easy and an inheritance from that site. Ti-amie remains committed to keep us from ignorance and the contest staff has already started working and running our first AMitS. They have been, as you can tell, great. However, I will take credit for recruiting Tog as an admin; in our initial conversations, he mentioned that he would try to be of help as he did not know the software and perhaps would be useless. Well, it had been a long time since I last heard such misleading words. Tog has developed a great grasp on phpBB and has been of super-help this last month. A lot of the extensions that we have added were found by him, making the site a better one. He truly was a managerial success from my side!

I will detour for a moment. phpBB is also an online community. In the same vein that we can talk about the difference between Stefan Edberg's slice vs Ken Rosewall's, these people there talk code as fluently as it can be done. ALL the extensions added come from there and although I am learning php (and html) to see if we can create our own, the reality is that learning php or any coding language is the same as learning a different language. Sure, learning French is easy... if you are born French. it will take a while. However, these codies can help us design new extensions, if we want to pay for them. I am contacting one to see if he would be willing to do so. Some of them can be paid via PayPal, so the thing would be for us to decide if we want to go that way, or we decide that what we have is fine. Food for thought.

There are two people I want to point out at the moment. One is Deuce; to say that he was enthusiastic about the new site would be an understatement. Deuce was very keen on getting something that was not based on social media platforms and, as he was the third person that joined the forum, he started playing with it early on. He poked and tinkered with it and sort of tortured tested it, but his requests and recommendations made us (95% Tog) find extensions to get the features going. I thank him a lot for that.
The second person is Kirkus. You see, he lies when he says that he only had a little role to play in this site. Yes, he has not tinkered with it (he is not an admin... yet) but while we were debating about reddit and everything in TAT1.0, I contacted him for some info. Eventually, as I waited for YOU PEOPLE to answer if you wanted a new forum (yes, I do have the right to YOU PEOPLE you, YOU PEOPLE :) ), Kirkus gave me the needed advice. Cue to Kevin Costner in FIELD OF DREAMS: he told me to build it and then see if you would come. So although quantitatively his contribution was small, qualitatively it was priceless. It was the final push needed to get this up and running.
And with that, please go to this post for a bit of an announcement:
https://talkabouttennis2.com/viewtopic. ... t=94#p1299
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Re: How are we doing?

#38

Post by Deuce »

Thanks for the mention, ponchi. It was rather clear to me that you and I both wanted TAT to continue in as similar a manner to the original TAT as possible... and as soon as you told me that you were giving thought to seeing if you could somehow create a forum-type format which would accomplish that, I simply tried to make damned sure that you would not abandon that thought, and would go ahead and see what was possible to do. I regret that I haven't been able to be of more help technically - but, hey, to me, a server is a person who tosses a ball up in the air and strikes it with a racquet...

But I thank you mostly for not only having the initial idea to create this site from scratch, but also for having the desire and perseverance to actually get it done. And thanks, as well, to Tog and any others who've helped with the technical elements of creating this great forum. (All we need now is the option to be able to see at least 30 posts (or more) per page! I've lost track of how many times I've thought a thread was finished, only to discover by chance a day or so later that there is an additional page (or two) that I did not notice. It's driving me nuts! :freaking: )

Because of the current virus threat to the entire planet, and the measures we must take to protect ourselves from it - which includes separating and distancing ourselves from our families and friends -, on-line 'communities' have taken on a greater importance. It's wonderful to have our community preserved here - it is simply a slightly different address and slightly different format. As you and I have both said, it's like moving the family to a different house - one that's just a couple of blocks away.
Things have come together very nicely here - the transition from the original home has seemed very natural and seamless. This forum is up and running right in time for the re-start of the tennis season, and we're all looking forward to discussions being had about our favourite sport - and other matters.

Bravo, ponchi - and sincere thanks again for this... gift.

.
R.I.P. Amal...

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Re: How are we doing? FIRST ANNIVERSARY

#39

Post by ponchi101 »

Hello all.
Today we reached our ONE YEAR OF OPERATION :yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo: :tatrocks: :tatrocks: :tatrocks:
And I wanted to update a bit on how we are doing:
Screenshot 2021-12-05 212324.jpg
The little capture above tells us how our board is running within our host. We have used, in one year, 651 MB of size, a ridiculously tiny amount for our 102 GB of storage. My initial worries that we would need to prune forums and keep an eye on posts was unfounded. The geniuses at phpBB made this thing as efficient as possible and it really takes no space whatsoever. Because of that, pruning has been turned off for almost all subforums except the suicide pools, which will be pruned one year after they are run. I don't see the need to keep "ATP DAY 4 AUSTRALIAN OPEN PICKS" for more than that.
As we have so much space not being used, I repeat to all: this is your forum, and this is your space. If you have a fun internet project that you want to start, let me know and we can use some of the available space. It would not affect us too much.
As it was recently said, we are still a village or, as I said, a hamlet. We are still under 300 members, of which around 50 are bots, about 10 are people that came in once and tried to insert a commercial link, and most simply show up for the pools. The settings are set so that after one year of inactivity, the names will be dropped so we will see a few disappear soon. We have lost some members too, which is never fun, but a few have come on board. Since we really do not advertise I doubt a trove of people will be coming in.
An interesting bit: TAT1.0, as it was spelled before, has been taken over by another person. Kirkus informed me of that and I was looking up to see if I could snatch the name and take us back to our origins, but I was not fast or shrewd enough; I was beaten to it. So 2.0 we will remain.
It has been a fun year, and I gather that by now it will be regular maintenance on and on. We started as phpBB V3.3.2 and those guys move fast enough so that we are up to date with V3.3.5. One issue for the future, but they will handle that for us: We are running on php7.4, while php8.0 is already out. Everything running on 7.4 will run on 8.0, but not the other way around. I really do not believe the guys from phpBB will not look into any problems once one may develop.
Thanks to all for being here. I hope it has been as much fun for you as it has been for me :grouphug:
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Re: How are we doing?

#40

Post by mmmm8 »

Thank you, Ponchi, for your time and dedication in running our hamlet (and, at the time, insistence we continue a forum format!). Mayor for life!

P.S. I hope that guy paid Kirk for the logo of TAT1.0
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Re: How are we doing?

#41

Post by meganfernandez »

mmmm8 wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 3:56 pm Thank you, Ponchi, for your time and dedication in running our hamlet (and, at the time, insistence we continue a forum format!). Mayor for life!

P.S. I hope that guy paid Kirk for the logo of TAT1.0
Here here! *clinks champagne glasses*
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Re: How are we doing?

#42

Post by ponchi101 »

mmmm8 wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 3:56 pm Thank you, Ponchi, for your time and dedication in running our hamlet (and, at the time, insistence we continue a forum format!). Mayor for life!

P.S. I hope that guy paid Kirk for the logo of TAT1.0
I talked to Kirkus, and no, the guy blatantly stole the logo.
Kirkus considered for a moment some legal action, but not worth it. And you know he is really totally off tennis. His new passion is NASCAR, which was a peculiar transition, if you ask me :)
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Re: How are we doing?

#43

Post by Deuce »

I remember those days of discussion after we learned that TAT 1.0 would be shutting down. Wanting to maintain essentially the same format, figuring that Reddit would not preserve the feeling of TAT 1.0...

A year later, I'd say it's been a success...
R.I.P. Amal...

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Re: How are we doing?

#44

Post by Fastbackss »

I am thankful for the efforts in keeping us afloat.

I am also thankful that I now have a 2nd cup of coffee, so that in the future I don't vote in polls like this (apparently I thought it was current - I saw the December and not the 2020 part)
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Re: How are we doing?

#45

Post by LilMissBubbles »

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