As you can see, we have updated the board software to the latest and greatest from phpBB. We are still getting used to the new interface and have found alot of our old mods are now built in. At this point, we are very concerned about security. Sooo, we aren't going to be installing any mods right off the bat. We want to run the standard software for a bit and see how it works. However, as you are using the board, if you see any functionality that you had before that is missing, please post to this thread with a description of what is missing. From there, we will look at installing mods, once we are sure it won't cause a security issue. Thanks.
One change that's been implemented that you should be aware of ... you can now create multiple forum accounts using the SAME email address. Since the new version of phpBB let us do this, we thought we'd give it a try to make things easier for the Play by Post games. So now you can make as many NPCs as you like!
Also note that the RSS links are all gone. We're going to give the board's built-in subscription system a try ... if it doesn't work well enough (as we found before), then we can look for a better add-on. But try it out first ... go to the bottom of the page of the forum or thread you're interested in, and click on the "subscribe" link in the left corner (you'll probably need to re-do this even if you had been subscribed before the melt-down). Please let us know if you have any trouble, or if it doesn't deliver all of the posts you ask for, etc. Thanks!
Hm, the forum search does not seem to work properly.
I entered "weapon abilities" and later tried with "criamon". In both cases I got an empty result and this information:
"The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words:"
Even if this is the Ars Magica forum, none of these words should be that common.
For the search, phpbb3 has a number % and when the word appears more than this %, it's "taken" (it's usefull for words like "the" or others). On Ars magica, some words are too often used... (name of houses).
I've disabled the search "common words" filter entirely, and I'm rebuilding the database for it now (which will likely take several more hours) ... when that's done, you shouldn't have that trouble anymore. Try searching tomorrow and let me know if there are still problems. Thanks!
Many of you probably noticed the influx of porn spam this morning, left behind by bots that got through registration despite both a captcha and an email confirmation requirement. We cleaned the posts out and re-implemented the "Not a Bot" question for registration, but in a much more user-friendly way this time (thanks Wendy!). Hopefully that will stymie them as it has in the past.
As a result of the 40+ obvious spam-bot registrations, we also deleted the accounts of all new registrations from Jun 9th and 10th. If yours was deleted and you're not a bot, please re-register with the same username and password. Sorry for the trouble, and thanks for understanding!
I definitely prefer the RSS feed over the new forum subscription feature: RSS permitted me to read the new posts in my RSS reader whenever I wanted, not being interrupted by new mails in my mailbox, and provided posts full content whereas forum subscription feature only seems to send new threads titles and links.
So I won't use the forum subscription, I would use the RSS feed.
Okay, the RSS feed is on the "to do" list. Since the "subscription" feature just annoys me (I used the RSS feed to monitor the Ask Atlas forum, for example), it's likely to actually get done, and sooner rather than later.
Ok, so does anyone have any suggestions for a RSS Mod that works with the new version of the software. I am going to start the research but figured it wouldn't hurt to ask if someone has something already setup on another board. Thanks.
The permissions system for the new software is WAY more complicated than it was before. I've been working on setting it up properly, but if you suddenly notice that you CAN'T see/do something that you WERE able to before, or that you CAN see/do something that you WEREN'T able to before, please let me know!
Sorry, it's going to have to wait a while ... we got diverted by that ongoing hacker situation for almost a month, and now our webmaster is traveling until the end of the month.
I'd forgotten this comment, and have a couple simple requests if you don't mind the threadomancy. Don't know if they're possible, but if they are - that'd be great!
The first is a "horizontal rule" (
), that creates a line across a post. Rather than using dashes ( ------------ ) or underscores ( __________ ), this tag creates a solid line that conforms exactly to the viewed width of the post - no wider, no shorter. Nice for creating strong breaks in a post.
Also, are superscript/subscript possible? While typing "C = Pi R^2" works, the ability to actually make a raised number would be nice. Also critical for making numbered footnotes (rather than multiples of asterisks.) (Subscript is less useful to me, but if one might as well do both.)
