by ponchi101 Gang.
As I am working a bit more on this system, I would very much appreciate some feedback. I am having some issues with my account (yes, I know, and I AM RUNNING IT. Go ahead, laugh). It seems the administrator interface is limited to some arrangements.
In short:
My recent topics window is ON TOP, although I set it up for ON THE SIDE.
It is showing all recent topics, as opposed to only UNREAD ONES (which is what I set it too).
Some people are also having issues loading avatars. Let me know.
The poll attached is multiple choice. Click as many as apply. I also want to test the POLL function.
Thanks.
BTW: if something changes, you can re-vote. Unlike in any other aspect of life.
by texasniteowl re: avatars....I took my avatar from OG TAT and resized it down to 90x90 jpg but it ended up still over the 6kb limit. So in order to drop the size from 8 to 6, I had to load it into paint and save it as a gif which reduced the "quality". But it did drop it to the right size limit so it worked. just fyi in case it helps someone else.
by
Deuce ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 10, 2020 10:45 pm
In short:
My recent topics window is ON TOP, although I set it up for ON THE SIDE.
It is showing all recent topics, as opposed to only UNREAD ONES (which is what I set it too).
In response to the above specifically, my 'recent topics' window has always been on top.
And it seems to fluctuate between showing all recent POSTS and only the recent posts that I've not yet read. Maybe it was fluctuating between the two because you were playing around with it.
Either way is ok... though I think I prefer it showing all recent posts, not just the unread ones.
It would be nice if we could set these things individually, if that's possible - then no-one (including you) would ever have to worry about it.
By the way, the 'Board Index' link on the bottom left of pages isn't working (for me, at least). When I click on it, nothing happens. If I hover, I get a small pop-up allowing me to select the
Forum I want. But clicking on the 'Board Index' produces nothing. The 'Board Index' link toward the top left of the pages works fine when I click it.
It's not a big deal - don't consider it a priority... and if it never gets fixed, it's fine. I just wanted to let you know.
Nice avatar.
But mine blinks.
by
Deuce Deuce wrote: ↑Fri Dec 11, 2020 3:52 am
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 10, 2020 10:45 pm
In short:
My recent topics window is ON TOP, although I set it up for ON THE SIDE.
It is showing all recent topics, as opposed to only UNREAD ONES (which is what I set it too).
In response to the above specifically, my 'recent topics' window has always been on top.
And it seems to fluctuate between showing all recent POSTS and only the recent posts that I've not yet read. Maybe it was fluctuating between the two because you were playing around with it.
Either way is ok... though I think I prefer it showing all recent posts, not just the unread ones.
It would be nice if we could set these things individually, if that's possible - then no-one (including you) would ever have to worry about it.
I've just noticed that when I click on the numbers (seemingly some type of page numbers) under 'Mark Forums Read' on the Board Index page - I have numbers 1 to 5, and every time I click on a different number, different posts come up in the 'Recent Topics' window. Strange. And I can't click on #1, no matter what number I've clicked on before.
By the way, the 'Board Index' link on the bottom left of pages isn't working (for me, at least). When I click on it, nothing happens. If I hover, I get a small pop-up allowing me to select the
Forum I want. But clicking on the 'Board Index' produces nothing. The 'Board Index' link toward the top left of the pages works fine when I click it.
It's not a big deal - don't consider it a priority... and if it never gets fixed, it's fine. I just wanted to let you know.
Nice avatar.
But mine blinks.
by
Suliso Just testing a new site...
by
ponchi101 Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Dec 11, 2020 2:32 pm
Just testing a new site...
Welcome!
by
the Moz Thanks so much for this ponchi
by
dave g - This is just a test for creating tables for things like fantasy tennis score tables
* ponchi101 20 25 10 100 155
* ponchi101 5 30 25 90 150
ponchi101 40 50 50 150 290
This website does not appear to have the same type of table maker that TAT1.0 had. This should not cause a large problem, because we usually just copy and paste data from spreadsheets like EXCEL into the table. We may have to add an "*" to the beginning of each line to prevent extra blank lines from being inserted. The only problem I am seeing is that we will lose the ability to make the columns line up without the table making ability.
ponchi: does this website service provide a table making tool?
by
ponchi101 Dave. I don't think it does. If by website provider you mean phpBB (software), it seems it indeed does not let you make tables. I tried it too and I had to insert chevrons to create the space.
If you mean the hosting service, they fall back on phpBB; they do not provide software (they let you upload WP, phpBB or any other software with auto-installers, which is as far as I have gone with them).
It seems to have that limitation...
by James Just use Google sheets. You can share them as read only like I did with this year's prediction scoring.
by
ponchi101 James wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 4:11 am
Just use Google sheets. You can share them as read only like I did with this year's prediction scoring.
If you share them as READ ONLY, wouldn't that block people from entering their pick?
by Kirkus I don't understand the reason, but apparently giving posters the ability to create tables can make it easier to introduce malicious code into a forum. I was using different software on a project some years ago and I wanted the ability to make tables from the front end and I had to sign a waiver, holding him harmless, before the software writer would unlock that feature.
I don't know if that's still a thing, or is what's going on here, but maybe.
by
ponchi101 Kirkus wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 6:01 pm
I don't understand the reason, but apparently giving posters the ability to create tables can make it easier to introduce malicious code into a forum. I was using different software on a project some years ago and I wanted the ability to make tables from the front end and I had to sign a waiver, holding him harmless, before the software writer would unlock that feature.
I don't know if that's still a thing, or is what's going on here, but maybe.
Ok. Sounds reasonable; about 20 years ago one of the most common ways to distribute a virus was via MS documents: .doc and .xls were very easy to code into malicious malware.
I believe that the way to go, if we accept James proposal, is to create a Google Sheet and load the link here. The people can go into it and post their pick.
I have never used any of the cloud based google applications but, if they have the same properties as a regular Excel sheet, we could go this way:
1. People have to register for the SP a couple of days before.
2. That list goes into the sheet.
3. The sheet would be protected, so that only the picks column can be changed.
4. After you lose, your ROW would be protected again. You could not enter any data, so no more zombies.
5. Same sheet every day, unprotect the column for the day, and maybe it would be better for everybody.
We still have over one month.
by James Oh, I didn't mean for suicide picks, but for tabular posts like scores and results. There are Google forms or survey monkey things if you are talking suicide pool pick entries.
You lose the banter of pick threads entirely, but if we are being honest hardly anyone sits and reads those, I think.
by ponchi101 I am trying to run a test for a Google Sheet. Will update that post so you can see it.
by Deuce Ponchi, I notice that going to the 'Talk About Tennis' forum defaults to the ProSilver theme, no matter what theme we've selected in our user control panel (I've tested this). For example, if the ProSilver Dark Edition, or X-Creamy theme is selected, all forums will appear in those colours EXCEPT the Talk About Tennis forum, which appears in ProSilver.
Also, I've selected 'On The Side' for the 'Recent Topics' area, but it displays on the top. It displayed on the side for a couple of days last week, but has been on the top for the past several days, though 'On The Side' is still selected in my user control panel. I've played around with it, but I cannot get it to display on the side at all anymore.
Not a serious matter, obviously - just want to let you know, as you mentioned you were experiencing something similar with the 'Recent Topics' display.
by
Togtdyalttai Deuce wrote: ↑Thu Dec 17, 2020 11:56 pm
Ponchi, I notice that going to the 'Talk About Tennis' forum defaults to the ProSilver theme, no matter what theme we've selected in our user control panel (I've tested this). For example, if the ProSilver Dark Edition, or X-Creamy theme is selected, all forums will appear in those colours EXCEPT the Talk About Tennis forum, which appears in ProSilver.
Also, I've selected 'On The Side' for the 'Recent Topics' area, but it displays on the top. It displayed on the side for a couple of days last week, but has been on the top for the past several days, though 'On The Side' is still selected in my user control panel. I've played around with it, but I cannot get it to display on the side at all anymore.
Not a serious matter, obviously - just want to let you know, as you mentioned you were experiencing something similar with the 'Recent Topics' display.
Can you see if it's any different now please?
by
Deuce Togtdyalttai wrote: ↑Fri Dec 18, 2020 12:49 am
Deuce wrote: ↑Thu Dec 17, 2020 11:56 pm
Ponchi, I notice that going to the 'Talk About Tennis' forum defaults to the ProSilver theme, no matter what theme we've selected in our user control panel (I've tested this). For example, if the ProSilver Dark Edition, or X-Creamy theme is selected, all forums will appear in those colours EXCEPT the Talk About Tennis forum, which appears in ProSilver.
Also, I've selected 'On The Side' for the 'Recent Topics' area, but it displays on the top. It displayed on the side for a couple of days last week, but has been on the top for the past several days, though 'On The Side' is still selected in my user control panel. I've played around with it, but I cannot get it to display on the side at all anymore.
Not a serious matter, obviously - just want to let you know, as you mentioned you were experiencing something similar with the 'Recent Topics' display.
Can you see if it's any different now please?
Yes - the Talk About Tennis forum no longer defaults to ProSilver - it's fine now.
Thanks much, Tog.
('Recent Topics' is still on top, though.)
by ponchi101 Deuce:
Try to update your USER CONTROL PANEL/DISPLAY OPTIONS. Switch to pro-silver or pro-silver se, the set the recent topics to the side.
The other themes may be note set up for that extension. It is not an official one.
by Deuce Still on the top with ProSilver when set to 'on the side'.
I can set it to 'on the bottom' in any theme, and that works (it's on the bottom). But it won't go to the side no matter what I do.
As I said - it's not an important thing, so don't spend too much time on it.
I see that the posts displayed per page has seemed to increase from 10 to 15. Getting it to be user-set, with the option to go to 30 or 40, would be nice - when you have time. Again, not a hugely important thing to be done immediately.
by
ponchi101 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.
Your issue with the RECENT topics extension are puzzling. Let's see if they go away.
by meganfernandez Oh hey just found this site. I'm on TAT about every day and it took me forever to see the note at the top about TAT2.0
by
ponchi101 meganfernandez wrote: ↑Fri Dec 18, 2020 2:04 pm
Oh hey just found this site. I'm on TAT about every day and it took me forever to see the note at the top about TAT2.0
Well, I was wondering what took you so long
Welcome. Take a look around, as the forum is not exactly like TAT1.0. The posting and customizing is a bit different
by
meganfernandez ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 18, 2020 2:54 pm
meganfernandez wrote: ↑Fri Dec 18, 2020 2:04 pm
Oh hey just found this site. I'm on TAT about every day and it took me forever to see the note at the top about TAT2.0
Well, I was wondering what took you so long
Welcome. Take a look around, as the forum is not exactly like TAT1.0. The posting and customizing is a bit different
I was over on Reddit all by my lonesome!
Thanks for doing this! Love this.
by
Deuce 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.
by
ponchi101 Tog found that extension too and gave me the link. I downloaded it and installed it in my test site (locally in my laptop).
It just caused a crash so bad I could not recover the site, not even after deleting the files from the extension library in my drive.
I then looked for another, and it did the same. It seems those extensions have not been updated for phpBB 3.3.x (what we are using) and, as they are not official, they are only set up for 3.1.3 (what the developer states).
I left a not on the phpBB board for that person to know. Let's see if they update soon enough.
Now, I have to go and reconstruct my fake TAT2.0
by ponchi101 Deuce.
It seems I got it working, but as I had to re-install an entire new forum, it only has this extension now.
Let me re-build the extensions' library, just to see if this one may cause conflicts. I don't want to load this one up, and then find our it clashes with others and crashes the REAL board.
I believe I may give it a try tomorrow, after I am able to make a proper back-up of this board, and make sure that if I really stick the wrong finger on the wrong key, I can recover this one.
KYP
by
Deuce 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..."
by
Kirkus 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..."
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.
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
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
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.
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!
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 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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