Forum maintenance work

[Chuck Barlow]

Sorry this is short notice. I am going to be trying to complete some maintenance & upgrade work on the ZOA Forum this afternoon / evening (Friday). There will be some blocks of time where the forum will be disabled. I will try to have it back up by "prime time" tonight.

[Chuck Barlow]

Okay everyone, I think that I am finished for now. The forum is upgraded to the latest and greatest vBulletin version 4.0.6. You will of course notice that there is a new look to the forum. This is because all of our customized styles and templates that had the alternate "look and feel" from the previous version of the forum were not compatible with this version.

During the upcoming days and weeks I will work to try to restore some level of the ZOA custom look and feel so that at least we put a little bit of our own branding back into the pages.

Otherwise please report to me any problems you encounter with the forum.

[Charan Kumar]

I like the new look, but I am ok with the old one too. Nice job!!

[Adam White]

I like the new look also. Thanks Chuck for keeping the forum up to date.

[Jesse Eslava]

Real good. Thanks Chuck.

[Jimmy Cresswell]

Like this forum better then the old one.

[Chris Virgilio]

Not trying to be a complete antagonist here, but why do we keep upgrading pieces that are not broken at risk of breaking them even more? What functionality do we gain that we did not already have? Mainly I am asking why we keep f'ing with stuff that can break for seemingly no reason?

[Michael Mund-Hoym]

This update in the vBulletin forum went along with the recently bought forum license. Most of you probably remember me asking for donations towards the new forum license. Here it is along with the version upgrade. Thanks to Chuck for installing the upgrade and also many thanks to those who made a donation:

- Jim Greever
- Chuck Barlow
- Charan Kumar
- Mike Fries

We never risked losing any information or doing something wrong in the forum. Chuck always had backups that would have made it possible at any time to revert to what we had, in case anything he did might have gone wrong.

[Paul Biderman]

I like the new look as well....maybe better then the old one. And Chris, just about the time I stepped down as ATM ZOA's license to the forum came due for renewal. Their choices were to move to a different forum completely or to pay for a new license. I left that decision to the new ATM and obviously they chose to renew.

Thanks to everyone who donated. I know the license wasn't cheap.

[Chuck Barlow]

Also it's important to note that along with feature upgrades, these new software versions also include security patches that lower our risk of getting hacked.

[Jay McFerdy]

Not trying to be a complete antagonist here, but why do we keep upgrading pieces that are not broken at risk of breaking them even more? What functionality do we gain that we did not already have? Mainly I am asking why we keep f'ing with stuff that can break for seemingly no reason?

Why so harsh, Chris??? Usually not like you at all...

The guys have obviously made a hard effort in bettering what was already in place. Mainly for the simple reason that the "old" version of the forum (3.8.6 was the latest) would no longer be supported by vbulletin. It was either to accept the fact of no further updates, especially security patches, or working with something new and they could be assured that updates will be forthcoming.

I would like to thank the guys for taking the step to assure that security in our forum is of the utmost concern to ZOA.

[Steffen Franz]

the old IT rule says : "Never touch a running system" ;) but updates are sometimes necessary, if you like em or not. The new visuals need a bit to get used to for me. Thought I was on the wrong site at first.

[Mike Fries]

anyone else having trouble logging in/ staying logged in?

[Gene Cao]

nope...works for me

[Chuck Barlow]

I haven't noticed anything unusual either. Can you describe what is happening to you Mike?

[Mike Fries]

sure, on Safari and Firefox I go to the main forum link, log in at the top and it says thank you for logging in mike fries, the redirects me back to the main forum page but I am not logged in. I have to click on the "forum" button under the vbulletin logo and then it shows me as being logged in.

On IE in Windows 7, I can't even get into my user cp, it looks as though I'm a guest, but at the bottom of the page it says Mike Fries is currently logged in

[Paul Biderman]

I'm using Firefox and have had no problems. Try clearing your caches.

[Steffen Franz]

sure, on Safari and Firefox I go to the main forum link, log in at the top and it says thank you for logging in mike fries, the redirects me back to the main forum page but I am not logged in. I have to click on the "forum" button under the vbulletin logo and then it shows me as being logged in.

On IE in Windows 7, I can't even get into my user cp, it looks as though I'm a guest, but at the bottom of the page it says Mike Fries is currently logged in

happens to me on one computer with FF. It won't keep the log in, have to do it on every step. Since it's only one comp I don't really bother though. It's using FF 3.6.8, maybe there's something wrong with that one. However, this already happened to me before the upgrade, so I don't think it has to do with that.

[Mike Fries]

Happens on three different computers and my iPhone for me. I think the "remember me" works now I just have to click the forum button again and I'm logged in all of a sudden

[Paul Biderman]

Yeah, the newest firefox has been tempermental. I do have problems with it on other sites, such as not remembering my address history or not updating the page when I hit refresh. Still better then Internet Exploder though.

[Chuck Barlow]

Mike and Steffen,

I changed a server-side setting on the forum for the Cookie Domain value that is used. According to some vBulletin support forum posts that I read, this resolved similar issues that some other customers had been having with login in Firefox. Let me know if helps it to work any better for you.

[Steffen Franz]

Mike and Steffen,

I changed a server-side setting on the forum for the Cookie Domain value that is used. According to some vBulletin support forum posts that I read, this resolved similar issues that some other customers had been having with login in Firefox. Let me know if helps it to work any better for you.

not sure what you did Chuck, but that made it even worse for me on this comp. Now I have to sign in multiple times for each page I visit (before it was at least only once ;) ).

What's your experience with this change Mike?

Ain't a big deal for me though, as I mentioned, it's only on one of the comps I am using.

[Chuck Barlow]

Is it possible your browser has some restrictive settings for cookies? I'm pretty sure that cookies are being used by vBulletin to "remember" your login, so if that feature never seems to work it makes me think that you've either disabled cookies entirely, or your browser is only allowing them for certain sites.

[Mike Fries]

no changes after the update, but all of a sudden now I only have to log in once in Safari (haven't tested other browsers today)